LA 2028: A golden opportunity to address homelessness

Through the throngs of people and the music of dialects mixing together, the world comes together to watch elite athletes compete for their country. It's a time of patriotism, excitement, joy, and community. It is the Olympic Games.

"I'm incredibly excited because I love the Olympics, I want to be able to share in hosting the games with my children and the residents of Los Angeles, and I have such fond memories of the 1984 Olympics[...] It's quite remarkable if you think about it," said City Councilman Paul Krekorian

Like many, Los Angeles City Councilman Paul Krekorian is excited for a third Olympic Games taking place in the City of Angels.

When you think of the Olympic Games excitement and a sense of community radiate. But some voices are notably missing: the voices of those who are displaced due to the mega-event.

In many of the past Olympic Games, and all of those in recent history, host cities have displaced homeless and low-income populations to accommodate the infrastructure, construction and beautification efforts of the city in preparation for the games. This displacement takes many forms including gentrification, evictions, and even bus tickets out of the city.

"The events are used as a mechanism for opening up urban territories for capital reproduction.," said Christopher Gaffney, Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Latin American Geography, and a Clinical Associate professor at NYU, "whether it's gentrification, direct displacement or other mechanisms, it's not an accidental outcome because it happens every time[...]It's an integral part of the business model of these events: that people are displaced."

Gaffney has done extensive research in the field of mega events. He suggests that the displacement of low-income and homeless populations is intentional. He expects that Los Angeles will be no exception.

"This is about far more than preparing for the Olympics, homelessness is the single biggest social crisis that our city has faced in our lifetimes, which is why we're putting so much effort into resolving it," said Krekorian.

On September 13th, 2017, the city of Los Angeles was awarded the honor of hosting the 2028 Summer Olympic Games by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). This marked the city's third opportunity to host the Games, having previously hosted both the 1932 and 1984 Summer Games.

History

The most recent and prolific example of this displacement from the games occurred prior to the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympic Games.

"There was a constant pressure from the government to try and remove people through shifting discourses and shifting tactics," said Gaffney, "they tried to isolate the individuals in their confrontation with the state, and that was quite successful."

Cerianne Robertson, editor for Rio on Watch, a news organization detailing the evictions occurring due to the games, also lived and worked in Rio de Janeiro during this period. She notes that in that time leading up to August 2016, evictions were commonplace. She says houses were marked for eviction with no warning and there was violence between residents and the government.

According to a Rio de Janeiro city report, over 22,000 people were removed in Rio de Janeiro in the years between winning the bid in 2009 and hosting the games in 2016.

Gaffney says that it is simply part of the Olympic model, and an Olympic Games cannot happen without displacement.

Experts discuss their experience in Rio, and what it means for Los Angeles.

This legacy doesn't only permeate Games hosted in low-income countries. Both Atlanta and Los Angeles were guilty of massive displacements during their 1996 and 1984 Summer Games.

Atlanta was one of the first cities to be overt about displacing homeless people. Some were given one-way bus tickets out of the city, and others were evicted from the public housing they were living in - all in an effort to make the city look presentable for the games.

Lawrence Vale, a professor in Urban Planning and design at MIT, detailed the experiences of some of the low-income population in Atlanta in the wake of being awarded the games. He says that by the time the athletes arrived for the 1996 Games, many were housed in a former public housing project that had been redeveloped, while residents were "shotput out of the neighborhood."

"Thus the international media would see not desolate housing projects, but rather that Atlanta was a city on the move," he added.

LA 1984 is touted as one of the most prolific and one of the only profitable modern games, but it was not without its problems. Max Felker-Kantor PhD, a historian in race, politics and policing and novelist who studied the Los Angeles Police Department, explains that the honor of hosting the 1984 Summer Games was coupled with a militarization of the police force.

Incarceration rates of homeless people in Los Angeles spiked, particularly for minorities, and there were increasing sweeps of encampments all over the city.

The police chief of the LAPD in 1984, Billy Wedgeworth, was quoted by the LA Times in the week before the opening ceremony as saying, "we're trying to sanitize the area".

Felker-Kantor argues that these militarization and incarceration efforts were tied to the Olympic Games. He explains that while it may not have been obvious at the time, the LA 1984 Games serves as a learning platform: we have the "ability to look back and see how events were connected," which means the city has an opportunity to change how homelessness is handled in light of the Olympics.

LA 2028: are they prepared to address homelessness?

After working with Paris and the IOC to secure the 2028 bid to host the Summer Games, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and other city officials have been touting the future games as an opportunity to make a profit and create a more equitable Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, the County is home to nearly 53,000 homeless individuals.

Many question whether it is a good idea to spend money on these Olympic Games when the homelessness "crisis," as described by officials, has not yet been adequately addressed.

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"We championed, and voters passed Measures HHH and H, which bring billions to pay for permanent supportive housing, temporary housing and homeless services," said Councilmember Krekorian, "I anticipate we will have made big strides in our efforts to eliminate homelessness within a few years and certainly by 2028."

These sentiments have been echoed by Mayor Garcetti, explaining in an interview with reporter Bill Simmons that these measures will bring in "$4 billion for homelessness over the next 10 years to build housing and give mental health services and whole anti-addiction stuff."

A representative from the No Olympics LA Campaign feels differently, saying "City Council and the Mayor have done nothing to quell this fear, glossing over our concerns by assuming LA will make a dent in the crisis by 2028, or that the games will inspire someone to solve it"

The No Olympics LA campaign is an advocacy group that was started by the Housing and Homeless committee of the Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. It was formed when Los Angeles decided to pursue an Olympic bid. Their work is aimed at identifying the reasons that Los Angeles should not host the games. Some of their platform items include resisting police militarization, building homes, and enhancing public transit instead of hosting the Games.

The plan for the 2028 Games is unique. Rather than having one central Olympic park, where a majority of the events occur, LA has proposed four separate Olympic parks spread across the city. To reduce the cost of hosting the games, this strategy relies on the use of existing infrastructure across the city. The official candidature dossier submitted to the IOC reads, "with no new permanent venues required, our Games Concept simultaneously embraces the principles of Olympic Agenda 2020 and our city's existing assets and plans."

This proposal adds another level of complexity to the potential homeless displacement. While most previous games only had a central area of displacement, LA would have to tackle this issue four-fold. On top of this, the homeless population in Los Angeles is spread across the city, and homeless individuals can be found at most of the proposed venues.

Robertson says this could be a reason for LA to handle the issue differently that past host cities, because they have more impetus to address it with a sense of permanency rather than just relocating these individuals.

Los Angeles was awarded these games 11 years in advance, which is four more years than any other host city has received. In compensation for accepting a Games so far in advance, the IOC rewarded the city more money to account for the inflation that could occur. Los Angeles is also predicting to make over $1 million profit from the Games.

While Krekorian says that most of the surplus will go to funding youth sports programs, he adds that homelessness has "been our main policy goal for the city over the past few years and I anticipate it will remain so in the months and years ahead."

Gaffney disagrees, saying that Los Angeles will have the same violent, inequitable, and sizeable levels of displacement that occurred in past host cities, saying that there is no way to avoid it unless the entire Olympic business model is changed.

"In 1984, we welcomed tens of thousands of people from across the world for the games and I'm confident, given the amount of time we have to prepare for the 2028 games, that we'll do even better than before," says Councilman Krekorian.

Contending with a prolific legacy form the 1984 Games and the displacement legacy inherent in the Olympics. The city of LA could be the impetus to change the Olympic process. The 2028 Games is an opportunity to truly celebrate the human condition by celebrating the achievements of talented athletes, while also propping up the conditions of the poor.