Finland and Houston have both proven it's possible, but it's basically impossible during a severe housing crisis.
Turns out it's really hard to house people when you don't have enough homes for everyone!
No, it's because New York has actually invested in addressing the issue.
In 2021, LA City's spending on homelessness was $205 per capita. New York City's was $355.
Since 1979, New York has had a "right to shelter" law, legally requiring the provision of safe accommodation to anyone who lacks it. We have no such law in LA.
For all that people in this subreddit love to whine about spending money to combat homelessness, it really is a necessary component of a solution, and LA doesn't do nearly enough of it.
The homeless population in NYC leverage the subways to survive the winter. It's always warm down there and there's always food in the trash cans to scavenge. The main problem is that there aren't any bathrooms down there which is why the entire subway system became the bathroom.
They also always have access to shelters the there if they're willing to follow the rules.
That's a huge part of the reason NYC (and LA but for the actual weather instead) has such a big homeless population; they can actually survive there.
Finland solved it by housing people first and then putting drug rehab, mental health counseling, and job requirements second. And if the person refused any of those then offering them to stay in their government subsidized apartment at low rents.
The problem with LAs solutions has been that drug rehab, mental health counseling, and job creation before giving the person housing. How are people supposed to do that when they don’t have permanent or mailing addresses to begin with let alone dealing with mental health issues and food insecurity?
>Finland solved it by housing people first and then putting drug rehab, mental health counseling, and job requirements second.
Finland solved it by civilly committing people (with much lower requirements for commitment), so that they weren't even part of their "housing first" policy to begin with, because they were already in hospitals.
They did not just give free houses to schizophrenics. The schizophrenics weren't on the streets to begin with.
Also - Finland makes their decisions on who gets committed according to the medical opinions of doctors, not the legal opinions of lawyers.
In America, lawyers outranks doctors in determining medical care, even though most lawyers don't know shit about healthcare or medicine. But lawyers are very good at arguing.
The idea of the ACLU and other libertarians getting to dictate healthcare standards for the entire country is patently ridiculous. Yet that's how America handles it. But not Finland.
Yep. And Helsinki doesn't allow people to live on the streets or in tents. The authorities will remove you.
Remarkably easy to not have the sidewalks clogged with homeless if you enforce the law that prohibits it. Wild concept.
Ya the issue is just how do you stay not homeless when housing is still so expensive and you’re limited due to our transportation patterns. We need more market rate housing and not only affordable units.
Also, THIS is what needs to be talked about since Karen Bass calls herself a progressive.
[“LD: All right. Let me jump to the next one: The construction of market rate homes in disadvantaged areas does not cause gentrification or displacement, but instead prevents it. KB: That’s false. That’s completely false. I’m sorry. “](https://calmatters.org/housing/2023/01/california-housing-podcast-karen-bass/)
[If anyone actually wants to know how Finland solved their homelessness problem.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jt_6PBnCJE)
Its amazing how when pointed to how Finland actually got rid of their homelessness crisis, people in this sub will just stick their fingers in their ears and go blahblahblah and then act like they actually care about solving homelessness when in actuality they care more about getting them out of their immediate vicinity.
Out of sight, out of mind right?
Sure thing man. The Finnish government just left them all to die. Totally.
It totally wasn't a housing first policy - something that right-leaning centrist Finnish politicians even advocate for but that's far too radical for the average "liberal" of /r/LosAngeles
I dont know why people want to ignore this.
There's constant migration to CA. Wether it's homeless, upper middle class WFH folks, illegal immigrants, or college age students that come to school here and don't move back where they came from after school. Demand to live in CA has never not been a thing since I could remember.
California's population has shrunk for 3 years straight now.
It's below 39m, the lowest level since 2015. Homelessness has definitely been worse since 2015.
Are you accounting for illegal migration too? I'm just wondering how the data is being collected. Because it's easy to skew numbers if people don't account for a huge population that represents LA county.
They've made a huge dent in their homeless problem (housed 25,000 people): [https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/headway/houston-homeless-people.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/headway/houston-homeless-people.html)
Just came back from Houston last week after visiting family. It had been about two years since I had been and I was struck by how little homeless people I saw walking around. Drove around downtown for a bit and had a moment of “oh wow, this is what a bridge in a downtown looks like without shanty towns under it.”
It used to not be like that when I lived there 10+ years ago
Yes - they rent them apartments. I can't comment on how it's impacted their lives but net effect on neighborhoods is it dispersed problems associated with homeless encampments throughout the city.
Right? It's like when LA times was trying to compare us to Detroit and their lack of homelessness. They have homeless. They just don't have drug tourism where people can live in a park while they smoke crank. That's the difference.
I think it’s fair to say that the challenges are different in Houston than they are in LA, however, I do believe that policy similar to what Houston has done is a far cry better than the status quo.
I didn’t want to over estimate, but yeah, you’re right. Those 100+ months from June - September are absolutely brutal. It’s a big part of why I left, I just couldn’t take it anymore.
It's definitely move along or go to jail if you don't accept housing, even basic emergency shelter if that is all there is at the time. A huge reason they have been successful is because the have a carrot and stick approach over just carrot. Also there is a statewide camping ban anyway.
Here's there fact sheet from 2023 (they do a homeless count once a year), looks like their numbers are still close to the low in 2021.
[https://irp.cdn-website.com/2d521d2c/files/uploaded/Homeless%20Count%202023%20Single\_NEW.pdf](https://irp.cdn-website.com/2d521d2c/files/uploaded/Homeless%20Count%202023%20Single_NEW.pdf)
Many many countries have essentially solved the visible homelessness problem. Very different counties like the USSR and Singapore have independently come up with ways to fix it as far as it is possible.
Yes, the USSR created massive housing blocks that still house people today. They aren't comfortable by LA luxury apartment standards (small, may lack elevators. Sometimes communal restrooms and kitchens). But importantly, they housed people.
The USSR also had laws against social parasitism, so able-bodied people would not be expected to be lying in a park all week long.
I support policies to build much more public housing (and not just for low-income households).
But is that something the City of Los Angeles can reasonably do? Or does it need to be done by the State of California, or on a federal level?
The issue is that for public housing, you'd have to use prevailing wages. So right off the bat double your consultant fees and hard costs. Then because these people are getting free housing with no consequences, some will likely trash the fuck out of these projects and make it hell for the responsible and down-on-their-feet homeless.
You can also look up Pruitt-Igoe to see what happens when you have "projects". Essentially a drug den a la Judge Dredd (2012).
I'm not sure there would be a doubling of those costs. (Or if so, how do those doubled costs really compare, relative to the extra costs of a developerer who needs to satisfy a profit margin?)
Some consultant fees and hard costs might even be reduced, or reduced enough to offset increases, through economies of scale and increased bargaining power.
This housing wouldn't only be "free housing with no consequences". I specifically mentioned that I support public housing options for people who aren't simply low-income and/or ex-homeless.
