A court order issued in April that would have required the city of Los Angeles and county to shelter and treat unhoused people living on skid row within six months was struck down by an appellate court.
The L.A. Alliance for Human Rights sued the city and county last year in the Central District of California federal court alleging that negligence, a violation of due process, and discrimination have caused businesses near skid row to suffer and property values to drop.
“If you get struck down legally and you get struck down governmentally, all you have is the community and if the community you have isn't big or strong enough, then you need a bigger community,” said Glen Dunzweiler, who produced and directed a film about homelessness in Los Angeles called yHomeless. “From my experience, we need more people to care about the homeless and you need people to make more noise to make it the leaderships' problem so that all of a sudden someone in government’s reputation is on the line because of it.”
Originally, U.S. District Judge David Carter ruled in favor of the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights based on the court's finding of discriminatory lending, redlining and unequal access to affordable housing, according to media reports.
In response to the reversal, counsel for the city and county have filed to dismiss the plaintiffs’ amended complaint, which now seeks to require shelter for the homeless who are openly sleeping on sidewalks and under freeway bridges.
However, an overly broad and sweeping solution to homelessness is likely to fail, according to Dunzweiler who is based in Los Angeles.
“We need to triage the homeless to find those people who are seeking stability first and use that as some positive proof to move forward,” he said. “That is the way and people don't like to hear that because it means community work and community buy-in. It means small wins and people want large wins.”
Before successfully producing his film, Dunzweiler narrowly escaped experiencing homelessness himself while residing in Riverside.
“I bought a house in 2006 and then I got cut back on work in 2008 and my bank told me I had to stop paying them before they would even talk to me about modifying my mortgage,” Dunzweiler told the Southern California Record. “My bank wanted me to put myself in jeopardy of becoming homeless in order to prove to them that I didn’t have enough money to pay. But, if they decided to foreclose on me, I would have ruined my credit score, which I knew was something I needed to get an apartment.”
Instead of falling into the homelessness trap, Dunzweiler ended up short-selling his Riverside home in 2012 and now lives in Burbank.
“I just tenaciously kept on my bank and worked that out,” he said.
As for solving the homelessness problem, Dunzweiler said it's all about hearts and minds and the public realizing that someone else is not going to fix the problem.
"You have to find the homeless that are willing to get out of skid row," he said. "Another solution is letting people be homeless but cleaning up the environment around them like getting rid of the rats and feces and providing toilets that are monitored instead of getting everybody housed in one fell swoop. We can distribute towelettes so that people can clean themselves. Definitely, my solutions are very small gains but small gains add up over time and the public has to realize that the people on the streets in their community are members of their community.”