Living on the Street
As of this writing Los Angeles County has reported that around 42,000 people are homeless in the city of Los Angeles. The city has a population of about 3,900,000 so almost 8% of the cities population lives on the street.These numbers are from 2022 (the last count) and if you live in the city and have any observation skills whatsoever - the problem isn't getting any better.
This is a huge disaster. This op-ed article isn't going to help solve the problem but we hope it will convey the enormity of it.
The county sights some reasons for the problem:
- Soaring rents.
- Stagnant incomes.
- COVID
- Mental health issues.
- Substance abuse.
- No fault evictions.
- Affordable housing shortfall.
- Racism.
Racism - Black people are overrepresented in the homeless population nationwide. A ground breaking 2018 report by LAHSA’s Ad Hoc Committee on Black People Experiencing Homelessness noted that while Black people represented only 9% of the County’s general population in 2017, they comprised 40% of the homeless population.
Racism is a self-inflicted wound that we created. If it weren't for our intense, rampant racism, nearly half of our homeless might be home. We can dream.
Soaring rents are a self-inflicted wound that we created. Didn't we have rent control at one point almost solely to prevent the exact problem we are now facing? What happened?
Stagnant incomes. I think we are trying on this one but we can't seem to raise the minimum wage fast enough and the retailers and the price-point raisers are ahead of us anyway.
COVID was just a unpredictable phenomenon (that helped to a degree because folks weren't getting evicted).
Mental health issues. It's a whole other article about how many free resources are out there for drug and alcohol use and mental health disorders but the government is bereft of promotional skills and people don't know they exist, then if they do find out, signing up - getting care - by phone, online or in person is a night mare of unequalled torture.
No fault evictions? What?! If you are going to turn your apartment building into codos to make a whole lot more money for yourself, you better be prepared to pay me dearly to displace me.
And the dreaded affordable housing shortfall. A shortfall is "a failure to to meet expectations". Oops!
It looks to me like we are dealing with decades of greed and local governmental carelessness and lack of vision and now we all have to smell it.
fade to music... "I love L.A." by Randy Newman.