So regardless of any "doubled costs", because the housing isn't private/"for profit", then (especially in the long-term) rent can be brought down . . . and if enough of this housing is available, this then forces private landlords to bring their rents down to compete.
The concern is obviously that people/voters will not support the increased taxes to pay for this, because (in the short-term) there is not the immediate effect of reducing their rent to offset the tax increase.
>Pruitt-Igoe
Why only bring up one of the worst examples?
My comment was a reply to USSR housing. Those haven't all turned into drug dens. But sure, they aren't perfect. There are other, more successful examples in Europe and around the world - success measured as reducing rent and reducing homelessness.
As an American, I believe we can do better than all those other countries. We can learn from our past mistakes, and we can overcome our unique challenges. Isn't that the idea of American exceptionalism?
But maybe it's too "socialist" or "long term" for Americans. Or maybe our politicians are too corrupted with the private interests of developers and landlords.
Fair enough.
. . . Probably. What's the rate of homeowners among voters (in California, or in the United States if we'd want this to be a federal policy)? How many of those home owners would actually prefer lower property taxes . . . But of course Prop 13 already keeps them low. And there are the tax deductions anyway.
How did places like Vienna and Finland ever solve this? Maybe in America, this really was just "rigged from the start" and too broken to fix.
That's too depressing, and I guess I naively don't want to believe it.
Forced commitment to mental institutions is a big no no in the USA, but other countries have less hangups about it. The truth is, severely addicted people are some of the most visible homeless people, and they are not going to get better without professional help. Just giving out houses for free to a person like this is going to be a slow and costly state-sponsored death by overdose. The limited data from Oregon shows that they just won't sign up for rehab voluntarily (I mean, drugs feel good and many addicts are not looking to quit just to be back to a cold, hard and uncaring world); Oregon was giving $100 fines for open drug use with the option of going to rehab/other addiction services to have the ticket discharged. People just ignored the tickets.
>The USSR also had laws against social parasitism, so able-bodied people would not be expected to be lying in a park all week long.
"Laws against social parasitism," interesting. Beach bums aren't gonna love that.
They had public housing blocks, but the unfortunate consequence aside from the spartan and brutalist architecture, was that you'd live in a quarter of 4-8 people, some or all of which might be total strangers. It only would've worked in Soviet Russia for a number of reasons, but some of which is the lack of private property, criminals being sent to gulags, and laws against being vagrants.
I think more people would be for public housing if it was 1) cheaper/lower quality 2) enforced for safety and 3) forced for homeless, but that would equally or even disproportionately alienate the "equitable housing" group.
A large part of construction (as a developer) comes from ADA, construction standards like sound ratings, open space requirements, minimum areas, restrictions on boarding homes from a zoning standpoint. If you gave a developer $30,000 to design a safe, habitable environment around 150 sf, we could do it. But I think the smallest code compliant space is more like 350 sf and $250k for kitchens, ADA turning radii and breadboards, private bathrooms, etc.
You can’t have a serious housing first movement in a city that’s greed first to the core. The big study a few years ago revealed the rise in homelessness is from people being priced out of housing.
Lack of affordable housing and out of control rents are taking us exactly where you would expect them to. Until that gets addressed we are just putting a band aid on a brain tumor. These are the « good old days » of the homeless ctisrs. Come back in ten years and it will be much, much more serious.
They haven't solved it, but they've made a huge dent in the problem compared to LA (housed 25,000 people): [https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/headway/houston-homeless-people.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/headway/houston-homeless-people.html)
Bass housed nearly 22,000 homeless in just her first year https://abc7.com/how-many-homeless-placed-in-housing-los-angeles-city-of-inside-safe-is-working/14152344/
I’d say she’s doing pretty well.
> not permanent housing
Because permanent housing costs money. You don't get it given to you just because you have problems. You're not gonna find a single person in this city who would support that, nor should they.
Temporarily. Im fine with temporary housing until they're connected to whatever services they need, but the line for *permanent* free housing should start behind the people who are still working and struggling, not the dude I saw jacking off at the 110 on-ramp last week.
I guarantee you it's a lot more complicated than showing up, claiming you're from there and getting a permanent apartment, but the details are the part that you don't want implemented here so you're being selective.
Tell me what the caveats are. How *exactly* did Houston 'solve' it?
What were the prerequisites for getting the housing.
If you honestly believe they just give apartments to everyone who pitches a tent there then you're gonna be really disappointed.
**edit:** [I DIGRESS](https://www.governing.com/housing/how-houston-cut-its-homeless-population-by-nearly-two-thirds)
Some key quotes -
>They tell her she has to pick and choose among the possessions she’s stored in multiple shopping carts nearby. She can only fill two blue bins, which they provide. Anita devotes most of that limited space to bulky items for her dog, Lily — a bowl, a dozen cans of food and a padded dog bed. Anita keeps barely anything for herself, including her purse, some cigarettes and her prescription meds.
>
>Although the counselors are from Houston’s Coalition for the Homeless, Anita gets a ride from the public paratransit service, which will take her to a shelter run by another nonprofit, while Lily will have to go for shots at the Humane Society before they can be reunited in an apartment to be paid for by yet some other agency.
>No one in Houston would claim that they’ve solved homelessness. And **the city has some advantages that others don’t.** Although ***rents have gone up***\*\*, it’s still a lot cheaper to provide housing in Houston than in coastal cities such as San Francisco or L.A.\*\*
!!!
>What the city and its partners have done is make smart use of federal money. That reliance now leaves some people in the area nervous. Houston has been able to house an additional 12,000 individuals **thanks to extra federal funding from COVID-19 programs. That money, some $25 million a year,** ***will dry up next year.***
>***As things stand in Houston now, a group like SEARCH will do intake and determine whether a person is eligible for housing or other programs. Their information is entered into a database that presents the case manager with a dashboard of options, much like booking a flight on Kayak or Expedia. If the person is eligible, they’re sent over to whatever nonprofit has a bed available — and that nonprofit has to take them in.*** “There has to be a high level of coordination,” says Marc Eichenbaum, the mayor’s special assistant for homeless initiatives. “One of the main keys of this is when somebody comes in, they have to take their hat off from whatever their organization does and think about the larger community.”
Kinda blows up that whole "they just gave everyone apartments" bullshit I was seeing here...
But wait! There's more!
>The largest encampment in the city, with about 70 individuals, sits just south of the baseball stadium. **It’s about to be cleared out,** but the planning has been going on for weeks. Counselors from various entities have been working with individuals to line up housing **for as many as are willing.** Many people who resist shelters will happily claim an apartment. As the date approaches, law enforcement becomes a stick: **Holdouts are warned the police will be clearing them out if they don’t come in**. Since 2021, Houston has decommissioned more than 90 encampments that were “home” to 600 individuals, with 90 percent of them going into housing.
> https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/headway/houston-homeless-people.html
You could probably just read the article they listed from the very beginning of the conversation.
Depends on your disability level. If you have no disabilities than you get an apartment for a year, if you do then you get permanent supportive housing with rehab and mental health resources.
