The Arrogant Bureaucracy:
My day of press conferences and peaceful protests
by Bud Stratford
Friday, March 18th, 2016

Yesterday, I went to Los Angeles to attend a homeless rights protest on the steps of Los Angeles City Hall. The protest itself was scheduled to run between 11:30 am and 2 pm. But the city council, represented by city councilman Curren Price, scheduled a pre-emptive news conference for 9:30 am on the very same steps that the protesters were scheduled to meet at, at 11:30. Having extremely short notice of this sudden change in plans, I hastily amended my travel plans so that I could be in downtown Los Angeles by 8:00. I am, after all, “the press”. Being “the press”, I thought it was pretty important for me to be at that press conference, come hell or high water, and regardless of how much sleeplessness, exhaustion, and Los Angeles rush-hour traffic I would have to battle along the way.

That press conference became the defining moment of my day. That was an unfortunately enlightening experience. Admittedly, my experience with my government is fairly nonexistent, outside of paying the occasional parking ticket (or my taxes, which are fundamentally similar). And my experience with press conferences is even less existent than my experience with city government. So, I basically had no idea what to expect at all.

But in my mind’s eye, I was pretty hopeful. I figured that if anyone would take the time to listen to the press, or their constituency, it would surely be a city councilmember. They are, after all, the lowest possible rung in our political hierarchy. As such, I assumed that I would be able to talk to this guy, maybe ask him a few questions, and get The City’s perspective on this whole dilemma of tiny homes for the homeless, and what The City could do to work with all parties involved. “All Parties” being the many, many parties… both public, and private… that would like to work [together], in a pro-active fashion, to solve the homeless problem in Los Angeles.

How wrong I was…

The News Conference

The news conference was interesting. All of the “bigger media players” seemed to be present, and accounted for. I saw reporters there from the local Fox affiliate, as well as from The Los Angeles Times. There was a small horde of cameramen and photographers. There was myself, representing the International Network of Street Newspapers, based in London, England. There was also an abundance of journalists representing “the new, independent media” (including an outlet quite literally called, “The New American Media”). There were a handful of “homeless activists”… allies of Elvis Summers, the homeless-house builder. And then, just before the news conference started, Elvis Summers arrived on queue, fashionably punctually, with his trademark bright-red-dyed mohawk, and an extemely dapper (and stylish) black suit. The crowd immediately rushed toward him, excitedly wanting to either ask him questions, or to show their support. He was clearly “The Rock Star of The Moment”.

I’m pretty sure that made Curren Price none too happy. The glare in his eyes made that much, readily and obviously apparent.

The Curren Price Initiative

The news conference started with Curren Price front and center behind the podium, and a large number of his supportive entourage standing behind, and beside him in apparent solidarity. Included were homeless advocates, city bureaucrats, and a small handful of homeless people… including a mother, and her 7-year-old (or so) daughter.

The theme of the press conference was pretty straightforward: tiny houses for the homeless are not an admirable, or even acceptable, option for the city’s homeless. This was repeated several times, through the mouths of a parade of speakers. Instead, it was up to the city bureaucrats to solve the homeless dilemma. Apparently, it’s always been up to the city bureaucrats to solve this dilemma. They just haven’t had the initiative, or the plan, to solve it.

Until now. Two hours before Elvis’ protest was scheduled to begin.

The Conspiracy Theory

Somebody brought up a great question to me, as I stood there listening to Curren Price speak. The question was, “If the city is so determined to solve the problem, then why haven’t they done anything meaningful to address the problem, until today…?”

“That’s a great question. I’m not sure. I don’t live here. So, I wouldn’t know.”

“Well, I do”, said my mystery source.

“Okay. Tell me. What is it then?”

“They’re making money off the homeless.”

“How so…?”

“By being well-paid city bureaucrats that make their living off of ‘helping the homeless’. And they perpetuate their paychecks, by not helping them at all. It’s in their better interests to make sure that the homeless stay on the streets, where they’re highly visible. So that the problem looks even worse, so they get even more funding to ‘fix’ the problem. But, they can’t actually solve the problem. Because if they actually solved the problem, they’d be out of a job. And their paychecks would cease to exist. Unlike the homeless, The Bureaucrats go home to nice, comfortable houses every night. That their city paychecks pay for. If the homeless had homes, the bureaucrats would be out of their homes, and on the streets. And no bureaucrat is going to tolerate that change of fortune.”

