On Friday, February 20, LA CAN’s Community Watch team saw a police van full of people drive down Crocker Street and stop near 4th Street. LAPD Central Division Captain Kelly Muniz, Sgt. Helper, and other officers got out of the van. Central City East Association director and proponent of criminalization of unhoused people, Estela Lopez, got out, along with real estate agent and Historic Core Business Improvement District boss, Blair Besten. And, the featured guest, Ronnie Kurtz, Assistant Secretary of Community Planning and Development for the Trump Administration’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
Led by the locals, Kurtz and his HUD team walked around the block, tried to get into the Care Campus, then stood in front of tent sites where unhoused people are attempting to survive on the streets, pointing with disdain while their camera crew filmed them. This “tour” was a photo opportunity, exploiting poverty on Skid Row to promote a deadly agenda.
Kurtz’ job is to oversee HUD’s work on affordable housing, community development (including Block Grants), disaster relief, and homelessness. He is responsible for administering billions of dollars of government funds, for programs on which millions of people throughout the US depend for services and housing.
Before being appointed to this powerful and responsible job, Kurtz, age 32, worked for three years as director of planning and community development for the City of Grovetown, a 4.8 square mile suburb of Augusta, Georgia with a population just over 17,000 and no homeless shelters within ten miles. Before this job, he worked for a few years as an entry level planner for an architectural firm.
Kurtz’ main qualification appears to be his Republican Party activism and his support for Donald Trump. He helped found the Columbia County Young Republicans and served as an RNC delegate to the Party’s 2024 National Convention. He joined Trump for President, Inc. for the 2020 campaign, and quit his job in Grovetown to join the campaign in 2024. He worked briefly for the America First Policy Institute and then for the Trump-Vance transition team after the 2024 election.
During his Senate confirmation process, Kurtz repeatedly stated that he would “follow… President Trump’s leadership in pursuing Administration priorities.” Trump spelled out his priorities related to houselessness in his August Executive Order “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” in which he promoted criminal punishments for unhoused people and forcing people into involuntary, often inhumane, mental institutions, while defunding housing programs. Kurtz said he was committed to “advanc[ing] the goals” of Trump’s executive order.
Kurtz said specifically that he opposed “Housing First,” a proven effective approach to houselessness that prioritizes getting people into permanent housing regardless of their drug use or mental health conditions.
The Trump administration has moved to drastically cut funding for permanent housing, along with other government supports for people in need. They proposed to cut HUD funding by 45 percent, including massive reductions in the Section 8 voucher program that houses hundreds of thousands of people. While Federal courts stopped proposed cuts that would have caused 170,000 people to lose their housing, including over 9,200 in Los Angeles County, the Trump administration continues to shift away from permanent housing and towards shelter, forced treatment, and criminalizing people living on the streets.
Kurtz’ photo op tour of Skid Row, with police and known criminalization advocates, has nothing to do with helping residents in need, and everything to do with promoting an agenda of forced treatment, shelters instead of permanent housing, and punishing people for their poverty. Had he actually spent time talking to people living on Skid Row, instead of just the gentrifier lobby, he would have learned that people want the government to support their human right to housing and to treat them with the dignity that they deserve.