Homelessness, “Neighbors” and the Usurpation of Public Space

A few years ago, I received a summary of a public meeting where a Councilperson met with her constituents regarding homelessness. When a resident complained about encampments on the sidewalks, a Council aide replied, “The homeless have as much right to the sidewalk as you do”. Besides sidestepping the issue of why there are so many people living on the street, the response was flip and arrogant. Yes, anyone has a right to use the sidewalks. But nobody has the right to use them exclusively. The inability of leaders to see the difference encapsulates a core problem with homelessness in Los Angeles; it has encroached on the public space for so long, the default assumption is that virtually any location is open to encampents.

We can start with the obvious health and safety issues created by encampments. Encampments are breeding grounds for vector-borne diseases. A recent story on KTLA shows the deplorable conditions in a large encampment just west of downtown. Rats scurried amid a sea of trash and food waste. Rotting food attracted flies and other insects. The living conditions harken back to the days of a Victorian slum instead of a modern world-class city. The report also quoted a police spokesperson as saying pedestrians are forced to walk in the street because the tents and trach block the sidewalk. The traffic lanes on Olympic Boulevard is not a place where people should be walking.

We also know the homeless, especially those who are unsheltered, have death rates many times higher than the housed. The latest report from the L.A. County Department of Public Health shows the death rate per 100,000 people is nearly four times higher for the unhoused than the general population’s rate, (p. 8, figure 4). Despite a small decline, drug overdose continues to be the leading cause of death among the homeless, followed by cardiac arrest, which is often associated with long-term chronic drug use. The Health Department attributes the decline to the expanded availability of anti-overdose medication like Naloxone, but there is a difference between preventing an overdose death and preventing the overdose to begin with, a concept that seems lost on proponents of Harm Reduction.

Some hazards of being homeless are manmade. A 2022 study by San Diego’s District Attorney revealed that the unhoused are victims of crime at far higher rates than their housed counterparts, They are 19 times more likely to be murdered, 15 times more likely to be robbed, and nine times more likely to be sexually assaulted. In other words, if you manage to avoid a Medieval disease or a fatal drug overdose while living on the street, you may fall victim to personal crime.

Even as local leaders trumpet unsubstantiated decreases in unsheltered homelessness, encampments seem to crop up as soon as they’re cleared, and they continue to consume more public space than ever. A recent article in the Westside Current shows that public libraries on the city’s west side recorded more than 17,000 homelessness-related calls for service between 2017 and 2024, or an average of almost 2,430 per year, or 2.6 calls per facility per day. Calls cover everything from active substance abuse to assault with a deadly weapon. Librarians quoted in the article often fear for their safety and the safety of patrons. Libraries should be refuges from the hectic pace of city living, and a resource for their communities. Instead, they have become ersatz homeless shelters, but without the capacity or staff to treat people with crisis-level problems. In what may be described as the ultimate example of mission creep, LA libraries now distribute naloxone and provide training on its use. The city’s fiscal year 2026-27 budget shows it will spend almost $1.4 million on security services and more than $1.6 million on social services contracts in the library system. Those amounts do not account for repairs and other extra costs associated with homelessness. Speaking from personal experience, in the city I worked for, we had to hire a service that cleaned crime scenes to clean the main library’s restrooms because the custodial contractor was not equipped to handle the biohazards disturbed unhoused people left behind.

One cost that cannot be quantified is the denial of the library experience to patrons, especially those of limited means. In addition to lending books, public libraries have become places where people can search for jobs, and where adults and children should be able to find a quiet space. Yet these opportunities are too often denied to them by disturbances and criminal activity associated with the unhoused.

The situation on our sidewalks and in our libraries is indicative of a larger problem with homelessness in Los Angeles. Our leaders constantly lecture residents and business owners that the homeless are our “unhoused neighbors” and that questioning their presence in the public sphere is discriminatory. To some extent, that’s true. Being homeless is not illegal, and the unhoused are no less human than anyone else. But nobody, housed or otherwise, has an inherent right to use public spaces for their exclusive use. I cannot decide to build a house in the middle of my local park, nor can I use the middle lane of Sepulveda Bl. as a personal parking space. Yet families are denied the use of parks, patrons the use of libraries, residents the use of the sidewalks, and business owners the benefit of clear access to their stores because leaders refuse to work for the common good.

If the homeless are truly our “unhoused neighbors”, shouldn’t they be held to the same social standards as any other neighbor? I wouldn’t tolerate my housed neighbor throwing his trash into my backyard, yet the city spends millions to clean encampments, often just to have occupants move back, sometimes on the same day. Allowing the unhoused to enjoy the benefits of being neighbors without any of the responsibilities denies them full participation in society. This was one of the comments made by Jess Echeverry, CEO of SOFESA, a homelessness services nonprofit on LA’s west side. In a 2021 interview, Ms. Echeverry said failing to provide the unhoused with meaningful life skills training denies them the ability to become fully integrated in society, forcing them to permanently rely on government support.

Exacerbating the usurpation of public space is the increase in “rough sleepers” among the homeless. A recent RAND survey of three key centers of homelessness in LA shows that, while homelessness has deceased or stayed steady, the proportion of people sleeping with no shelter of any kind has sharply increased. As the study says, rough sleepers tend to be chronically homeless, and more likely to have substance abuse or untreated mental illness, making them more difficult to bring into shelter and housing. These are the people we find sleeping on the sidewalks and acting out in libraries.

Instead of reclaiming public space for the common good, local leaders rely on lectures and rhetoric to protect the status quo. They reframe the legitimate expectation that taxpayers have unfettered access to public spaces as “hating the homeless”. Advocates ask “where else can they go” while ignoring the fact local government has left thousands of units vacant due to bureaucratic bickering, and thousands of people stranded on the streets waiting for housing that may never be built. And, perhaps in the greatest injustice to both the unhoused and residents, they refuse to acknowledge the reality that many homeless people have untread mental illnesses and/or substance abuse problems. Advocates are so enamored of the idea that homelessness is purely due to the lack of affordable housing, they are willing to put library employees and patrons in harm’s way, force pedestrians to walk in the street, and prevent children from playing in parks, all in the name of their ideological obsession with housing. Until we elect leaders willing to advocate for common people, we will continue to suffer from a narrowing of what constitutes public space in our communities.