L.A. County Supervisor Lyndsey Horvath has not asked the County Sheriff’s to enforce the “No Parking” signs along PCH by the beach. RV’s park there for weeks on end with no repercussions.
By TIM CAMPBELL
There have been some interesting stories in the news about questionable actions by local officials. One of D.A. George Gascon’s top deputies, Diana Teran, was indicted on several felony counts of stealing the files on police officers’ disciplinary records.
Mike Bonin
Former Council member Mike Bonin faced community backlash after he criticized Governor Newsom’s recent executive order on cleaning up homeless encampments. Critics mentioned his habit, while on the Council, of approving transitional and affordable housing projects with little or no public input.
Earlier this year, when LAHSA released a report critical of the City’s anti-camping ordinance, LAMC 41.18, some progressive members of the Council and Board of Supervisors, including Hugo Soto-Martinez, Katy Yaroslavsky, and Lyndsey Horvath were quick to condemn the ordinance as ineffective and cruel.
Then, on May 31, the City’s Chief Legislative Analyst released a review of LAHSA’s report, revealing serious procedural and methodological errors that made the report virtually useless. None of the elected officials have walked back their comments. Yaroslavsky has been roundly criticized for approving an interim housing facility and ignoring her constituents’ concerns about crime and trash near homes and small businesses.
What all these stories have in common is a serious case of moral relativism on the part of local officials.
Diana Teran
For example, Ms. Teran, who was once in charge of police misconduct prosecution, apparently thought it was okay to commit a crime to prove certain officers are criminals.
Likewise. Mr. Bonin and Ms. Yaroslavsky feel they are justified circumventing the Brown Act for the higher purpose of building shelters and housing. Mayor Bass and others have chosen to ignore the Supreme Court’s Grants Pass decision for their morally superior Housing First approach, even though LA’s programs are cruelly ineffective at getting people off the street.
My term for this attitude is the ethics of convenience. I define it as a willingness to impose a strictly defined moral code on others while giving yourself the right to ignore the same moral norms. It is a classic case of the ends justifying the means.
If I’m convinced most cops are little more than sadistic thugs, then pilfering a few confidential files is justifiable. If I’m convinced dropping a transitional housing facility in the middle of a mixed residential/small business area is morally right, then public notice requirements are little more than a minor inconvenience. If I can claim the moral high ground, anyone with disagrees with me is inherently immoral; they hate the homeless or want to criminalize poverty, or condone police brutality.
This is, of course, nonsense. When the policies you support leave thousands on the streets while you lecture constituents about social justice, then your policy is immoral. When you insist Housing First’s failed model is the one and only cure for homelessness, your views are as puritanical as any zealot’s, and you’ll have no problem creating meaningless numbers that make it look successful. Seeing crime as an inevitable result of social injustice denies the role of personal responsibility and dehumanizes its victims.
The primary fuel of the ethics of convenience is arrogance. By convincing yourself your beliefs are morally and intellectually superior to others, you not only have the right, but the duty, to impose them on an ignorant and benighted public.
That’s why you often see comments like “when will you get it through your head…” or “if you weren’t so closed-minded/old/privileged/prejudiced, you’d see how wrong you are.” The arguments are long on insults but short on objective truths.
For example, let’s look at advocates’ insistence that most homeless people come from the communities they live in, and are victims of economic injustice. They argue that people coming from other areas is a myth, and substance abuse or mental illness are the results of, rather than the cause, of homelessness.
However, a recent Westside Current article exposed the Weingart Center’s practice moving people from other states to taxpayer-subsidized housing, even though there are higher-needs people in LA.
Photo: John Alle Santa Monica Coalition.
A March 2024 L.A. Times article reported nearly half of San Francisco’s drug users came from somewhere else. Likewise, several surveys, including the UCSF/Benioff study, have consistently reported anywhere between half and 65 percent of homeless people had mental health or substance abuse problems before they became homeless.
Because these facts do not fit advocates’ narrative, they are dismissed as a consequence rather than a cause of homelessness. Arrogance prevents advocates from dealing with the reality of homelessness in Los Angeles.
One of the most tragic signs of this purposeful blindness is when advocates ask their favorite question, “Where will they go?” Clear an encampment that blocks a sidewalk and forces pedestrians into the street? “But where will the campers go?” Tow derelict RV’s dumping raw sewage into storm drains? “Where can they go?”
Advocates use this question as a weapon to make those who ask it look like heartless NIMBY’s who just want the homeless out of sight. They never think to ask themselves that perhaps there are so few places for the unhoused to go because of the failed policies of the advocates themselves; an obsession with expensive and time-consuming housing construction instead of transitional housing, and woefully inadequate treatment programs that have stranded thousands on the streets.
“Where will they go” should be a question advocates should have been asking local officials five or ten years ago, when it would have been easier and more economical to implement a variety of solutions for the unhoused.
Instead, the fixation on housing construction has created the need for the moral gymnastics we see from our Council and BOS members, as they try to justify expensive and ineffective solutions to a problem that just gets worse.
(Tim Campbell is a resident of Westchester who spent a career in the public service and managed a municipal performance audit program. He focuses on outcomes instead of process.)
We are never going to be successful dealing with the homeless crisis as long as the current leadership is on charge .
This paragraph states EXACTLY what many of us have been trying to say,
“When the policies you support leave thousands on the streets while you lecture constituents about social justice, then your policy is immoral. When you insist Housing First’s failed model is the one and only cure for homelessness, your views are as puritanical as any zealot’s, and you’ll have no problem creating meaningless numbers that make it look successful. Seeing crime as an inevitable result of social injustice denies the role of personal responsibility and dehumanizes its victims.”
Amen, so well said
someone who focuses on outcomes, instead of processes, simply tosses darts, as opposed to offering solutions
Tim Campbell is a true journalist in calling out these arrogant politicians. I’ve also heard the shut-down-the-discussion question of “But where will they go?” My response is “I’m pretty sure that is why we elect people – to solve that question!” Their answer is to simply allow them to stay in environmentally sensitive areas or blocking sidewalks (I guess ADA is no longer a thing) because if we move them, we are “criminalizing homelessness.” Another favorite trope trotted out to shut down conversation. I am compassionate for the situation these poor people in are, but decades of completely ineffective and expensive policies cannot continue. The definition of insanity defines the approaches now in place. Sad, but true…
Tim Campbell should run for mayor. He is so correct. The homeless who do not want help or want to accept help are those whose homelessness didn’t start with loss of a job or other financial problems. It started because that homeless person was addicted to drugs or alcohol and then blames homelessness. Giving them a “home” doesn’t solve the problem. Only drug and alcohol rehabilitation will, supervised by experts and in a protective environment. Wake up voters –