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Here we are at the @DWCweb ready for our first Judge Carter hearing of the year. Follow along! https://www.latimes.com/homeless-housing/story/2021-02-03/federal-court-comes-to-skid-row
Lotta boldfaced names at this carnival. @mikebonin, @kathrynbarger, @Mike_Feuer, @abales, @HildaSolis and
@hughhewitt to name a few. No @ericgarcetti. Here's some background about Judge Carter who is anything but conventional s we've written in the past. https://www.latimes.com/homeless-housing/story/2020-04-19/coronavirus-homeless-judge-david-carter-skid-row
@hughhewitt to name a few. No @ericgarcetti. Here's some background about Judge Carter who is anything but conventional s we've written in the past. https://www.latimes.com/homeless-housing/story/2020-04-19/coronavirus-homeless-judge-david-carter-skid-row
About 18 of us in a tent. Another 40 people are sitting outside and a speaker is blaring. Carter told everyone to stand 6 feet apart from each other and if they didn't he would get a US Marshal to remove them. You can hear the street sounds as well--people yelling, music playing
Carter's speaker keeps cutting in and out. Everyone is masked. This is not normally how court works, but here we are. Carter tells us that he's not here today to check in on the agreement that was reached last spring to create 6k beds for homeless people. https://www.latimes.com/homeless-housing/story/2020-03-18/coronavirus-homeless-recreation-centers-garcetti
Sorry wrong link. He says that he hopes in good faith that they'll reach this goal by April. There's some jazz music playing on San Pedro that is playing. Carter's mask is around his chin. https://www.latimes.com/homeless-housing/story/2020-06-18/city-and-county-agree-to-provide-6000-new-beds-of-shelter-for-homeless-people-in-next-18-months
Carter has basically asked the City and County to brief him by Feb. 16 to tell him about the powers he might have to intercede in this crisis on the streets. Carter is very focused on the flight of the women he has seen living on the streets.
also follow @meghanncuniff who is here https://twitter.com/meghanncuniff/status/1357391929172889601?s=20
General Jeff is a great advocate and Skid Row resident is speaking now. He's grown close to Carter--thanks him and @kdeleon for their help getting people into cover during the rain. Jeff rails against @ericgarcetti for not showing up.
Pretty amazing--you could hear people cheering on the street when he said that. "We have women outside this gate 20 feet from where I am right now who are stuck on the sidewalks with very little support," he said.
"Let the record show that the court appreciates the music," Carter just said to laughter. “From now the thinks it should have a little of that all the time. Welcome to the community.”
Skid Row's City Councilman @kdeleon is speaking now. He was out here with the judge trying to get homeless people out of the rain. I heard that they struggled to get people into hotel rooms and were able to set up tents but it was quite an effort.
"IT’s about the dysfunction of our systems," he said. I heard that De Leon actually paid to put up some women in hotel rooms. Not sure if that money came from council budget.
"I dont believe a consent decree is necessary yet," @kdeleon said. "But I will understand if the court finds it reasonable" because gov officials can't work together.
This is an apparent reference to @mikebonin request that the City enter into a consent decree with Carter. Bonin, wearing a flat hat and a monogrammed LA City jacket is standing behind him listening. https://mikeboninla.medium.com/a-path-toward-progress-why-los-angeles-needs-a-consent-decree-db72fa788c21
I can see out the windows of the tent homeless people peering through the bars of the fence around the @DWCweb watching the hearing. Carter has spent a lot of time talking to homeless folks asking them about the plight they're experiencing.
Right now we have @HildaSolis speaking and says that Carter is making a provocative statement holding this hearing here. "it’s a provocative conversation that we have to have," she said.
Solis references the Vignas property as being representative of the urgency of the moment. She says it showed the priorities of the County, because they used the last of their federal money to build these units. @LATDoug wrote about this project. https://www.latimes.com/homeless-housing/story/2021-01-18/los-angeles-homeless-housing-project-vignes-street
So Solis says she hopes we don’t go into a consent decree as well. Carter points out the County/City would remain the governing body and the court would act as a monitoring body. "What we're exploring now is far different than that," he said.
Carter says he wants to understand better if the city has failed to respond to an emergency and it's his time to step in. You get the sense that Carter is trying to sound out what he can do on his own and not get slapped down on appeal.
"Mayor @ericgarcetti ," Carter says. There's silence. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but Carter appeared peeved. "Any member of Mayor Garcetti’s staff." Garcetti Staffers Deputy Mayor for Homelessness Jose “Che” Ramirez, and Deputy COS Matt Szabo come to lectern.
