Originally published at: An update on homelessness in Venice Beach, CA | Boing Boing
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I can only take a few minutes of his videos. It kicks in my PTSD, memories of being homeless, even though it has been many years, the wound is still fresh.
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I really wish more people would call this what it is… thanks for that.
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I’ve noticed actual shanty towns developing locally - people living in parks have started building semi-permanent structures from construction materials. (Previously it was just people living in tents and vehicles.) We’re going to have full-on favelas at some point soon. The US really is still partially a “developing nation,” it’s just unevenly distributed.
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Here in Austin they’ve cracked down on where homeless folks can set up at and how long they can stay in a particular place. At a glace they aren’t as clustered all in one place like how they were last year but i feel like the problem hasn’t been addressed, it’s a bandaid fix that obfuscates how serious the problem remains. I don’t notice them as easily now but if i’m driving and paying attention i can definitely spot folks camped out in more locations across town
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There was a time when American governments regarded shanty towns and Hoovervilles and such as expressions of a severely dysfunctional system, the core assumptions of which needed to be addressed and challenged. Now they’re just seen as unfortunate “externalities” of a system to which (per Thatcher) “there is no alternative”.
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Many still do, it’s just that it’s kind of evenly split between people who view it as failing the citizens suffering from homelessness and those viewing it as failing the elites who are upset at having to see the outcome of their small-minded selfishness in supporting trickle-down economics.
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The two warring parties that keep actual help for the spectrum of people who need it at bay in west Los Angeles are the “We have special rights because we pay property tax” folks and the “It’s the people’s land, everyone can camp everywhere and anything else is incarceration” advocates
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Mike seemed cool.
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Also due to prop 13 many of them pay negligible property taxes which is itself part of the reason why there aren’t resources to help those who need it.
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Always remember: the homeless do not cause homelessness.
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transients have always built shelters wherever they could get away with it
they’re more visible now because it’s currently unfashionable to have the cops bust them down and haul them away as soon as they appear
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Something I noticed is that previously, there were “soft” shelters - tents, igloos made of piles of trash that accumulated over time… Now it’s shelters springing up made of serious construction materials, taking up more and more area in certain park spaces (that previously had smaller, “softer” homeless encampments).
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