`Not in my city': local governments and homelessness policies in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Region

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1 Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 2001, volume 19, pages 791 ^ 815 DOI: /c15c `Not in my city': local governments and homelessness policies in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Region Robin Law Department of Geography, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand; robin.law@geography.otago.ac.nz Received 13 March 2000; in revised form 25 September 2000 Abstract. To understand local government social welfare policies in large metropolitan areas, we need to pay attention to the processes by which amorphous social problems are translated into well-defined services amenable to local government structures of provision, and we need to place these processes within an interjurisdictional context that is more complex than a simple `city ^ suburb' binary opposition. In this paper I explore the interjurisdictional allocation of responsibility for social welfare in a fragmented metropolitan region, through a case study of city responses to the suburbanisation of homelessness in Los Angeles County in the 1990s. The results of a 1991 survey of all eighty-five local governments in the county revealed wide variations in the extent to which cities acknowledged responsibility for dealing with homelessness, and in the forms of actions adopted by cities. Some city characteristics (population size, median household income, and charter city status) were significant factors affecting the level of action on homelessness. However, the variation in city action must also be understood as a product of the metropolitan context, where city officials develop welfare policies with close attention to the actions of neighbouring cities, and with a keen awareness of the opportunities for burden shifting and `beggar thy neighbour' responses. Although the relative mobility of homeless people (both forced and voluntary) heightens the impact of policy disparities among cities, a similar scenario can be imagined for other social needs in a politically fragmented region. Introduction Over the last four decades, urban policy debates in the United States on equity and social welfare have been structured by the dichotomy of central city and suburbs. By the early 1990s, the discourse of urban crisis generated by white flight to the suburbs had been replaced as new sociospatial patterns emerged, such as gentrification, immigrant-driven demographic shifts, and growth of suburban employment nodes (for example, `edge cities'). Cutbacks in federal and state welfare spending, and limits on local property tax bases (for example, California's Proposition 13) constrained local government budgets, and a complex mix of public sector, private sector, and `shadow state' nonprofit agencies together formed local structures of governance (Healey et al, 1995; Wolch, 1990). Although the central-city ^ suburb distinction is still useful as a broad organising idea, it is increasingly inadequate to capture the complexity of interjurisdictional tensions and patterns of social welfare need and provision in large metropolitan areas (Nunn and Rosentraub, 1997). In particular, this dichotomy is of limited value in situations of `metropolitan fragmentation' (Barlow, 1991), where a multiplicity of autonomous cities share a functionally integrated space-economy while each retains responsibility for determining the mix of city services provided, and each occupies a unique location, along with a distinct local history and population mix. Studies of local government service provision have tended to focus on well-defined services conventionally provided by local government, such as schools or household waste collection. Social welfare functions are less often discussed, although some commentators identify their community-building role as highly significant (for example, Frug, 1996; 1998). Studies of local governments have also tended to take as their model a discrete, well-defined, and functionally independent urban settlement surrounded by

2 792 RLaw rural land, rather than a municipality embedded in the metropolitan mosaic of contiguous local governments (Briffault, 1996). Thus relatively little attention has been paid to the policy process of simultaneously constituting social welfare problems as local government service issues, and negotiating resources and responsibilities among neighbouring autonomous cities in a single metropolitan space. It seems plausible that, in a situation of metropolitan fragmentation, local governments will develop social welfare policies with close attention to the actions of neighbouring cities, and with a keen awareness of the opportunities for burden-shifting and `beggar thy neighbour' responses (Davis, 1996). In this paper I argue that, to understand local government social welfare policies in large metropolitan areas, we need to pay attention to the processes by which amorphous social problems are translated into well-defined services amenable to local government structures of provision, and we need to place these processes within an interjurisdictional context that is more complex than a simple `city ^ suburb' binary opposition. In this paper I explore the interjurisdictional allocation of responsibility for social welfare in a fragmented metropolitan region, through a case study of city responses to the suburbanisation of homelessness in Los Angeles County in the 1990s. The broad question addressed is this: How do local governments in a politically fragmented metropolis respond to an emerging social problem such as homelessness? More specifically, what variations and patterns of service provision across metropolitan space are generated in a policy environment that facilitates local government strategies of interjurisdictional burden-shifting? Theories of metropolitan fragmentation and service diversity There are wide variations in the extent and form of services which are provided by local governments in the United States, even where local governments share the same regional or metropolitan context (Duncan and Goodwin, 1988). Urban and political geographers have been particularly interested in explaining the reasons for the variation in service provision among neighbouring cities in a single metropolitan district. Three theoretical approaches have been particularly influential: the public choice `consumer preference' argument, the liberal `manipulated city' approach, and the Marxist `uneven development' approach (Cox and Jonas, 1993; Duncan and Goodwin, 1988; Frug, 1998). Despite the deep-seated differences in political