Story at a glance
- Homicides of homeless people in Los Angeles rose by 2.7 percent in 2019.
- This number has increased over the years despite national averages trending downwards.
- The primary sustainable solution is affordable housing.
In the past three years, more homeless have been murdered in Los Angeles than ever before, pushing the West Coast’s housing crisis in a new, sinister direction.
Even as the overall number of homicides across the country has decreased in recent years, in Los Angeles — home to Skid Row and other large-scale homeless encampments — murder rates for those living on the streets rose steadily from 2016 to this year.
While only 1 percent of the city’s sprawling population live on the streets or in shelters, homeless people made up around 17 percent of all homicides this year in Los Angeles, according to the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD)’s report profiled in NPR.
That means 42 homeless people were murdered in 2019 — an increase from the previous two years. According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, California also saw the most crimes against homeless people in 2016 and 2017.
This violence comes as homelessness surges across Los Angeles, despite a multi-million dollar effort to curb the housing crisis. This year, 59,000 people lived on the streets countywide, and there were more than 36,000 homeless people within the city, a 16 percent increase.
Several factors contribute to the rising number of homeless homicide victims, including geography and mental illness. The LAPD Commander and Homeless Coordinator Donald Graham stated that people who are forced to live outdoors are exceedingly vulnerable, and that the violence that results in fatalities often has a PTSD component to it.
A 2018 quarterly report on homelessness, released by the LAPD, corroborates this trend. When tracking crime among the homeless community, increases were seen across all categories of crime — rape, manslaughter (or homicide), and aggravated assault.
The lack of affordable housing has been reported steadily by the National Association of Realtors, and persists as a problem in desirable real estate locations, such as in California.
“The ultimate solution to the homeless population’s safety is to house them,” Graham said.
changing america copyright.