I have to admit that this line of logic only makes perfectly plausible sense. Maybe, the city doesn’t really want to solve the homeless problem. Maybe, there really is too much money at stake.

Within moments, Curren Price confirmed beyond any reasonable doubt, just how much money was on the table.

By my count, that number is $2,030,300,000. And counting.

The Details

Curren Price and His Entourage made a big deal out of the piles of money that they’ve “adopted a plan” to spend, attempting (but, not guaranteeing) to solve the homeless problem in Los Angeles. Whether these funds have been earmarked or actually budgeted, was left entirely unclear. “The Adopted Plan” is a $2 billion strategy, including another $30 million to provide “outreach, coordination, showers, storage and other services”. Furthermore, Price dedicated another $300,000 to “intensive outreach” in his own district.

Thus far, that money has bought and paid for the following results: it has paid for 120 shelter referrals and placements; it has provided 210 people with “direct services and transportation”; and, it has referred 41 others to “mental health and medical services”. Veronica Lewis of SSG/Hopics, an outreach agency, said that another 100 people had found homes through city- and-county funded programs in the last 18 months.

These staistics, by the way, were all outlined in the LA Times story on the press conference yesterday. They’re consistent with the numbers that I heard floating around at the news conference, myself. Unfortunately, I didn’t see any written documentation or statistics, backing any of these “facts” up. And the speakers spoke so fast, and so vaguely, that I barely had time to write everything down. Let alone, make any sense out of it.

But, the overall truisms remain: the city has “adopted” $2,030,300,000, and has “helped” exactly 471 homeless people, in vague and undefined ways, with that money thus far. That seems like a pretty awful return on investment to me. But, what do I know? I’m not a well-paid city bureaucrat…

The LA Times also noted that “the number of people housed in Price’s district was not available”. But what the LA Times didn’t tell us was how easy it is to find good, solid estimates regarding those numbers.

The Numbers

Thankfully, I have a smart phone that can readily access Google from any place on the planet, at any time I want. Even from downtown Los Angeles, at noon, on any given Friday. Had Curren Price wanted to access the homeless numbers for his district, as well as for the metropolis at large, he could have gone to www.laalmanac.com and seen the numbers for himself. Just like I did.

In the Los Angeles Metropolitan area, there are approximately 82,000 homeless people on the streets on any given night. 12,356 of those are classified as “chronically homeless”. “A high percentage- as high as 20 percent- are veterans”, it adds. “Unaccompanied youth… are estimated to make up from 4,800 to 10,000 of these”. These are direct quotes from The Los Angeles Almanac. And they illustrate just how atrocious and intractible the homeless problem in Los Angeles really is.

Politifact (www.politifact.com) reports that, according to HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, “it costs [taxpayers]… about $40,000 a year for a homeless person to be on the streets”. If he’s right, then Los Angeles taxpayers are spending $40,000 per year for 82,000 people to be homeless, for a grand sum of $3,280,000,000 per year. That’s $3.28 Billion dollars that Curren Price’s taxpayers are spending every single year on a problem that he has “adopted” only $2 Billion dollars to solve.

Elvis spends about $2500 on every homeless house he builds. If that’s accurate, then Elvis could house the city’s 82,000 homeless people for about $205,000,000. That’s $205 Million. Not, Billion.

And those people would have their own safe, secure, and private houses. Not just, a cot in a shelter where they’re forced to sleep in open space, completely vulnerable, and surrounded by total strangers. Many of them with severe physical, mental, emotional, and behavioral issues.

Which even the city admits is true. Because they’ve “adopted” part of their budget to providing “mental health and medical services”. Which they wouldn’t need to fix, if the problem didn’t exist.