foundations among these three approaches, they all share a commitment to explain metropolitan fragmentation and variation in city service levels as the outcome of social processes operating in the context of space and time. Under the public choice scenario (based on Tiebout, 1956) households are rational consumers of local government services with varying preferences, and diversity in service provision is the beneficial outcome of householders `voting with their feet' for different packages of local government (services, taxes, etc). Public choice theorists have developed this argument and explored problems of interjurisdictional spillover in service provision (for example, Cremer et al, 1997). Critics note that, although this approach is attentive to time and space in general terms, the drive to develop an abstract model leads to a neglect of specific historical and geographical context, and the adoption of unrealistic assumptions. In contrast, the liberal reformist approach downplays potential differences in consumer preference as a causal mechanism, and instead explains metropolitan fragmentation and service diversity as the outcome of political processes of congregation and exclusion. The emergence of metropolitan fragmentation in the United States is understood as an initiative by middle-class suburbanites to avoid the redistributive tax burden of central cities, and to preserve the middle-class character of neighbourhoods and local schools, often through

3 Homelessness policies in LA County 793 exclusionary zoning and regulations on housing density. Some of the insights of public choice theory regarding externalities, and free-rider behaviour are incorporated. The Marxist approach is distinguished by a focus on the dynamics of capitalist production rather than consumption, and an understanding of the local state as an element in the capitalist state apparatus. Fragmentation and service diversity in metropolitan areas are explained as part of a structural process of uneven development across space (Duncan and Goodwin, 1988). Liberal and Marxist explanations both share a normative dimension that sees fragmentation as negative. Over time, both have tended to converge, and to inform new initiatives in political geography such as contemporary work on regulation theory and governance (Goodwin and Painter, 1996; Jones, 1998). Public choice theory, working within a normative framework that sees fragmentation as a positive response to consumer demand, seems to have had less influence in geography (but see Boyne and Cole, 1996). The similarities among these three `contextual' approaches are highlighted in comparison with an alternative body of work which draws on a somewhat aspatial political science tradition: the comparative approach, sometimes referred to as `output studies' (for example, Hoggart, 1995). This work seeks to identify consistent relationships between city characteristics (including demographic characteristics and attitudes of local residents) and policy outcomes, aiming to develop some ability to predict the responses of local governments or residents. Cities are treated as discrete and independent cases, captured in a `snapshot' at a single point in time, and situated in a spatial context that is often simplified using indicators such as `central city/noncentral city'. In the interests of obtaining comparable cases, smaller cities and those with anomalous features are often excluded. Combining the comparative approach with a contextual approach more sensitive to social processes in space and time can help explain local government service provision within a metropolitan area characterised by a large number of cities. The example of local government responses to homelessness in Los Angeles County in the early 1990s offers a well-defined case study that permits the weaving together of different explanatory factors, to show how local government responses are linked both to context and to city characteristics. The suburbanisation of homelessness Homelessness can be understood as the effect of structural changes in employment patterns, housing supply, and welfare state policies (Belcher and DiBlasio, 1990; Lang, 1989; Rossi, 1989; Wolch and Dear, 1993). In the United States in the 1980s, these changes included deindustrialisation, cutbacks in funding for low-income housing, deinstitutionalisation of chronic psychiatric patients, epidemics of drug use, and reductions in relief payments for indigent adults. Once homeless, individuals are forced into patterns of daily and periodic mobility across metropolitan space by the organisation of the welfare system (regulations, practices, and geographic distributions of facilities) and by the need to maintain connections with friends and family (Wolch et al, 1993). By the beginning of the 1990s, homelessness in the United States could no longer be regarded simply as an inner-city phenomenon. In major metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles, makeshift cardboard shelters and converted shopping carts appeared in the parks and vacant lots of suburban neighbourhoods. Reports began to surface of families and individuals living in cars in parking lots and camp sites, spending their days in the shopping malls and branch libraries of small jurisdictions across the metropolitan district (Hoch, 1991; Laws, 1992; Lee, 1989; Los Angeles Times 1993). This `suburbanisation of homelessness' presented local authorities with evidence of need, but there was little clear indication of how to respond. Although clusters of shelters,

4 794 RLaw missions, and other services for a transient population had been developed in inner-city Skid Row districts, most smaller suburban cities had neither established facilities, nor voluntary sector groups able to respond effectively. Homelessness thus represented a new and many-sided social problem for suburban local authorities in the 1990s, with the potential to become a charged political issue. Responses by local governments to this emerging problem were shaped by federal and state policy, but were also shaped by the metropolitan context of governance. Because homeless people are easily cast in the role of outsiders and transients rather than deserving local residents, it is tempting for local authorities to shift the problem both by neglecting to provide any services (avoidance) and by physically moving people (displacement). Indeed, one well-known strategy by local authorities has been sardonically termed `Greyhound therapy': offering homeless people one-way bus tickets out of town (Fantasia and Isserman, 1994, page 89). Thus cities where police harass homeless people, and where land-use regulations prevent shelter location, may