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In one of his first appearances before the lobbyists, lawyers, consultants and others who live by their ability to influence city hall, Los Angeles City Councilman David Ryu didn’t make it easy for his audience. He tackled some of the big issues confronting city hall and dug into them deeply, more deeply and even more deeply.
Ryu, elected last year, is definitely a policy guy. This wasn’t a bad thing since there were plenty of wonkish people at the Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum luncheon at the Palm Thursday. Usually, the speakers give a policy once over and let the audience return fairly quickly to their jobs of influencing public officials. This time, they got an urban affairs seminar. From their questions, they seemed to be interested.
His presentation reflected his background. As a senior deputy to then Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne Burke, Ryu handled a wide range of social and economic problems, including two of the most intractable--homelessness and mental illness. Now, as a councilman, he’s in the middle of the development controversy as the representative of the 4th District, a center in battles over high rises in Hollywood, Koreatown and other areas. And as a Korean American, he is part of the increasing Asian American influence in politics and government.
He said that cooperation in the past few months between the historically feuding county and city governments have produced some good ideas and useful programs for the homeless. Ryu said, however, “Money alone isn’t going to solve homelessness.” The more than $100 million in Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s new budget, he said, is “like a scratch on a window.”
Then he tackled a controversial aspect in the discussion of treatment of the mentally ill, who made up a large segment of the homeless. He spoke of the hard work of outreach workers who try to persuade the mentally ill to accept treatment or apply for housing. “It takes 10 outreach attempts to convince a (homeless) person to have a cup of coffee with them (the workers),” he said.
Ryu moved on to the problem of mentally ill young people who leave parental supervision at 18 and then refuse their parents’ orders or advice to be treated. He said “now, it is almost impossible get a conservatorship over the mentally ill,” a status that would permit relatives or guardian to order them into care. For the young mentally ill, he said, the answer might be to extend parental authority to order treatment to the age of 26—the age children are eligible for care under Obamacare.
He appeared to be thinking of giving government more power to impose care on the mentally ill, a stand that would put him in conflict with civil libertarians who oppose such steps.
On development, Ryu, elected on a platform of helping neighborhoods who feel oppressed by over-development, said he is spending time with developer and neighborhood advocates and his “top priority is to rebuild the community’s trust.” He said he opposed an initiative, scheduled for next year’s ballot, that would impose a moratorium on some housing developments. “I’m not supporting governing by initiative,” he said.
When we chatted afterward, he said he hoped his remarks hadn’t been too long and complicated. Not at all, I said. I’m interested in all that stuff. And I thought the audience was, too.
