Los Angeles Animal Services Discontinues Dicounted Spay/Neuters

LA Animal Watch just reported that due to some budget cuts, LAAS is discontinuing their low cost spay/neuter certificates.

Last year, Los Angeles passed an ordinance that mandates that all animals in the community must be spayed or neutered, and yet, now, they are making it more difficult for people to comply with the law.

Nationwide, the most common reason people give for not having their animals altered is that they say they cannot afford the proceedure. Cities that have been successful at decreasing the homeless animal populations in their cities have been successful by eliminating this most common barrier to spay/neuter -- cost -- through low cost/no cost alteration programs targeting low-income neighborhoods.

So now, LAAS has gone from having the largest barrier to spay/neuter put back in place -- and yet mandated it -- causing a whole new set of people who cannot afford to comply with their mandatory law.

Successful animal control programs have shown that they are successful by removing barriers to responsible dog ownership -- not creating them and punishing non-compliance.

Last year, after passing their mandatory spay/neuter ordinance, Los Angeles saw a 24% increase in euthanasias in the city -- after 6 straight years of steady declines in dogs killed. Keeping a mandatory spay/neuter policy in place, with no low cost spay/neuter program, is setting up the shelter up for a bloodbath -- especially with dogs coming in from low-income neighborhoods.  If LAAS cannot afford to offer low-cost vouchers, they should at the very least suspend enforcment of their MSN law to avoid an even harsher increase in shelter killings.

LAAS continues to struggle with their mandatory spay/neuter law -- and one more thing for other cities to consider before enacting such an ordinance.  Are you listening Chicago?

Comments

[Selma]

Way to hurl, LA!

What happened to government of the people, by the people, FOR the people?

I guess they can't afford to subsidize neutering, since California is going bankrupt. Yet they cling to a law that is not only based on lies, but also has the opposite effect to that intended.

[Dawn]

Love this statement!!

"Successful animal control programs have shown that they are successful by removing barriers to responsible dog ownership -- not creating them and punishing non-compliance."

[Rebecca]

We are asking the city council of Los Angeles to repeal this law. It makes no sense that the council passed a law that now stands to punish the most vunerable in our society, the low income, disabled and senior residents all of whom have lost any assistance they desperately needed to comply with this ridiculous law. The punishment by the way is fines upto $500 and a misdemeanor and a/c has the right to take their pet away.

[Rebecca]

The AP has picked up on the story and it is in outlets all over the country. Great press for failed legislation.

[Brent]

Rebecca,

Thanks for the updates -- and good luck on pushing for the repeal. The combination of the law and the lack of low-cost spay/neuter vouchers is a huge recipe for a lot of bloodshed in the shelter. Sigh.

Please keep us posted on any progress.

I'm glad the story got picked up by the AP. I really wish they had dived deeper into the story. I'll be posting it in the next day or two.

[JAL]

Brent Brent Brent..

You wouldn't be asking the media to, ya' know, do real research beyond a good headline or anything would you?

How's SweetP? I've done the ACL thing a few times. No fun at all.

[E]

Last year was also a year of record foreclosures and collapse of the economy which caused the rise in dogs and cats being abandoned to shelter, it has nothing to do with the spay/neuter law. There are other non-city funded low cost options, they are easy to find with a simple google search. People say they cannot afford it but also do not bother to find the affordable services or adopt animals that are ALREADY FIXED. People should stop paying $500 for a puppy and then complaining that they cannot afford to fix them...

The city has also have said they cannot afford to enforce the law, so really, you cannot claim that it is causing oh so much hardship.

[Rebecca]

Um, E..Not the case. As a resident of Los Angeles, the forclosures did not cause the high increase of intakes into shelters. In areas that were MUCH more hard hit than Los Angels in the foreclosure realm, their intakes did not increase at the levels that LAAS did. Nice excuse and argument from Ed Boks (E???) but like most of his (your) justifcations, they don't makes sense. It's easy to make a claim, much more difficult to back it up with proof.

There are not other non-city options. There is much outdated information on the internet. Almost every single program offering assistance has ceased to exist in the city.

To say that people should adopt animals that are "already fixed" isn't an argument. People owned pets already when the law was passed. That doesn't help those people. The city has been releasing animals intact (which by the way is against state law) and then expecting people to spay/neuter them at their own cost. So even "adopting" animals from shelters doesn't help financially.

The city can not afford to enforce the law, but having the RIGHT to do so, at the whim of an a/c agent is still wrong. The right to prosecute someone (misdemeanor remember???) should not be allowed if there are not significant resources to provide every resident to comply with the law.

Remember is was passed assuring $2.2 million was available to pay for spay/neuter. That was 4 months ago. Now there is zero, zippo. The law was passed on deception. It now needs to be repealed.

It's pretty cut and dry. Bad management, bad law, bad for animals and the people of Los Angeles, time to go.

[Brent]

E,

Yeah -- MSN doesn't happen in a vaccuum. There are always other factors.

However, I think discounting MSN's role in this is naive.

For starters, in October, the state of California passed a law to slow the rate of foreclosurers - which worked in the back quarter of the year.

http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/hotproperty/archives/2008/11/dont_pay_attent.html

Forclosures were down in October and November. However, if you look at the month over month canine euth rates - the single highest increase month was in October -- the month when forclosured dropped, but MSN started being enforced.

http://laanimalservices.com/PDF/reports/yearend/DogIntakeNOutcomes.pdf

I think it's also fair to note that LA saw an increase in forclosures in 2006 and 2007 -- but still saw a decrease in shelter kill rates -- prior to MSN.

I also think that it's disingenous to blame people who buy $500 puppies. You and I both know that that is not who is receiving the discounted vouchers. It is low-income people who are receiving the vouchers -- and they're not buying $500 puppies instead (at least not most of them).

It would all also be different if similar increases in shelter kill rates hadn't taken place in virtually every other city that has passed a MSN ordinance. Denying reality is not helping animals.