By Charles Springer
There were 16,000 vacancies registered with Westside Rentals this summer. I wonder how many vacancies are available in all of Los Angeles County as opposed to the amount of homeless who want to get off the streets.
Ever since our “appointed” leader in the White House took office, I have seen the number of homeless almost quadruple while the number of jobs and housing opportunities have shrunk. How can anyone be so blind as to not see that this country has for the past two decades been in a decline?
When I was growing up I remember Nixon taking us off the gold standard and the private sector replacing this monetary standard with various economic “bubbles” to replace gold for the amount of money being printed. In other words, the money all of us spend is only worth as much as these bubbles are.
Well, let’s see... the dot.com bubble has burst, the stock market is in havoc and the real estate bubble is deflating with all of these rental vacancies. And you can’t convince me that this is not a bad sign for the “bubble.” Common sense tells me otherwise. And now, as the economy continues to fail at producing jobs, how long will this bubble that makes the American dollar worth anything remain viable?
As far as the real estate market is concerned I have a really outrageous solution. Why not take some of these vacancies and fill them with the working homeless by kicking back the rents to rent control prices? The homeless would be from the shelters, have jobs to pay the rent and have some time to get clean and sober.
This would serve a two-fold purpose. First, it would unlock the bottle neck of filled beds caused by the lifting of rent control and the raising of rental prices which makes it harder for people to get housing. Then, some of us who want off the streets would get beds faster and keep the cycle going. Secondly, anyone who is into this cash flow thinking would agree that if you have a building with vacancies that have stood empty for more than six months to a year, there is NO cash flow. So if you put in some low income prices and let these sheltered homeless pay you rent, you have some kind of cash flow, which is better than nothing. This might even be construed as a charitable act for tax purposes if enough people push our leaders for it to be so.
I would also set up a watchdog committee of both the housed and unhoused to have some say in the actions of these shelters and the owners they deal with so no hanky panky goes on. The committee would also ensure that the ones renting the apartments are on the up and up to protect both parties.
This solution also has a benefit for the community as a whole because there would be little need for further building and over-development would slow down in the residential areas of the city. And the population of homeless who want to exercise their rights to live on the streets would be far less than it is now.
This is just one of the solutions that could be worked out to help stem the tide of homelessness in Santa Monica. (Charles Springer is a homeless resident of Santa Monica, and a freelance writer and artist. He can be reached at Chaz_59@yahoo,com)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 8, 2003. Read the original PDF.