https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/30/us/los-angeles-homeless-newsom.html
Leaders of Los Angeles County, where more than 75,000 homeless people live, voted on Tuesday to reaffirm that they would not criminalize homelessness.
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Don’t move skid row some place else. Shrink skid row by placing money into affordable housing. The next leader of California needs to be taking action on housing every day.
Government funded and non-profit services exist in and around skid row already. The situation is obviously more complicated than just throwing more money at the situation.
This video is worth a watch. Pretty eye opening.
That’s not actually the case in CA.
Newsom was in favor of the SC ruling because CA has a lot of unused bed capacity. Many cities and counties have more unhoused people than beds, but many of the beds are unfilled.
Newsom wants to clear encampments if shelter space is available, not if shelters are full. That was impossible to do before the SC ruling. If you had 10,000 unhoused people and 2000 total beds, and only 1000 of the beds were filled, you would needed 10,000 beds before you could clear encampments. Newsom wanted to be able to say “I have 1000 more beds, so I want to get 1000 more people off the street.”
Last I checked a few months ago, San Francisco had about 10% of its beds open, and cities like Oakland have something like 30% of its beds open. I was looking for LA’s stats, but I have not been successful.
This all sounds great in theory, but a lot of people avoid shelters because they’re not safe, don’t allow you to have belongings, etc. That’s the first problem we need to solve. Adding more beds isn’t going to help if reasonable people don’t want to take them.
That's because homeless shelters are dangerous and unpleasant for all sorts of reasons:
I spent most of my time homeless out on the street. It wasn't until the very end of my homelessness that I ended up in a shelter. And I found out that a lot of what I was afraid of was true. I never found out what a body louse was until I got into the shelter. You know, I had my shoes stolen, just like people said you get your shoes stolen, although I will say that there were three people in the shelter who offered to give me a pair of shoes after that happened.
...
Hi, yeah, I was homeless in Berkeley, and I found it very, very difficult to go in at the times that they wanted us to go in and to leave at the times that they wanted us to leave. It was difficult because it was exhausting. You had to leave whether it was rain or shine. And a lot of people had nowhere to go. And so you would find women that were just, you know, sitting outside the shelter at all hours of the day, waiting for the shelter to open up again.
And then, you know, when it was open up again, you had to be in there by a certain time. I was dealing with both mental illness and substance abuse, and I think people forget that with substance abuse, you don't have much control. You need help, you really need help, and you can't necessarily come in without having alcohol on your breath.
You can certainly not drink while you're in the shelter. I've been sober for a few years now, but at that time I just, I wasn't able to do what they wanted me to do and to come in at that time.
...
Hi. Nobody has addressed the thing about animals. And I just want to say, when I was homeless, I had a dog. I used my dog as protection because I was just a single young woman on the streets. And, you know, they wouldn't let him in shelters. They - you couldn't have an animal, and I needed my dog. I mean, my dog was kind of my family. And so we slept outside because I didn't want to have to give up my dog.
https://www.npr.org/2012/12/06/166666265/why-some-homeless-choose-the-streets-over-shelters
This site goes over it in more detail: https://brightenthecorner.org/2023/02/12/why-some-people-avoid-homeless-shelters/
Sexual assault is also a big problem in shelters. Here's the ACLU on abuses going on in shelters in Orange County, CA: https://www.aclusocal.org/en/press-releases/aclu-uncovers-horrific-conditions-sexual-harassment-oc-homeless-shelters
There used to be this racist picture floating around online of the border between San Diego and Tijuana. And the thing is, the US likes to pretend we are "above" that, but we're actually worse. Because we don't even give people the grace of a shack to sleep in anymore. We would have shanty towns in this country if we gave people even that little dignity.
What the fuck, I did not see that one coming. I'm in the central valley, can a SoCal person catch me up here? Is LA actually getting shit done on homelessness?
In the SF Bay Area they are jumping on the chance to take advantage of this new scotus ruling. So I’m a bit surprised LA is not.
Yeah, I saw that. So many news pieces where cities are all "we're showing our homeless people how much we love and support them by tearing down their shelter, throwing away everything, and telling them to get fucking lost. Because it's really all about neighborly love and supporting one another at the end of the day, you know."
On the one hand, I kind of don’t blame them. I mean something has to be done. OTOH it’s interesting to see Newsom and Breed so quick to embrace such a ruling from the current Supreme Court. And now it’s also interesting to hear that LA is not going down this route.
