
How We Found New Patterns in LA’s Homeless Arrest Data - akras14
https://source.opennews.org/articles/how-we-found-new-patterns-la-homeless-arrest/
======
robotkdick
A link in the OPs article that supposedly supports the conclusions derived
from the data says:

 _...from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. Homeless population in
the city of LA is up 48% just since 2013. The reporters data shows a 31%
increase in the amount of arrests of homeless people. So, per-capita arrests
have gone down. That 's basic statistics._

That would indicate that the headline of the article supported by the data...

 _Huge increase in arrests of homeless in L.A. — but mostly for minor
offenses_

..is misleading.

I lived in Santa Monica during the same time period. The homeless population
has skyrocketed along with homeless crime. We moved further south because of
the problem. The LA Times is a joke.

The LAPD are not the best police department in the country, but I do believe
they're doing their best with a complex problem the rest of our society has
chosen to ignore since the 1980s.

The homeless problem is not due to the police, but they are the ones we
unfairly expect to deal with it.

~~~
wjossey
I was having dinner with a buddy last week, and we were discussing the issue,
as he lives in Mar Vista and I live in Beverly Grove (just recently having
moved from Santa Monica). It's become a remarkable problem for the city, and
it's hard to convey the impact if you don't live here.

One thing I wondered was how we properly incentivize the city to take steps to
manage the situation. Right now, the city brings in $6B in annual revenue
(almost 25% of its budget) in property taxes. Despite the remarkable climb in
homelessness, property tax revenue continues to climb, because property values
are seemingly skyrocketing despite the issue.

As an example, I live on a street where one half of a 100 year old duplex
would run > $1M, with dozens of homeless people living within a hundred yards
of my house. It's not uncommon for one to walk up and down the street, ringing
doorbells asking for assistance, or harassing you as you walk down the street.
Never mind the piles of trash & excrement left on the street. I've learned not
to drive down the alleyway that runs perpendicular to my street, as it's not
uncommon to have people sleep in the middle of the road.

If property values were sinking because of the issue (which in a normal
housing market would happen because of safety concerns), the city would be
more well incentivized to come up with solutions. But, outside of just citizen
complaints, city hall doesn't really have any skin in the game.

Now, you could say, "You're part of the problem. If people like you are
willing to move there, you cause the property values to rise." Well, yep,
you're right. However, I WANT the city to solve this problem responsibly, and
moving away doesn't help me be a part of this solution. I'm hopeful that the
sales tax we self-imposed to raise funds to address the issue begin to help,
but I'm mostly unimpressed with the changes thus far.

~~~
DoreenMichele
One of the problems is people get interested in "helping the homeless" which
often goes bad places, instead of _reducing incidence of homelessness._ One of
the things we need to solve the latter issue is more housing being built,
especially entry level housing.

Some stats:

[https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/05/california-...](https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/05/california-
statistics-on-homelessness.html)

[https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/05/seattle-
sta...](https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/05/seattle-statistics-
on-homelessness-and.html)

~~~
fulafel
It may be the right place, if lack of home is not the person's biggest
problem.

~~~
DoreenMichele
Some of the ways it goes bad places:

1\. Defining the help based on their status as _homeless._ This means they
need to be on the street to get help. Getting off the street can disqualify
them for ongoing services.

2\. Many programs to help people with serious problems come with a lot of
strings attached. They are often highly controlling. Jumping through the hoops
involved can be a huge burden in its own right.

3\. Terrible, terrible "concentration of poverty" effects.

One of the problems with living in, for example, public housing projects is
that everyone you know is poor. You lack access to human capital, to people in
the know, to people with connections and power.

Homeless programs take that issue and cube it. You are standing in line with
addicts and people who are seriously ill, who are smoking while you wait or
who smell strongly of cigarette smoke or of marijuana and who are very germy,
coughing and sniffling constantly. It's a great way to make sure you stay sick
and get sicker. It's also a very challenging social environment to crowd
together a bunch of people who are very stressed out and who typically lack
good coping mechanisms for dealing with social friction.

4\. Some of the worst programs charge money to participants and/or use them as
free labor to help sustain the service. These services typically have a very
poor track record of actually helping people solve their personal problems.