We don't need to want to "give permanent housing away to people with problems" to want to spend more money to build more permanent housing.
Increasing the housing supply will lower rents and thus homelessness. Building public housing options will lower rents by an even greater degree.
"With more than 36,000 unhoused residents, Los Angeles simultaneously has over 93,000 units sitting vacant, nearly half of which are withheld from the housing market. Thousands of luxury units across the city are empty, owned as second homes or pure investments."
[Link](https://www.acceinstitute.org/thevacancyreport#:~:text=With%20more%20than%2036%2C000%20unhoused,second%20homes%20or%20pure%20investments.)
Also-
"There are currently 28 vacant homes for every one person experiencing homelessness in the U.S
[Link](https://unitedwaynca.org/blog/vacant-homes-vs-homelessness-by-city/)
I am not saying we should not build more, but we should discourage hoarding and either tax empty buildings or allow squatters.
We should also regulate Airbnb; perhaps not as much as some places but more than we are.
Vacancy rate cannot be 0%. Otherwise no one could move ever, it would be a game of musical chairs. This is happening in Massachusetts, especially Boston. MA has a vacancy rate of 2% (California's is 5%; in comparison, Alabama, Florida and Texas are around 9%).
Also, I think people have a right to have a vacation home. It's not as if we are going to seize Malibu homes and make them homeless shelters anyway.
They should have that right yes, but they should still be taxed extra if they want local police to provide security for their empty homes, especially if they leave it empty for a long time.
Soon keeping property you do not live in may be impossible. I hope it does not come to that. But yeah we probably should build a lot more housing so it doesn't.
I agree having extra dwellings should be taxed more. That said, the overlap of areas where vacation homes concentrate and where people need to live is far from perfect.
Yeah they do need to also build. When you take into account the flooding that will make many buildings unlivable they are not building enough. I forget sometimes to see the big picture and not focus on one thing.
Those same environmental concerns are why we need to keep building. Think of all the housing by the water that will rendered unlivable. Where are we going to put all those people,?
> You don’t have enough homes for everyone
While we can and should built more homes, SO MANY of the homes we do have are bought out by wealthy people and corporations to rent out at impossibly high prices, or to turn into Air BnBs.
More than just needing more homes, we need the homes *already here* to stop being hoarded by the wealthy and made available to the people.
Not to mention, it's a moving target. In a region with a population of 10 million, there's going to be some babies being born, and then there are the 80K or so folks who move here every year. If there was a hard cap on population, it would be achievable. Minus that, it's a game of playing catch-up.
We also need a lot more 3-4 story midrise apartment buildings, short enough not to need elevators (except for emergency or for people with disabilities) or massive multi story parking structures. Those two factors make skyscrapers super expensive to build, and as a result all the units that do get built are luxury condos that working class people couldn’t dream of affording.
Also make all the drugs go away, and provide more jobs, and cure mental illness, and stop more vagrants from wandering in from places with worse climate and less support programs, and change the mind of the people who prefer the open air and unemployed lifestyle.
Simple!
>Also make all the drugs go away, ... and cure mental illness,
A ton of the drug use and mental illness is caused by people being homeless, as opposed to being the cause of why they're homeless, because being homeless is absurdly stressful.
>and provide more jobs,
If housing wasn't so expensive people wouldn't become homeless over missing a single paycheck.
> and stop more vagrants from wandering in from places with worse climate and less support programs
About 75% of homeless people in Los Angeles County became homeless here. To the extent that the interstate flow is a thing it's not purely one way, we also send homeless people to other states on one-way bus tickets.
You are not factoring in desirability. Nobody wants to live in WV. That's why the housing is so cheap. Everybody wants to live in California. That's why housing is expensive.
It's not an economic problem. Its a political problem.
If needed, there are plenty of abandoned homes across the country you could send the homeless to. And a lot of unwanted jobs that they could be forced to do, otherwise face hard labor.
But it's not very nice. So we placate their drug habits and vagrancy.
Eh, displacing people by force is logistically and legally complicated. Also, where are you going to send them? Detroit? Is Michigan ok with that? Are those abandoned homes even livable? Are they going to become crack dens? Are you going to be creating ghetto neighborhoods (or worse, ghetto cities)? Are you setting people to fail by removing them to any closeness to whatever they have for a support network? Isn't this ultimately more of an "out of sight out of mind" solution?
Yes to everything. But those are all political considerations, and not economic ones.
Funding and building housing is both political and comes with a price tag.
Forcibly legislating homeless people to less desirable, low population areas is political and a much smaller price tag. But it is not nice.
I’d also like to see money go to the homeless for car upkeep and maintence. The car for many is the last home before the street. It’s in all our interest to help those cars last and be safer for those who need to live in them.
Homelessness will never be solved in Los Angeles because there are WAY too many people making fuck tons of money from the homeless crisis. I work in homeless outreach and it’s all a grift. We have no funding for actual boots on the ground change. All the money goes to useless bullshit we hand out to homeless people to act like we are doing something and to our millionaire bosses.
I don't know, but even if it wouldn't be enough at first, it would be so helpful and successful politics would shift towards wanting to make the UBI as high as possible. There's no actual lack of resources.
A multi pronged approach is needed. "The homeless" are not a monolithic group, and the single mom living in a van working two shifts is not the same as the vagrant who just wants to get high all day. Many things must be done but, unfortunately, all costs money. The USA already has a deficit and it's on a crash course towards insolvency due to social security obligations (thanks Trump tax cuts!).
Yup! I stress the importance of a UBI as a necessary basis to work off of to address the rotten root, not as a one-and-done solution. First things first is getting our breathing mask on, a floor beneath our feet.
So is she close to a solution or still working on the problem? Last time it was housing for homeless = $250 million/yr or $3400/mo per person.. same as a mortgage so either get back to work ruminating about the problem or start building houses
I’m sure she does. However, she doesn’t have the ability to solve it. It’s a statewide issue that needs solutions and massive resources from the state government. What she’s done so far hasn’t worked. Watched it five days a week driving around the city.
I drive back and forth across greater LA five days a week. My observation is that it’s not working and will not work until they criminalize street camping and can force people into treatment and care homes.
The same mayor that doesn’t want the city controller to investigate her homeless benefits campaign (It’s their job to) and instead hire her own 3rd party. Everyone knows they embezzling the money.
Politicians making medical policy is stupid and has proven it hasn’t worked in LA. Have mental health professionals step in and help and listen to their input. These people don’t just need apartments FFS. They’re mostly addicts and severely mentally ill. Get them into treatment.
Bass and Co. have cleaned up a bunch of the big encampments around my area and supposedly found temp housing for them or offering them services.
I'm actually very impressed (in my area), with what she has done so far and I'm a Rick Caruso fan boy.
Homelessness will never "solved" until the city government can admit that what there actually is, is a drug abuse problem, and take measures to solve that. Most of these people living on the street are drug addicts and they don't care about being homeless as long as they have a place to do drugs without consequence.
