Homelessness

[evertonfc]

I travel to LA frequently, have family in the area and absolutely love the city. I just returned and spent time in the Hollywood area. The homeless problem is quite stunning and seems to be worsening. I heard lots of tourists discussing it and spoke with two business owners who are considering moving thier shops due to tents up and down the sidewalks. In some areas off Vine/Sunset, the homeless simply pitch a tent and then scatter thier belongings for feet up and down side walk.I saw one gentleman in one spot the entire 4 days. You physically could not go around him. I go out 2-3 times per year and it's worsening. My sister, who lives in Veince ( 15 years now) said at times, the streets there look like a campground. A very complex problem but my guess is there will be a breaking point with residents. They are all fairly accommodating at moment- far more than most communities anyway

[leftieNanner]

1. My sister lives in Chico

And the entire downtown area is nearly impassable now. Business owners arrive in the morning to open up and they find people sleeping in their doorways, or worse - feces in the doorway. The city is trying to fix the problem, but there are no easy answers.

My small city has problems in this area too.

[Blue_true]

10. If you ever stop to talk to homeless people in cities,

you will find that most come from rural areas of the country and state with big cities. They are usually people that have left something bad behind them, sexual abuse when they were young kids, alcoholic parents, abusive lovers, they are LGBTQ and their rural enclaves considered that a sin that brings abuse and harm, ect. Occasionally you will meet a person from a well off family that just left their comforts for their own reasons.

[Amishman]

20. Some of that is availability of services

Small towns (or very rural areas with no towns at all) don't have the support structures in place to aid the homeless, nor the public transit or job availability to help them pull themselves back up.

[Initech]

2. A lot of it has to do with how expensive rent is.

Rent is rising everywhere and it's being weaponized by landlords against tenants. It's quite disturbing what is happening to both residents and businesses. Good businesses are getting kicked out and residents are getting squeezed. Something has to be done about it but what? Any solution is too complex to come to terms so that both parties are satisfied.

[Blue_true]

13. To get rents down, someone of means has to be willing to bite a bullet and spend money

that will either never come back of take decades and decades to recoup, without interest or appreciation, essentially the person must be willing to flatout lose to help society. Don't hold your breath waiting for such a person, corporations will do minor things as long as they get plenty publicity about how they give back to their communities. Local rich people and some forward looking churches will help out some, but there usually is a hook.

Local governments are a dice roll. A ethical mayor and council may set aside funds to help the homeless and buy up real estate for the public good, but then one day along come Trump-like grifters that are only interested in stuffing their pockets and their associates pockets and will use the public assets that earlier administrations set up for the public good as their personal piggybanks.

What has to happen is that greedy landlords need to be boughtout. The purchased properties then go into a public trust that is designed to keep rents low. The issue is that people running the trust can't use it to benefit relatives and friends, a big concern with properties that are put into public trusts (we see it a lot where favored paving companies do roads or favored companies build or renovate public owned buildings. We saw the problem play out big as the Soviet Union dissolved, overnight those that were high up across the former Soviet Union countries became overnight billionaires as the stole money and property that belonged to the public.

[cwydro]

3. I visited Seattle for the first time this past spring.

The homelessness problem was really shocking to me.

[maxsolomon]

17. It's shocking to us, too.

But we're not unique. There are homeless shelters in Forks, WA. Population 3,832.

[StrictlyRockers]

4. It has gotten a lot worse in Santa Cruz, Central California.

The drug problem is bad.

[Johnny2X2X]

6. Different type of homelessness rising

The homelessness around a lot of big cities and high rent districts is changing. In that part of CA, if you get laid off from work and behind on rent you can be homeless in a flash because even when you start working you're still several thousand dollars from being able to get into an apartment.

I've been pretty close to homeless in the past, but in most of the places I've lived I've always been just several hundred dollars from being able to move to a new apartment. I can't imagine living in the Bay Area and knowing that if I need to look for another place to live I might need $6000 or more to move in. Those types of rents just mean the hole is very big very fast.

I live in Grand Rapids MI, the rent market here has exploded, faster than property values. Places that were $800 a month just 5 years ago are going for $1400 now. Homes being sold are being bought by rental companies. It's choking renters big time many of who don't have the savings or credit to be able to buy right now. My mortgage payment on the home I own is about $1000 less than I would pay if I were renting my house. If you couldn't afford to buy in the last decade, you are really feeling the squeeze.

[Blue_true]

14. Very good post.

Rental properties is the next financial bubble. As soon as individuals or companies buy one property, they are leveraging that property for loans on other property.

