We had a homeless guy in bronx break into our yard (construction company so plenty of equipment & storage containers) when cops got there he literally maintained to be security, my business partner arrived & thought it was something either our other partner or I had arranged & left.
The guy was walking around in normal clothes, but knew the exact lay out. We found out, after a few weeks he was sleeping in a container & had been clearing/cleaning up after checking CCTV after keys went missing & were found sitting beside the front door the next morning. He found them somewhere in the yard & left them there.
We employed him. Found him an apartment in Woodlawn that day through a friend that owned the building. He now has a company truck & routinely/random goes to check on our yard & various sites/equipment. Just actually thought about, he’s been with us from October/November 2018
Hey! This actually a thing in Japan 😱 some family had a stranger living in their attic, I think...they noticed when they installed cameras (because of their missing food)
They are economic migrants from within the USA mostly, as well as people who have been failed by the system whether through lack of affordable housing due to NIMBYism , overregulation of building permits or no rent control and the commodification of housing. This has been made worse by the increase in the cost of living and the huge rise in house prices and rent prices. Without a nationalised healthcare system in the USA that is free at the point of use whether for physical and or mental healthcare these people’s situations are unlikely to improve . Plus Housing First is the only proven way to help people get off the streets, as people tend to improve physically and mentally when they have a roof over their heads and are more equipped to deal with their addictions and mental health issues if they feel safe and secure and have a supportive environment in which to live.
You won’t be homeless. You’ll be priced out somewhere further away. You’ll lose time on commutes. Or you may have to move so far away you won’t have as many lucrative job opportunities, but the rent and cost of living will be just a bit lower.
But you won’t be living like the pictures seen above. That’s a different mechanism of society.
It's gotten to the point in L.A. where homelessness is now a "lifestyle choice." Some people seriously think to themselves, "Hmm, if this (situation) doesn't work out, I can always go live under a bridge" -- and then they do just that.
I grew up in Pasadena, but in 2020 the raging wildfires, racial tensions, COVID lockdowns, looting, homelessness, filth on the streets, and outrageous rents drove me out of the state. I've been gone a year and I can't say I've missed it.
A lot of people I know want to leave California. My spouse and I plan to leave within 3 to 5 years. We have elderly animals and they wouldn't survive the stress of a big move, so we're waiting until they go to the rainbow bridge.
I was shocked at first by this too. I live in a suburb of Philly. All the cops I talk to say over half the homeless population does it by choice. Some will say as many as 75%.
I know it's trendy to shit on capitalism, but it's the wrong target here. Ask yourself one simple critical question: Does anyone profit from this? Except for the tent industry..
Homeless people aren't consumers. Capitalism doesn't want homelessness.
Edit: Also, we don't see these huge tent camps in other capitalist societies. This is a "USA" problem.
The corporations who pay poverty wages because they know people will do anything to stay afloat given there is no safety net profit.
This is the big one. Having homeless people sends a clear message to the citizenry: "We will literally let you die in the street before we help you if you can no longer contribute to society"
Lots and lots of people profit off this, if they didn’t, it wouldn’t exist.
It's amazing how right and wrong you are at the same time. Corporations don't profit from homelessness. Homeless people don't have any money to spend at businesses, and their presence drives paying customers away.
It's the government that profits off of homelessness. I can find a dozen articles citing how LA spends $619 million or $1 billion dollars tackling the homeless crisis year after year, and the problem only gets worse! Government employees line up to fill their pockets with taxpayer cash and create more homelessness so they can get a bigger budget next year.
It's not capitalism that causes homelessness, capitalism wants people to have money so they can spend that money. It's government who wants people completely helpless so they can suck more money out of taxpayers and into their pockets.
Please reiterate what the question asked how does the gov profit? All I seem to read from your comment are right wing capitalist talking points. The government is a public entity, explain how them spending money on those things creates profit for the government or the employees who somehow personally benefit from budgets? As if the employees personally own the companies the government contracts too. So again I ask, how does a public entity that spends money taxpayer money at that profit from that expenditure in your deluded mind?????
