{"id":119113,"date":"2021-04-13T10:45:00","date_gmt":"2021-04-13T10:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=185631"},"modified":"2021-04-13T10:45:00","modified_gmt":"2021-04-13T10:45:00","slug":"as-covid-restrictions-lift-green-spaces-are-front-lines-in-a-fight-for-housing-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/04\/13\/as-covid-restrictions-lift-green-spaces-are-front-lines-in-a-fight-for-housing-justice\/","title":{"rendered":"As COVID restrictions lift, green spaces are front lines in a fight for housing justice"},"content":{"rendered":"

A community garden<\/a>, a jobs program<\/a>, meal distribution, community clean-ups: These are the amenities and services that unhoused people and mutual aid organizations created in Los Angeles\u2019 Echo Park after coming together in the park last fall. Alongside the lake, with its iconic swan boats, hundreds of unhoused people took shelter during the pandemic, setting up tents against the downtown skyline.<\/p>\n

David Bush, a local organizer for homeless rights who has himself been unhoused for the past 20 years, told Grist he had never seen anything like it. \u201cThe park had become such a peaceful oasis during lockdown,\u201d he said, in large part because the COVID-19 shutdown put a temporary pause on the city\u2019s policy of forcibly removing similar encampments<\/a> to conduct sidewalk and street cleanings.<\/p>\n

But on March 25, the community evaporated in the blink of an eye. Police choppers rumbled in the sky. The city put up chain-link fences to enclose the camp, turning the once-autonomous community into what protestors and residents of the park called an \u201copen-air prison.\u201d At least a dozen people were left trapped inside the park by the fencing.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of Angelenos gathered outside the park as the police followed orders from the city council to displace more than 200 residents living in the encampment, despite COVID-19 guidelines<\/a> from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, which say that clearing such encampments can increase the risk of viral transmission.<\/p>\n

The police\u2019s use of \u201cless-lethal<\/a>\u201d rubber bullets, batons, and pepper spray reportedly left at least four protestors with concussions and broken limbs<\/a>. Ultimately, police detained 182 people, including at least three reporters and a group of legal observers. A handful of residents living at the park were also arrested<\/a> for not agreeing to leave the homes they\u2019d built.<\/p>\n

The confrontation at Echo Park poses a question that cities across the country<\/a> are wrestling<\/a> with: What role should public green space play in the urban housing shortfalls laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic? While the coronavirus forced people into their homes, those without housing settled in public spaces for safety, establishing informal communities in newly-freed areas like parks and downtown sidewalks. But as Los Angeles lifts its pandemic restrictions, record-high housing prices and a rise in homelessness are creating a dilemma that city leaders are choosing to address through policing.<\/p>\n

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Protestors confront a line of police in riot gear following the Echo Park eviction. Wally Skalij \/ Los Angeles Times via Getty Images<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Both Mitch O\u2019Farrell, the city council member who represents Echo Park, and Mayor Eric Garcetti called the displacement and police response a \u201cgreat success.\u201d O\u2019Farrell, who supported the eviction of the encampment, said in a press conference that residents were displaced with \u201cthoughtful and compassionate action\u201d that was necessary to maintain safety at the park. Garcetti has called it \u201cthe largest housing transition of an encampment ever in the city\u2019s history.\u201d (The offices of Council Member O\u2019Farrell and Mayor Garcetti did not respond to Grist\u2019s requests for comment in time for publication, and a Los Angeles Police Department spokesperson declined to comment.)<\/p>\n

According to O\u2019Farrell, \u201c209 people experiencing homelessness\u201d were moved \u201cinto transitional shelter with supportive services, medical care, and other humane and necessary resources.\u201d But according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, the number was closer to 180. Of those, 138 were temporarily placed in the Project Roomkey program, which provides hotel rooms for unhoused Angelenos. Of those 138, many were back on the street within a matter of days<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Advocates for the unhoused contend that the eviction during the middle of a public health crisis provided a false solution to homelessness, especially when only temporary housing was offered to those evicted. Beyond disregarding the CDC\u2019s guidelines for halting evictions, advocates say the displacement took place in direct violation of United Nations standards<\/a> stipulating that \u201cinformal settlements,\u201d such as tents and camps, should be protected in the same manner as traditional housing.<\/p>\n

\u201cEviction, violent displacement of an unhoused community, is first and foremost an inhumane and ineffective approach to solving homelessness, especially during a pandemic,\u201d Hilary Malson, a researcher who studies housing and displacement at the University of California, Los Angeles, told Grist.<\/p>\n