manage to diminish claims on local resources, while more tolerant cities may find themselves inadvertently performing (and paying for) a regional service. Research into local government responses to homelessness can be broadly divided into contextual and comparative studies. On the one hand there are detailed studies of particular cities or localities within cities, informed by the historical and spatial context. Most of this is inspired by liberal and Marxist urban theory, rather than by public choice theory. Political struggles over homeless people's presence on particular sites have been sharply delineated for Venice Beach in Los Angeles (Wolch and Dear, 1993), Tompkins Square in New York (Smith, 1996), People's Park in Berkeley (Mitchell, 1995), and Skid Row in Los Angeles (Davis, 1990; Goetz, 1992). Goetz's (1992) study relates local state policies on homelessness to land-use debates and property interests in downtown Los Angeles. This work, and more recent work by Mitchell (1995; 1997) and Smith (1996) in the Marxist tradition, explain variations in local government policy on homelessness in the context of historical patterns of local state responsibility and capitalist uneven development, and in a political environment shaped by local struggles. On the other hand, there are comparative studies of the homelessness policies of major cities across a single national territory. For example, Hoggart (1995) surveyed the homelessness policies of cities in the United Kingdom and investigated the correlation between the policy and political characteristics of the city. The comparative studies by the US Conference of Mayors (1993) provided valuable data to support claims for federal funds. More recently, Berman and West (1997) have conducted a major survey of the level of preparedness in US cities of more than people. However, as Berman and West point out, there are still unanswered questions about the responses of smaller suburban cities within a single metropolitan space. Few studies attempt to link a comparative approach with an approach that locates cities within specific geographical, political, and historical context. The lack of research on local government responses to homelessness within a single metropolitan area echoes a broader omission: as one critic notes, ``one of the main silences in the burgeoning literature on global cities concerns the ways in which national and local state institutions articulate with the distinctive social and economic processes of the World City'' (Goodwin, 1996, page 1396). Context of the Los Angeles County case study By 1990, an estimated 7.8 million people lived within the County of Los Angeles. About 3.5 million lived within the boundaries of Los Angeles City; other cities with more than residents included El Monte, Santa Clarita, Pomona, Torrance,

5 Homelessness policies in LA County 795 Inglewood, Pasadena, Long Beach, and Glendale. The 85 cities then within the county ranged in character from exclusive suburban enclaves for wealthy households (for example, San Marino), to places with many poor households and minimal infrastructure (for example, Bell) to cities dedicated to industrial land use (for example, Vernon), to large, socially diverse cities with a long-established historical identity (for example, Pasadena). Many were incorporated in the 1950s under the `Lakewood Plan' which allowed suburban residents to claim control over zoning and escape fiscal redistribution for public service, while still drawing on countywide economies of scale, by contracting vital services from the county (Davis, 1990; Keil, 1998; Miller, 1981; Teaford, 1979). Subsequently, a large number of small `bedroom' suburbs incorporated as cities, setting in place the fragmented metropolitan structure of Los Angeles. Unincorporated areas (administered by the county) remained, but cities continued to incorporate through the 1980s. The boundaries of local jurisdictions are shown in a simplified form in figure 2 below (although several small pockets of unincorporated land within city boundaries could not be effectively mapped at this scale). Methodology For this research the county boundary was used to define the metropolitan region. Semistructured telephone interviews were conducted in 1991 with city officials and with law enforcement agency representatives for each incorporated city. In the calls to city officials, the interviewer asked the receptionist to direct the telephone call to the person in the city administration who was responsible for homelessness issues. Interviews were sometimes completed with just one person, but often involved several officials (usually from departments of planning and city clerk's office) and repeat telephone calls were made where necessary to follow up referrals. Each interview included eight basic questions, with scope for follow-up questions, covering issues of stated policy, funding and staffing, legislation and enforcement, and land-use zoning. The interviewer made written notes of each answer, and once transcribed, these were sent to city officials to be checked; this allowed the information to be supplemented and checked by other officials. Of the transcribed responses, 76% were reviewed and returned, and those not returned were assumed to be correct. The number of nonresponses to questions was minimal (less than 5%) for all questions except those dealing with law enforcement, where it rose to 33% because of difficulties in contacting appropriate law enforcement officials. Some variation in response quality was inevitable, because cities varied widely in size and complexity, because much depended upon reaching an informed person to interview, and because informants in different cities may have interpreted questions slightly differently. However, the survey yielded broadly comparable data which have been checked for accuracy by informants. The interviews were supplemented by information drawn from planning and policy documents collected from cities. Further details on methodology and findings are available in Law and Wolch (1993), and preliminary findings are reported in Wolch and Dear (1993). Four general questions underlie the research, and are used to organise the findings. First, how was homelessness constructed as a political problem for local governments in this period? Second, how was the general problem of homelessness translated into specific service issues that could be addressed by local governments? Third, what was the extent of variation among cities in local government responses, and how did this relate to city characteristics and location? And, fourth, how did the context of metropolitan fragmentation affect local government responses?