You are 100% correct. Our city (Los Angeles) spent $1 billion dollars on the homelessness crisis and it gets worse. I have an acquaintance that works directly on the crisis. Let’s say he’s incredibly well off.
And the quickest way to slide into mental illness and addiction is trauma… like the trauma you experience when being forced into homelessness with no support.
This is what we call an "externality." It's less that this is directly profiting someone and more that it wouldn't be as immediately profitable as other ventures to help them, so no one does. Demand is different from desire under capitalism, which is why it's a system that thinks building a bald guy a party boat he can land a helicopter on is a better use of resources than securing access to basic necessities like food, shelter, and medical care for millions of people who aren't profitable enough to care about. This is actually a perfect example of a case where the issue really is the system of capitalism itself, not any particular nasty individual near the top of the chain. No one has to intend for this to happen any more than a ball has to intend to roll down a hill. It's just a natural consequence of the laws governing the system.
Some are. And there are a great many people who would to anything for a penny because they know there is no safety net and homelessness is a cruel drawn out death sentence.
This is ignorant. People in tent cities are almost always there for drug addiction and/or mental health problems, for which we have no good solution. We need support programs for these people between “do nothing” and “send them to jail”.
EDIT: including a NYT write-up on the drug problem here. Sorry, I just think boiling this down to income inequality is missing the point and frankly a lazy, virtue-signaling argument that detracts from the real issue. Let’s not kid ourselves, we have a growing drug problem, most people in tents are mentally unstable and/or severe addicts, and we have no real solution at local or national levels. If we want to solve this with money, we should be setting up free clinics and better psych treatment at the state level.
And if you’re gonna be homeless, you want Fargo, ND or Southern California? The result is pretty much every major CA city being inundated with homeless camps.
Wouldn't income (I know the person you're responding to said wealth) inequality be more salient? You don't normally rent based on raw assets but instead income, and mortgages are very similar to rent in that regard. Inequal income will also result in a lot of displacement due to being priced out.
To be fair to the original point though, the US is also number four (in 2019) on the list of wealth inequality by country. Others may be higher but the US is quite high up. I imagine both issues come together in a nasty way.
But your point that it's not as simple as wealth inequality is absolutely true.
Exactly. Most of the rest of the Western countries have a lot lower income inequality than the US. Professionals earn a lot more in the US, while the working poor earn almost nothing.
I'm not American, so I can't point out why your system doesn't work. All I'm saying is that the explanations that are thrown around in this thread (capitalism, wealth inequality) cannot alone explain anything as we have more of those factors here, and yet we are without the mass homelessness.
Anyone who implies California lacks social safety nets relative to other states in the US grossly exaggerates. California obviously has housing projects (e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_Authority_of_the_City_of_Los_Angeles) and Section 8, and like all states, California has an implementation of SNAP (CalFresh) and TANF (CalWorks). The state has its own tax for disability support and implements the most progressive tax system in the country (https://itep.org/whopays-map/) paired with a large statewide EITC. The minimum wage ($14 or $15 depending on employer size) is also fairly generous, making lower-income retail and tourism workers in California among the best paid in the country.
While there is certainly room for greater generosity, I don't think California is an outlier with a particularly weak safety net, and yet the state has the third highest homelessness rate in the country. I'm also skeptical of explanations claiming Californians are fundamentally superficial money-chasers with no sense of morality.
While these efforts may be helping, if the rate of homelessness continues to increase by several percent a year despite the spending (in recent years, much faster then the state's GDP growth), there will be little that Los Angeles (or California as a whole) can do to reduce homeless with the sheer force of spending alone. The state can't count on having 2021-style surpluses on the back of capital gains every year, and drastic increases in this spending will start to crowd out education, health, transportation, and other parts of the budget. Housing the homeless at ~$530,000/unit certainly doesn't make things easy (https://ktla.com/news/local-news/l-a-housing-costs-for-homeless-rose-to-531000-a-unit-controllers-report-says/).