Man shit just got very real. Carter says he's gonna break hippa b/c "I think it’s dehumanizing to not to show the faces of real people." Compares it to showing images of concentration camps during WWII
He shows several photos on posterboard that he took on his iphone. They're of women--some half naked, some shivering and some trying to set up tents--who he met in the rain last week. "We're hearing in court and not seeing and feeling this," Carter says.
Carter is peppering Ramirez with a series of a questions about the number of people who have died, how many fires there have been on skid row, and why it's so hard to put up a tent. You can hear a woman yell: "I love you Judge."
Ramirez stepped into this job last summer after Christina Miller stepped down. She had been a regular presence at these hearings through out the spring and summer. https://www.latimes.com/homeless-housing/story/2020-08-11/garcetti-homeless-advisor-christina-miller-to-resign
Carter is really fixated on the fact that Homeless people are predominantly POC. "Do you know of any active plan that will start to resolve this disproportionately," Carter asks.
Ramirez is really struggling to answer this question.
Ramirez is really struggling to answer this question.
"I have a lot of questions today and those questions are going to arise when other people are testifying," Carter says. "This is not what I call a soundbite day. If you decide to stay i think I will be calling you back. If you decide to leave so be it."
Now we have City Atty and mayoral candidate @Mike_Feuer He's here to introduce Meg Barclay but before that a quick story. He's telling the story of a homeless woman who he met on her block named Anne.
Sorry I stepped away for a second to go to the bathroom, but the speakers are loud so i could hear! No quotes but Feuer says that he thinks it's the City Council and Mayor's role to coordinate the response to this crisis --not a judge.
Like Garcetti's comments last night, this seems to signal how the City is gonna respond to Carter's question on whether local officials have adequately responded to this crisis and whether he needs to step in.
Scott Marcus from the city has graciously given me a copy of the brief they just gave to Judge. I’ll scan it and post it later.
Also major achievement, for the first time, (I think ), in the course of this nearly yearlong process, Judge Carter has not botched Scott's name. Marcus has been here for EVERY hearing and yet Carter called him the wrong name the whole time.
We're hearing from @mikebonin right now, who after 7 years as an elected official and long time as a staffer, is offering an argument for why we need a consent decree. https://mikeboninla.medium.com/a-path-toward-progress-why-los-angeles-needs-a-consent-decree-db72fa788c21
"Our system is just not fundamentally designed to address the crisis that we were in," @mikebonin said. "It’s just a fundamental inherent systemic lack of coordination.
AS frustrated as we all get there really are no bad actors in this situation."
AS frustrated as we all get there really are no bad actors in this situation."
"The problem is there is no one choir director and not everyone is singing the same song or in the same language or being told to show up for rehearsal at the same time," @mikebonin says as latin music plays from speakers at the corner of 5th and San Pedro.
Quite a moment from Pete White of @LACANetwork who has been asked to speak. He notes that despite the focus on the plight of homeless women who are usually POC, not one black woman has spoken.
He puts his phone on speaker, and one of his colleagues Monique Noel goes off on how black women are regularly suffering on the streets and also not part of the discussions about solutions.
"There are thousands of women on skid row...Emergency housing has not been made available to them," she said through a crackling speaker amid cheers from the streets. At one point White asks her to slow down because the "Court reporter's fingers are about to fall off."
Judge Carter is really embracing the chin mask. Everyone else has been pretty good about wearing the mask.
The LA Alliance’s atty Liz Mitchell is really pushing hard arguing about what she views as the failure of HHH. She wants money that has been committed to development but not actually spent yet to be used on interim housing insteda of supportive housing.
This echoes ideas put forward by @kdeleon at a recent council meeting. https://www.latimes.com/homeless-housing/story/2021-01-12/councilman-kevin-de-leon-t-wants-25-000-new-housing-units-for-homeless-people-by-2025
We now have heard from the atty for the intervenors @shaylarmyers who says it would be a shame if the end result of today was a renewed focus on interim housing at the expense of permanent housing that the city and county sorely needs.
"We know where the blames lies. The blame lies that we have 500k to few affordable units," @shaylarmyers said in ref to how few people get from interim housing into perm housing. You can read about one such interim housing program with mixed results here! https://www.latimes.com/homeless-housing/story/2020-11-20/garcetti-a-bridge-home-homeless-program-offers-mixed-results
The typo in this quote is my fault not @shaylarmyers'.
"Here we have an article stating that all expenditures for Project Roomkey would be funded forward and backward," @abales said. Then he notes how hard it's been getting folks off the street and that many of these hotels are closing down. https://www.latimes.com/homeless-housing/story/2021-01-27/manna-from-heaven-l-a-officials-say-biden-funding-could-get-thousands-of-homeless-off-streets