No, LA isn’t getting anything done. Not clearing encampments of likely less a humanitarian decision and more of a “let’s keep doing nothing” decision
No, it's an overwhelming problem. Encampments are huge, unsafe, and monopolize use of public spaces.
If there was available, appropriate, safe, and dignified housing available to people in encampments, then it would be justifiable to clear ad hoc encampments. Otherwise, you're just making it "someone else's problem," because people have to go somewhere.
Right of access to public spaces doesn't mean shitting on the street, smoking crack, starting fires, or stealing dozens of bikes and packages from neighbors.
They shit on the street because no one is letting them use any bathrooms. They are "starting fires" because it gets cold in L.A. at night.
Most homeless people in L.A. are not drug addicts or thieves. They're just down on their luck in one of the most expensive cities in the country. Many of them even have jobs. But when rent is $2000 a month for a shithole that's a 3-hour drive from their job, what are they supposed to do?
This says almost 50% of homeless people were working in L.A. and that was back in 2020- https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/homeless-la-county-homelessness-working-jobs/
So you tell us: where are they supposed to go? How are they even supposed to get there?
Also, re the drug part- if you had to live in the conditions they lived in, you'd probably be tempted to take the cheap escape that intoxication offered too.
They also start fires to cook with, because most food banks and SNAP don't give warm food. You have to heat it yourself. If we loosened this restriction for SNAP there would probably be less fires.
When it comes to theft and drug use, a lot of that isn't the homeless. Yes some homeless, but most visible homeless literally cannot steal because they can't even get into stores and if they do they are watched so closely.
Drug use sure. But most homeless can't afford to use drugs at the same rate as housed people. And drug use itself isn't an issue, it's that it's in public, which they wouldn't do if they had a house. They also would poop in their own house if they had it. Giving homeless people homes solves a ton of issues with them.
Tell me, where do you poop? Are you willing to let any unhoused people poop there? Where do you cook? Are you willing to let any unhoused people cook there?
Housed people poop, do drugs, cook, and steal. Unhoused people poop, do drugs, cook, and steal. They just do it from a public space.
Life is hard, especially when you're on the streets. I don't fault anyone for doing what they need to survive or recreating in a way to escape their struggles.
The alternative is to stick them all in a very large train that runs around the earth at the equator.
Most homeless people are down on their luck and really need support. Affordable housing, job training and placement programs, food, and medical care can really help these people. I don't have any problem with this majority of the homeless population.
A small percentage of homeless are insane, whether due to mental health problems/drugs/some combination. These are the people causing problems. They cannot be left to destroy themselves and society around them. We need mandatory care for these people for them to live with dignity. It is not compassionate to throw them on the streets and ignore them. We need asylums for this subset, like we had until Reagan closed them all.
I agree up until the last part. Collective forced housing (en masse), involuntary institutionalization, or enslavement, all give similar effects and they are negative. I highly recommend a visit to the Glore Psychiatric Museum in St Jo, Missouri, if you want to see what those asylums were actually like. It's out of a horror film. What you're requesting is a living nightmare for the very people who can't advocate well for themselves.
I think a better solution would be assisted living apartments, giving the person in question the most autonomy possible. Social workers should be required to have body cams. You might like learning more about bioethics when it comes to determining autonomy and consent with medical/neurological conditions - a complicated topic.
We can design a system that offers people dignity and care without rampant abuse. Some combination of public transparency, civil rights group monitoring and criminal penalties for failures in the administration.
The horrible treatment of people you're describing is not inherent to asylums. It is a risk that we need to be conscious of and design systems and safeguards to prevent.
Do you remember the Stanford prison experiment?
Unfortunately, all group housing has this effect on people. Even young babies in orphanages do worse in group settings compared to one on one care.
There is something inherently damaging when we put people on an assembly line and remove their individuality and personhood. We can see this over and over again in many different settings.
I have lived in several states that already just give disabled people apartments and have caregivers check in as needed. This system already exists and works really well. It lets the disabled person pick out a living situation that works with them and their needs. It lets them have a home.
Disability is very complex and often people have many disabilities. A person with diabetes and food allergies could die living in a group home. Many group homes are not very accessible for certain disabilities. And many disabilities have accomodations that directly contradict each other. For instance, you may need a wide hallway for a wheelchair, but a different resident needs to sit down in the hallway if they feel faint and may block the hallway for a chair. Or a person with a seeing eye dog may conflict with a person who has a severe dog allergy. Both people deserve housing that fits them individually.
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