6 796 RLaw Whose problem? Allocating responsibility for homelessness During 1991 an estimated to of the residents of Los Angeles County were homeless at any one time, a 16% increase from the previous year (Shelter Partnership, 1992). As the recession in Southern California intensified during the late 1980s and early 1990s, the number of homeless people each year grew by more than 10%, as did the percentage of people in poverty and inadequate housing (Wolch and Dear, 1993). According to one measure, Los Angeles had the highest rate of homeless people per capita (Goetz, 1992). As homelessness became more visible, public debate intensified on the identification of blame and the allocation of responsibility. A central theme in this debate in the 1980s was the degree to which homelessness was to be seen as a collective public problem for government, as opposed to a private problem for individuals and the voluntary sector. Even when governmental responsibility was acknowledged, debates continued over the particular allocation of responsibility along a vertical dimension (city responsibilities in the context of county, state, and federal administration), and along a horizontal dimension (city responsibilities in the context of the other cities in the metropolitan region). Since the 1970s responsibility had devolved further down the vertical dimension. Nixon's `creative federalism' and later Reagan's `new federalism' allowed local authorities more budget autonomy than had prevailed under the categorical grant programme (Lang, 1989). During the Reagan administration, greater emphasis on local responsibility was associated with deep cuts in housing, block grant, and other federally funded social programmes, thus diminishing the federal capacity to narrow disparities in health and welfare among residents of different cities. At the national level, the Stewart B McKinney Homeless Assistance Act 1990 was signed into law, the first federal legislative effort to intervene in contemporary homelessness. Although it included funds for shelters and other services, the effects were countered by the severe cuts in federal housing programmes. Among a raft of provisions, the Act authorised the Department of Housing and Urban Development to distribute block grants to states (and through states, to cities, counties, and nonprofit agencies) for homeless shelters and services. To qualify for the funds, participating states, metropolitan cities, and urban counties were required to submit a Comprehensive Homeless Assistance Plan (CHAP) that described among other things, available services within the jurisdiction (Fantasia and Isserman, 1994, page 62). This was followed by the National Affordable Housing Act of 1990 and the Low Income Housing Preservation and Resident Homeownership Act of The state tier of government was involved in regulating some aspects of local government policy on homelessness. In California, from 1980 all local jurisdictions were required by the state to prepare a Housing Element as part of their General Plan, and to identify a community's `fair share' of regional housing needs for all income levels. From 1984 California cities were required to address the needs of `families and persons in need of emergency shelter' when revising their General Plan. The allocation of responsibility for addressing homelessness between county and city levels of government was a highly contested issue in Los Angeles. The county has legally mandated responsibility for health and human services, but was notoriously slow to respond to the emerging homelessness crisis, leading to increasing pressure on city and voluntary social agencies. There was no statutory restriction preventing local governments from dealing with homelessness, and some (such as the City of Los Angeles, as the largest city and the city responsible for the downtown Skid Row) began to expand services and develop policies. During the late 1980s, criticism mounted of the county government response, culminating in a lawsuit against the county brought by the City of Los Angeles (Wolch and Dear, 1993). Eventually this dispute was to lead to

7 Homelessness policies in LA County 797 a joint homelessness policy initiative by the city and the county. But by the beginning of the 1990s, local governments were largely acting in isolation in a situation where metropolitan-level planning and service initiatives were notably lacking. How then did local governments perceive their responsibility along the horizontal dimension, in relation to neighbouring local authorities? A close reading of the interview transcripts revealed a pervasive commonsense understanding that homelessness was the responsibility of those places where homeless people were currently located; the corollary of this is that cities without a `homeless problem' were not morally required to do anything. In the words of one official: ``We have no homeless problem. This is an affluent community. I have seen a few people with shopping carts on the periphery, but that's all.'' In this rather static view of the situation, homelessness was treated as a spatially bounded phenomenon. Some interviews did reveal a recognition of the mobility of homeless people, and interestingly, this mobility was seen as the source of power. Mobile homeless people were portrayed as invading transients against which cities were helpless victims fixed in space. One official summed up his city's situation with an air of relief: ``At present, the homeless have not descended on our community.'' The commonsense perception that homelessness is the responsibility of those places where homeless people are to be found was criticised by activists, in debates over attempts to define and identify homeless populations by area. The first federal government attempt at measuring and locating homelessness took the form of the `S-night' count by the US Census of Population in This tried to record the local distribution of homeless people in emergency shelters and known street locations by using estimates by local police and service providers, and was heavily reliant on the cooperation of