Angela McGregor / Special to the Daily Press
In a fast-paced forum at Venice’s Rose Room, hosted by The Westside Current, Circling the News, the Santa Monica Daily Press and the Acorn, all six candidates for County Supervisor, District 3 had a chance to present their positions. The event was also live streamed.
The candidates (Jeffi Girgenti, Roxanne Beckford Hoge, Craig Brill Henry Stern, Lindsay Horvath and Bob Hertzberg) were given between 30 seconds and a minute for each response, which created a lightning round ambiance, but also allowed for all candidates to cover a broad range of topics.
HOMELESSNESS
Candidates were asked about the complicated and pressing issue of homelessness.
Stern stated that in order to fix homelessness, the county “needs to get out of its own way and start spending down the almost $1 billion I found in an audit I did for mental health services.”
He said the county has just 30 mental health workers, a number he feels should be “in the hundreds.” He wants to put psychiatric care facilities in every neighborhood, and stop pitting “care first versus housing first.”
Hertzberg said he agreed with Stern and that “the county’s just not taking responsibility.” Hertzberg, who brought with him a bulging notebook full of what he called “homework”, held up a letter showing the county had yet to respond to a question about hundreds of millions of dollars in unspent funds.
Girgenti spoke to the need for “conservancies”, along with the need for a HOPE and HOST program that works, by working with all first responders and creating facilities to “get these people housed. Hope of the Valley has done a great job with this.”
Horvath said that in West Hollywood, they have an “80% success rate in getting people off the streets.” But she said the most complicated problem was “how to get people together to solve problems. People are very angry in this county. They’re angry, they’re upset, and they have a right to be.”
Beckford Hoge acknowledged that homelessness is a pressing issue, but stated the most important issue for her was the “corruption in our City Council. It is the number one issue we face. It affects everything, from homelessness, to crime…everything is made worse by the cabal of people collecting huge pots of money and doing nothing.”
Brill said that “homelessness and public safety are the driving issues behind why people are angry. People don’t feel safe going out on the street.” He pointed to the need for more beds, and more assisted living centers to get people off the street who are “mentally ill, and can’t live on their own. We need to build them immediately.”
All but one candidate — Stern — said that they would abolish LAHSA (although Stern later clarified his response by stating he would restructure the agency, by having it work with the Department of Public Health and the Department of Mental Health “under one umbrella”). Hertzberg said the recently released recommendations of a County “Blue Ribbon” commission on Homelessness were “ridiculous”, because “on the one hand they say it’s a crisis, and on the other hand, they want 39 months to fix it.”
Horvath said the commission’s recommendations (which include creating a new position to oversee all homeless services) “create more bureaucracy and not solutions.” What’s needed, she feels, are “elected officials being held accountable…legally noticed meetings with service providers and people with lived experience experiencing homelessness, meeting once a week” to determine if resources are being effectively managed.
Beckford-Hoge said, “No one has the right to live in a public right-of-way. People have a lot of reasons for being homeless. But I don’t have the right to have a beach view because I can’t afford to live here.” Brill stated that all 88 cities within the county need to be part of the solution to ending the “open air drug dens across the county. We need a regional approach, disband LAHSA and create an organization with real metrics that is accountable to the Supervisors so that we…can get them the resources they need.”
Stern stated that he probably would have voted with the three Supervisors who agreed to create a new Department of Homelessness (along with other proposals recommended by the Blue Ribbon Committee) but that “they’re taking too long to do it.”
As for the County’s continued fight against the L.A. Alliance lawsuit, all six candidates felt the county should settle it, as the city has. Stern said the county’s contention that they are “doing all they can” is absurd in light of the “five people a day dying on the streets.” Horvath recounted frustrations getting the county to provide her city with more mental health evaluation teams, which resulted in the creation of a model for every city to do so. All candidates, expressed frustration with spending tax dollars to fight the lawsuit.
OTHER ISSUES
All of the candidates, save for Stern (who replied, “not yet”), said the County Board of Supervisors should be expanded. Hertzberg pointed out that he had actually put forward a bill to do that in the State Senate, but that it had been voted down.
Stern felt strongly that the Berggruen Center in Brentwood should not be built, as it’s in a fire zone. Hertzberg disagreed, stating that the fire risks were being mitigated and the actual facility would take up just 2 acres out of over 400. Horvath agreed with Stern, as did Girgenti and Brill, who pointed out the lack of parks in Los Angeles County, compared to other counties.
On a question regarding the banning of plastic bags in L.A. County for environmental reasons, all candidates except Beckford-Hoge (who stated it was “not the role of government”) favored a ban (in Stern’s case, only of single-use bags).
All six candidates stated they would be willing to work with Sheriff Villanueva, should he be re-elected. Hertzberg stated he felt the Sheriff should be appointed by the Supervisors, rather than elected, because asking for political contributions leads to corruption. Beckford-Hoge said that the Sheriff is “elected for a reason, because it turns out having one appointed, like with the LAPD, means that “you’re just trying to cover your butt all the time.” Brill agreed with her, and said he also feels the Sheriff is woefully underfunded, with unincorporated areas of the county not even able to get an officer to respond to calls. Stern said that he thinks “we’ve given Sheriff Villanueva a lot of political fodder to exploit a wrong-headed agenda of defunding the police. We’ve got to get back to re-funding and reforming the police…The Sheriff is smart, and he’s taken all the consternation, all the fighting and has been trying to win in the court of public opinion. He came down here to Venice in his cowboy hat because nobody was doing anything to solve this.”
A question about the qualifications of the head of the L.A. County Department of Public Health, Barbara Ferrer, resulted in a discussion about the County Supervisor’s abdication of their responsibility to use her services in an advisory capacity, rather than, as Beckford Hoge put it, “asking not a single question…during this pandemic.” Stern agreed with her that the Board is “simply not stepping up and owning the judgment calls that they’re making…We hid behind Dr. Ferrer during this pandemic, but she ought not to take the blame. I thinks the Board’s got to step up.” Hertzberg agreed with him, and called for a better “management structure” for Public Health.
The candidates were asked their opinions of SB9 and SB10, which would increase density in the state by (respectively) allowing duplexes to be built on single-family lots and allow up to 10 units per lot near transit lines, taking away local control over zoning decisions. Girgenti was adamantly opposed to the motions, stating that “we only think we have a housing shortage.” Hertzberg said he voted for SB9 (but not SB10) because he thought it was “a reasonable solution” but cited other, better options for increasing density, including adaptive reuse and ADUS, that “do not encroach on open space.” Horvath said that she opposed both motions because “we want to protect local control. While there might be good intentions in terms of creating more housing, we don’t need a one size fits all approach because all of our communities are different.” But now that they have been passed, she doesn’t feel cities should be filing lawsuits to oppose them. Brill opposed the measures because it would expand housing in areas at risk of wildfires, but also stated that “we need to build housing in our transit corridors.” Beckford Hoge opposed the motions, and said that “most of us live here because we want open space. We do not want to live in Manhattan.” Stern opposed both SB9 and SB10 because he feels that we should not be building in fire zones. “I don’t think Scott Weiner should be deciding what housing looks like in L.A.” he continued. He also pointed out that building market rate housing alone would solve the housing affordability crisis, and that neither motion contained an affordability requirement.
The complete video of the event is available on You Tube.
