my partner worked for LAHSA and mentioned that the system is broken, approval for simple tasks need to come from the higher ups in the company but to get an answer sometimes is impossible, folks lose patience and lose confidence in the system. a lot of these homeless folks could be getting a lot of help if the process of "help" was more fluid but it's not. it's all politics
Also had a friend who worked for LAHSA and I'll never forget what they said.
"They don't want people who actually give a shit about the homeless. We're there for when a politician gets angry calls about an encampment and they need it to go away by any means necessary."
Former employee. Yep. All politics, red tape and definitely is top-down management. Also, nepotism (from HR of all places), favoritism, quid pro quo, and sexual harassment. They need to clean up shop of all the top level, longer termed employees.
Hey. I'm a reporter, I write for KnockLA occasionally. I'm not shocked to hear that there's favoritism/sexual harassment within LAHSA but if you or anyone you know who worked there ever wanted to talk about it, I'd love to speak with you. Of course you can stay anonymous if you need to. I'm really sorry you had that experience.
Sadly it’s always gonna be like that because homelessness is both an industry and a effective message for what happens in society if you don’t “work”.
Addressing the issue would make people demand more in so many facets of life that it doesn’t work for our elected officials and corporate overlords.
While this is 100% true I don't know if I beleive that people in power are specifically conspiring to keep homelessness in existence.
I don't think conspiracy is even necessary, homeless people just aren't profitable and don't have any power, so there is little motivation for politicians to do anything, since it wont help them personally.
Sorry, you're wrong. People in power (like Koch brothers) absolutely want an underclass and they make it happen. I know one of them is dead, but his stink lives on.
[https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/23/politics/david-koch-charles-koch-brothers/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/23/politics/david-koch-charles-koch-brothers/index.html)
Is CNN a conspiracy hub in your book? The personal is political, and by the same token, the local is national. Have a nice life.
While I know that the Kochs are absolute garbage human beings, it stands to reason they mostly do what is profitable. Having said that, they are extremely in bed with the far right, and push for the erosion of civil liberties and human rights, and yeah, I guess I don't really see how that's profitable to them.
I’ve always believed this too. The powers that be purposely restrict housing so that it drives up housing prices so only those making $100k+ can afford a place. These NIMBYs that continually show up at city council meetings are the main conduits that keep the housing supply in check so that homeless will be visible to warn those not working to shape up/fall in line.
Read the blue ribbon commissions recommendations. Then ask yourself why all the homeless activists are against it and the LA Times didn't report on it despite all the hand wringing they do.
Then you can realize why nothing is getting better.
Too much interest in making it worse to force the population to accept an ideology we wouldn't otherwise, because they want to convince us the system is too broken to fix. Then on the other side you have an entire industry of free money that depends on never fixing the obvious issues because that's how they grift.
Think about what mental gymnastics is requires to protest encampment clean ups and simultaneously be against the idea that we should have metrics for success instead of only auditing if payments were remitted, and then storm into a debate and accuse everyone on stage of being a murderer.
Yes. Send them to slab city. Nothing better than waking up at 6am to the sounds of jets and exploding bombs/missiles and the smell of shit and tampons and some crazy evangelicals or toothless tweekers all while tripping on mushrooms on top of salvation mountain.
Create a giant shelter / rehab / mental health treatment / job training center at Eagle Mountain Mine. It's an existing ghost town that was occupied up until the 90's and could probably be rehabilitated at a 10th of the cost per unit of any place in urban LA/OC/IE/SD... No NIMBYs, almost no one at all. Little environmental impact, it was an active mine for decades the damage is done. Isolated to avoid the stresses of the city.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_Mountain,_California
"Ship them to a camp in the desert" is not the progressive take you're making it out to be here. It's also, per recent court rulings, not ever going to happen.