local authorities. Critics pointed out that this tended to overrepresent homeless people in established nodes of service provision or gathering points wellknown to police, but undercounted those in less obvious, nonestablished locations, particularly suburban sites (Cousineau, 1992; US GAO Report, 1991). The S-night count revealed that homeless people were definitely present in about half the cities in the county, and were more concentrated in places with more low-cost housing and emergency shelters. Those cities with no reported homeless presence did include some small wealthy suburban areas or rural low-density places without lowincome housing which were unlikely to generate homeless people from their own current population (for example, San Marino, Bradbury). However, the category also included medium-sized cities with substantial low-income populations, but without significant homeless services such as shelters (for example, Cudahy, Hawaiian Gardens). Although these cities potentially generated homelessness from within, those local residents who became homeless were forced to undertake complex patterns of voluntary and involuntary migration within the metropolitan region in search of services (Wolch et al, 1993). Given this mobility, attempts to define local responsibility through local need by the number of currently homeless people in one local authority who are counted applying for assistance, sleeping in public space, or staying in emergency shelters were criticised as inherently flawed. The question was raised as to why cities where dedicated volunteers run homeless shelters should be assigned more responsibility for homelessness than those where vigilant police roust out every transient sleeping in the public park and send them on their way. Obviously, larger places with a more diverse and low-income population would have more residents vulnerable to becoming homeless than small, homogeneous, and relatively affluent residential cities. But because much of the homelessness in Southern California could be attributed to structural metropolitan-scale trends in employment and housing markets, it was not

8 798 RLaw clear why the primary responsibility for responding to homelessness should lie with those cities where the need was manifested. The debates over responsibility for homelessness suggested that there existed a strong propensity for city officials to undertake some form of burden shifting among jurisdictions. However, this was challenged by those calling for more redistributive and collective responses. In particular, the debate over the organisation and meaning of the S-night count highlighted the arguments for homelessness as a structural metropolitan-wide issue rather than a local or individual problem, and stimulated the eventual development of more systematic metropolitan-level coordination. At the same time, the counts themselves and the challenges over their validity substantially emphasised the geographical dispersion of homelessness out of Skid Row. What kind of problem? Framing and formulating local government action While cities were coming to terms with their responsibility for homelessness, they were also translating the general problem of homelessness into specific issues related to accepted or designated local government functions. This process offered considerable scope for variation, but tended to result in three main issues. Most generally, homelessness was constructed as a problem of social control, of disorderly individuals (`vagrants', `transients', `panhandlers') or activities (urinating or sleeping in public, loitering, begging). In this case, homelessness was articulated as a problem of people who were `out of place' and the solution involved purification of space and the reimposition of social and spatial order (Sibley, 1995; Takahashi, 1996). The need to engage in social control to manage homelessness could be recognised even by cities with affluent residents, because the problem in this form revolved around a discourse of homeless people as mobile rootless individuals who have come from `somewhere else'. This definition of the problem generated responses involving legislation and law enforcement. Homelessness was also constructed as a social welfare crisis, especially in those cities with large populations of low-income individuals vulnerable to housing loss. The well-recognised function of local government as the coordinator and provider of emergency relief to residents temporarily homeless through an unexpected crisis (for example, a natural disaster) could be extended to incorporate a notion of local government responsibility to help residents who become homeless for more structural reasons. In this formulation, the local government relief services for homeless people could be clearly articulated as a service to needy local residents. However, this discourse of homeless people as citizens in temporary need was vulnerable to criticism that `other' nonlocal homeless people would come from elsewhere to take advantage of the locally provided services, thus requiring social control. The social welfare formulation of the problem led to responses such as appointing staff to coordinate homelessness policies, obtaining state and federal funds for homelessness projects, and allocating funds from the city budget for services such as food banks, shelters, and emergency grants. Finally, in those cities where nongovernment organisations were active in providing services for homeless people, homelessness was also constructed as a problem of zoning and land-use planning. In this discourse, homeless people are perceived as (potentially mobile) consumers of particular kinds of services, who bring with them some noxious effects requiring management. This formulation of the problem calls upon the professional, technical, and rational skills of local government officials to negotiate among the claims of homeless service providers and other land users. Although zoning may be used to reinforce either a tolerant or a repressive approach to homelessness, it is worth distinguishing separately because it represents a particular way of `framing' the issue. The kinds of responses undertaken by cities in this regard

