3 Responses to “Criticism Filter Sucessfully Deployed At Los Angeles Times”

1. 
   1
   Rodger Jacobs Says:
   October 18th, 2005 at 6:55 pm

   Can you post the content of that e-mail? It would be interesting to see if there were keywords that flagged it as spam. The LAT has a notorious history of reader e-mail bounce backs.

2. 2
   Mossback Culture Says:
   October 18th, 2005 at 7:53 pm

   County: Level 3’s home county is U.S.’ most “tech-savvy” On The Third Hand I admit it, I?m a female chauvanist? Moore’s Lore The Speed of Deciding Independent Sources Criticism Filter Sucessfully Deployed At Los Angeles Times Kerabu Free cake, she said powered by zFeeder PagesLosing Custody of My Hope

3. 
   3
   A Senior Administration Official Says:
   October 18th, 2005 at 10:02 pm

   Here’s the entire email. When I stripped out all the links, it seems to have gone through.

   ———-
   Steve Lopez wrote in Sunday’s Skid Row piece that “Roughly 10,000 people
   flop on skid row streets each night …”

   That number was not sourced and overstates the count — likely by 400% or
   more.

   Mitchell Netburn, Exec Director of the LA Homeless Services Authority, said
   in testimony to the US House of Representatives in 2004 that “approximately
   10,000 homeless and at-risk people live in this 40 square block area.” (see
   note 1)

   BUT that does not mean 10,000 people on the street. The definition of
   “homeless” used by the LAHSA and others includes those in shelters and
   motels (note 2) — thousands of people in the Skid Row area.

   Note also Netburn’s phrase “and at-risk.” I can’t find what portion of the
   10,000 are estimated to be at-risk, but that also reduces the number of
   on-the-streets homeless.

   One knowledgable-sounding commenter on our blog wrote:

   > If you count those of us living in the private not for profit hotels , we are
   > the “at risk” and you have between 2600-3000 people. These not for profits
   > receive funding through Supernofa funding through LAHSA in SPA 1 , then you
   > have the hotels that do not have subsidies and have not been aquired by the
   > private not for pofits and you throw in another 1000-1500 at risk folks, I
   > consider them to be homeless, substandard housing , by HUD definitions. Then
   > you add those in the MIdnight mission, Fred JOrdan Mission , Los Angeles
   > Rescue MIssion and UNion rescue Mission Every Evening , the Transitional HOuse
   > – we call the T-HOuse , then the drop in center . You come up with … another
   3500 close to 10,000 folks add the 600 to 1000 on the streets to
   > that . You get my point.
   >
   > So you have approximately 6,000 people living in HOtels in Central City East
   > and then add those in the MIssions (3,500) and those on the street.
   >
   > (note 3)

   Using his numbers you have 9,500 housed – temporarily – in the Skid Row East
   area. Even if there are 11,000 homeless in the area — higher than the LAHSA
   itself thinks — that leaves ‘only’ 1,500 on the streets every night. That
   is a far more believable number.

   A paper titled “Homelessness in Los Angeles: A summary of recent research”
   from the Weingart Center has percentages of homeless actually on the street
   or in encampments ranging from 15% (Downtown Women’s Survey) to 39% (Cold
   Wet Weather Survey). (note 4). That would translate to 1,500 to 3,900 on the
   street — likely very high (these had small sample sizes and were collected
   from all over LA County), but still far less than 10,000.

   The 2000 Census counted 7,848 people in “other noninstitutional group
   quarters,” which includes shelters and outside, in the zip codes roughly
   inside the 110 / 101 / 10 triangle (90012, 13, 14, 17, 21, 33, 71). Most of
   those would be in shelters, leaving — again, a few thousand at most “on the
   streets.” (note 5)

   Another way of looking at it — accepting the dubious figure of 80,000
   homeless countywide (again, this includes those in motels, shelters, etc –
   i.e, anyone without a permanent “home”), Netburn of the LAHSA estimates 10%
   – 8,000 — are “chronically homeless.” Say half live in the Skid Row area,
   and of those, 50% are on the street. Both are likely too high, but using
   those guesses, you’d have 2,000 homeless people on the street on Skid Row.

   Lopez’s 10,000 figure was published on the biggest platform the Times has:
   the front page of the Sunday paper. Although columnists like Lopez may
   normally be subject to less stringent standards of fact checking than
   straight news reporters, there was nothing in the piece to indicate that it
   was opinion. If it was news, the 10,000 figure should have been sourced or
   vetted — one call to LAHSA should get a better figure (if it was opinion,
   I’m not sure what the Times’ policy is, but I would argue the same standard
   applies). As it was, most of the Sunday readership probably just filed the
   10,000 figure away under “must be true, it was in the paper.”

   (s/ my real name!)

   Sources (note: http:// removed from each since otherwise the LAT spam filter
   wants to tag this message as spam!)

   (1) financialservices.house.gov/media/pdf/071304mn.pdf

   (2) homelesscount.lahsa.org/FAQs.htm

   (3)
   independentsources.com/2005/10/17/fighting-over-the-homeless-count/#comment-
   4055

   (4)
   http://www.weingart.org/institute/research/other/pdf/homelessness_in_los_angeles-a_
   summary_of_recent_research.pdf
   (page 26)

   (5)
   factfinder.census.gov/servlet/GCTTable?_bm=y&-geo_id=85000US900&-_box_head_n
   br=GCT-P9&-ds_name=DEC_2000_SF1_U&-_lang=en&-redoLog=false&-mt_name=DEC_2000
   _SF1_U_GCTP9_ZI1&-format=ZI-1&-_sse=on