'We hurt those already hurting': why Los Angeles is failing on homelessness

[Jilly_in_VA]

Last month, the top official charged with addressing homelessness in Los Angeles announced her surprise departure, offering a scathing message on her way out: the crisis is “a monster of our own making”, she wrote in her resignation letter. “Those in power who possess the ability to change the lives of more than 60,000 unhoused Angelenos must be willing to do so.”

Heidi Marston’s public comments about her decision to leave the Los Angeles homeless services authority (Lahsa) offer a rare look from an insider at the systemic problems that have prevented major metropolitan regions like LA from adopting the rapid, large-scale and humane response that the emergency demands.

Marston’s exit comes as Los Angeles is home to an estimated 66,000 unhoused people and accounts for 20% of all Americans living outside. More than five unhoused Angelenos are dying every day. Local residents are falling into homelessness faster than the unhoused are moving indoors. Large tent communities are growing on city streets and in parks.

The crisis in LA and in California has reached record proportions, but severe inequality is a growing problem in many US metropolitan regions. LA’s broken system, experts say, mirrors the failures of cities across America to help their most vulnerable residents.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/16/homelessness-los-angeles-lahsa-heidi-marston

[jimfields33]

1. With all those hollywood rich living there, you can't tell me they can't add a ten percent tax

on all earnings on everybody working in Hollywood. Sounds like that’s all they need to do.

[onecaliberal]

2. I was in the fashion district on Saturday.

Haven’t been there since before COVID. Let me say, even I was shocked at how much worse it has gotten.

[snowybirdie]

3. Never lived there

but I'm wondering why, with such a large budget surplus, why isn't the state doing more for homelessness?

[hunter]

4. This should be a federal issue, not a local one.

Homeless people land in the places where the weather and/or the local community isn't trying to kill them.

We can solve the homeless problem by building homes, and by improving access to mental health care and other social services. That would save money compared to the current situation, but it has to happen everywhere. Otherwise the homeless will migrate from places where housing and services are not available -- largely places with hostile NIMBYs -- and overwhelm local social services where they exist.

It's also a harmful notion that giving someone a shower, a haircut, and presentable clothing will magically make them employable. That's the "American Dream" isn't it? Unfortunately anyone who believes that will be severely disappointed. It's a hard reality that many homeless people are unemployable in our twenty-first century society and will require mildly supervised housing. Currently the very expensive alternative to that is jail and prison. We all suffer that in taxes and increased crime rates. It would be better to catch people before they go down that path.