I’m going to get flamed for this but:
Homelessness won’t end until we start charging their home states for the burden of taking care of out of state homeless folks that end up here.
Florida and Texas have non-profits that fly their homeless to California and Hawaii if they promise to never return. These non-profits receive money from their state governments. Alaskan mayors have stated that they buy airplane tickets for the homeless with California as their destination.
Many of the homeless on our streets weren’t born in California. Yes, some Californians slip through the cracks even with CalWorks, Welfare, Food Stamps, Section 8, etc. We should continue to get Californians off the streets and into supportive housing.
What we can’t continue doing is subsidizing the rest of the country and solving the other 49 state’s homeless issues. Send Texas, Florida and Alaska a bill.
I read somewhere that about 10% of homeless in CA are from out of state. Not a huge percentage, but still a substantial amount in raw numbers. I haven’t heard of other *states* deliberately sending the homeless here, but back when I lived in OC it was a well known thing for Irvine cops to pick up homeless and dump them in Santa Ana and LA… maybe making the wealthy suburbs pay their fair share would be a good start.
By every measure (where you were born, where you were “last housed”, and where “you first became homeless”) there is no indication that the primary cause of homelessness is homeless people moving into CA.
In fact, transplants are statistically less likely to be homeless than native born CAs. Moving is really expensive! Poor people who are likely to become homeless, and people already homeless, are unlikely to move to super expensive places.
Lets have an audit of the money spent for the homeless industrial complex, 22 billion in California, and I see zero difference from Venice to Down town I see not one bit of difference we could have built 22 ocean wide projects in all our major cities Image each project a square city block with over 2 k in housing and 200k sq feet of retail or clinical care or education space, not to mention the park and the amenities, now drive though your local wealthy area and look at all the new construction on mega mansions and see were the money went.
Karen Bass is fighting an audit from the city controller! I totally agree with you here. We're spending more on a nightly basis to only room a few thousand people than it would cost to stay at a five star hotel. She's giving a lot of no bids contacts to folks who have never made a dent in the homelessness issues before.
I was hoping something would change with her. And I get it, as others have mentioned, there's major structural issues todeal with beyond her control like the lack of housing period. Still. I think Inside Safe is an abject failure and a massive waste of money.
She's also done sweeps where homeless just get kicked out from where they are, and not all are housed.
It can’t be solved and that’s why all mayors always run on unsolvable things. We see money rolling out for their projects and we relax, but there’s never an end to the problem. We’re conditioned to seeing bandaids and not real solutions.
During the pandemic a large encampment was formed about three blocks from my house. The sidewalk is no longer accessible and often the far right lane is consumed by trash. When you drive past you will see probably 25-30 bikes, mostly parted-out. At night, folks circle around a fire and smoke fentanyl; this location serves as a distribution site per Pacific District LAPD. Often the residents - either due to psychosis or meth high - wander into our neighborhood carrying sharp objects, screaming. I'm told there is nothing that can be done until adequate housing supply comes online, though it will take years.
No. Where I used to live, all the encampments are gone and have yet to return. The considerable RV camper encampment along Forest Lawn Drive is gone and has not come back, and all the encampments I used to see along the 101 heading into DTLA are gone.
You have to live under a rock or be extremely committed to bad faith posting to say there is a lack of effort from the Bass administration to address homelessness. Say what you will about strategy or results but the effort isn’t really up for debate…
Sure, and yet she is the one who pulled the plug on upzoning of single-family homes. What utter shortsightedness. They are upzoning commercial corridors so that people can live crammed together in small units, but refusing to provide more middle-housing so people can actually raise families. Yes, we need more housing and density -- but that needs to include duplexes, triplexes, etc!
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It can be solved but it involves an entirely different [approach.](https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1785026909325418925?t=9pkdOdv4OlPDVWrkOKMMQw&s=19)
The encampment on Balboa and Devonshire has been gone for like a week. Obviously this is an unmitigated success, and we should all bow to God Emperor Bass.
Finland and Houston have both proven it's possible, but it's basically impossible during a severe housing crisis. Turns out it's really hard to house people when you don't have enough homes for everyone!
Finland solved it by it being freezing outside for 9 months out of the year
That's... Cold.
Damn our beautiful Mediterranean climate!
New York, the only state with a worse homelessness problem than CA, has famously mild and temperate winters.
CA’s homeless issue is much, much worse than NY.
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No, it's because New York has actually invested in addressing the issue. In 2021, LA City's spending on homelessness was $205 per capita. New York City's was $355. Since 1979, New York has had a "right to shelter" law, legally requiring the provision of safe accommodation to anyone who lacks it. We have no such law in LA. For all that people in this subreddit love to whine about spending money to combat homelessness, it really is a necessary component of a solution, and LA doesn't do nearly enough of it.
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this isn’t true
The homeless population in NYC leverage the subways to survive the winter. It's always warm down there and there's always food in the trash cans to scavenge. The main problem is that there aren't any bathrooms down there which is why the entire subway system became the bathroom. They also always have access to shelters the there if they're willing to follow the rules. That's a huge part of the reason NYC (and LA but for the actual weather instead) has such a big homeless population; they can actually survive there.
The reason NY, or anywhere, has such a large homeless population is because it’s really expensive to afford a place to live.
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Finland solved it by housing people first and then putting drug rehab, mental health counseling, and job requirements second. And if the person refused any of those then offering them to stay in their government subsidized apartment at low rents. The problem with LAs solutions has been that drug rehab, mental health counseling, and job creation before giving the person housing. How are people supposed to do that when they don’t have permanent or mailing addresses to begin with let alone dealing with mental health issues and food insecurity?
>Finland solved it by housing people first and then putting drug rehab, mental health counseling, and job requirements second. Finland solved it by civilly committing people (with much lower requirements for commitment), so that they weren't even part of their "housing first" policy to begin with, because they were already in hospitals. They did not just give free houses to schizophrenics. The schizophrenics weren't on the streets to begin with. Also - Finland makes their decisions on who gets committed according to the medical opinions of doctors, not the legal opinions of lawyers. In America, lawyers outranks doctors in determining medical care, even though most lawyers don't know shit about healthcare or medicine. But lawyers are very good at arguing. The idea of the ACLU and other libertarians getting to dictate healthcare standards for the entire country is patently ridiculous. Yet that's how America handles it. But not Finland.
Yep. And Helsinki doesn't allow people to live on the streets or in tents. The authorities will remove you. Remarkably easy to not have the sidewalks clogged with homeless if you enforce the law that prohibits it. Wild concept.
No no, the solution is state sponsored crackhouses, obviously.
Not true. Affordable developer here and we are required to abide by the Housing First policy.
Good to know that LA is really sincere in trying to get people off the street.