9 Homelessness policies in LA County 799 included preparing policy documents and making adjustments to the zoning plan to account for relatively new land uses, such as transitional housing, emergency shelters, soup kitchens, and drop-in centres. Zoning initiatives were particularly interesting because they did not require significant spending by the city, and hence could be adopted by relatively poor cities which were otherwise constrained from adopting more expensive responses. The initiatives in response to each of these three constructions of the problem are discussed in more detail below. Social control initiatives Since the 1973 court decision that declared laws against vagrancy unconstitutional, legal control over homeless people has shifted from a concern with status to a concern with behaviour. Consequently, recent legislation has focused on activities such as sleeping in public which are inherently harmless but which allow enforcement to be targeted at homeless people. Relatively little local government legislation deals specifically with contemporary homelessness, but one common municipal strategy all over the United States is to use existing state and local laws to harass and expel homeless people from public spaces (Mitchell, 1997). These include laws against loitering, living in a vehicle, panhandling (asking for money), soliciting, trespassing, exceeding curfews on use of public places, disorderly conduct, and even jaywalking (HomeBase, 1993; National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, 1991). Few cities in Los Angeles County had a wide-ranging ordinance forbidding sleeping in public, but at least one third had implemented park curfews that effectively removed these public spaces as potential sites of refuge for homeless people. (No specific question was asked about park curfews, but many cities spontaneously reported their existence.) Some cities also forbade sleeping on the beach, or in vehicles on public streets, or in tents, or engaging in other activities associated with homeless living; for example, a municipal ordinance in Monrovia against disrobing, bathing, or shaving in public. About one third reported ordinances forbidding loitering, and about the same share had laws against panhandling or soliciting. Historically, cities have also relied on the State of California statute prohibiting panhandling, which had only recently been invalidated after a legal challenge. In response, some jurisdictions have attempted to define a new offence of aggressive panhandling or `panhassling' (Perry, 1993), while others have placed restrictions on soliciting, such as requiring a permit. All these legal forms of social control provided opportunities for local authorities to ensure that transient homeless people move along out of their territory into another jurisdiction. Whether legislation exists or not, law enforcement agencies are typically called upon to respond to homeless people. A national survey of police departments found that street people were viewed predominantly as a police problem in most jurisdictions, but police officers reported insufficient referral agencies and no clearly defined responsibility for the noncriminal problems of street people (Carter et al, 1992). In our study, police officers reported that their enforcement of laws against loitering, panhandling, and outside sleeping is not rigorous, and most commonly only occurs in response to complaints. Only 10% of those interviewed reported rigorous enforcement. Officers said they rarely arrested or prosecuted homeless people, and in some cities they were instructed to refer homeless people to service agencies. The most visible and contentious enforcement of law with regard to homeless people has been the destruction of homeless encampments (`sweeps'), on the rationale that encampments created health, safety, zoning, and fire code infractions. Nine cities (11%) reported conducting sweeps. The City of Los Angeles has been notably aggressive toward encampments. The City shut down `Justiceville', a 60-person organised

10 800 RLaw encampment located on a former playground in Skid Row (Clayton, 1985); removed a group of homeless living on the steps of City Hall (Muir, 1988); and bulldozed a camp of 125 people living behind the Union Rescue Mission (Sahagun, 1991). Encampments have been especially contentious in Santa Monica, a beachfront city with a history of liberal politics. As the number of visible homeless people in Santa Monica grew, there were calls from the public for legislation to prevent homeless people from living on the beach. When the city attorney refused to draft a `no encampment' ordinance, and later refused to prosecute violators of an ordinance written for the city by an outside consultant, he was fired by the city council, and the ordinance enforced. Surprisingly, despite rising numbers of homeless people, few law enforcement authorities reported increasing their level of enforcement of relevant laws. Instead, the simultaneous rise of homelessness, along with the invalidation of panhandling and vagrancy laws, and ever-increasing demands on law enforcement resources has apparently resulted in stable patterns of enforcement. Three out of four of law enforcement officers who responded to this question reported no change in enforcement practice over the last few years, and 18% reported that enforcement had become less rigorous. In the words of one officer, ``Enforcement is more lenient than in the past. Before we said `Not here!' Now we recognize that homelessness is part of the landscape.'' Social welfare spending initiatives Apart from the county government and the largest city (Los Angeles), only Santa Monica and Long Beach had prepared specific policy documents, although West Hollywood had included homelessness policy in a human services policy document (City of Los Angeles, 1987a; 1987b; Countywide Task Force on the Homeless, 1985; Santa Monica Task Force on Homelessness, 1991). In just over half the cities, a staff member or (more