10%

A new report was just released in Los Angeles- homelessness increased in the last year by 10% . TEN PERCENT. We went from the astounding 69,000 people living on the streets to an unbelievable over 75,000. The number that really shocked me is that this is an increase of EIGHTY PERCENT since 2015. I don’t even know what to do with that number.

I arrived in LA on Christmas Day of 2015 but I was lucky. I had a law degree, I very quickly got a job paying me $40 an hour, found an apartment by the beach, and slipped easily into LA life. Most people are better at decision making and do not take on hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans to suffer through three absolutely brutal years of voluntary schooling but that also means that when they move to any number of the big, expensive cities in America that it is not nearly as easy to find housing. Before this report there were 230 newly unhoused people in LA per day. That number must be much higher now. And yet, we are not building enough housing.

I recently attended a very large, expensive gala for a large homeless service organization in Los Angeles that was celebrating their next big goal: building 250 new housing units in five years. The thing is, this is a really good organization that does fantastic work in the community. We partner with them. This goal isn’t a reflection of a lack of vision or lack of care or any wastefulness. That’s just how hard it is to build housing these days.

If we look at the cost of homelessness in America, about $40,000/person/year and multiply that by the over 580,000 unhoused people in America (at last count, which does not take into account the massive post-COVID increases that we’re seeing across the country) we are spending over $23 billion a year on the unhoused. Surely we can build housing for that much money. We could also- and hear me out, I know this is extreme- spend the about $1 billion it would cost to get IDs for the 26 million American adults who don’t have them so they can get jobs and find whatever housing is available.

The new report is about Los Angeles but we are seeing these patterns all of the country. COVID benefits are ending, cost of living is soaring, and real people are paying the cost. We are on the ground every day working to solve the problem however we can. Just yesterday the mayor’s office dropped off a client at our Skid Row ID spot and we took him and a large group to the DMV to get IDs. We are on the ground across the country working to get as many IDs as we can and we have no plans to stop any time soon. But we need your help to do it.

ID and driver’s license costs increased astronomically this year. In California, driver’s licenses went up $10 this year, to $41. We need your support to face this growing need and rising costs. Times are hard for everyone and nonprofit fundraising is reflecting that. Donations are cratering across the country. But that doesn’t stop the calls for help. On the contrary, the increase of need is inversely proportional to the drop in donations. We will continue this work, but your donations are what make it possible. Please consider giving a gift today.

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Thanks so much for going on this journey with us.

Kat