[StrictlyRockers]

23. Thanks, very interesting post.

It's the same here in Santa Cruz. The property values are sky high. Median home price is one million dollars. or really $950,000.00..

[Wellstone ruled]

5. We are seeing the results of

Republican Economic Policies now having a major impact on the Social Ills of our Nation. Federal Dollars to Cities and Counties that helped people down on the luck are now gone. The Social Welfare Saftey Net is long gone thanks to the likes of Paul Ryan and his gang of right wing fundies.

When affordable Housing has a two year waiting list and the Racist Rapist in Chief is killing off any funding,what do you expect. The local Fundie White folks are not going to spend any of their Dollars to help alleviate this problem as their Retug Representatives said they would.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

19. iow, too many billionaires

GOP has manufactured too many billionaire oligarchs on the backs of the middle class. They socialize expenses and privatize the profits.

[Wellstone ruled]

21. Yes they have.

We can look no further than the Heritage Foundation as well as the American Enterprise Institute as the source of these policies. Nixon's Election was the Turning Point and the Gutting of the American Dream.

[Aristus]

7. Just one more symptoms of wages not keeping pace with inflation.

If municipalities spent as much on things like homeless shelters and low-income housing as they do on things designed to deter the homeless (spiked concrete pads and windowsills, park benches subdivided by narrow armrests that prevent lying down on them, heartless cops moving them along at best, and confiscating their belongings at worst), we could begin to get a handle on the problem.

[Blue_true]

15. It is not that simple.

Cities like Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, even Oakland now, Santa Cruz, Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago, Boston, DC are expensive because there are plenty of people in those places making large salaries. The market chase people that can afford high rents and squeeze out everyone else.

The only way to fix the problem is for cities to buy up properties and lower rents dramatically. High paid people will make out like bandits on rent, but lesser paid people will have a roof over their heads. The problems with such a setup is economic snobbery (well paid people not wanting to live around lesser paid people) and official corruption that always is possible with publicly owned trusts.

[chowder66]

8. I live in Hollywood and there are camps all around. It's a complicated situation.

and yes the neighbors are upset. Crime and sanitation is a huge issue. The police aren't really able to do much so residents pool their money to purchase private security around their neighborhoods.

I moved in when the area was still a little dodgy but then it got a lot nicer. It was pretty nice for about 15 years.
As soon as they started developing Hollywood the crime started increasing and has exploded in the last 5 years or so but that was also when they cleared out skid-row downtown but as more people come into Hollywood for the night life, more people find our neighborhoods to ransack.

A lot of foreigners buy up property here and shut out residents which is another problem. Airbnb didn't help matters either. It helps some
who can get extra income but not everyone has a two bedroom apartment or home to let out. Most don't. Renters are getting kicked out, pushed out and bought out. Some are ending up homeless.

Having nice year round weather adds to all of this as well.

[diva77]

9. And yet the Board of Supes approved $282 million contract for non-verifiable BMD "voting" systems

without batting an eyelash, June 12, 2019. And the $282 million contract has open-ended terms so that yet more moola can be appropriated.

The embedding of the private voting machine industry here and everywhere is stunning and is starving LA and counties all over the US of what is needed to address serious problems such as homelessness.

[Joe941]

11. As is the aften the case socialism has the answer...

Guaranteed minimum income for every american would go a long way to solving this problem. Listen to bernie.

[maveric]

12. We have that same problem in San Diego.

It’s really sad when you go downtown. People everywhere standing around, living in tents or blankets. Really sad. Local news did a story on homelessness. Supposedly 10,000 people on the streets down here. LA has about 20,000. It’s terrible.Some of these people have jobs but can’t afford the Sky-high rents in SD and are forced to live on their cars.
There is a big problem in this country and not much is being done about it.

[maxsolomon]

16. Welcome to Urban America

I am in Seattle; we think we have the largest homeless population in the nation, and people are at each other's throats over who's to blame and what to do.

Then I went back to Cincy for the 1st time in 3 years. I saw things I'd never seen: women begging at freeway exits, homeless in the neighborhood I grew up in, a revitalizing downtown neighborhood taking several steps backward.

I keep telling people in Seattle: this is a national crisis, we're not the exception, and no one is talking about it at the Federal level. Least of all President Sociopath.

[dalton99a]

22. +1. It's a visible problem in many cities

A KVUE Viewer says she took this photo outside a Discount Tire in South Austin on Sunday, June 30th.

[Raine]

18. It's really bad here

it's even spreading into suburbs, you can't go ANYWHERE in Los Angeles County without seeing homeless camped all over the streets and sidewalks.