SLUM HOUSING: L.A.’s HIDDEN HEALTH CRISIS
On April 26, 2007, the Los Angeles CAFA Collaborative is sponsoring a briefing breakfast and strategy discussion entitled: Slum Housing: L.A.’s Hidden Health Crisis. Every day doctors, clinics and hospitals treat children with chronic and acute asthma and other chronic diseases and then send them home to the slum housing that has caused these conditions in the first place. This strategy discussion will engage community members from across Los Angeles to address the slum housing conditions which are causing and exacerbating asthma prevalence and incidence in inner city children.
More than 150 elected officials, public health and housing professionals, community leaders, tenant and community organizers, health care providers and local residents will be attending the event (to be held at The California Endowment in Los Angeles) which will provide a critical discussion on the effects of slum housing on the health of L.A.’s children. A white paper reflecting seven years of collaborative work by the Los Angeles Community Action to Fight Asthma collaborative will be presented at the briefing. The report includes information on the:
Health costs of L.A.’s slum housing crisis;
Who bears the health burden of the crisis;
Who bears the cost burden of the crisis;
The business model of criminal slumlords and their impact on public health;
Proposals to address the health crisis.
Following is an executive summary of the White Paper developed by the Los Angeles CAFA Collaborative:
“The Shame of the City – Slum Housing and the Critical Threat to the Health of L.A.’s Children”
Slum housing is the most significant public health threat to the children of our city. Slum housing tenants, most of whom are children, suffer from lead poisoning, asthma and widespread and debilitating infections among other health disorders as a direct result of these housing conditions. These health costs take a dramatic toll on tenants, community based organizations, community clinics, the public health infrastructure and taxpayers. Unknown are the future costs of what lies ahead by robbing children of opportunities due to the poor health conditions in their early years: decreased lung function from slum-housing triggered asthma incidence, the lost education from missed school days because of illness caused by slum housing conditions, and lost mental capacities and decreased brain function due to lead poisoning.
Slum housing is characterized by overcrowded conditions and substandard living conditions: from peeling lead paint to mold-covered ceilings to cockroach and rat infested bedrooms. The poorest and most vulnerable of our neighbors, live in substandard conditions. African Americans and Latinos disproportionately live in slum housing. Deliberate neglect by slumlords creates these unhealthy environments for their tenants. Disappointedly, tenants generally have little recourse and conversely, slumlords profit by their practice of neglect. Gentrification and weak tenant rights have created an environment for slumlords to spin their buildings into millions of dollars of profit while our children get sicker and are forced to live in the most horrendous housing conditions reflective of the worst barrios in the Third World. Many of the city’s worst neighborhoods and slum housing tracts are within walking distance of the rapidly gentrifying downtown LA neighborhoods.
Frustrated with the inability of health and housing institutions to integrate a comprehensive approach to slum housing, over the past several years the Los Angeles CAFA Collaborative, including health promoters from Esperanza Community Housing Corporation, medical practitioners from St. John’s Well Child and Family Center, and tenant and homeless organizers from Strategic Actions for a Just Economy and the Los Angeles Community Action Network have built their own system of environmental health in Central and South Los Angeles. Our paper, “The Shame of the City – Slum Housing and the Critical Threat to the Health of L.A.’s Children” constitutes the lessons we have learned, implications for policy, and a call for public health and housing officials to move towards an integrated environmental health approach to slum housing.
FINDINGS
54% of children seen at St. John's have elevated blood lead levels, and 8,078 extreme cases were reported to Los Angeles County in the past 10 years;
9% of children across LA have asthma, and an estimated 14% in Los Angeles’ urban schools have asthma; 18% of St. John’s Well Child and Family Center pediatric patients have chronic asthma;
Mold and mildew caused by leaking pipes, in adequate drainage, inadequate ventilation, holes in walls or roof and inadequate weatherproofing can result in asthma, chronic bronchitis, chronic pneumonia, eye problems, conjunctivitis, allergic rhinitis, chronic sinusitis and pneumenitis (chemical pneumonia);
In Central Los Angeles, land values are increasing 800% in the last ten years;
Negligent landlords are creating blight by buying adjacent parcels and disregarding repairs as a strategy for forcing tenants out of these rapidly valuable properties, further exacerbating pediatric chronic health conditions;
In the Morrison Hotel alone, a 111 room residential hotel South of Downtown Los Angeles, where the CAFA Collaborative won a legal injunction against the owners for health conditions resulting from hazardous slum conditions: the effects of slum housing cost tenants, community based organizations and taxpayers a conservative estimate of $985,289 for diagnosing and treating 25 children;
One of the largest Los Angeles slumlords owns 240 properties. 1700 families live in his units for a total population of about 10,000. Many of the patients treated at St. John’s eight clinics in downtown and South Central Los Angeles with asthma, live in these slum dwellings;
Sophisticated slumlords have been making cosmetic repairs to pass code inspections;
African Americans and Latinos have been hit the hardest by the health effects of slum housing;
The coordination of health care services, case management, community health promotion, in-home environmental assessments, and tenant and community organizing is effective in slowing down the process of displacement and chronic ill health, but more help is needed.
STRATEGIES FOR CHANGE / RECOMENDATIONS
Collectively, the Los Angeles CAFA collaborative, coalition of nonprofit community based organizations (CBOs) have provided health care services, intensive case management, tenant rights education, organizing capacity, research on slumlords, lead education, asthma education, measurement of roach infestation, lead dust wipes and documentation, patient diagnosis, patient treatment, medication, case management and diagnosis documentation. This litany of tactics has successfully armed tenants and the community with evidence to document the scope of the problem of slum housing. Tenants have been educated on how to protect their health and their housing rights and owners have been educated by doctors and community workers on how to protect their tenants and the resources available. Still, all of the CBOs work has only skimmed the top of actually changing the living conditions of those in slum housing.
There are four areas we have identified for improvement. First, City and County officials must increase enforcement and coordinate their activities by providing more support to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. It is not clear who is in charge of what type of inspections; Public Health is not given the power it needs to hold slumlords accountable and neither the County nor the City appears to communicate with each other to engage this critical public health threat. Sharing resources and improving communication could improve the process. Second, increase the environmental health capacity by training health promoters as County inspectors. This would increase the environmental health inspectors unit and can increase the number of inspections. Third, increase the penalties for code violations. The ability to avoid violations and the relative low fines has not threatened slumlords to change their practices of neglect or cosmetic repairing. Make the slumlords pay their share of slum conditions instead of tenants, CBOs and taxpayers. Fourth, create stronger anti-displacement policy – by all means, displacement costs need to be avoided. Fifth, provide direct funding to doctors and community clinics to provide the myriad of disease management and environmental health services necessary to save the already seriously comprised health status of LA’s children.
Convening a group of health practitioners and public officials to form a coalition and devising ways to reduce displacement and improve health conditions to lower the costs of slum housing would add to the community based organizations (CBO) efforts to create livable conditions for the most disadvantaged.
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