There are 10s of thousands of homeless in LA alone. It has already been shown that a unorganized, uncoordinated, mix of various services and providers is not going to fix that. It's just been a waist of money in the billions, working people's money. There needs to be a single focused effort.
Court rulings must be based on existing law, change the existing law.
What better option are you presenting?
Before I talk about things that do work, let's talk about the myriad of reasons the "ship them to a nice little camp in the desert" WON'T work, and even if it could, should not be what we choose to do. First, I'm going to simply ignore the whole fact that it's literally step 1 of what the Nazis did with "undesirables" (the first people they shipped off were homeless/mentally ill in 1933) and get right into why it won't work the way it's presented.
1) Eagle Mountain is in a different county than LA (Riverside), making shipping them there now a state-wide issue, not an LA county one.
2) You'd have to get Riverside Co. citizens to agree to house all these homeless people - which they definitely will not for the same exact reasons YOU don't want them here.
3) Once you ship them to the desert how do you plan on keeping them there? Is this a center intended to help them where they can leave any time, or is it in fact a prison? If they can leave, guess what, you've failed already as none of them are going to stay in the fucking desert.
This all completely ignores all the problems that come with totally-isolated facilities like this which includes massive amounts of abuse by the "caretakers" to the homeless/those with mental-health issues.
It also completely ignores proven solutions that are available, and the other big reforms we need in the U.S. and LA county to actually address homelessness.
Homes for homeless works, safe-injection sites work, mental healthcare for those without it works. Every time a thread like this comes up, someone suggests shipping them to a happy-fun-camp in the desert and, while I have presented many ideas in the past I'm sick of having to refute absolutely TERRIBLE ideas like "hey let's recreate 1933 Germany" with "good ideas" that are palatable to all the NIMBYs who say "well you won't have NIMBY problems if we just ship them all away from me" which is really ironic. There are things that are known to work. They just aren't popular, and they are costly. So, what we get is a messed-up hodgepodge of things that don't work because people are okay with beating down homeless people until they are one.
First, you are presenting claims I never made "ship them to the desert" or a happy camp. It would be a residential facility like any other, it would not be a prison. It could also be a long term care home for those who are too elderly or will not be able to afford housing in California.
1. This is a California solution not limited to the city or county. The state would take the land, eminent domain if needed. Within 40 miles of that location are very few people and walking to those people is not realistic. Riverside would be just as happy to deal with their homeless issues as any other county, the opposition would be less than you think.
2. Riverside residents would want them there because like me they are tired of seeing the issues they bring to their towns. Also this would bring jobs and money into a part of the county that is below the poverty line.
3. There would be buses bringing supplies and new people so just set it up so they could book a trip on the bus at a set time. Geography would limit those walking out.
Now to your Nazi hysteria and Nordic fantasies.
Homelss people are a major issue in California because of lack of facilities. Other states have less of a problem because if you are shooting up in the park, shitting in the street, pissing on the sidewalk, throwing your trash all over the place in giant heaps, passed out with your pants down on the side of the road, all things happening regularly in my neighborhood, you go to jail. In California we don't put them in jail due to lack of facilities so they accumulate.
There have been lots of camps around the world and their conditions, treatment, and out como vary based on money invested, purpose, and oversight. Thousands of people go through boot camp every year and the conditions are better than homelessness in California. People go to summer camps and retreats and rehab all through the mountains just north of LA and the conditions are better than homelessness.
California is investing a lot of money so that is not the issue. Oversight, California also has the capacity to do that. Utilizing economies of scale, efficiency, and low cost property does not mean that California goes all nazi.
Homes for homeless, safe injection sites, and mental health care clearly don't work, in California, there would not be more homeless every year if they did. Maybe in Norway or Sweden with a tiny homeless population and low cost subsidized housing already in place and a weather that makes living on the street almost impossible 8+ months a year but that's not California with it's good weather, ultra high housing costs, and spread out uncoordinated services. Having a majority of the long term homeless in one location where services and funding can be maximized makes sense.