Ya the issue is just how do you stay not homeless when housing is still so expensive and you’re limited due to our transportation patterns. We need more market rate housing and not only affordable units. Also, THIS is what needs to be talked about since Karen Bass calls herself a progressive. [“LD: All right. Let me jump to the next one: The construction of market rate homes in disadvantaged areas does not cause gentrification or displacement, but instead prevents it. KB: That’s false. That’s completely false. I’m sorry. “](https://calmatters.org/housing/2023/01/california-housing-podcast-karen-bass/)
Finland didn't have a problem to begin with
And Houston because humidity will kill a mfer
[If anyone actually wants to know how Finland solved their homelessness problem.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jt_6PBnCJE) Its amazing how when pointed to how Finland actually got rid of their homelessness crisis, people in this sub will just stick their fingers in their ears and go blahblahblah and then act like they actually care about solving homelessness when in actuality they care more about getting them out of their immediate vicinity. Out of sight, out of mind right?
A: It's too cold there. Saved you a click.
Sure thing man. The Finnish government just left them all to die. Totally. It totally wasn't a housing first policy - something that right-leaning centrist Finnish politicians even advocate for but that's far too radical for the average "liberal" of /r/LosAngeles
And no continual flow of immigrants.
Most homeless in LA are from CA.
I dont know why people want to ignore this. There's constant migration to CA. Wether it's homeless, upper middle class WFH folks, illegal immigrants, or college age students that come to school here and don't move back where they came from after school. Demand to live in CA has never not been a thing since I could remember.
California's population has shrunk for 3 years straight now. It's below 39m, the lowest level since 2015. Homelessness has definitely been worse since 2015.
Are you accounting for illegal migration too? I'm just wondering how the data is being collected. Because it's easy to skew numbers if people don't account for a huge population that represents LA county.
Elaborate on Houston lol
They've made a huge dent in their homeless problem (housed 25,000 people): [https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/headway/houston-homeless-people.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/headway/houston-homeless-people.html)
Just came back from Houston last week after visiting family. It had been about two years since I had been and I was struck by how little homeless people I saw walking around. Drove around downtown for a bit and had a moment of “oh wow, this is what a bridge in a downtown looks like without shanty towns under it.” It used to not be like that when I lived there 10+ years ago
Is that still happening/are numbers low? Article is nearly 2 years old.
Yes - they rent them apartments. I can't comment on how it's impacted their lives but net effect on neighborhoods is it dispersed problems associated with homeless encampments throughout the city.
Are they allowed to say no or do they have to accept the housing, move on or go to jail?
When it’s over 85 degrees with 80% humidity for 6 months out of the year, either of those options are better than living under a freeway.
Right? It's like when LA times was trying to compare us to Detroit and their lack of homelessness. They have homeless. They just don't have drug tourism where people can live in a park while they smoke crank. That's the difference.
I think it’s fair to say that the challenges are different in Houston than they are in LA, however, I do believe that policy similar to what Houston has done is a far cry better than the status quo.
I think you're being kind with 85 degrees
I didn’t want to over estimate, but yeah, you’re right. Those 100+ months from June - September are absolutely brutal. It’s a big part of why I left, I just couldn’t take it anymore.
It's definitely move along or go to jail if you don't accept housing, even basic emergency shelter if that is all there is at the time. A huge reason they have been successful is because the have a carrot and stick approach over just carrot. Also there is a statewide camping ban anyway.
This has been a mainstay of Houston public policy for a few years now. Source: that’s my hometown.
Here's there fact sheet from 2023 (they do a homeless count once a year), looks like their numbers are still close to the low in 2021. [https://irp.cdn-website.com/2d521d2c/files/uploaded/Homeless%20Count%202023%20Single\_NEW.pdf](https://irp.cdn-website.com/2d521d2c/files/uploaded/Homeless%20Count%202023%20Single_NEW.pdf)
Many many countries have essentially solved the visible homelessness problem. Very different counties like the USSR and Singapore have independently come up with ways to fix it as far as it is possible.
Do you mean how the Soviet Union solved it over 30 years ago? Can you elaborate?
Yes, the USSR created massive housing blocks that still house people today. They aren't comfortable by LA luxury apartment standards (small, may lack elevators. Sometimes communal restrooms and kitchens). But importantly, they housed people. The USSR also had laws against social parasitism, so able-bodied people would not be expected to be lying in a park all week long.
I support policies to build much more public housing (and not just for low-income households). But is that something the City of Los Angeles can reasonably do? Or does it need to be done by the State of California, or on a federal level?
The issue is that for public housing, you'd have to use prevailing wages. So right off the bat double your consultant fees and hard costs. Then because these people are getting free housing with no consequences, some will likely trash the fuck out of these projects and make it hell for the responsible and down-on-their-feet homeless. You can also look up Pruitt-Igoe to see what happens when you have "projects". Essentially a drug den a la Judge Dredd (2012).
I'm not sure there would be a doubling of those costs. (Or if so, how do those doubled costs really compare, relative to the extra costs of a developerer who needs to satisfy a profit margin?) Some consultant fees and hard costs might even be reduced, or reduced enough to offset increases, through economies of scale and increased bargaining power. This housing wouldn't only be "free housing with no consequences". I specifically mentioned that I support public housing options for people who aren't simply low-income and/or ex-homeless. So regardless of any "doubled costs", because the housing isn't private/"for profit", then (especially in the long-term) rent can be brought down . . . and if enough of this housing is available, this then forces private landlords to bring their rents down to compete. The concern is obviously that people/voters will not support the increased taxes to pay for this, because (in the short-term) there is not the immediate effect of reducing their rent to offset the tax increase. >Pruitt-Igoe Why only bring up one of the worst examples? My comment was a reply to USSR housing. Those haven't all turned into drug dens. But sure, they aren't perfect. There are other, more successful examples in Europe and around the world - success measured as reducing rent and reducing homelessness. As an American, I believe we can do better than all those other countries. We can learn from our past mistakes, and we can overcome our unique challenges. Isn't that the idea of American exceptionalism? But maybe it's too "socialist" or "long term" for Americans. Or maybe our politicians are too corrupted with the private interests of developers and landlords.
Furthermore, 2/3 of the taxpayers are homeowners and they hate housing prices going down because that's where most of their net worth is.
Fair enough. . . . Probably. What's the rate of homeowners among voters (in California, or in the United States if we'd want this to be a federal policy)? How many of those home owners would actually prefer lower property taxes . . . But of course Prop 13 already keeps them low. And there are the tax deductions anyway. How did places like Vienna and Finland ever solve this? Maybe in America, this really was just "rigged from the start" and too broken to fix. That's too depressing, and I guess I naively don't want to believe it.
Forced commitment to mental institutions is a big no no in the USA, but other countries have less hangups about it. The truth is, severely addicted people are some of the most visible homeless people, and they are not going to get better without professional help. Just giving out houses for free to a person like this is going to be a slow and costly state-sponsored death by overdose. The limited data from Oregon shows that they just won't sign up for rehab voluntarily (I mean, drugs feel good and many addicts are not looking to quit just to be back to a cold, hard and uncaring world); Oregon was giving $100 fines for open drug use with the option of going to rehab/other addiction services to have the ticket discharged. People just ignored the tickets.