typically) a city department was assigned to deal with homelessnessrelated issues; the rest (43%) had no set procedures or staff responsibility. Despite the possibility of obtaining state and federal funds for homelessness programmes, less than half (46%) of all municipalities spent any funds on programmes targeted to homeless people. Of those that did, virtually all funds were allocated to nonprofit organisations, who were direct providers of shelter beds, social services, and transitional housing. Thirteen cities (15%) reported spending $ or more, but in general expenditure on homeless programmes was relatively small in relation to the total city budget and other expenditure; less than 1% of total spending in all cities except West Hollywood. To set this in context, note that the umbrella category of community development and planning comprised 8.2% of 1990 ^ 91 expenditure in all California cities (State Controller, 1992). In the absence of city intervention, the voluntary sector (primarily church-related agencies) made up the backbone of homeless services. These tended to continue the local nature of response, being based on energies and resources mobilised at the church parish scale. In some cities, an interfaith coalition of churches established a rotating emergency shelter system. City involvement ranged from direct financial assistance, to relaxation of land-use regulations, to provision of support services such as office space. In Pasadena, for example, city and local homeless advocates cooperated to conduct a detailed count of local homeless people in order to allocate service resources (City of Pasadena and the Pasadena Housing and Homeless Network, 1992). In response to state regulations requiring that cities address the needs of ``families and persons in need of emergency shelter'' when revising their General Plan, about half the cities had completed that portion of the revision by 1991, although their mention of homelessness was usually brief and generalised. It typically consisted of an estimate of homeless numbers derived from local police; a list of shelters in the region run

11 Homelessness policies in LA County 801 by charitable agencies; and a conclusion that nearby facilities (including those in neighbouring local authorities) were sufficient to deal with estimated need. Zoning and land-use planning initiatives Although land use is traditionally a local prerogative in the United States, governed by zoning codes and general plans, in certain classes of land use the states and the federal government have intervened in local control to prevent discrimination. For example, in California, an amendment to state-mandated requirements for the General Plan requires localities to identify sites suitable for emergency and transitional housing. However, enforcement mechanisms were not set in place, resulting in potentially uneven implementation (Dear, 1992). Local governments control location of homeless service facilities through their control over land-use zoning, but, historically, these facilities have not been specifically mentioned in most city zoning codes. Only about 10% of cities in the region had specific land-use planning provision for homeless services such as emergency shelters, single room occupancy (SRO) hotels, or social service facilities such as soup kitchens or transitional housing. State law ensures that small group homes (typically, for six or fewer individuals) may be located within all residential zones in all cities. Other kinds of homeless service facilities must usually secure a Conditional Use Permit (CUP). The important exception to the CUP requirement was church-based shelters, which in several cities were defined as a `church accessory use' and allowed as a by-right land use in any residential neighbourhood or other district (for example, commercial or industrial). Typically, the CUP process involves a public hearing, and community conflict often engulfs CUP applications, leading to permit denial. Permission granted under the CUP process is subject to restrictions on size, hours of operation, distance from similar uses, parking, etc. The uncertainty of the process and the possibility that the project may be encumbered with burdensome restrictions add significant obstacles in the way of service agencies attempting to establish such uses. Planned changes to zoning ordinances included proposals to permit shelters with a CUP in high-density residential, commercial, and industrial zones, often incorporating restrictions on proximity to other shelters. Service facilities such as soup kitchens and counselling centres had received the least attention in terms of specific zoning. Policies toward SRO housing included preservation for use as emergency or transitional housing, rehabilitation, and permission to locate in Senior Citizen Housing Areas and in the central business district. In some small cities, planning staff had taken the initiative in preparing detailed and comprehensive zoning policy applicable to homeless-related services (for example, City of La Verne, 1991). What kind of responses? Explaining local government policy with reference to city characteristics and location There was a very wide variation in the nature of city responses to homelessness. It spanned a continuum from total neglect of the issue of homelessness, to a high level of engagement incorporating specific policy documents, staff allocation, funding, legislation, social control enforcement, and zoning measures. At the most basic level, the pattern of response followed the familiar city ^ suburb dichotomy, where the large central city (City of Los Angeles) with relatively low-income residents engaged with homelessness more fully than the small outer suburban `bedroom cities' with relatively wealthy inhabitants. The do-nothing approach of these largely white middle-class suburban communities supported the familiar conception of a North American urban geography characterised by private affluence in the suburbs and public squalor in the impoverished central city. However, beyond the basic dichotomy a more complex