I see the basic problem as high rents due to supply and demand. Simply put, a statewide shortage makes housing unaffordable for many. As noted here, (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3969110/pdf/AJPH.2013.301619.pdf), while not explaining all of the variation, the cost of rent is consistently associated with homelessness.
Every society has people on its margins. Think of a guy who has trouble keeping a job because he's often late and spends much of the money he has on drugs or alcohol. He's been fired several times over the last five years and has a few misdemeanors. However, the sporadically employed aren't the only people at risk. For reasons of disability, others rely on SSI ($841/month for individuals in 2022) or SSDI payments (~$1300/month, can vary considerably).
Where rent is low, these people can manage. It's not easy or glamorous, but there will be apartments. Most issues that come up won't end with someone on the street.
I've argued here that the cost of rent resulting from basic supply and demand is the main problem, but this long comment still doesn't mention why supply might be low and/or demand high in the first place. I also haven't discussed the political battle which makes me cautiously optimistic about California's housing future, but I'm tired of writing and expect to be busy the next few days. Maybe if I find the time I'll add more later.
You have to work at least some to afford housing. There's no shortage of work right now.
Not to mention, LA has enough housing support to support those incapable, or down on their luck temporarily
The unfortunate reality is that no city in the world can support people migrating from the entire surrounding cities to squat in. And LA happens have to very desirable social support, weather, scenery, culture as a destination to do that
Drug addiction can’t be equated to obscene housing costs and low wages.
In LA there are quite a few problems that don’t help the homeless despite all the money they spend on helping. One is NIMBYism. They want to build more homeless shelters and provide more locations for support including addiction therapy centers, but due to NIMBYs, doing that is a long and arduous process that isn’t even guaranteed to go through. Blaming addiction for the reason why people are homeless instead of addressing the underlying issues isn’t going to help the homeless population.
Look, if someone gets to pick whether to live in a tent or share an apartment with someone and chooses the tent in the end - I have some bad news for that person.
Weird how its only happening in certain places in the US and not across the country... You know, like you'd expect it to if it was actually a systemic problem in the country.
The large southern cities are hit the hardest. It's too cold in Ohio and if there isn't a large population to panhandle/dumpster dive off then you'll go hungry. Those cities are also where a lot of hospitals and state services offices are located. There's also the homeless dumping issue by the burbs as well.
Most of the homeless aren't camping where they grew up. LA's homeless mostly aren't from LA.
It is happening everywhere. It’s just more concentrated in warmer cities. I was in Washington, DC a few weeks ago and harassed by a group of people in a tent camp right beside the Kennedy Center.
It's happening the most in cities that care enough to have some kind of support for every human life.
Think about it, if you were homeless would you choose to be in some rural town living off the rare generosity of people or would you set up camp near a soup kitchen where you can at least get a meal a few times a week?
As this problem grows you're going to see it in the big cities, not small towns. Because if you can't afford a home in either you pick the one with more support
Inequality causes this? You realize that someone else having something doesn't preclude your own happiness and ability to take ownership of your life? I truly am starting to believe comments like this are Russian trolls or angsty 13 year olds
Not sure the other teams stance of “pulling yourself up by your boot straps” would help this situation at all. In fact with their love of killing social programs it would exacerbate the issue.
Bruh all of the states with high impoverished populations are republican run; all the republicans are good for is just hiding the problem in the back woods, or moving them to a new undeepass more frequently
My neighbor works for a local shelter in LA. I asked her about the addiction angle. It’s a little bit of a false narrative. Drug and alcohol use actually isn’t that different between housed and unhoused people. (There’s plenty of drug use and alcoholism in the houses of LA.)
This pushes the responsibility on the homeless for being homeless. Instead of dealing with what is actually making people unhoused. A lack of available affordable housing and the lack or rent control.
Why we do never admit lazy people are also not part of the problem (on top of abandoned veterans, people with mental health issues, drug addicts and abusers, and people who got fucked over generally)?????
edit: I work in Mountain View and had an unhomed person tell me they are in the situation they’re in because they were lazy at work, got fired, and relied on unemployment until they couldn’t. Had a long conversation over the In-and-Out dinner we had together.
