As homelessness takes center stage in debates between candidates this election season, it is important to recognize many of the root and systemic causes of homelessness.

In the city of Los Angeles, a study from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority estimated that more than 80,000 residents were unhoused in 2019. While the group’s 2020 count was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, they placed the number around 42,000 just for the city of Los Angeles.

Encampments set up outside of the Los Angeles City Hall as City council met in the building on Monday, May 30 (Gavin Quinton | The Corsair)

The housing crisis that Los Angeles faces only escalates as the pandemic continues to rage on. According to data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, an estimated 30% of the unhoused population suffers from mental health issues. That includes Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which occurs after living through what human brains perceive as “trauma”.

As an individual who suffers from PTSD, I can attest that it is both crippling and traumatizing in its own right. Mental healthcare can truly be the key to unlocking doors into one’s own psyche that would go otherwise ignored.

PTSD comes in different forms, and can even take someone fully out of their reality and back to the incident that caused the problem in the first place. I am someone with the privilege to be housed, who when suffering from a bout of intense flashbacks, can still be left non-functioning and terrified for something that doesn’t physically exist.

Making sure there’s access to this healthcare is a basic need and should be available for absolutely everyone. “The city is depriving the homeless of human rights,” said Benito Flores, a resident of Los Angeles who was homeless for 15 years before claiming a vacant house. “They’re abusing the homeless.”

The unhoused crisis can truly only be solved when the government begins to take mental health seriously, and without the stigma of perceiving survivors as weak for wanting help. Would someone not take insulin if their body did not produce it naturally? Medications that treat mental health disorders are vital and access to them should be easy and open to everyone.

All Los Angeles mayoral candidates have expressed the deep need to help the unhoused get on their feet. But without truly addressing the root of the problem within someone’s mind, what good will their efforts really do?

By not creating a space for the unhoused where healthcare is given with affordable treatments, the government is merely putting a bandage on a wound that needs stitches. Mental healthcare should be offered no matter a person’s socioeconomic status.

A 2022 report revealed that more than 40% of inmates in Men’s Central Jail, a facility in Los Angeles County, also suffer from mental health issues. They have little access to necessary care. To deprive anyone of that treatment is wrong and should be reformed immediately.

Without this care, the unhoused crisis will only continue to escalate and worsen. Those in charge of the city should understand this. They must create a platform claiming to take responsibility and action against our mental health crisis.

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