Anyone's personal problems are always a combination of two factors: Them and
the rest of the world. If you are the wrong gender in a sexist environment or
the wrong color in a racist environment or the wrong socioeconomic class in a
classist environment, other people can be an active barrier to you being able
to solve your problems.

I have about six years of college. I was homeless because I have an incurable
medical condition and I was clear that working a corporate job and living in a
mold filled apartment were barriers to me being healthy and solving my
problems. I'm not mentally ill and I don't take drugs. I chose to go sleep in
a tent while figuring out how to make money online so I could get myself
healthier.

The one thing I consistently asked in various online forums was for help
figuring out how to make money online. I mostly didn't get any such help. I
got pissed all over and told I was "panhandling the internet" and just a
charity case.

I did eventually figure out how to make a little money online. That plus
paying off my student loan helped me get off the street. My income is still
incredibly low. I still have an incurable medical condition. I still deal with
sexism and classism as barriers to my income goals.

If I had been treated with the same respect as anyone else on Hacker News who
is trying to figure out how to create a profitable online business and taken
seriously in my goal of developing an earned income, I believe I would have
developed that income much quicker and would be making a lot more money.
Having to figure it all out myself with no one willing to toss me a clue and
people actively pissing on my efforts has been quite the uphill battle.

So when I hear you say that things going what I describe as "a bad place" _may
be the right place_ if lack of a home is not their biggest problem, what I
hear is justification for intentionally keeping people's problems alive out of
prejudice. What I hear is the assumption that people who are currently very
poor or who have mental health issues or an addiction don't really deserve the
kind of help that would give them a shot at getting a good life.

Because that's how I got treated and it actively made it harder to resolve my
issues.

------
AdmiralAsshat
"An XLSX file is just a zip of xml files" is definitely a useful tidbit I will
keep in my toolbox. I have clients at my day-job who send us Excel files all
the time, even after explicitly cautioning them that the software only works
with CSV.

~~~
tdb7893
I know that at least .docx is a zip of xml also. As far as I know all of the .
__*x microsoft office formats are

~~~
subculture
Came to say something similar. There was a discussion a couple of weeks back
on Metafilter about using this technique to modify comments within Word files.
Handy knowledge to have: [https://ask.metafilter.com/320606/Removing-
timestamps-from-c...](https://ask.metafilter.com/320606/Removing-timestamps-
from-comments-in-Word-2016)

~~~
TeMPOraL
At my previous job we were working on a project that had a "propertiary"
format that was just an XML file with a different file extension. At some
point they asked to GZIP that XML before saving, though.

So one day, I'm sitting at customer's office, working on something different,
when they come and tell me they have this problem when the application is fed
this particular file. I say to one of their devs, show me the file in text
editor. They open it, and seeing garbage, say "it's no use". I immediately
recognized the ZIP header, so I tell them, unzip it and open the output. Lo
and behold, an XML content that let me debug their problem without running the
application. Their _technical_ people were impressed by my "wizardy".

(Probably one of the reasons why they later asked my colleague to "encrypt"
the file by running some binary transformation on the zipped XML before saving
it.)

------
nmeofthestate
Reading this, I wondered whether this database maintained by the LA Times
would be illegal anywhere that fell under the new EU GDPR regulations. It
doesn't look anonymised.

------
sgt101
Deep domain knowledge required to extract value from data.... Not such a
surprise!

