Homelessness Planning Process Analysis

The public agenda item I selected is the concern of the homeless. I selected homelessness due to I have had the privilege of recently attending and being a participant in various Homeless Initiative Policy Summits for the Los Angeles County. According to the Los Angeles Almanac (2015), there is an estimated of 254,000 men, women, and children experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles County. The Los Angeles County Board of Superiors has pledged millions of dollars to reduce homelessness. The planning process includes employment, land use, prevention, subsidized housing, coordination of services and street homelessness outreach. Various partnerships (public, private, & nonprofits) are working diligently together to house and provide imperative
resource services.

The homelessness agenda issue has been on of the high priorities on the list for the Los Angeles County, along with poverty, and child trafficking. Reducing homelessness is a public agenda that has continued to affect our society at large, which leads to affecting our communities. The certain principles of democracy that impact the public agenda item would be democratic values, equality, and freedom. According to Post (2006) one of democracy principles is that it requires that citizen treated equally concerning the dimensions (p.33). These characteristics of democracy not only impact the public agenda but also shapes the public agenda, which are imperative principles to individual living in homeless conditions that are unable to maintain adequate housing and lack funding to do so. Thus, all citizens are equal before the law and must feel that this is a not only a public but a state decision to compact homelessness. Post (2006) states that if democracy requires that citizens experience their government as their own, as representing them, they must experience the state is some way responsive to their own values and ideas (p.27).