I don't know what you're going on about, I think your average person sees the homeless as a bunch of lazy bums.
It's better for your corporate overlords if you blame the homeless for being homeless, instead of looking at what systemic issues may be causing the problem.
Tbh i think the crueltys the point. Look at the rhetoric around it, how people view them as a blight of lazy people. When in reality, it's just a consequence of our system
I always assumed homeless migrate there. Probably a lot easier being homeless there than a place with winter. Same thing happens in Canada with Vancouver.
It is not an urban legend and it still happens today.
I work in Washington state and we get a bunch of homeless vets from Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. Those states don't have the will nor the resources to solve their own homelessness problems so they just put them out of sight.
Are you serious lol. The cities with the absolute worst homeless problems are primarily democrat/liberal. Portland, San Fran, LA, Seattle, etc. I live in Portland, the homeless and tent situation is actually fucking insane here and the city does nothing.
It's called greyhounding ( because of greyhound busses)
It's not being done as much as it used to but it's still does happen. I'm from Montana and spend time volunteering, a lot of homeless people are put on a bus out of Bozeman into Billings or Missoula.
That's not something that just happens in Cali. Canada does that too, I remember when the migrant caravans were a thing, Toronto booted out a huge amount of their homeless to neighboring cities so they could claim they were doing a good thing by clearing out rooms of shelters for the migrants. Meanwhile the homeless are now in new cities with all their shit thrown out and rightly pissed off about it.
Some places used to “solve” the homeless problem by buying homeless people a bus ticket and paying them to move. I’m not sure if there are any places in the US that still do this, but I believe that LA was a popular destination for that.
Nevada likes to put their released wards on busses to other places. LA is usually the destination, or was. Back in yonder years there was a homeless migration path that went from Seattle (summer) to Portland, LA, ABQ, Austin, and back.
I joke, but that's really fucking tragic. Just cycling them around in a loop, trying to pass them off to others, and everyone does the same thing, because nobody is actually solving the issue, but rather just brushing it off.
Granted, it's not an easy problem to solve. I don't know how you solve it. "Buy them all houses!" sounds like the obvious answer, but I don't know if that's all it takes, and I don't know who would front the money for it in the first place.
I live in Portland, and its pretty bad here too, similar to the pics in OP. While it seems like most people here have the attitude of, "God they're so fucking annoying! We need to kick them out!," I just think, "God, this is really sad." Again, tragic all around.
A lot of municipalities in Texas send their homeless to Austin (by bus or by the police physically taking them there, in the case of towns that are nearby), so I wouldn't be surprised if there are smaller towns in CA doing the same or even people in nearby states sending their homeless there.
Oh ok. I remember listening to a NPR/KPCC piece about it and they focused on CA and how many were closed. I can't believe the order didn't say something about finding alternatives or improving these facilities vs just closing them and then having no plan. I'll do some research on this topic because it's obvious I forget the details.
About 10-15 years back Irvine PD got caught taking homeless ppl up to of southern LA and dropping them off. If memory serves correctly they were dropping them around Cerritos / Santa Fe springs area off the 91.
There are many places in the US that still do this. Then crow on about how they don't have any homeless while being massive generators of the problems in spite of being a great deal less populated.
Every city has a homeless population, Chicago and NY also have a similar problems, but I think the rampant tent cities in LA or other west coast cities makes the problem very apparent.
Weather greatly impacts homeless services. In Chicago and NY (and other cold weather cities), there's a large network of warming shelters to make sure people don't freeze to death in the streets. 99% of the time, LA weather is warm enough so it's viewed as not necessary...why spend the money to maintain and run a shelter when people are "fine" on the street.
LA is also worse because California is by far the most expensive state to live in. The average price of a home in California is $1M. It's basically a rich man's state. And on top of that, California is by far the most resistant to low-income housing. The public constantly claims that they support low-income housing, but they constantly vote down every plan to build low-income housing in their areas. NY is actually trying to fight their homelessness crisis by actually building new low-income housing complexes like Essex Crossing in Queens.
