In LA, a park fence won’t cure homelessness. But it’s a start

from Jim NewtonCalMatters

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Los Angeles struggles to balance its humane responses to addiction and homelessness with its more immediate, but often less durable, alternatives—policing. MacArthur Park, a 35-acre space in the heart of Los Angeles’ Westlake neighborhood, is proving to be a disappointing testing ground.

Neighbors want a safer place for children to play and for residents to enjoy the outdoors. Does that mean they should tolerate needle exchanges or encourage arrests of homeless people? Are park beautification plans just window dressing or a real contribution to safety?

The latest debate involves placing a wrought iron fence around the park with limited access through the gates. What does a fence say about how a city approaches and solves its toughest problems?

The Los Angeles Parks and Recreation Commission and certain public speakers addressed these issues during a recent hearing. Most of the speakers who were able to participate in the hearing – which was held on Thursday during business hours — opposed the idea of ​​a fence.

Some said it would fence off their community while doing nothing to address drug proliferation or the intractability of the area’s homeless population.

“We have to ask ourselves why a fence is needed,” said a health worker who lives near the park. “A fence will not bring dignity. It will only push people further into invisibility.”

Others warned of the “unwanted” symbolism of the fence and the closure of public space. They said it protects the public from the reality of homelessness, “marginalizes human beings” and wastes city money.

“I question whether this proposal is really concerned with the betterment of the community,” noted another speaker, “or whether its true intent is to improve the aesthetics of Los Angeles.”

A fence is not a wall

Although critics dominated public comments at the commission hearing, the fence has supporters. A fence is not a wall, these supporters argue. Its gates would be open and could be barred, offering a clear view of the park. And it can help stabilize the neighborhood and regulate access to the park by reducing traffic from the surrounding sidewalks, which are sometimes teeming with drug-addicted people wandering in and out of the park.

After a contentious hearing during which the commission repeatedly threatened to throw out disruptive activists, the commission voted to approve $2.3 million for the project. City staff can now create a more complete design. But that hardly mollified community advocates or united the two sides.

Opponents of this project are roughly divided between those who see the park as a magnet for crime and those who see it as a refuge for the city’s most unworthy residents.

For the first group, criminal justice is responsible – more police patrols and repression on drug trafficking and stolen goods sales — are the logical way to make the park safer and more welcoming.

But to those who see park residents as victims of misguided social policies, law enforcement’s decisions seem cruel and doomed to failure in the long run. Instead, they’re calling on the city to use its resources to develop housing and fund “harm reduction services” like addiction treatment and needle exchanges.

The apparent division between them has the unfortunate effect of placing advocates in silos from which they fail to appreciate that lasting solutions will almost certainly require elements of both approaches.

Things that help can also hurt the park

It’s true that the park can’t be cleaned up by arresting homeless people whose primary crime is simply being poor. But it’s also true that treating the park’s problems as mere symptoms of deeper societal problems delays doing something now and may actually make things worse.

Take, for example, the understandable desire to treat addiction as a disease and to respond not to arrests but to treatment and outreach—needle exchanges, for example. These exchanges save lives, but they also attract users and dealers—hardly what MacArthur Park or its neighbors need.

Police Chief Jim McDonnell has seen the benefits of needle exchanges, but he also cautions that they have their place. MacArthur Park today is already so burdened by drug abuse that anything that encourages users is wrong. “I feel like it empowers people,” he told me recently.

McDonnell acknowledged that some of the efforts at MacArthur Park will need to be revisited. The temporary fence, now used to prevent vendors from selling stolen goods — and sometimes drugs — helped protect the stores along Alvarado Street, along the park’s eastern edge, and helped reduce crime in the neighborhood. But the chain link the fences are rickety and full of trash. “It’s not a good situation,” he said.

No solution will succeed on its own, and some suggestions are more significant than they appear. Even the objection that the park’s perimeter fence is intended to improve the park’s appearance rather than solve its essential problems ignores the connection between the two.

The “broken windows” theory of safety.

The relationship between the appearance of an area and its safety is not a matter of speculation. This is the basis of the most important work of police philosophy in the modern era, the 1982 Atlantic magazine article by James C. Wilson and George Kelling that laid out the theory of “Broken Windows.”

This article identifies “order” as an essential element of community safety. Disorder, as illustrated by a neighborhood where broken windows are left unattended, is not just a contagion. It contributes to crime, with minor offenses such as vandalism creating space and opportunity for more dangerous activities.

That’s exactly what’s going on today at MacArthur Park. An atmosphere of disorder manifests itself in the sleazy streets, and the rowdies try to fight it. It is a neighborhood of trash and neglect, radiating neglect and inviting crime. And crime ensued, just as Broken Windows claims.

Would a fence fix that? Probably not by itself. But it is wrong to say that its effect will be only aesthetic. A sense of community can create the reality of a community—one that cares for and protects its well-being. A more beautiful park would be a more orderly park, with police to enforce that order and the community to benefit from it.

That’s a goal worthy of a $2 million fence.

This comment is the fourth in a series of repeat coverage of LA recovery attempts MacArthur Park and areas like it, and the implications for distressed communities across the state.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.