Category: Los Angeles

Change first or help first?

18 July, 2012 (09:31) | Homelessness, Housing, Los Angeles, program design, social impact bonds, social programs, Supportive housing, US News |

By:David A. Smith   When it comes to people whom we wish to help with government or charitable resources so that they can change their lives, should we make them prove it first or should we give it first?    Is this a good idea?   That question lies underneath the design choices within many [...]

Distrust me just this once? Part 3, how to build trust

10 September, 2009 (10:15) | Communications, HOPE VI, Los Angeles, Public housing, Residents, Speculation |

By: David A. Smith   [Continued from yesterday's Part 2 and the previous Part 1.]    “Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.” – Oscar Wilde   In the first two parts of this post, we encountered (via a Los Angeles Times article) Los Angeles‘ Jordan Downs public housing property, and the ambitious [...]

Distrust me just this once? Part 2, the enemies of trust

9 September, 2009 (10:43) | Communications, HOPE VI, Los Angeles, Public housing, Residents, Speculation |

By: David A. Smith   [Continued from yesterday's Part 1].     “Who are you going to believe: me or your lying eyes?” – Groucho Marx, Duck Soup   To redevelop Jordan Downs, one of Los Angeles’s largest and worst public housing properties, requires gargantuan capital – the figure $1,000,000,000 has been bandied about – [...]

Distrust me just this once? Part 1, the need for trust

8 September, 2009 (09:50) | Communications, HOPE VI, Los Angeles, Public housing, Residents, Speculation |

“Trust me just this once.” – from Great Lies in Real Estate, Volume 3   “Trust me, I’m on your side”   Slums persist in part because they have defenders.  Among those defenders are many slum residents themselves, for whom a lifetime’s experience has taught them, Trust no one, especially any well-dressed or well-spoken newcomer [...]

The homeless magnet

7 November, 2007 (10:14) | Ecosystem, Housing tenures, Los Angeles, Markets, US News |

Now that Los Angeles has acquiesced in a judicial decision forbidding the city from rousting vagrants, will the city become a magnet for America‘s homeless?    Desperately seeking Los Angeles   As I posted nearly two years ago, Los Angeles is already America’s homeless capital.  Homelessness flourishes in temperate climates and is drawn to cities, [...]