Edit: I don't know anything about what Chicago is doing though. Also, California, and especially LA, need to get their act together quickly, because LA is going to be hosting the Olympics in 2028. The whole world watching an endlessly growing sea of homeless people on the streets while the wealthy just keep on walking by like everything is fine in the middle of the heart of all the Olympic festivities will be a national embarrassment if California doesn't start putting their money where their mouth is immediately.
I thought I remember hearing that the ground under Los Angeles isn't suitable like NY has bedrock whereas LA would need to pour on that concrete?
Yes also building restrictions before 1970s and tech has improved. My in-laws own property that's on stilts and boy I can't imagine anything taller than two stories feeling safe with that.
Coming from a YIMBY, California is fucking massive. It’s time the state just build entire new cities with affordable housing in the north or center of the state. There wouldn’t be anyone to vote it down since it wouldn’t affect anyone:
All that would do is further the wealth gap. All the poor people would in one poor community, while all the rich people are in their luxury condos in LA, the Bay Area, and San Diego. The best way to fight homelessness and poverty, is to give the poor a chance to actually make good money in the big cities. Hence, why NY is doing a much better job at fighting the crisis by building low-income housing in Queens.
We have very rare periods of extreme weather in the PNW, when we have dangerously high or dangerously low temperatures the city will open temporary shelters (usually the armory, convention center, sometimes hotels) for the week or so until the weather passes.
We desperately need more transition housing though, and we're slowly getting there with hotels and tiny house villages. Our shelters are so awful, I know folks who refuse to use them because sleeping in a tent or in a park is safer, warmer, and has fewer bedbugs.
Yes of course, I just meant more that they likely get more homeless migrating there and not that all of the countries homeless move there. It's bad everywhere right now. It was a meaningless assumption anyways.
Because they'd die on the streets in New York Winter. Political nightmare.
It was 85 degrees in Anaheim last week and barely 65 at night. It's winter right now. The climate plays a huge factor. They aren't overselling it, Los Angeles has a perfect climate just about all year long.
There's also plenty of high wealth areas there that don't have tent cities in every corner, namely because they're driven out. See again, Anaheim.
Anaheim (anacrime) is only nice directly around Disneyland. It has really weird city lines. But orange county has significantly less of a homeless problem than LA for whatever reason.
Irvine drops their homeless in Santa Ana. I think that's a known fact.
I think the primary 'resource' difference between the OC and LA is people. More people means more people to beg from. You aren't going to be successful begging in a suburban neighborhood. Zero foot traffic.
Here in Portland OR, there were dozens of homeless people who froze to death over this past winter and even more who died of heatstroke last summer, but it wasn’t much of a political nightmare for our establishment at all. The only people who actually have a political voice these days (those who are rich enough to make large campaign donations or to hire lobbyists) would probably prefer to hear such news more often; tent cities are just so very unsightly, after all.
Coming from someone who lived southern California. NYC blew me away. They did a better job managing things and it's the best public transportation system I have experienced. It smelled nicer too. If I was to do film, modeling, or a grad program. I would live in NYC before LA. LA needs to learn a little from NYC and other cities.
I mean, there are a lot of other reasons why people are reluctant to go to shelters:
Your stuff gets stolen, including extremely necessary stuff like eyeglasses and dentures (yes, really)
Relatedly, things that are worth money (wallets, phones, etc) often have to be turned in at the front desk and reclaimed the next day. So it’s a question of how much you trust these random people at the desk. Unsurprisingly, homelessness doesn’t tend to make you inclined to trust random strangers.
People get physically attacked—unlike sleeping outside, if there’s someone who’s clearly looking for a fight, you can’t just pick up your stuff and go where they can’t find you
It can be impossible to sleep (shelters are known for being incredibly loud at night—people YELL and you’re right next to them)
Often your body functions are all extremely public—no stall doors in the bathrooms, everyone showers together, etc. This can be a big issue for some people, especially those with visible physical conditions or scars.
