The atrocious scenes in MacArthur Park are just the latest chapter in decades of inhumanity.
But the City of Los Angeles has stopped those of us who are trying to do something about homelessness.
My husband and I founded, funded and ran a recovery-based shared housing community called Haaven.
Together, we supported eight fully furnished and outfitted shared-homes where more than 200 formerly homeless people found community and support in homes built on cultures of health and recovery.
The City of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) excluded Haaven from their menu of solutions, claiming shared housing was “undignified.”
We did not require sobriety, but asked residents to refrain from doing drugs in the homes.
The City and LAHSA said that impeded people’s civil rights.
Our privately-funded solution was driven out of business simply for providing a recovery-based alternative to the misery of the streets.
I first became aware of the homeless crisis in Los Angeles about 17 years ago, when my son was just three.
We live in Venice, Calif., and I used to push him in his stroller down to the local kids’ park.
Day after day, I passed the same people sprawled on the sidewalks in various states of distress.
Looking down at my innocent toddler, it hit me: Every one of these suffering souls, rotting on our streets, is someone’s child too.
Once they gazed up at their mothers with those same big, beautiful, hopeful eyes.
Seventeen years later, I’m horrified — as a mother and as a human being — to see other people’s children still rotting on the streets and in the parks of Los Angeles.
Hundreds of young people suffer in plain sight, lost to addiction, mental illness and agony, while the community, the city and now the world stands by and watches.