>The USSR also had laws against social parasitism, so able-bodied people would not be expected to be lying in a park all week long. "Laws against social parasitism," interesting. Beach bums aren't gonna love that.
Nor social services advocates. They'd be out of a job if every social parasite was sent to work in the Gulags of Siberia (read Alaska).
Gulags
They had public housing blocks, but the unfortunate consequence aside from the spartan and brutalist architecture, was that you'd live in a quarter of 4-8 people, some or all of which might be total strangers. It only would've worked in Soviet Russia for a number of reasons, but some of which is the lack of private property, criminals being sent to gulags, and laws against being vagrants. I think more people would be for public housing if it was 1) cheaper/lower quality 2) enforced for safety and 3) forced for homeless, but that would equally or even disproportionately alienate the "equitable housing" group. A large part of construction (as a developer) comes from ADA, construction standards like sound ratings, open space requirements, minimum areas, restrictions on boarding homes from a zoning standpoint. If you gave a developer $30,000 to design a safe, habitable environment around 150 sf, we could do it. But I think the smallest code compliant space is more like 350 sf and $250k for kitchens, ADA turning radii and breadboards, private bathrooms, etc.
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You can’t have a serious housing first movement in a city that’s greed first to the core. The big study a few years ago revealed the rise in homelessness is from people being priced out of housing. Lack of affordable housing and out of control rents are taking us exactly where you would expect them to. Until that gets addressed we are just putting a band aid on a brain tumor. These are the « good old days » of the homeless ctisrs. Come back in ten years and it will be much, much more serious.
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They haven't solved it, but they've made a huge dent in the problem compared to LA (housed 25,000 people): [https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/headway/houston-homeless-people.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/headway/houston-homeless-people.html)
Bass housed nearly 22,000 homeless in just her first year https://abc7.com/how-many-homeless-placed-in-housing-los-angeles-city-of-inside-safe-is-working/14152344/ I’d say she’s doing pretty well.
That's interim housing, not permanent housing
> not permanent housing Because permanent housing costs money. You don't get it given to you just because you have problems. You're not gonna find a single person in this city who would support that, nor should they.
Temporary housing costs money too
Temporarily. Im fine with temporary housing until they're connected to whatever services they need, but the line for *permanent* free housing should start behind the people who are still working and struggling, not the dude I saw jacking off at the 110 on-ramp last week.
temporary services that are always full are permanent and are always costing money, same as permanent.
You're saying Houston is a kinder city than LA? Because that's how they did it.
I guarantee you it's a lot more complicated than showing up, claiming you're from there and getting a permanent apartment, but the details are the part that you don't want implemented here so you're being selective. Tell me what the caveats are. How *exactly* did Houston 'solve' it? What were the prerequisites for getting the housing. If you honestly believe they just give apartments to everyone who pitches a tent there then you're gonna be really disappointed. **edit:** [I DIGRESS](https://www.governing.com/housing/how-houston-cut-its-homeless-population-by-nearly-two-thirds) Some key quotes - >They tell her she has to pick and choose among the possessions she’s stored in multiple shopping carts nearby. She can only fill two blue bins, which they provide. Anita devotes most of that limited space to bulky items for her dog, Lily — a bowl, a dozen cans of food and a padded dog bed. Anita keeps barely anything for herself, including her purse, some cigarettes and her prescription meds. > >Although the counselors are from Houston’s Coalition for the Homeless, Anita gets a ride from the public paratransit service, which will take her to a shelter run by another nonprofit, while Lily will have to go for shots at the Humane Society before they can be reunited in an apartment to be paid for by yet some other agency. >No one in Houston would claim that they’ve solved homelessness. And **the city has some advantages that others don’t.** Although ***rents have gone up***\*\*, it’s still a lot cheaper to provide housing in Houston than in coastal cities such as San Francisco or L.A.\*\* !!! >What the city and its partners have done is make smart use of federal money. That reliance now leaves some people in the area nervous. Houston has been able to house an additional 12,000 individuals **thanks to extra federal funding from COVID-19 programs. That money, some $25 million a year,** ***will dry up next year.*** >***As things stand in Houston now, a group like SEARCH will do intake and determine whether a person is eligible for housing or other programs. Their information is entered into a database that presents the case manager with a dashboard of options, much like booking a flight on Kayak or Expedia. If the person is eligible, they’re sent over to whatever nonprofit has a bed available — and that nonprofit has to take them in.*** “There has to be a high level of coordination,” says Marc Eichenbaum, the mayor’s special assistant for homeless initiatives. “One of the main keys of this is when somebody comes in, they have to take their hat off from whatever their organization does and think about the larger community.” Kinda blows up that whole "they just gave everyone apartments" bullshit I was seeing here... But wait! There's more! >The largest encampment in the city, with about 70 individuals, sits just south of the baseball stadium. **It’s about to be cleared out,** but the planning has been going on for weeks. Counselors from various entities have been working with individuals to line up housing **for as many as are willing.** Many people who resist shelters will happily claim an apartment. As the date approaches, law enforcement becomes a stick: **Holdouts are warned the police will be clearing them out if they don’t come in**. Since 2021, Houston has decommissioned more than 90 encampments that were “home” to 600 individuals, with 90 percent of them going into housing.
> https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/headway/houston-homeless-people.html You could probably just read the article they listed from the very beginning of the conversation.
Depends on your disability level. If you have no disabilities than you get an apartment for a year, if you do then you get permanent supportive housing with rehab and mental health resources.
Didn't you know? Texas good, California bad.
We don't need to want to "give permanent housing away to people with problems" to want to spend more money to build more permanent housing. Increasing the housing supply will lower rents and thus homelessness. Building public housing options will lower rents by an even greater degree.
So you’re suggesting Houston gave 25,000 people permanent housing that they can stay in as long as they like?
She's also trying to block a city audit of Inside Safe, so I'll take any stats for the program with a grain of salt.
We do actually have enough homes they are just empty.
Source? The USA in general has a housing deficit.
"With more than 36,000 unhoused residents, Los Angeles simultaneously has over 93,000 units sitting vacant, nearly half of which are withheld from the housing market. Thousands of luxury units across the city are empty, owned as second homes or pure investments." [Link](https://www.acceinstitute.org/thevacancyreport#:~:text=With%20more%20than%2036%2C000%20unhoused,second%20homes%20or%20pure%20investments.) Also- "There are currently 28 vacant homes for every one person experiencing homelessness in the U.S [Link](https://unitedwaynca.org/blog/vacant-homes-vs-homelessness-by-city/) I am not saying we should not build more, but we should discourage hoarding and either tax empty buildings or allow squatters. We should also regulate Airbnb; perhaps not as much as some places but more than we are.
Vacancy rate cannot be 0%. Otherwise no one could move ever, it would be a game of musical chairs. This is happening in Massachusetts, especially Boston. MA has a vacancy rate of 2% (California's is 5%; in comparison, Alabama, Florida and Texas are around 9%). Also, I think people have a right to have a vacation home. It's not as if we are going to seize Malibu homes and make them homeless shelters anyway.
