# Why Everyone Is Wrong On The Question Of Homelessness Details Bob Gelfand ![logo](https://www.citywatchla.com//templates/ja_teline_v/images/logo.png) July 27 2026 [ ![](https://www.citywatchla.com/images/stories/July-2026/059d.jpg#joomlaImage://local-images/stories/July-2026/059d.jpg?width=1190&height=658) ](https://www.citywatchla.com/gelfand-s-world/33111-why-everyone-is-wrong-on-the-question-of-homelessness) [GELFAND'S WORLD](https://www.citywatchla.com/gelfand-s-world) - [ Next Article **The World Cup Was the Dress Rehearsal. The Olympics Are the Main Event.** ](https://www.citywatchla.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=33066:the-world-cup-was-the-dress-rehearsal-the-olympics-are-the-main-event&catid=395) ###### Typography - [](# "Smaller Font") ****Smaller** **Small** **Medium** **Big** **Bigger**** [](# "Bigger Font") - [](# "Previous Font Style") ****Default** **Helvetica** **Segoe** **Georgia** **Times**** [](# "Next Font Style") - [ Reading Mode](# "Reading Mode") > [](https://www.addtoany.com/share) > > [Comments](#disqus_thread) GELFAND’S WORLD - Homelessness is up a few percent. Or it was down a few percent for two years running. Or more likely, these numbers are bogus because the method for doing the counts is itself bogus. But that is not the reason that people who celebrate or mourn these numbers are just plain wrong. To understand why and to figure out how to proceed in the right direction requires a different sort of thinking. To get to the right place, we might consider WWII history, or just about anything regarding engineering. It goes like this: What is your objective? Simply put, what exactly are you trying to accomplish? And by the way, that word “exactly” isn’t just there as a place-holder. I could even borrow a phrase from a discussion I recently heard regarding the conflict with Iran: What are the attainable objectives? At the end of the day, where do you want to be? What is the ideal solution point? Objectives Attainable Back during the war years running from 1939 into 1945, the allies developed their objectives, which were the following: Japan and Germany must surrender unconditionally and submit to occupation by allied armies. The goal was well defined and it turned out that it was obtainable. Note that it wasn’t easy, but it was attainable. There is one more thing about that concept of obtainable objectives that will bear heavily on our subsequent consideration of homelessness. What do you do when you have two objectives that aren’t quite exactly contradictory, but are sort of different – you could do one of them without doing the other, or you could do the other without doing the first one. If we wanted to be mathematical or scientific in our jargon, we could say that the objectives are orthogonal. So how does this apply to the current arguing about the homeless and what we do for them or about them? I think that it goes like this: At one time we had homeless encampments in previously open public spaces such as sidewalks, the areas under and along freeway overpasses, or the plazas and porches surrounding government buildings. The encampments were an eyesore and to the extent that any still exist, they are still an eyesore. That’s one side of the equation. The widespread existence of homeless encampments and parked RVs is damaging to the beauty and peaceful enjoyment of the city landscape. This is, if nothing else, a potential consideration with respect to the 2028 Olympics. But there is another consideration which is itself strangely complex yet must ultimately be compelling: It must be tiresome and painful and also downright scary to have to live on the open streets. Just think for a moment about what it is like when you are trudging through a heavy rain coming down on a cold night, and think about those who don’t have a nice warm inside to attain. And one more thing. Consider what it must mean for those with serious but treatable illnesses when they don’t have access to a doctor and the proper pharmaceuticals. So here we have it in the simplest possible form. There are two orthogonal issues when it comes to the issue of homelessness. The situation is damaging to the view and image of the city due to the existence of the homeless themselves as they attempt to survive in places that are designed as transportation corridors rather than as residences. The other is the substantial collection of difficulties, dangers, and miseries for those who live in this way. So there are two separate and distinct problems that are not handled by the press or the politicians in a logical way. Which do you choose to address? Back when the issue of homelessness became politically heated, a colleague of mine estimated the public point of view: He said that most people wanted the homeless to be “invisible.” I think that he meant that people were bothered by having to walk around and past the campers while walking into the post office and walking down the sidewalk. They were made to feel uncomfortable by the panhandlers. They just wanted the problem to go away. Many of them were sympathetic and continue to be so. But they were just members of the public who dealt with the problem in their own way – by largely ignoring it – and they weren’t in the business of solving such problems for others. So for some people, there is one goal which is, to put it bluntly, that the homeless somehow go away. And the people who feel this way aren’t thinking in great detail about how that goal could be accomplished. In the old days, the police dealt with the ambulatory homeless by locking them up or by telling them to leave town. A long-ago Supreme Court decided that this was no longer permissible. And then there is the other goal, which is to help people who obviously could use some help. People who deal with the homeless on a daily basis tell us that many of them suffer from mental illness. These same activists talk about the alcoholism and drug use among many of the same people. And of course living on the street is a recipe for physical illnesses. Imagine what it would be like to have a cold, and then bronchitis, and then pneumonia and to endure them without having a family doctor or antibiotics or even cough medicine? Living on the streets can, by