For Blakely, the Homelessness Safety Nets Are Failing and Far Away

By GABRIELLA BOCK |Reporter

Homelessness isn’t always clear and apparent.

Visual clues signaled by the mentally stricken or the elderly woman pushing an overstuffed shopping cart make up only a segment of Los Angeles’ growing homeless population––sometimes there aren’t any indicators at all.

Such is Blakely, an assumed name to shield her identity, who reached out to the Palisadian-Post to shed some light on the struggles that she, and many like her, are currently facing.

This smart, well-dressed woman is part of two new increasingly important elements of the Los Angeles homelessness crisis—those who work, but live in their cars, the “mobile homeless.”

And then there are those who have worked all their lives but, because of LA’ s history of chronic underbuilding that is catching up with rising rents, they are at the tipping point of losing their homes and ending up on the streets when the issues, and the cost of dealing with them, suddenly become much more tricky.

Blakely is one of the thousands of the city’s “pre-homeless.”

She is a trauma victim who is receiving intensive psychiatric treatment at a care facility in The Village, but it’s not obvious.

The 30-something is well educated, articulate and has a rich career history that would attract career counselors at any employment recruiting agency.

But for her, dealing with trauma, including depression, has become a full-time job—which means she cannot work or pay her rent in a nearby city.

Friends have helped pay her medical bills in the Palisades, where she is almost every day, but her landlord may not be so forgiving. She may be evicted in months, or even weeks, and she has nowhere to go.

She falls through the safety nets, even those evolving with significant voter-approved tax increases.

She needs to be homeless before she can be helped back into a home.

“State agencies simply try to squeeze patients into whatever they offer, even if it is a complete obvious misfit for the person’s needs,” Blakely explained.

“There needs to be some autonomous agency that thoroughly examines patients, their treatment history, explore and determine on a scale all of their needs and see which ones are not met, and make treatment plans according to that.
“Right now, there aren’t any services put in place to ensure that I don’t lose my home, where I have lived for seven years,” Blakely told the Post. I have been on disability, and the $700 and change doesn’t begin to cover rent, groceries, student loan payments and everything else. I have completely exhausted my resources.”

Earlier this month, the county began spending tax revenues collected from the March-approved Measure H.

The tax is expected to raise up to $355 million annually for a variety of services related to homelessness—including more than $40 million over the next three years to prevent at-risk people from becoming homeless.
County officials estimate that the prevention program would spend about $12,000 on each family and $7,857 on each individual, including staff costs.

But for those facing homelessness now, the current system can feel like it’s working backwards.

“I’ve contacted about 60 different organizations and they either want to get me into a shelter now or have instructed me to call back after I lose my home,” Blakely continued.

“They don’t seem to understand that I want to prevent myself from ending up at a shelter––I don’t need help getting there.”
But in a shelter, she’ll land if she doesn’t soon find a source of income.

Without any family to support her, Blakely is on her own in a city that already lacks affordable housing for low-wage earners, let alone those who bring in zero income.
It’s a problem that keeps her up at night.

And although some may argue that she is living above her means, Blakely sees it differently.

“People don’t understand why I haven’t been able to work and just ‘be normal,’” she said. “That is a huge source of agony:  the accusations, the misinformation, the judgments. It is a very real thing, nobody would choose to live in daily crisis and risk losing everything.”

But there is a light at the end of the storm tunnel. In addition to Measures H and HHH, the California Senate’s “No Place Like Home” initiative is poised to repurpose millions of dollars of bond money from Proposition 63, The Mental Health Services Act of 2004, towards housing people struggling with mental illness.

And although it won’t work to keep at-risk individuals at their current residence, the initiative does support a “housing first” strategy that provides safe, secure housing and aims to create an environment that allows for mental health treatment to take hold.

As California prepares to write and adopt the plan into action, it will likely be another two years before the state begins to hand out new sets of house keys.

For Blakely, and others like her, the future is too far away.