12 802 RLaw relationship was apparent among the multiple different kinds of cities and different forms of response to homelessness. A simple way of classifying cities was developed, based on whether the city reported any action in the areas of social control, social welfare spending, and zoning. A city was counted as having some social control practices if it reported rigorous enforcement of homeless-related ordinances; if it reported that enforcement had become more rigorous in recent times; if it reported conducting sweeps of homeless encampments; or if it had more than one ordinance in the three categories of ordinances forbidding panhandling or soliciting, forbidding sleeping in public places, or forbidding loitering. A city was counted as devoting social welfare spending to the issue if it had assigned any amount in the budget for homelessness services (including unspecified sums); or if it had assigned an amount for services to a low-income population which included (but was not restricted to) homeless persons, and this expenditure was identified as relevant by city officials. A city was counted as having intervened in zoning if zoning code amendments relevant to homelessness services were being considered, or if the zoning code already made mention of the following land uses: homeless shelters; soup kitchens and similar services; transitional housing and SRO hotels. (The predominantly industrial cities of Vernon and Industry, each with fewer than 1000 residents, were excluded from the analysis, because their special character produced distortions.) The distribution of cities among these categories is shown in figure 1. The spatial location of the cities are shown in figure 2; the code numbers used to identify the cities are listed in table 1 (see over) along with city names and some city characteristics. The code numbers are also referred to in the text whenever a particular city is mentioned. Twenty-four cities reported no action in any of the three areas. This group included many of the small suburban enclaves that are typically characterised as jurisdictional mechanisms allowing affluent homeowners to exclude others and avoid redistributive local taxes (for example, Westlake Village, 4). In the aggregate, these cities tended to have a low population, and relatively high median household income (table 1) as well as high homeownership rates. Their lack of engagement with the issue suggests that residents have so far been cushioned from both direct experience of homelessness and from encounters with homeless people. Among this group were many cities that Action: No action 24 All cities 83 Action: 0 Zoning 7 8 Action: Social control Action: Social welfare spending 16 Figure 1. Forms of local government action on homelessness among cities in Los Angeles County. The cities are listed in table 1.

13 Homelessness policies in LA County 803 Figure 2. Simplified local government boundaries in Los Angeles County. retained minimal staff, and contracted the county and other agencies to provide city services. However, it is worth noting that this group also included a few small working-class cities, such as Bell (42), and some larger cities with a mixed population (for example, Alhambra, 34, and Baldwin Park, 62). Thirty-four cities reported only one form of action, either social control (eleven), social welfare spending (sixteen) or zoning (seven). The cities in the social control cluster tended to resemble the no-action group, including several with small populations and relatively wealthy residents. The reasons why they had engaged in social control initiatives were not clear, but may have been a result of a stronger perception of a homelessness problem (perhaps because of the proximity to poorer cities) or of a more active and interventionist law enforcement agency. Cities in the social welfare spending cluster included more larger cities, and typically had lower mean household incomes (table 1). In the zoning cluster, median city size was larger still, and household income still lower. The remaining twenty-five cities reported multiple actions: social welfare spending plus either social control (eight), zoning (eight), or both (nine). The cities which reported multiple actions included most of the region's low-income people, and included most of the cities over in size. In aggregate, they had a low average median household income, lower rates of homeownership, and slightly higher average rent-to-income ratios than the other cities. Further analysis of these patterns followed the comparative approach adopted in studies of cities within national space by Berman and West (1997) and Hoggart (1995). Given the diversity of responses among cities, a simple but fairly robust measure was used to organise the data into three groupings representing the degree of engagement with the issue of homelessness. Simple statistical techniques were deployed to investigate the relationship between the level of action on homelessness (broken down into three categories outline above: no action, single action, or 1^83 Cities included in analysis Unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County City of Vernon (excluded) City of Industry (excluded) 0 10 km

14 804 RLaw Table 1. Population, income, and expenditure characteristics of cities in Los Angeles County, grouped by the city's response to homelessness (sources: State Controller, 1992; US Census of Population, 1990). Zone City name Median 1991 City population household income expenditure per annum ($) per capita ($) No action 4 Westlake Village Hidden Hills Lomita El Segundo Rancho Palos Verdes Rolling Hills Estate Rolling Hills South Pasadena Alhambra* San Gabriel Rosemead* Bell Paramount Sierra Madre Bradbury Arcadia Duarte Irwindale Baldwin Park* South El Monte La Habra Heights La Puente Walnut Signal Hill Median Mean Standard deviation Social control only 22 Hermosa Beach Palos Verdes Estates Lynwood* La Canada Flintridge San Marino Commerce Carson* Hawaiian Gardens Monrovia Temple City Azusa Median Mean Standard deviation Social welfare spending only 10 Beverly Hills Burbank* Glendale** Manhattan Beach Lawndale