The Former Teacher

One of the most vocal speakers at the press conference was June Richard. Mrs. Richard is a former teacher at LAUSD in Los Angeles. She spent quite a bit of her angry time at the microphone… and make no mistake, her countenance was one of an extremely angry woman both during, and well after, the press conference… glaring at, and speaking directly to, Elvis Summers and his supporters.

“Your houses are not a solution to the homeless problem in Los Angeles!”, she seethed. These houses are unsafe for the city. The homeless people that inhabit them, can (and according to June, do) use them as a convenient cover for drug use and prostitution. They take up space on the sidewalks that force children to walk on the streets, which is unsafe for the kids. Those same homeless people leave their sewage and trash everywhere, making the whole neighborhood an eyesore. These, are Mrs. Richard’s contentions.

The one argument that was mysteriously left unsaid… but, we all know it’s true (including June Richard, I’m sure)… is this: “homeless houses” bring down the property values in the neighborhood. And this, I suspect, is precisely why it was left unsaid. Because it sounds “mean” to put your own self-serving economic interests above the humanitarian interests of those who have nothing in life, besides a donated tiny house, and some other “bulk trash” items.

I had the chance to talk to Elvis later, regarding June Richard’s assertions; June Richards would hear nothing of talking to Mr. Summers, herself. The only evidence that I saw of her “reaching out” to Elvis, was to cuss him out on camera. Footage that Elvis still has readily accessible on his smart phone.

Elvis, for his part, does not disagree with anything that June Richard said at the press conference at all. She’s absolutely right. The streets are no place for homeless houses. They certainly could be used to house all sorts of illicit activities (although he does disagree in regards to how often this actually happens). They do pose an obstacle for pedestrians walking the sidewalks. The trash is an obvious problem… although the homeless cannot be blamed, or held accountable for all of the trash on LA’s streets. Elvis noted that when the police came to impound the tiny houses as “bulk trash” and removed them from the city sidewalks, the city (for whatever reason) left behind the “bulk trash” that was inside the houses, as well as all of the “bulk trash” that just happened to be surrounding them. So apparently, bulk trash does not figure into the city’s definition of “bulk trash”. Only tiny houses do.

Still, none of this matters. “The issue…”, Elvis shouted over his mega phone… that he had pointed directly at City Hall, just so everyone could hear him loudly and clearly, “…is about shelter…! People need shelter…! And my houses give them a safe, secure place to sleep at night…!”

And Elvis is right. Although the City Council would have no way of knowing that. Because they’ve never slept in a tiny shelter before.

But I have.

Our Incompetent Government At Work

Although Curren Price was not available to answer questions after the news conference… and neither was his “handler”, who I’ll always remember as “The Man In The Electric Blue Suit”… the rest of his entourage milled around for a while after the conference networking, taking advantage of photo ops, and generally schmoozing up a storm. I had the chance to ask many of them if they’ve ever slept in one of Elvis’ tiny houses…? They all looked at me a little strangely… as if I was some sort of reporter from Mars or something… and kindly advised me that, no, they certainly hadn’t. And they certainly would not, under any circumstance. Because of how “unsafe” and “unsanitary” those homeless houses are. That they’ve never seen. Nor, spent any time in.

One of the things that I really wanted to do while I was in Los Angeles, was to sleep in an “Elvis Summers Homeless House” for myself. Unfortunately, this was not a possibility this weekend. Of the 37 Homeless Houses that Elvis and his volunteers have built, 3 were impounded by the city, and are currently in gated in secure (and well-armed) storage at an undisclosed location (out of fear of Elvis finding them, and stealing them back, I presume), awaiting a change in city ordinances that would allow for the city to permanently destroy them.

Of the remaining 34 houses, 8 more are in storage at a similarly undisclosed location (out of fear of the city finding them and stealing them from Elvis, I presume), along with the personal affects of their former residents. The remaining 26 houses are completely unaccounted for. That’s “the official story”. The truth is that nobody really knows where they’re at. The most that anyone knows is that, hopefully, they’re doing their intended job somewhere in Los Angeles.