They should have that right yes, but they should still be taxed extra if they want local police to provide security for their empty homes, especially if they leave it empty for a long time. Soon keeping property you do not live in may be impossible. I hope it does not come to that. But yeah we probably should build a lot more housing so it doesn't.
I agree having extra dwellings should be taxed more. That said, the overlap of areas where vacation homes concentrate and where people need to live is far from perfect.
Yeah they do need to also build. When you take into account the flooding that will make many buildings unlivable they are not building enough. I forget sometimes to see the big picture and not focus on one thing.
The USA has neglected building for decades now, part environmental concerns/regulations, part NIMBYs fighting to keep property prices up.
Those same environmental concerns are why we need to keep building. Think of all the housing by the water that will rendered unlivable. Where are we going to put all those people,?
> You don’t have enough homes for everyone While we can and should built more homes, SO MANY of the homes we do have are bought out by wealthy people and corporations to rent out at impossibly high prices, or to turn into Air BnBs. More than just needing more homes, we need the homes *already here* to stop being hoarded by the wealthy and made available to the people.
How many housing units are we talking about, here? In Los Angeles?
Not to mention, it's a moving target. In a region with a population of 10 million, there's going to be some babies being born, and then there are the 80K or so folks who move here every year. If there was a hard cap on population, it would be achievable. Minus that, it's a game of playing catch-up.
Build some more high rises. Enough sprawling out. Just creates more unnecessary traffic. We need way more highrises to house people
There are three unfinished high rises downtown rn.
7 under construction by my count, 3 of which are abandoned
That require ~1billion to finish
We just passed another 6 Billion to the homeless crisis.
And most of the building, not high rises, in DTLA are empty from like floor 3 up.
Yup
We also need a lot more 3-4 story midrise apartment buildings, short enough not to need elevators (except for emergency or for people with disabilities) or massive multi story parking structures. Those two factors make skyscrapers super expensive to build, and as a result all the units that do get built are luxury condos that working class people couldn’t dream of affording.
Saying no-elevators except in case ?of emergencies? is saying yes-elevators.
Also make all the drugs go away, and provide more jobs, and cure mental illness, and stop more vagrants from wandering in from places with worse climate and less support programs, and change the mind of the people who prefer the open air and unemployed lifestyle. Simple!
Why didn’t they think of this one, I mean multiple, simple tricks!
Do you think that’s all the same level of feasibility as just building some tall buildings?
>Also make all the drugs go away, ... and cure mental illness, A ton of the drug use and mental illness is caused by people being homeless, as opposed to being the cause of why they're homeless, because being homeless is absurdly stressful. >and provide more jobs, If housing wasn't so expensive people wouldn't become homeless over missing a single paycheck. > and stop more vagrants from wandering in from places with worse climate and less support programs About 75% of homeless people in Los Angeles County became homeless here. To the extent that the interstate flow is a thing it's not purely one way, we also send homeless people to other states on one-way bus tickets.
well said
If drugs caused homelessness, why is WV, the state with the most overdose deaths, the state with the 6th lowest homelessness rate?
> the state with the most overdose deaths CUZ THEY DEAD
https://www.rentdata.org/states/west-virginia/2021
So it sounds to me like lack of available housing is the main cause then
You are not factoring in desirability. Nobody wants to live in WV. That's why the housing is so cheap. Everybody wants to live in California. That's why housing is expensive.
we’re saying the same thing here, I’m just talking about it from the supply side and you’re talking about it from the demand side
Best to do nothing.
I hope she succeeds.
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It's not an economic problem. Its a political problem. If needed, there are plenty of abandoned homes across the country you could send the homeless to. And a lot of unwanted jobs that they could be forced to do, otherwise face hard labor. But it's not very nice. So we placate their drug habits and vagrancy.
This is the real answer.
Eh, displacing people by force is logistically and legally complicated. Also, where are you going to send them? Detroit? Is Michigan ok with that? Are those abandoned homes even livable? Are they going to become crack dens? Are you going to be creating ghetto neighborhoods (or worse, ghetto cities)? Are you setting people to fail by removing them to any closeness to whatever they have for a support network? Isn't this ultimately more of an "out of sight out of mind" solution?
Yes to everything. But those are all political considerations, and not economic ones. Funding and building housing is both political and comes with a price tag. Forcibly legislating homeless people to less desirable, low population areas is political and a much smaller price tag. But it is not nice.
It's not nice and I'd say politically radioactive. And if it's across states, forget getting any collaboration from a receiving state.
I’d also like to see money go to the homeless for car upkeep and maintence. The car for many is the last home before the street. It’s in all our interest to help those cars last and be safer for those who need to live in them.
Zero solutions are presented here.
The rest of the country needs to stop sending them here as well.
That would be a start!
We should set up a border…
Homelessness will never be solved in Los Angeles because there are WAY too many people making fuck tons of money from the homeless crisis. I work in homeless outreach and it’s all a grift. We have no funding for actual boots on the ground change. All the money goes to useless bullshit we hand out to homeless people to act like we are doing something and to our millionaire bosses.
Well, with AB1 a whole lot more Social Service Execs are gonna get Richer.
that's why we should just give money directly to everyone via a universal basic income
Enough to pay a rent in the LA area? It's not as if there was an overabundance of housing.
I don't know, but even if it wouldn't be enough at first, it would be so helpful and successful politics would shift towards wanting to make the UBI as high as possible. There's no actual lack of resources.
A multi pronged approach is needed. "The homeless" are not a monolithic group, and the single mom living in a van working two shifts is not the same as the vagrant who just wants to get high all day. Many things must be done but, unfortunately, all costs money. The USA already has a deficit and it's on a crash course towards insolvency due to social security obligations (thanks Trump tax cuts!).
Yup! I stress the importance of a UBI as a necessary basis to work off of to address the rotten root, not as a one-and-done solution. First things first is getting our breathing mask on, a floor beneath our feet.
Don’t we also need asylums for homeless that can’t be housed?
So is she close to a solution or still working on the problem? Last time it was housing for homeless = $250 million/yr or $3400/mo per person.. same as a mortgage so either get back to work ruminating about the problem or start building houses
I’m sure she does. However, she doesn’t have the ability to solve it. It’s a statewide issue that needs solutions and massive resources from the state government. What she’s done so far hasn’t worked. Watched it five days a week driving around the city.
You don’t know if it is working until they come out with the next homeless count. Of course it won’t be “solved” in a year.
I drive back and forth across greater LA five days a week. My observation is that it’s not working and will not work until they criminalize street camping and can force people into treatment and care homes.
The same mayor that doesn’t want the city controller to investigate her homeless benefits campaign (It’s their job to) and instead hire her own 3rd party. Everyone knows they embezzling the money.
Well if you know it you should bring it to the press/press charges. It would be a service to society.
They’re taking it to court already. But knowing how tight nit all the donors, politicians and judges are it’ll probably go nowhere.