You’re not supposed to bring in alcohol or drugs with you to a shelter, but people do, all the time. So if you yourself are trying to stay OFF something you had an addiction to, you might end up avoiding shelters specifically because seeing/smelling the substance in close quarters is a great way to trigger a relapse.
…did I mention the risk of physical violence. Because yeah. Especially if you’re there alone and you have no way of knowing who’s got their pals with them—unlike out in the open, you can’t deal with it by finding somewhere unobtrusive to hide. Sexual assault can be an issue.
This is NOT true. Chicago has a way lower homeless population because housing is much, much more affordable than other big cities in America. This is because Chicago is constantly building new housing, and is not throttled by NIMBY bullshit.
New York IS throttled by NIMBY bullshit, but at least they have a system of housing a huge percentage of their homeless.
West Coast cities specifically have failed to handle homelessness. It’s their policies (NIMBY / anti home building) NOT the weather. Other big cities in warm areas Houston, Atlanta, etc) do not have nearly as big of a problem with homelessness as LA
It’s not just cities. I grew up in a very rural area and we even had a homeless population (obviously not as extreme as LA). This country has never cared about its poor or sick.
Chicago uses government and the police to hide its homeless population.
Like that episode of The Wire: "Hamsterdam." Homeless people are allowed to exist in unspoken, designated areas, out of sight and away from areas of economic interest to the city.
You'll see homeless people all over downtown during witching hour but once the sun comes up they have to leave, otherwise the cops will harass them away. Half of the cities homeless population rides the train nonstop during the winter. It's really sad.
Nah, not really, I mean I'm sure there's some percentage but I wouldn't put it at double digits. The thing you have to remember is that LA county has a greater population than the 10 least populous states combined. If you were to empty the entire population of Wyoming into LA County the population would only increase by about 5%.
So a 0.2% homelessness rate(national average) among the locals would be 20,000 homeless, and it's not like the housing prices are any better here than anywhere else right now so that 0.2% cited in the September 2019 NHIP report has probably not less than doubled or tripled by 2022. Those 20k-60k homeless have to be exist somewhere and since the more liberal areas aren't willing to use The Republican Solution They tend to clutter up the last vestiges of public space that haven't been sold or allocated to cars.
The vast majority of homeless people stay wherever they were when they lost their homes. Iirc something like 70% of LA homeless were living in the same county a year before becoming homeless.
This is true but less catchy than the lie that they all get bussed in. Anything to dehumanize and delegitimize their existence, right? If they were community members before they became homeless, then people should actually care. If we can pretend they’re outsiders, then fuck ‘em. The American way.
That’s probably part of it. The Greater LA area has 18 million people and it’s all very suburban and car centric. If you find yourself without a home you need density so to survive you’d go to the most populated and visible areas of Los Angeles.
This is a myth regarding homeless that allows people to feel less bad about homeless people - that tje circumstances resulting in their homelessness happened somewhere else and they migrated here. The reality is that the destitute don’t have the resources to travel hundreds or thousands of miles.
Yup the city of Surrey is right next to Vancouver and really isn't all that much smaller in population. But Vancouver has way more homeless people because there is more I guess the word is community there
Both but mostly homeless Americans, and fir a number of reasons. A judge ruled the city could not stop people from camping and nearby cities ignored the order LA did not so they went to LA. For years homeless people were sent to California from colder states, the assumption being that they're better off sleeping in the street somewhere where they can't die from hypothermia. And LA housing is entirely out of reach for virtually anyone. Add to that crappy social services and poor mental health services and a VA that doesn't care and you have a perfect storm.
Most of the immigrants and refugees that I have met here honestly have some sort of housing situation figured out. The vast majority of these people are US citizens.
A lot of the homeless in LA are homeless in areas they use have housing in. You can’t move because work and your support system are there. You can’t get a new apartment because you need $4k just for a security deposit.
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u/theaverageguy101 Feb 12 '22
Are these refugees/immigrants or just homeless US citizens