Ananya Roy, director of UCLA\u2019s Institute on Inequality and Democracy, says that L.A.\u2019s emphasis on addressing homelessness through policing has resulted in city ordinances that criminalize sleeping in one\u2019s car<\/a> or on certain streets<\/a>, as well as others that limit the amount of personal property<\/a> that unhoused people can possess. The cumulative result is \u201ca vicious cycle that deepens the precarity and exclusion of unhoused people,\u201d according to Roy. <\/p>\n

Many scholars, advocates, and unhoused people believe that Project Roomkey, which launched in March 2020, is an expansion of these criminalizing policies. The program, funded by the federal government, was created to help curb the spread of COVID-19 by offering shelter to the unhoused, who are especially vulnerable to the virus because of their inability to isolate. Despite pledging to deliver 15,000 hotel rooms for unhoused people, L.A. only delivered one-third of that total at the program\u2019s height last September. While participation dwindled due to reports of discrimination against disabled people<\/a> and punitive rules<\/a>, the city failed to submit paperwork to get reimbursed<\/a> for the program by the federal government, leaving an estimated $59 million gap in the city budget. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very ironic: They call it \u2018Project Roomkey,\u2019 but people don\u2019t even get an actual key to their rooms,\u201d Roy told Grist. \u201cThey are forced into curfew conditions, searched head to toe before they can even enter what is supposedly their own space.\u201d <\/p>\n

As a result of the program\u2019s controversies and failures, it is scheduled to be terminated altogether in September. Earlier in the year, activists suggested that the city reform the program by forcibly commandeering unused hotel rooms<\/a> for the unhoused, since hotels were so reluctant to offer up their facilities to the program. Now they\u2019re searching for more permanent solutions.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Farrell, the city council member, thinks he has an unconventional fix with a $3 million plan<\/a> to install a \u201cvillage\u201d of 38 64-square-foot Pallet shelters for unhoused people in Echo Park. The prefabricated shelters, which are known as \u201ctiny homes\u201d and are smaller than most jail cells, will hold two unhoused people each and potentially offer better protection from rain<\/a> and heat waves<\/a>. While O\u2019Farrell has offered this as a \u201chumane\u201d solution that could last for years, Theo Henderson, an unhoused Angeleno, told Grist that he doesn\u2019t trust city leaders whose policies have consistently led to more policing in his community.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to stop relying on a city that has criminalized us,\u201d he said. \u201cNo matter the idea, it has led to more criminalization for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Malson, who has studied housing justice and encampments during COVID-19<\/a>, says that in the absence of permanent housing solutions, governments should sanction encampments and provide services that respect \u201cthe agency and autonomy of unhoused people\u201d instead of evicting and criminalizing them. That could look like easing restrictions on unhoused people\u2019s right to keep personal property, creating and maintaining washing stations and hygiene facilities, and decriminalizing life in public spaces. <\/p>\n

Across the country, including in Los Angeles<\/a>, encampments are criminalized by ordinances that make it illegal to camp in public parks. According to the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, 57 percent of cities prohibit camping in certain public spaces<\/a>. Malson says that allowing people to sleep in parks overnight could be a step toward decriminalizing encampments.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe city could do so much more in making more space available for unhoused people, as far as rezoning parcels as campgrounds, rezoning other green space, such as golf courses and parts of public parks, as spaces for unhoused people,\u201d said Malson. \u201cThese sound like outlandish ideas, but they have been done in the past in Los Angeles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, from 1946 to 1954, parts of L.A.\u2019s iconic Griffith Park were home to a settlement called Rodger Young Village<\/a> that contained 1,500 emergency housing units to house veterans returning from World War II. Malson says the city\u2019s thinking around housing should encompass public green spaces as \u201cresources that can be tapped for the provision of safe shelter.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Signs
AP Photo \/ Marcio Jose Sanchez<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Beyond providing respite from displacement and a sense of community to the former residents of the encampment in Echo Park, the green space also offered an enormous mental health benefit, according to Bush. \u201cJust the setting, in nature, was so effective in addressing homeless people\u2019s trauma and mental illness,\u201d said Bush. \u201cIt\u2019s the most effective mental treatment for unhoused people that I, in 20 years, have seen.\u201d<\/p>\n

But for now, no one \u2014 housed or unhoused \u2014 can access the park. Two weeks ago, protesters held a candlelight vigil outside the park, proceeding past the fences that held a sign someone had hung from the wire in a direct rebuke to O\u2019Farrell, the city council member: \u201cThis park is the people\u2019s. Not Mitch\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

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This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A community garden, a jobs program, meal distribution, community clean-ups: These are the amenities and services that unhoused people and mutual aid organizations created in Los Angeles\u2019 Echo\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1251,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13813,905,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119113"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1251"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119113"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":119114,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119113\/revisions\/119114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}