itself, be a fatal illness. So here is the quandary connected to all this talk and political posturing about homelessness: I don’t hear the mayor or members of the City Council (or even the homelessness activists) pointing at a specific goal and even more to the point, I don’t hear them discussing how their particular goal is attainable. In the presence of such vagueness, we are left with the social equivalent of the forever war. Reducing the numbers of homeless by one percent a year is not a solution. And, as the recent statistics show, we are not sure that we are achieving even that amount of progress. The way that we estimate homelessness numbers is about as unscientific and subject to counting error as it is possible to be. So let’s try defining the two goals, as orthogonal as they might be. The first goal might be simply to rid our city streets of homeless encampments. It is certainly attainable if you are willing to permit two things: (1) coercion and (2) public expense. If it is legal for the city of Los Angeles to control its own public spaces, and if we are willing to pay the taxes to cover the cost of policing the homeless, then this would be an attainable goal. It worked for a lot of small towns and cities over the course of past years. Of course it is, potentially, cruel and difficult of achievement, and in truth a perpetual problem requiring perpetual enforcement, much as broken water mains and street maintenance are chronic issues. And then there is the other goal, which is to serve the needs of those who are, for different reasons, living on the streets. We hear a lot about this goal, even right here in CityWatch. We hear about the need for mental health services, addiction treatment, and housing. We have tried to engage in the service approach over the past decade or so, and we have learned how hard it is to do. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try, just that things turn out to be difficult. What I find perplexing is the fact that some of our leaders, including the current mayor, are convinced that there is one approach that we must engage in, with the implication that if we can only get things right, we will have a solution. In the mayor’s case, it is to get people housed, and then try to deal with their other issues. I offer an anecdote in partial rebuttal. I heard this from a Los Angeles police officer who told this story: He had known a particular homeless man who hung around the West Los Angeles streets. This officer worked with the guy for several years and finally got him into an apartment out in the valley. Problem solved, or so he thought. But about a year later, he ran into the same fellow, once again on the street in the west side. This once-again homeless man explained that he preferred living in that area and not in the valley. The anecdote suggests, if nothing else, that for some people things are more complicated than the absence of a roof over one’s head. This guy didn’t like the situation he was in, even if he had an indoors. Maybe he was just plain mentally ill, or maybe he was so well adapted to the homeless lifestyle that things seemed more normal to him on the street. Or maybe there was some other reason. But this anecdote is consistent with what we are hearing about lots of other homeless people who get placed into some sort of housing – many of them end up back on the streets. It turns out that there are some people who really don’t want to live indoors, and no amount of arguing with them can change their minds. I am going to – intentionally – leave this accounting unfinished because the complexities of the homelessness issue collide with the desire to finish the story in under 1700 words. I’ll merely reiterate that the leadership of this city have failed to provide a specific goal which might be one or the other of the following: a) Force the homeless to relocate somewhere else that doesn’t involve our sidewalks and plazas, even if it requires that we spend a lot of money to provide decent living accommodations of some sort, or b) We concentrate on providing services and treatments that would reduce the pain and misery of being on the street instead of being in a comfortable bed. Instead, let me refer to a comment made by an activist who was known during his lifetime as General Jeff. He became a spokesman for the residents of skid row. I remember him asking the simple but useful question: “Where do you go to wash your hands?” The simple process of hygiene in a big city is one that is – or should be – easily solvable. I would like to suggest that if nothing else, the city and county of Los Angeles provide for toilet facilities with hot and cold running water and, in addition, provide for drinking water. European and Asian cities have figured out how to do this, so why can’t we? In addition, I would like to suggest that we could find some area (most likely out of town) where open space and even tents and cots could be provided for those who are in immediate, dire need, and that such facilities include not only basic hygiene but also hot food and even a cup of coffee. This approach is attainable and, compared to the current approach, a lot cheaper and has the advantage that it gets people off the streets into a safer environment where they can sleep peacefully and wake up to a meal. It is not a solution for chronic mental illness or drug addiction, but at least we could attack the issues of cold and hunger and illness. This brief discussion doesn’t even scratch the surface, but at least it points out the problem for the rest of us that our politicians have created: They have chosen to spend billions of dollars without ever once making clear what the final goal is. That’s probably because they themselves have not thought through the question. If you are designing an airplane or planning an invasion, you have to think things through. Might I suggest that this same requirement exists for social policy too? *(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at )* - [ Next Article **The World Cup Was the Dress Rehearsal. The Olympics Are the Main Event.** ](https://www.citywatchla.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=33066:the-world-cup-was-the-dress-rehearsal-the-olympics-are-the-main-event&catid=395)