Unhoused people want basic city services. Why aren’t they getting any? LA has only 14 bathrooms for 4 million people. The city won't provide basic trash pickup to encampments while spending millions on sweeps that advocates say make conditions worse.
This was 9 years ago. Have there been positive changes? youtu.be/hBzXXzFTXho?...
Because under Capitalism your only value is your ability to make money for some already rich person.
Performative cruelty is the American default position.
The Trump regime can build concentration camp housing in less than a month so I’m trying real hard to understand why similar housing and services can’t be made available to our homeless population. It’s not just going to go away. We have to own this crisis and help these people.
same policies in most all metro areas it seems...in SanAntonio 4 mobile shower and laundry units all but disappeared since purchased and originally deployed around 2018 by former city councilman Robert Trevino for downtown district.
The bank industry’s greed during the global real estate crash and corporate real estate ownership is responsible for much of today’s homelessness. Unhoused people work and pay taxes, they deserve basic services at encampments until affordable government housing becomes a right not a privilege.
Probably because they want to put them in more permanent housing and not encourage this behavior?
Are they doing anything to help with that though?
LA is making some headway on homelessness, but like any major city, there's bureaucracy and an entire industry that makes money just servicing the homeless who all want their piece of the pie.
So if you know the behaviors get worse by doing what they continue to do and in order to help them it means providing services - is this not the definition of insanity. Literally right in the header. Doing what they are doing is making it worse but let’s keep doing it because we want them better.
Well, for starters its not just "picking up trash". You arent allowed to move any personal belongings of the homeless without court order. Most of skid rows dumpsters are locked because people try and live in them and/or ransack them. Any unsecured trash usually gets sifted and scattered.
2. Even if you manage to figure out what's personal belongings and what's trash, its not as simple as normal trash collection. Dirty needles, broken glass pipes and other items are mixed in between trash. On top of that, you have anti-biotic resistant staff, TB, Hep B and even Cholera to deal with.
And the rats, some the size of small dogs. Typhoid broke out while I lived down there, along with TB. Normal sanitation workers arent equipped to handle that situation. www.youtube.com/watch?v=QehM...
I walked everyday for three years down 7th to Alameda from Douglas Park. They turn a fire hose on human beings. They round up all of their belongings into dumpsters. 30-40% are veterans if the process doesn’t change nothing will. Bathrooms that self clean are all over EU.
If you walked it, you know they do not. Mitchell v. Los Angeles says they dont. They are legally prevented from doing so. I lived on 5th and Alameda for 5 years and watched debris pile up for years without intervention. No one has ever turned fucking firehoses on them.
What they did do is have the Health Department decontaminate a few streets. Once. In 2018. If you actually spend time with them, you'll realize none of them want housing the city provides. Shelters are not safe, and permanent homes provide so many restrictions they'd rather be on the streets.
The city is bankrupt. It barely has enough funds to run, let alone expand programs. LAHSA has been a joke for more than a decade, and just churns through funds without providing services. There's zero funds for bathrooms, even if it were a good idea, which it isnt for a myriad of reasons.
Correct because the minimal amount of shelters or beds is not the solution. Giving them permanent housing is the first step. They have the ability to help themselves when they have a roof, running water and access to medical services. Studies show it costs a LOT less than the current programs
I'm actually not against anything like what you are describing. But what you are talking about takes billions upon billions of dollars, and an expanded medical safety net that simply does not exist in LA. Houston is a great example of what you are describing, but far from perfect.
They absolutely used firehoses to “clean” the streets. They blasted the sidewalks while a group ahead threw their belongings out. The mental illness needs to be treated. You are thinking only as an American that “they don’t want”, “there is no money” etc. we know that the problem is fixable.
So imagine giving them a place to live so they don’t need to defecate in the streets. Imagine helping them with access to doctors or bathrooms. Stop thinking of the current situation and think about how you would want your veteran dad with PTSD to be treated.
Government’s initial responses to problems usually involve some form of criminalization, because thoughtful, creative solutions take time, energy, and funding.
Because Gavin Newsom is a putz and hates poor people and homeless people. I was homeless 9 years and actually voted for him because any Republican would be worse. Except maybe Arnold.
Because being poor and homeless is a crime in this country.
Homeless spend most of their day looking for a meal and where they will sleep when it gets dark.
Here’s something the National Guard can work on while being deployed for non existent riots.
And do what? Build latrines or do you mean to forcibly remove?
Build latrines and housing.
Gotcha.
I've always said that if we, as a society, have decided that relieving yourself in public is not acceptable, then we, as a society, need to provide open access toilets.
People have basic needs no matter how much money they don't have.
It's because the city of LA hopes that the unhoused people will go somewhere else to be poor.
ya..these folks are mentally ill and its hard to herd them to proper quarters
I housed people want to be housed. Work on getting housing for them. It’s going to take a lot of ideas.
Or just look at how countries have succeeded in helping this problem. Not a lot of ideas it is simple. The US won’t embrace any of the things that work because “socialism”.
Which is why this problem is t going to get solved any time soon. Because the US won’t do what works but will continue to throw lots of money at non solutions. That is the American way, because somebody stands to make money off of not solving the problem.
Things have got to change.
Until Americans stand up and stop this insanity it is unfortunately going to get worse
Spare me your concerns.