Part II: Bread or Circuses? A Century of Homelessness and Olympics in Los Angeles

A three-part series reflecting on the impact of the Olympics–past, present, and future–on the City of Los Angeles and its most vulnerable residents, from a religious and theological perspective.

The Tenth Olympic Games, held in 1932, was awarded to Los Angeles on a technicality–they were actually the only ones who offered. Anxious to show the world that their desert town was more than just a place to film movies, LA placed their bid in 1923, unaware that the context within which they would be hosting 9 years later would be at the height of The Great Depression. Despite the global economic crisis, LA approved a one-million dollar ballot measure to fund the Olympics (equivalent to $21mil today), prompting Californians to swarm the Sacramento Capitol with signs reading, “Groceries, Not Games!” 

Nonetheless, LA managed to make the Olympics a surprise success. With a little Hollywood pizzazz–advertising the games across the new Route 66, and introducing “photo finish” cameras and the three-tiered podium for medal winners–Los Angeles left an indelible mark on the Games, and also netted a million dollar profit. In many ways, the idea of the mutually beneficial partnership of Olympics and host cities was made in Los Angeles in 1932. And like most Hollywood dreams, it would turn out to be far more elusive than advertised–even for the City that invented it. 

In order to understand the Olympics of 1984 and 2028, we have to pause briefly and look at 1963. The LA City Council at this time passed an ordinance 41.18 with multiple provisions on public behavior, but provision (d) has become the most contentious: a ban on sitting, lying, or sleeping on public property. In one fell swoop, the most vulnerable and marginalized in Los Angeles were now also criminals, subject to punishment.. While a full-scale enforcement of this is impossible, it allowed the City to strategize where homelessness would and would not be tolerated. 41.18(d) could be lax in areas like Skid Row, and strictly enforced in areas like Beverly Hills and Hollywood. Rather than committing to addressing or even ending homelessness, LA positioned itself to be able to nimbly maneuver and control it. 

The Summer Olympics would not return to the United States until 1984, when Los Angeles was once again awarded the winning bid by default with other cities failing to complete a bid. Despite Cold War tensions and boycotts, and the growing reputation that the Olympics took a heavy financial toll, Los Angeles believed it could replicate the success of 1932 with similar tactics and theatrics. For the first time, the Olympics were funded by private financing and corporate sponsorships. Hollywood composer John Williams, fresh off his legendary themes for Star Wars and Indiana Jones, was tasked to write a new Olympic theme. The Opening and Closing Ceremonies were star-studded spectacles (including a man in a jetpack!), and the city once again netted a huge profit from the Games. The lead-up to the Olympics and its aftermath once again changed the city of Los Angeles–but critics argue it was not for the better. 

At this time, homelessness in Los Angeles had skyrocketed. As the Olympics drew closer, Los Angeles increased criminalization and “beautification” efforts that made life more miserable for people on the streets, and drove them out of sight. Local officials were brazen in their language about what they were doing, even if some were more euphemistic than others. Councilmember Gilbert Lindsay even recommended reopening LA’s “drunk farm,” a project from the 50’s where LAPD took their alcoholic prisoners to the deep West Valley and forced them to work as sharecroppers at a cost-neutral farm, saying, “Let them sweat it out in the sun, grow vegetables to eat, and learn a trade.” 

Despite strong consideration, prison camps for the unhoused were eschewed in favor of tougher enforcement policies. Ordinances were passed to prohibit sleeping on the streets, sleeping in vehicles, and sleeping on bus benches. This crackdown did not end with people experiencing homelessness, but extended to communities of color broadly. Implicit and explicit racism allowed the recession, unemployment, drug epidemic, and AIDS crisis to devastate communities of color, and the “solutions” to these problems were to further marginalize those experiencing them. When the Federal Government allocated a budget for Olympics infrastructure, LA did not invest in job creation, public health, or addiction services: they invested in militarizing the LAPD, and christening them to make LA Olympics-ready the only way they knew how.

Because of their success and profitability, the 1984 Olympics etched in stone the dynamics of Los Angeles into the next several decades. The same police force that saw rapid expansion and militarization would go on to brutalize Rodney King and be acquitted for it. The profits generated from the Olympics were again not used to uplift marginalized communities, but to further enrich those on the right side of the widening wealth gap. 41.18 allowed Los Angeles for the ensuing decades to relegate homelessness primarily to Skid Row. Mayor Tom Bradley had promised the Olympics would make LA “a city for the future,” and it fulfilled that promise–there was a Los Angeles before 1984, and for better and worse, there was a different one after. 

Ordinance 41.18(d) was dealt a major blow in 2006 when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals declared it unconstitutional on the basis that it represents “cruel and unusual punishment.” They set a low bar for the City to provide 1,250 units of permanent public housing before they could begin enforcing it again. 

In 2017, Los Angeles was again awarded the Olympic Games for 2028. Mayor Eric Garcetti not only echoed the sentiments of 1984, but called back specifically to it: 

If you think about back to the '80s, think about the late '70s, we had inflation. We had war. We had some of the same things that we're struggling (with). We had a housing crisis. We had a homelessness crisis. The Olympics in '84 was a jumping off point for the rebirth of our city. And I think '28 will be as well.

Leaning more on spite than sentiment, Councilmember and failed 2022 Mayoral candidate Joe Buscaino declared during a contentious city council meeting about the Olympics, “What these games will do is create jobs and weed out poverty and put Los Angeles on the map!” Ignoring the obvious absurdity of needing to put one of the most well-known cities in the world “on the map,” the language of “weeding out” poverty was telling–poverty was to be treated like an outside invader to be removed, rather than a problem indicative of a toxic environment. This is how it was treated in 1984, and it would be the trajectory of LA in preparation for 2028. 

Less than a year after being awarded the Olympics, Garcetti declared that the criteria to begin enforcing 41.18(d) again had been met, and that the City would be pursuing it. Advocates were floored, as there did not seem to be much documented evidence that the housing units had been built. This same year, though, a different case involving a similar law in Boise, Idaho had made it all the way to the US Supreme Court, and the Court had ruled against the law. Before it even had a chance to revive, the City became fearful of countering the Supreme Court. 

Between 2018 and 2020, City Council made multiple attempts to reinstate the ordinance or one like it that would be in compliance with the Supreme Court ruling. However, community resistance has been strong, and a coalition of activist groups came together known as “Services Not Sweeps” to resist the reinstitution of criminalization. (“Sweeps” refers to when encampments of unhoused people are demolished by the City.) The phrase is a call to prioritize investing money in providing services to those in need, instead of paying for their removal and displacement. Yet even against this severe opposition, Council passed an amendment to 41.18 in 2020 that required an ambiguous “offer of shelter” before sleeping, lying, or sitting could be deemed unlawful. Under this new version which is yet untested in the courts, Los Angeles began sweeping again and continues to ramp them up not only for the Olympics, but for the Academy Awards, the Super Bowl, and to dispel new unhoused communities that formed during the pandemic. 

In this vein, Los Angeles continues to barrel forward toward hosting the 2028 Olympics, repeating the patterns of 1932 and 1984, likely toward the same outcome: increasing the illusion of respectability in Los Angeles, enriching and entrenching those in power, and further disenfranchising those without it. The issues Los Angeles has failed to address for more than half a century will continue to worsen, while those in power choose Games instead of Groceries, and Sweeps instead of Services.