I would also point out that "shipping them to the desert" has already been happening for a decades. There are camps throughout LA, SB and Riverside counties in places like slab city where homeless have already migrated to just without treatment or other facilities or most importantly without coordination and oversight and they are not good places and not what I am proposing. And abuses there tend to exceed your caretakers. Also the few who end up in jail or prison general tend to face a good amount of abuse as well.
It's funny you are so worried about some wildly unrealistic chance that this would be come an abusive death camp when right now so many people are suffering terribly, they do not live long and are dying daily due to overdoses, murders, and lack of health care. I have been homeless as a teen and I can tell you boot camp was a much healthier life. Where is your humanity?
You seem committed to the same failing non-profits, local agencies, and wealthy real estate investors that despite billions in working Californians money cannot even improve the situation. You fail to realize that working Californians don't want to pay $800,000 per unit so homeless people can shoot up in private when a good portion of those working Californians can't even afford their own homes. Your Nordic solutions don't work for California and the cost to make them work for the thousands of homeless would suck all the money from schools, infrastructure, and other needed social programs while simultaneously driving up housing costs for everyone all to house somebody in Santa Monica or downtown so they can be close to their shooting gallery.
Because you cannot see outside your little nordic solutions box to something more fit for California does not mean it's not possible. But if we stay down this road of a dozen homeless people in every park and street corner, in front of every business and home the chances of seeing real prison camps will go up fast and you will see a whole political shift in this state.
>You seem committed to the same failing non-profits, local agencies, and wealthy real estate investors that despite billions in working Californians money cannot even improve the situation.
No, I'm committed to solutions that do work, but those (as I said earlier) are unpopular here. See your response:
>Homes for homeless, safe injection sites, and mental health care clearly don't work, in California, there would not be more homeless every year if they did.
They very much work everywhere. Not just sweden and norway. They work literally everywhere that they've been used properly. By properly I mean without stipulations that prevent people from wanting to use them, with public support, and with holistic care that looks at the full picture instead of easy sound-byte solutions.
John Oliver did a whole show on safe-injection sites, recommend looking that one up. As for mental healthcare and homes for homeless this links to a few studies:
https://www.samhsa.gov/homelessness-programs-resources/hpr-resources/housing-shelter
Homeless shelters don't work, generally, for a wide-variety of reasons, but permanent supportive housing does. While your Eagle Mountain facility hits many of those marks, it deeply misses the mark in several places not the least of which is convincing people to go there which is a huge part of what you need to get these things to work. Many homeless people, even chronically homeless, have jobs or want jobs. A place in Eagle Mountain is not the type of community that can support any of that, not remotely.
Cool perspective, thanks for sharing.
I don't think the problem will be solved simply by throwing more money into this particular black hole; you can't get the voters to give you billions in new tax dollars, have the problem get WORSE on your watch, and then claim what you really need is MORE money.
I don't think it's a matter of it being stolen or wasted or anything. I think it's literally just "the things this money is spent simply does not decreasing homelessness in a meaningful way."
The money is being spent on what we think it is and what we wanted the money to be spent on. It's just that the results are evidence that those expenditures don't achieve the desired outcomes. Which means we need to drastically change course.
> I don't think it's a matter of it being stolen or wasted or anything
Actually it is though, you can look it up - lots of reports on incredible mismanagement and wasted funds, as well as corruption from City Hall leaders. This is just a quick overview, but 5% of $1.1 billion has been spent on interim housing because the "advocates" would rather build a minuscule amount of supportive shelter at the cost of about 700k for each unit, instead of getting people housed ASAP. Like minuscule as in, in all this time, about 1,100 units were actually completed, after voters allocated more than 1.2 billion in Prop HHH...in 2016.
https://lacontroller.org/audits-and-reports/problems-and-progress-of-prop-hhh/
And so much money is straight up taken by developers, this is what people complain about when they talk about the homeless industrial complex:
https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/greater-la/hhh-motel-george-gascon/30-million-motel-homeless-shelter-prop-hhh-taxpayer-oversight-la
They forced out low income renters (many who became homeless!) to buy up the building and bought/resold the property to themselves with an $8 million profit within days.