I’m still able to speak from experience here, even though I was not able to sleep in an “Elvis Summers Homeless House”, per se. I did, however, spend a month of homelessness sleeping in my micro-camper. Which is essentially an “Elvis Summers Tiny House” on wheels. Specifically, bolted to a small, Harbor Freight trailer. Like Elvis’ tiny homeless houses, it was cheap enough to build… it cost almost exactly the same $2500 that it costs Elvis to build one of his tiny houses… and it’s similarly (un)equipped with only the very basics required for a sound night’s sleep. Namely, a roof; a [locking] door; a ventilated skylight (two, actually); a Sealy Posturpedic queen-size mattress of plush and pampering quality; and some swanky, stylish, color-coordinated bedding. I’ll include some photos of my stylish setup, so you can judge for yourself just how “unsafe” and “unsanitary” it really is. And of course, I still sleep in it on a frequent and regular basis. Sometimes, even with my girlfriend. It is, after all, a camper.

And I can do it legally because “camping” is legal in many, many places. Which sort of opens a door, doesn’t it, to solving the “homeless problem”…? At least, on a temporary basis…? “Homelessness”, per se, might be quite illegal (and trust me, it really is). But by simply re-titling them “campers”… suddenly, opportunities arise for a completely legal, temporary housing paradigm. Not a permanent solution, to be sure. But a workable, practical, and temporary one nonetheless.

Which is all Elvis Summers ever wanted in the first place.

Homeless Houses, Homeless Approved

Immediately after the news conference concluded, the homeless lady that had spent the entirety of the news conference to Curren Price’s immediate left came running up to me, with her little daughter in tow, and promptly asked me how she could sign up on the waiting list to get her own tiny house. I was a little dumbfounded, naturally enough. For one, I had no idea that there was a waiting list for tiny houses. And secondly, I had naturally assumed that she was a supporter of Curren Price. Not, a supporter of Elvis Summers.

“Oh, no. I love what Elvis is doing. I’m homeless. So I really want to get on the waiting list.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, but how did you end up on the podium today with Mr. Price…?”

“Somebody just asked me to show up and stand there. So, I did. But I was really hoping to talk to Elvis.”

Elvis, as it turned out, did have a volunteer there, at City Hall, taking names for thier waiting list of homeless people that wanted tiny houses of their own. A few hours later, I checked back in with her to see how she was doing. She had a very long list of names in her hand. She had clearly been very, very busy.

“If you don’t mind me asking, but how do you find these people that are on the waiting list…? Aren’t they a little difficult to track down…?”

“Oh, they’re easy to find! Most of them have ‘Obama Phones’.” She showed me the list… and sure enough, she had a very long list of both names, and telephone numbers. Very quick, very simple, and very easy. I was impressed. Here’s a gal that knows how to get stuff done.

There must have been over fifty names on that list.

The Elvis Summers Vision

As I mentioned above, Elvis Summers never intended for these homeless houses to be out on the streets, or taking up space on the sidewalk, spreading poop and trash all over the place, and putting little children in harm’s way. What he really wanted… and, what he’s always wanted… is a safe, secure place (with some minimal sewage, water, trash, and security infrastructure) to put them. A place where the homeless could live short-term, within a sensible budget. Where they could get the help they need at one central location to permanently transition off the streets, and into employment and permanent housing. In short: a temporary, transitional campground. That could be placed on any one of Los Angeles’ multitudes of public spaces, or abandoned properties.

I never did get to interview Elvis directly for this story. He was an extremely popular figure yesterday, and everybody had a zillion questions that they wanted to ask him. That’s what separates Elvis from his detractors in city hall; Elvis is at least approachable, accessible, and willing to answer any and all questions, regardless of how long it takes, and regardless of who might be doing the asking.

Yesterday, he spent roughly four hours answering questions and being interviewed by dozens of reporters, well-wishers, supporters, and average people. I was invited to sit in on no less than a dozen of those interview sessions. And because all of the reporters on hand asked so many questions… many of those same questions were literally asked over and over again… I ended up not having to ask Elvis a single question, myself (although I did ask Elvis a few follow-up questions the next day, via cellphone text). I just noted the answers from all of the other reporters’ questions.

