Homelessness has killed five times as many Angelenos as murder

Originally published at: Homelessness has killed five times as many Angelenos as murder | Boing Boing

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If you just drove through LA once in your life & never even stopped to get out, you’d likely agree with the this.

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The tent encampments I still saw three months ago are slowly being removed (e.g. Venice Beach) or re-located (e.g. the West L.A. veteran’s camp, which was moved fully into the military cemetery). Tiny house villages are helping as well but as the article indicates it’s still a massive problem.

At the moment the homeless trend you see on the streets of the city are lots of RVs. The city is already going after them, so the next step will likely be a much less glamorous version of “vanlife”.

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So, more cops?

Yep, more cops. Seems like they have their priorities all sorted.

/s

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When your only solution to homelessness is cruelty, you end up spending all your money on professionally cruel people.

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The really shitty thing is they have shown they CAN get folks who want the help into housing – but they don’t put the effort in very often. You need a big event where tourism dollars will be hurt to get any action. Even though constant complaining has made the action less oppressive and more focused on actual SHORT TERM help, it mostly amounts to shuffling people around temporarily making blighted areas clean for a few weeks.

The boardwalk is immensely improved and the longterm shanties/Hooverville is gone, but new people show up every day and the system is broken.

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We’ve shown, multiple times around the world that the way to reduce homelessness is giving people housing first, then working to solve their other problems.

All the moralizing solutions implemented and proposed just don’t work.

Shuffling people doesn’t work. Making benefits contingent on sobriety and jobseeking behavior doesn’t work.

What works is reducing people’s stress enough to stop having to think about their immediate survival. Once that pressure is off, people very often start taking care of themselves. It works. Just look at Salt Lake City.

The way to get rid of homeless people is to house them.

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Quick! HIRE MOAR COPS!!! /s

coca cola coke GIF by The Coca-Cola Company

Pop Tv Yes GIF by Schitt's Creek

I was disappointed with the ATL mayoral race as the “crime problem” overshadowed the housing crisis… It’s not as bad as LA here, but that’s our future, in all major cities.

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Well, again, social support programs.

Housing first, then programs to help people with addiction issues, mental health issues, and jobs. But then you’d have to spend money helping those people, and not hiring cops to shoot them or buying military gear, so why?

(again, not putting a fucking /s because this is, to some degree, how many actual voting people actually think)

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The most important thing to remember is that the homeless didn’t cause homelessness.

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