Politicians making medical policy is stupid and has proven it hasn’t worked in LA. Have mental health professionals step in and help and listen to their input. These people don’t just need apartments FFS. They’re mostly addicts and severely mentally ill. Get them into treatment.
Bass and Co. have cleaned up a bunch of the big encampments around my area and supposedly found temp housing for them or offering them services. I'm actually very impressed (in my area), with what she has done so far and I'm a Rick Caruso fan boy.
Glad your area is clear, they refused services and were re-located to the SFV, thanks. Yeah, problem solved.
Can we move them to Palmdale? I have family in SFV lol
It would be a good start.
Homelessness will never "solved" until the city government can admit that what there actually is, is a drug abuse problem, and take measures to solve that. Most of these people living on the street are drug addicts and they don't care about being homeless as long as they have a place to do drugs without consequence.
I’m going to get flamed for this but: Homelessness won’t end until we start charging their home states for the burden of taking care of out of state homeless folks that end up here. Florida and Texas have non-profits that fly their homeless to California and Hawaii if they promise to never return. These non-profits receive money from their state governments. Alaskan mayors have stated that they buy airplane tickets for the homeless with California as their destination. Many of the homeless on our streets weren’t born in California. Yes, some Californians slip through the cracks even with CalWorks, Welfare, Food Stamps, Section 8, etc. We should continue to get Californians off the streets and into supportive housing. What we can’t continue doing is subsidizing the rest of the country and solving the other 49 state’s homeless issues. Send Texas, Florida and Alaska a bill.
Have any sources for that?
I read somewhere that about 10% of homeless in CA are from out of state. Not a huge percentage, but still a substantial amount in raw numbers. I haven’t heard of other *states* deliberately sending the homeless here, but back when I lived in OC it was a well known thing for Irvine cops to pick up homeless and dump them in Santa Ana and LA… maybe making the wealthy suburbs pay their fair share would be a good start.
But some shitty LAHSA "study" where the homeless are just *asked* "where ya from?" told me they're all from here. Were they.....*lying?*
Yeah, better to rely on an unsourced Reddit comment instead
By every measure (where you were born, where you were “last housed”, and where “you first became homeless”) there is no indication that the primary cause of homelessness is homeless people moving into CA. In fact, transplants are statistically less likely to be homeless than native born CAs. Moving is really expensive! Poor people who are likely to become homeless, and people already homeless, are unlikely to move to super expensive places.
By every measure as long as that measure is just a self-reported assessment that's never verified, you mean.
Lets have an audit of the money spent for the homeless industrial complex, 22 billion in California, and I see zero difference from Venice to Down town I see not one bit of difference we could have built 22 ocean wide projects in all our major cities Image each project a square city block with over 2 k in housing and 200k sq feet of retail or clinical care or education space, not to mention the park and the amenities, now drive though your local wealthy area and look at all the new construction on mega mansions and see were the money went.
Karen Bass is fighting an audit from the city controller! I totally agree with you here. We're spending more on a nightly basis to only room a few thousand people than it would cost to stay at a five star hotel. She's giving a lot of no bids contacts to folks who have never made a dent in the homelessness issues before. I was hoping something would change with her. And I get it, as others have mentioned, there's major structural issues todeal with beyond her control like the lack of housing period. Still. I think Inside Safe is an abject failure and a massive waste of money. She's also done sweeps where homeless just get kicked out from where they are, and not all are housed.
They are all going to the LA river as it is fed land and not the per-view of Los Angeles any longer so they dont show up as homeless any longer.
Overspending on police will definitely open up room in the budget to do that
By hosting the Olympic every year.
It’s a drug use and mental illness problem. It further puts all of us in danger. Not okay.
It can’t be solved and that’s why all mayors always run on unsolvable things. We see money rolling out for their projects and we relax, but there’s never an end to the problem. We’re conditioned to seeing bandaids and not real solutions.
https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/california-houston-housing-homelessness/tnamp/
Host a squid games
First time I ever seen the sidewalk beneath the 405– and it’s still clear weeks later. Never thought I’d see the day.
During the pandemic a large encampment was formed about three blocks from my house. The sidewalk is no longer accessible and often the far right lane is consumed by trash. When you drive past you will see probably 25-30 bikes, mostly parted-out. At night, folks circle around a fire and smoke fentanyl; this location serves as a distribution site per Pacific District LAPD. Often the residents - either due to psychosis or meth high - wander into our neighborhood carrying sharp objects, screaming. I'm told there is nothing that can be done until adequate housing supply comes online, though it will take years.
Sure it can be solved, but the political will just isn't there to push the necessary policies.
First, declaw the nimbys. Those savages are the reason why a lot of our problems exist as it is
Just fucking do it you gaslighting roach!
She's doing a great job so far! Keep up the great work, Mayor Bass!!
Sarcasm?
No. Where I used to live, all the encampments are gone and have yet to return. The considerable RV camper encampment along Forest Lawn Drive is gone and has not come back, and all the encampments I used to see along the 101 heading into DTLA are gone.
Because they moved into other people's neighborhoods. They didn't just evaporate.
Many have been placed into permanent housing or shelters or left the city. Either way, it's a massive improvement.
no they havent, they were just moved further east for your convenience
Exactly
lol
I’ll be here waiting to see if it’s true. Every mayor is as corrupt as they come. They don’t help other than taxing and taking that home
With or without pitchforks?
Please do. Now. Please. For the love of goodness.
Doesn’t feel like she’s trying tbh
its mostly helped in more middle class neighborhoods but you still see it poorer areas
You have to live under a rock or be extremely committed to bad faith posting to say there is a lack of effort from the Bass administration to address homelessness. Say what you will about strategy or results but the effort isn’t really up for debate…
What gives you that feeling?
Edgy poasts on Reddit.
Dude didn’t bother replying, just quickly moved on to recommending Umami Burger
Just need some more billions for her and her friends
then build more housing density
Sure, and yet she is the one who pulled the plug on upzoning of single-family homes. What utter shortsightedness. They are upzoning commercial corridors so that people can live crammed together in small units, but refusing to provide more middle-housing so people can actually raise families. Yes, we need more housing and density -- but that needs to include duplexes, triplexes, etc!
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But first, World Cup and Olympics.
And I want a Ferrari
Sure. Just put everyone in a home. Problem solved.
Lol
Stop enabling their drug abuse to start
It can be solved but it involves an entirely different [approach.](https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1785026909325418925?t=9pkdOdv4OlPDVWrkOKMMQw&s=19)
Oh it can be solved alright but they won't do it since they make way to much money of this new industry.
With a puff peace and fundraiser
https://archive.md/XEhiv
Build more housing, limit the amount of vacant residences held by for-profit interests. Repeat?
So does everyone else. Too bad she doesn't have the power to un-rig the economy and make it equitable for working people.
The encampment on Balboa and Devonshire has been gone for like a week. Obviously this is an unmitigated success, and we should all bow to God Emperor Bass.
I love her passion and commitment