One of the most interesting interchanges I heard, was regarding Elvis’ experience with the city. Had Elvis reached out to the city to collaborate, or to get authorization to build these houses? Or to find a place where they could stand, legally and safely…?

“Oh, many times. Many, many times.”

How many times…?

“Honestly? Too many to count.”

And what was the city’s response…?

“Initially? Nothing. Nothing at all.”

How, and when, did the city finally reach out to you…?

“That’s a weird story. I was invited to be interviewed by National Public Radio. Of course, that’s a nationwide news media. Along with me, NRP invited a representative from the city to be interviewed as well (Joe Busciano, from Council District 15), to give the other side of the story. Not even a half-hour after that interview, I had an e-mail from the city in my e-mail in-box.”

What did it say…?

“In a few words…? ‘Watch Your Ass’. The tone was definitely, very threatening…”

The Precedents for Elvis’ Vision

Once again, widely-available and easily accessible information that is quickly obtained via Google tells us that not only is Elvis’ vision practical; it’s already being done with some success in many other cities and towns across this country. “Occupy Madison” of Madison, Wisconsin is building micro-houses on wheels to house their homeless.

Portland, Oregon has a tiny house village called “Dignity Village”, where the homeless build their own cottages (at an average price of $3,300 each), police themselves, and have access to not only basic services, but also to community WiFi and a big-screen TV in their common-area yurt.

Austin, Texas has a very similar tiny house village for their homeless citizens called “Community First Village” that has “a medical facility, a workshop with loaner tools and resources to help with education and job placement”.

The Atlantic has a great story about a tiny house community in Nashville that is located behind the Green Hills Church; those houses cost about $7000 to build, and are truly adorable by almost any measure.

The list continues to grow. There’s a church initiative in Seattle that is building heated tiny houses for about $2,200 a piece. Hope Village in Fresno, CA; River Haven in Venture, CA; Opportunity Village and Emerald Village in Eugene, OR; Second Wind cottages in upstate New York; and Quixote Village in Olympia, WA, are even more examples of an emerging, innovative, and truly nationwide trend. I suspect that there might be even more by now that just haven’t been widely reported, outside of their local newspapers and television stations. But clearly, there’s a movement at work here. And by all accounts, it’s working fairly well. Elvis is quite aware of this. Even if the powers that be in City Hall aren’t.

Apparently, the powers that be at the Los Angeles City Hall aren’t even quite competent enough (yet) to figure out how to use Google, read the (many) media reports on these communities, and research these things. Let alone, to reach out to any of these established communities to see how they did what they did, and what the practical results of their combined efforts have been.

And they’re clearly not innovative and forward-thinking enough to embrace the ideas that work, and make those ideas work for the homeless of Los Angeles.

But Elvis Summers is.

The Curren Price Photo Op

After the news conference concluded, Curren Price made his way from behind the podium, through a gaggle of news-media types asking quesitons (that he was not answering, or even commenting on, according to The Man In The Electric Blue Suit), and strode purposefully across the plaza to where Elvis Summers was quietly standing, smoking a cigarette. Curren Price said a few indistinct words, grabbed Elvis’ hand, smiled for the camera… flash! went the proverbial bulb… and then he turned on his heels, and quickly walked away. Leaving Elvis, and the media, mouths agape and sort of stunned.

“What did he say?!”, everybody asked within nanoseconds.

“He said, ‘I’m not against you. I just think you’re doing it all wrong’.”

Did he elaborate…?

“No.”

What were you thinking…?

“You know, I was actually pretty excited when I saw him walking towards me. I was thinking, ‘Is this it? Is this the chance I’ve been waiting for? Is this the day that I finally get an audience with the city council, so I can speak my piece, and maybe work with them on a more permanent, or a more sustainable solution? Something that we can all collaborate on?’ My mind was rushing. I was really happy to finally have a personal word with this guy that’s been shooting me, and the homeless of this city, down for so long.”

Did you say anything back to him…?

“No. I didn’t have a chance. I had barely opened my mouth, before I realized that he was already gone…”

Bud Stratford can be reached at budstratford@aol.com. But like most people these days, he’s much easier to find on Facebook.