The L.A. Times reports:
Nine years after she lost her apartment in North Hollywood and began couch-surfing and living in her van, Laura Luevano received a federal rent voucher to return her to the world of the housed.
Two months later — after calling 23 apartments for rent with no luck — the 65-year-old disabled woman is sleeping on a cramped couch on a back patio in Sylmar, one of at least 2,200 homeless people in Los Angeles County with a voucher but no place to use it.
With more than 35,000 people sleeping on sidewalks and in alleys, underpasses and riverbeds, the city and county are leaning on rent subsidies for private landlords to bring quick relief to homeless people while elected officials struggle to fund a $1.87 billion construction program.
But in the last two years, rents have soared far above baseline federal voucher caps — $1,150 for a one-bedroom apartment and $1,500 for two-bedroom units. And with the county's rental vacancy rate at a scant 2.7%, voucher holders are tripping over one another in fruitless apartment hunts lasting months.
There's more:
The city has set aside $5 million, and the county $3 million, to cover security deposits and first and last month's rent, set up damage funds and pay initial water and power bills for formerly homeless voucher holders.
Some local governments also pay for $1,000 holding fees to tide over landlords while inspections and approvals are underway; a new program in Santa Monica offers a $5,000 signing bonus to landlords who rent to voucher holders.
But some landlords fear formerly homeless tenants will cause trouble or fall behind on rent. Subsidies are issued through a variety of programs to homeless and low-income people, but generally, tenants contribute 30% of their income, leaving the government to cover the rest.
There's more to the un-free market in real estate:
"Many landlords, even in this competitive market, when they find out their rent is going to be more consistent than in the regular market, they sign on," said Alisa Orduna, Mayor Eric Garcetti's homelessness deputy. "We have to hook them in."
"Hook them in". No word yet from the Keynesians who claim there's no inflation on this story.
