This is a *stunning* injunction. Not only what it orders LA to do, but also it's description of how we got here. Structural racism, exclusionary zoning, cowardly and feckless leaders - it's all here. Some highlights below (thread!) https://twitter.com/dillonliam/status/1384605317955145735

First up - making it clear that racism features front and center in our homeless crisis.

Why? Because ... "While Black people comprise only eight percent of Los Angeles’s population, they make up 42% of its homeless population"

Judge Carter doesn't believe this is random chance:

"The current inaction on the part of the City and County of LA has allowed the harms of their racist legacy to continue unabated, leaving Black people—and especially Black women—effectively abandoned on the streets."

It gets worse. I didn't know this - the Black homeless population has been growing while the white homeless population has been shrinking.

Now we dive into the history. In 1910, Los Angeles began its rich history of tearing down housing for people of color

Great Depression didn't help.

"Unemployment for white Angelenos reached a high of 25% in 1933, whereas unemployment among Black Angelenos during the same period peaked at twice that rate."

And then we have the introduction of racially-restrictive covenants, making it illegal for Black people to live in many parts of Los Angeles. Fewer homes available but same number of people? Rapid increase in rents.

Now we get to redlining. State sponsored segregation of neighborhoods across the US, including in Los Angeles. Judge Carter references @HOLCRedlining and Richard Rothstein's Color of Law numerous times in this section.

"People living in redlined neighborhoods were restricted from these federally backed avenues of credit for decades. This cycle of disinvestment blocked communities of color from the accumulation of intergenerational wealth that flowed in white neighborhoods"

And the racial wealth gap:

"While a Black person today earns on average 60% of what their white counterpart earns, Black American wealth is only about five percent of white American wealth."

"White Americans developed financial stability, and thus safety nets, that Black Americans were excluded from ... All of these factors shape Los Angeles housing
insecurity in the Black community today."

Highway construction ( @samdman95)

Judge Carter references federal documents which recommended using highways as a tool to separate white neighborhoods from Black ones.

"Yet, construction of the Los Angeles freeway was most effective in displacing Black families on a large scale. Communities of color lacked political representation to defend against their neighborhoods being razed to make space for the freeway."

The creation of Skid Row in the 1970s. A containment zone, as if we were dealing with nuclear waste, to isolate poverty and maintain "pristineness" in the rest of the city

Modern implications:

“racial bias [continues to] affect every aspect of a Black person’s life, and it is impossible to untangle the pervasive effects of institutional racism from other system failures that together cause a person to experience homelessness.”

LA's Housing Element. Judge Carter read @AbundantHousing analysis of LA's draft plan and calls on Los Angeles to use its Housing Element to "restructure and reform" the housing needs of Angelenos.

@Yimby_Law @California_HCD

He also quotes an LA Times Editorial which calls for changes to single family zoning

Now Judge Carter starts digging in to @MayorOfLA. Pages and pages of quotes from Garcetti acknowledging the extent of the homeless crisis but then doing nothing about it.

Judge Carter is not impressed:

"Despite acknowledgements by City and County officials, promises to the citizens of Los Angeles regarding the homelessness crisis have been made and broken year after year."

He continues:

"To this day, Mayor Garcetti has not employed the emergency powers given to him by the City Charter despite overwhelming evidence that the magnitude of
the homelessness crisis is “beyond the control of the normal services” of the City government."

"And yet, City and County officials are content to pay soundbite lip service instead of declaring an emergency and taking steps to correct the problems that plague their communities."

It's really a stunning criticism of current leadership in Los Angeles. Judge Carter, multiple times, basically calls Garcetti a coward for not taking decisive action on the homeless crisis.

The whole order is well worth reading. The link is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ytnYrv3W5REovP0_t-XVzOIuItr2WQQW/view

And the LA Times has good coverage here: https://www.latimes.com/homeless-housing/story/2021-04-20/judge-carter-la-city-county-shelter-skid-row-homeless-fall