~~~
mcherm
Not a surprise, but the story is a good small example of the problem, written
out with enough detail for non-experts to follow. Answering a very simple
question necessitated the use of a mix of skills like interviewing the
homeless, persuading a government agency to release data and hacking the
structure of Excel documents.

~~~
sgt101
Agree. I guess that I should amend to :

"getting the data, ingesting the data, using deep domain knowledge". My point
is/was that the super duper ML and visualisation is secondary (initially).
What I've seen is that the above list is table stakes, after which (quite a
long time after) someone realises that they can do something interesting with
analysis. The next step is that we realise that. everything. we. thought.
about. this. is. wrong.. Then much interesting thing!

------
icantdrive55
Local police departments are using that Broken Window theory to harass the
Homeless so they leave, or end up in jail.

In my county, we don't have much crime, but Homlessness was inching up there.

Hell, I live in Marin County. The enclave to the successful Founders. They
make their wad, and many end up here. They like to "act" liberal.

Well, the cops basically harass the homeless. I have an aqqaintance who lives
basically in a Scotch Broom thicket.

He told me the how the Coos are ticketing for everything. If you claim you
didn't do one of these alleged crimes, they just come down on you harder. He
said, I live in fear. I used to worry about dying on the streets with
pneumonia; now I worry I will end up in San Quentin. 'Hell--maybe, I'd be
better off?'

Marin County dosen's have a big crime problem, but Homlessness was inching up.

I recently saw a middle aged women commit the crime of sitting on a sidewalk.
She just sat down. I thought she must be tired.

Well five cops came raining down on her.

A big female cop, picked her up, threw her against a wall, and frisked her
aggressively. The cop appeared to enjoy treating this women terribly? Yes--the
cop seemingly enjoyed her job too much?

Cops, "I don't recognize her? She must be homeless?"

They then emptied her purse on the sidewalk. A tampon, and a stick of
Chapstick rolled into the wet gutter. Her well worn journal/phone book was
face down getting wet. It was a depressing scene.

It seemed like they were all asking her questions at the same time. They
warned her to, "just get on that bus!"

They took digital pictures of her.

The whole ugly incident was out of a Spielberg picture.

I couldn't believe the way she was being treated. Most of us would be taliking
to a lawyer after an incident like that?

This is America's new way of dealing with Homlessness.

My county has basically one homeless shelter. It's usually filled up, and has
a arms list of rules.

Again, my county has very little crime. We just have people who were inched
out of the game. Some had mental breakdowns. Some were screwed over by family
members--"loved ones". Sone just lost their job.

Many were former Programmers, or at least the one's I'm familiar with. Yes--it
seems like a lot of Programmers end up homless?

It makes sence in a way. You turn forty/fifty, and you're expendable. No
unions. Usually--far from family. No options? And no real skills. You spent
your best days thinking everything will be o.k., until that day. You show up
to interviews, but no call backs. Your skills get rusty. The bank account
dwindles.

I'm really appalled at how cites are taking care of the Homeless problem. All
I can do is write about what I see.

And yes--I'm very close to being harassed by some cop too. Great feeling?

Let me repeat, my county has very little crime. So little, newspapers use
police logs as humor. For instance,"Woman reported ugly man picking lemons off
the ground. We couldn't find perpetrator after a lengthy search of the
neighborhood."

I guess Rudy's way of cleaning up New York is the new norm? Harass, and use
the system to get them to move?

The problem is my county has virtually no crime? We just can't afford another
rate increase, and many if us have no social network to fall back upon.

~~~
mirimir
> Again, my county has very little crime. We just have people who were inched
> out of the game. Some had mental breakdowns. Some were screwed over by
> family members--"loved ones". So[m]e just lost their job.

I'm sure that many homeless "were inched out of the game". Homelessness was a
huge problem in the 1930s. And many homeless do have mental problems. Also
substance abuse, which is partly self-medication for mental problems. All
exacerbated by being "inched out of the game".

Back in the 80s, homelessness exploded after funding for psychiatric
institutions got cut during the Reagan administration. Many people hit the
street, with virtually no support. But which is worse, really? Being stuck in
a ward, over-medicated into passivity? Or dumped on the street?

It's a hard problem.

~~~
jchb
Although you are right that the Republican - Democratic struggle about which
level of government should be responsible for the patients did play a part, it
was not just not about defunding. There was a growing public opposition
against institutionalization. The 1975 movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
is just one example of criticism against the contemporary pshycatric care
model.

Also, in the 60-70s there was (and there still is?) an over-belief in how
medication could solve the problem.

~~~
mirimir
Yes, I remember the debate over institutionalization. And I recall visiting a
_humongous_ facility on Long Island. It was almost a small city.

Also, I'm seriously into "live free or die fighting", so institutionalization
is distasteful. I was technically homeless for several years, back in the day.
I lived with friends, in group squats, in remote forest cabins, in tents and
tipis, in vans, etc. But I was young and crazy, and it was fun and romantic.
And it was entirely voluntary. Now, however, it wouldn't be so much fun.

