
Los Angeles’ homelessness crisis - mixmastamyk
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-homeless-crisis-overview-20180225-htmlstory.html
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robert_foss
I write software for a living, and have on more than one occasion had the
opportunity to live and work in California.

Seeing the poverty and, how the poor are treated in San Fransisco, Los
Angeles, and every other large US I've been to, is so degrading and offensive
that the idea of participating in the financial system that sustains it is
unacceptable.

Surely I can't be the only one who feels this way.

~~~
bamboozled
You're not alone.

I've lived in two major cities of the world, spent time in many others;
However, I've never seen anything as bad as San Francisco and surrounding
areas. Some of my colleagues are from Europe and felt so shocked and uneasy
about what we saw.

I hate to say it, but it definitely left a bad impression of the USA on my
friends and I. It certainly made me question a lot of the things the US claims
to stand for.

Land of the free and home of the brave? If you say so...

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Cthulhu_
> Land of the free and home of the brave? If you say so...

Yeah as in, people are free to be homeless if they didn't work hard enough.
It's the Trump argument, he's a self-made man who kicked off with a small loan
of just one million. A lot of Republican, anti-socialist voters are poor, but
don't see themselves as poor but "temporarily underfinanced". And the truly
destitute / homeless apparently lose their right to vote.

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bamboozled
His father was a multi-millionaire [1], Donald Trump has never had to work
hard for his wealth, he inherited it.

I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say anyway.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Trump](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Trump)

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jjeaff
It seems that rather than trying to fight the laws of economics with rent
controls, special housing, and welfare programs, the focus should be
relocation and job placement in less expensive areas.

It's unrealistic to try to get someone a low end job that will support them
long term in one of the most expensive cities in America.

With the $1.2B bond measure, you could rent housing for every single homeless
person in LA for a good 5 years in middle America. (less than $500 a month all
in).

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jernfrost
Isn’t the problem that republican controlled midwestern states chase all their
homeless people out to democrat controlled big cities? They are not willing to
pay anything to help the homeless. They are not even willing to look at them.
They want it to be somebody else’s problem. I think that is a problem with
having open borders between states but not equal social programs. It leads to
a race to the bottom.

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newfoundglory
Not exactly - the bigger problem is that all the republicans controlled
midwestern states are shitty economies and so people move to places where they
hear that people can get jobs (functioning liberal states) and when that
doesn't work out they end up homeless in the new city. (Various polls of
homeless people in Seattle have found that most of them were already in the
area immediately before they became homeless).

~~~
refurb
Not sure you made it a Republican/Democrat thing when I can think of several
high unemployment/poverty Democrat states and low unemployment/poverty
Republican states.

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kenhwang
So, the thing that always bothers me about how Los Angeles is reported on is
the lack of normalization for population. LA is really big with a lot of
people. It will naturally have higher population of homelessness.

57k/10.2m is ~0.56% homelessness, which is about par with Seattle (11.6k/2.1m
= ~0.55%), but significantly better than SF (7k/870k = ~0.80%) or NY (77k/8.5m
= ~0.90%).

Given LA's unrelenting rapid gentrification, wealth, and income inequality, I
think the situation can easily get much worse.

But at least we're trying, trying to make the situation better, or at least
slow down its progression. I'd hate to see us give up and invest in anti-
loitering securitybots instead. The wealthy here haven't become that out of
touch and scornful yet, but keep writing articles like this and maybe they
might.

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ShabbosGoy
> I'd hate to see us give up and invest in anti-loitering securitybots
> instead.

Why would you need securitybots? Orange County police departments already do
it for free by dumping homeless people in Long Beach.

> The wealthy here haven't become that out of touch and scornful yet

I guess you’ve never interacted with people who live in Newport Beach. Or LA
for that matter. Are you sure you’re from LA?

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jernfrost
Good example of how private charity doesn’t work. The US has gotten ever
wealthier, or primarly the 1% the exact portion of the population who should
have been most capable of funding charity. Yet this problem grows. Charity is
able feed people but not turn around people’s lives. You need comperhensive
government programs for that.

~~~
refurb
SF spends $150M on homeless and it's one of the worse cities for homelessness.

You really think money is the problem?

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Letmesleep69
Am I alone in thinking that 150 million is not that much? When I was in SF i
saw so much poverty and suffering I could not believe my eyes and I have seen
homelessness plenty before. Build more affordable, high density homes and give
them to the homeless for free for a few years with high amounts of care if you
want to solve the problem.

~~~
refurb
I don't have the exact number, but if you divide $150M by the number of SF
homeless it's more than $30,000 per person.

I would argue it's what we're doing with the money that's the issue, not how
much money there is.

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mirimir
Reading this, I'm reminded of hobo life during the Great Depression.
Hoovervilles. And in those days, you could at least get around on freight
trains.

I'm also reminded of my own time living on the road. In my late teens through
early 20s, as an illegal immigrant. And indeed, I spent some of that time in
LA and SF. But mostly in the Pacific Northwest. Living in the forest, and
squatting.

But it wasn't that bad, because I had many friends. And it was fun to drift
aimlessly. But eventually, I went to college and grad school, so hey.

~~~
sshine
I was homeless for a year in my late teens. But I also felt it didn't hurt me
because I was young enough to still feel that it was a choice of my own, and I
did go to school.

As the article points out, only a third of homeless are addicted, so the
problem is not really about the homelessness itself. It's about losing hope
and being alienated by your own community. I always wondered why so many
homeless people like to flock around where it's crowded.

~~~
mirimir
I didn't actually feel "homeless" in a bad way. Someone we knew usually had a
place where we could crash. And some source of food and money. Weed and LSD
were always available, and sometimes psilocybe and peyote. But then, this was
decades ago, before "homelessness" became a thing.

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maximexx
Every living being on this planet should have the basic right for a house.
It's a primary need. Houses should not be part of the "free" economy and
should not be allowed to be traded for profit. If this pyramid scheme
continues the future will look very grim for billions of people.

~~~
kenhwang
But does that house need to be near the beach? Why not Kansas?

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Bucephalus355
All of this reminds me of the modern version of the Great Depression.
Economists have gotten smarter this time around and have covered up the
unemployment rate and CPI, but it’s mostly the same.

Studs Terkel, probably the most famous interviewer / oral historian who’s ever
lived, wrote a book containing hundreds of oral histories about the
Depression. It sounds just like today:

Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/1565846567/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_Yh8K...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1565846567/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_Yh8KAb3VAXQCK)

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jakecrouch
People at the top of our economy are generally oblivious to how bad things are
for the bottom half. The top 0.1% commands the same wealth as the bottom 90%.
Historically wealth inequality finds its outlet in political unrest, and there
is probably more of that to come in the next decade. In the last election a
socialist and a populist both got suprising amounts of support, even though
the broader economy was supposed to be doing well. The next recession will hit
the bottom 50% hard, and we could see truly strange things if that occurs near
an election.

~~~
throwaway1748
That's an easy statement to make, but I don't think it holds true for most
wealthy people. Especially wealthy people in Silicon Valley. If anything, most
wealthy people I know are extremely aware of how bad things are for the bottom
half and regularly vote against their economic self-interest for progressive
candidates.

Runaway inequality isn't due to some evil conspiracy by rich people to hoard
money from everyone else. It's due to the leveraging nature of technology and
the plummeting demand for unskilled labor

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RickJWagner
It's a really hard problem. Some people are down on their luck and can be
helped. Some people are out of control, there is no way to babysit them to
normalcy. Money won't solve it.

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grondilu
It's a bit paradoxical that homeless people can be a problem in a specific
geographic area. By definition, it should be easy to relocate them.

