June 1, 2018

Homelessness Shrinks Slightly in Los Angeles

This chart appeared on the front page of the LA Times this morning:

This data makes no sense. During the worst recession since World War II, the number of homeless people didn’t increase at all. Then, as the economy got into high gear, the number of homeless suddenly spiked. Why? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

Is it because housing prices stayed flat during the recession and then started rising? Maybe:

This doesn’t quite fit the homeless data, but it’s close. And the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority suggests it’s the problem: “Since 2000, median rent in Los Angeles County has increased 32% while median renter household income has decreased 3%.” I guess I can buy this, though it sure seems as if a greater likelihood of having a job would outweigh higher home prices, causing the number of homeless to go down during good economic times. Very strange.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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