Opinion: LA's homeless progress portal could pave the way for SJ

Photo by Abigail Van Neely

San Jose gov't should follow Los Angeles' lead in homelessness portal management, says Independent Leadership Group’s Irene Smith, and start sharing success/failure metrics for publicized, time-bound goals. Below, Smith explains how LA Alliance suing LA gov't brought about these data analysis changes (plus: how SJ might adopt a similar dashboard). From Medium.

When residents get fed up with a lack of a plan or a lack of response from their government, they often turn to the unpredictable idea of lawsuits out of sheer exhausted desperation. Lawsuits are what can happen when cities don’t follow laws or don’t enforce their laws against all violations equally. But sometimes everyone wins.

The LA Alliance sued the mayor, city, and county of LA for not doing their job regarding homelessness. Judge Carter found in favor of the LA Alliance and the LA Alliance put visible success metrics in place to measure homeless encampment reduction and bed increase (see charts below).

Go Deeper:

• Grant's Pass immediate legal impact: Court order restricting SF homeless sweeps is officially no more
• No more excuses #1: SCOTUS clears the way for CA cities like SJ to manage inhumane and dangerous homeless encampments
• SJ CM Doan finds City response to homeless crisis "a failure"

San Jose can implement these public portal accountability charts to measure our success. …

What the LA Alliance won:

• Shelter and housing

• Reduce encampments

• Return public spaces to their intended uses

• 3,000 treatment beds

• Deadlines and targets to measure progress

Lawsuits are expensive, no doubt about it. And suing a government entity is like tilting at a windmill and it means you should be ready to lose; lose money, lose time, and possibly lose reputations.

San Jose needs to be responsive to the pleas from residents to stop the illegal encampment fires. Respond to small businesses struggling with pungent urine along the sidewalks and blight in downtown. And finally, please assist our neighbors living on the streets. Avoiding lawsuits and putting our efforts into a housing ladder plan — that we could actually initiate this afternoon — that’s where our energy should focus.

Read the whole thing here (behind paywall).

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