Hayes Davenport is a comedy author with an enviable resume, having labored on reveals like “Eastbound & Down,” “Household Man,” “Vice Principals” and “Dickinson.” But he left that profession behind for a three-year run working at Metropolis Corridor, with a particular give attention to serving to Los Angeles’ homeless inhabitants.
It’s a journey he first began by supporting the marketing campaign of Nithya Raman, who grew to become a Los Angeles Metropolis Council member for the 4th District in 2020.
“It was Nithya laying out a path for me to exit and speak to folks, one thing I wouldn’t have felt like I might simply do by myself,” he says. “From step by step seeing alternatives to really assist folks get off the road … when you’ve finished it a number of occasions, you simply can’t not do it. It prompts and empowers you in a method that only a few jobs can.”
Davenport first met Raman in 2017 whereas volunteering with the homeless outreach non-profit SELAH Neighborhood Homeless Coalition. When she introduced her intention to run for the council seat in 2019, Davenport stop his job co-showrunning the comedy collection “Chad” with star Nasim Pedrad to give attention to the marketing campaign.
“When Nithya mentioned she had determined to run for the seat, realizing the outsized significance that town council has in L.A., particularly to the problems we have been coping with and homelessness, I simply thought it was a possibility I couldn’t miss,” he says. “I couldn’t simply watch her do that and never be concerned. That may have been so painful. I assumed I’d return to TV after the election, however I used to be watching my buddies who I had labored on the marketing campaign with now be in Metropolis Corridor and get to really expertise these points firsthand and have actual affect.”
Davenport joined Raman’s workers as a senior advisor in July 2021. Though he not might run writers’ rooms, his internet hosting gigs on cult comedy podcasts, “Hollywood Handbook” and “The Flagrant Ones,” supplied a launch from the difficult work at Metropolis Corridor.
On Monday, Davenport introduced on X that he left his job in authorities after three and a half years — however he’s not slowing down on his advocacy.
“I left now as a result of I simply had a second child and I’m stepping into some extra TV work,” he says. “Additionally, I really feel prefer it’s a superb time to begin speaking once more about metropolis stuff, which is more durable to do as a metropolis worker.”
Davenport, who beforehand co-hosted the native politics and coverage present “LA Podcast” from 2018 to 2021, is effectively on his option to hanging up extra conversations. He launched a brand new Substack, Large Metropolis Warmth, alongside together with his profession change announcement, and began a podcast miniseries two days later. Essentially the most urgent subject he’s tackling? Measure A.
Measure A asks voters to assist fund homeless companies for the over 75,000 individuals who shouldn’t have a house in L.A. County. It could bump the present 1/4 cent gross sales tax designation to a 1/2 cent tax. Davenport says the measure — which builds upon a beforehand handed Measure H — is important.
“Every single day I’m struck by how radically totally different our homelessness system is than it was seven years in the past after I first began doing outreach,” he says. “When folks needed to enter a shelter, the one factor we needed to supply as volunteers was a giant group shelter within the metropolis of Bell, Calif., which is 12-15 miles away from the place we have been doing outreach. Lots of people we have been speaking to had by no means been earlier than, and even heard of it.
“There have been no city-run shelters in any respect,” he continues. “All the things was operated by nonprofits. Now, we are able to go to folks and say, ‘Hey, are you curious about a resort room in the identical group the place you at the moment are, and perhaps the place you’ve been dwelling for years? We will get you on the record for this, and there are companies there, and we are able to preserve working with you to get you into everlasting housing.’ Within the metropolis of L.A., that’s night time and day from the place we have been simply in 2016, 2017, and that’s a product of this new service infrastructure that we’ve constructed up partially by Measure H, which we began in 2017. To tear out these companies is to return to having no choices for folks whenever you’re doing outreach, mainly going on the market simply handy out water and shrug. In lots of instances, this could cease even the outreach for the water step. It could simply depart folks to decay on their very own.”
Past Measure A, Davenport says the distinction between candidates within the presidential election, by way of how they might affect L.A. homelessness companies, is “night time and day.”
“We depend on the federal authorities for everlasting housing vouchers, for plenty of one-time funding for applications within the pandemic,” he says. “The emergency funds that got here from the federal authorities made it doable for us to place folks in inns, which we had by no means been capable of do earlier than. That has reworked our shelter community in L.A. — it was federal cash that did that. If Trump is in workplace, that cash is gone. We now have no expectations that LA would get something. In actual fact, it’s more likely that we’d be punished. When he was in workplace final time, he was threatening to come back into L.A. and arrange large refugee-style camps in several elements of the county and pressure folks into them underneath a penalty of incarceration. That’s the kind of factor I believe we’d count on if Trump gained, as an alternative of getting funds to get folks sheltered and housed.”
Outdoors of voting and additional training on the subject, Davenport says that if folks need to assist L.A.’s unhoused inhabitants, there’s one place they will begin.
“An e-mail to your native consultant remains to be a remarkably highly effective pressure in native authorities,” he says. “Somebody will learn it and so they’ll in all probability really feel like they should react to it indirectly, and that’s particularly highly effective if you will get 5, 10, 20, 100 folks to e-mail about one thing. If one thing is essential to you and also you’ve discovered about some coverage that’s being held up within the metropolis that might tackle it, an e-mail or a cellphone name actually does imply one thing.”