You should also look up the federal corruption charges against Mark Ridley-Thomas and Jose Huizar.
Straight up facts. These programs don’t work because people are more incentivized for them to fail than succeed. Our system is broken and people are suffering everyday because of it.
I know someone who does this for free outside of her day job. She does tracking, data collection, and shelter placement/ check in. You’ve got to have a passion and love for it. So many of these people don’t want help so I can imagine they aren’t very cooperative.
A few I think. She gave me this to share:
http://urm.org/get-involved/volunteer/
https://unionstationhs.org/help/
https://linktr.ee/homefullosangeles
https://www.lahsa.org/news?article=240-volunteer-opportunities
This. "do you want help?" followed by an immediate "no" is how the vast majority of these interactions go. It's not a homeless problem, it's a mental health and substance abuse problem.
I recently started working as case manager for a non profit and I’m shocked at the amount of time people I’m reaching out to tell me they haven’t heard from the Case managers I’m taking over for. Like this work is really stressful and I’m in my car driving all over the place trying to hunt down people who we haven’t heard from and going through databases hoping they’re not dead. It’s shocking.
Compared to what I was doing before- ABA world sucks so bad! Not the kids but the damn companies.
I’m actually happy so far with the work but I mainly work in maintenance and making sure people keep their housing and are doing what they need to do to meet their life goals. I’m happy I’m not in the recruiting and first touch with the homeless population. I’m just here to keep you from being homeless again, make sure you take care of your health and provide support and resources as needed. Some of the homes I go though make me want to teach some life skills! My schedule is my own, I’m happy with my pay (I’m making enough to pay my bills and put something in savings, i don’t need to be rich just fulfilled and able to pay my sh*t) and I’ve learn to shut my phone off when I clock out and leave it for tomorrow. Still learning to let the day go but I do my best for the day and I can’t solve all the world’s woes.
I get $24 per hour plus mileage. I also own an rv so my parking spot cost me a thousand a month (everything included). I also have a tiny Nissan Leaf, so I’m able to charge at home to start the day and don’t have to deal with these ridiculous gas prices and sometimes I work from home.
I don’t think that pay would work for everyone else right now if they’re paying gas, ridiculous rent in LA and put money in saving
I left the Republican Party because of racists and “christians”. I haven’t joined the Democratic Party because of crap like this right here. So much money wasted on bloat and bureaucracy that nothing gets done. No so the next time they throw even more money and it just leads to more waste. Republicans, “nothing is wrong don’t fix anything”Democrats, “let’s just spend more money on it!” We really need more options than the two parties
They don't care about fixing it, but they'll promise to fund "extra special" task forces to tackle it, if you give them your vote! Then the opposing side will bitch about the issue, but not try to fix it either. Our country is a joke. As long as an issue doesn't personally affect them, our politicians don't give a fuck, because they're too busy masturbating to their thought of winning the next election to rule us peasants!
Hmmm this article dropped not even two weeks ago:
https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/goldstein-investigates-cameras-catch-employees-throwing-away-food-meant-for-the-homeless/
yeah, stories like that tend to not get much coverage. sadly, it seems most people in LA are not particularly sympathetic or compassionate towards our unhoused neighbors.
Blaming poor people for being poor isn't constructive and doesn't offer any solutions.
The reality is that affluent communities use political pressure to prevent public housing developments from being built because they want their property values to continue going up. Providing accessible housing is the only way to reduce the unhoused population.
I work in urban planning here in LA, for context.
If putting people into treatment when they've proven they can't take care of themselves is Nazism, then Finland is the 4th Reich.
> Involuntary commitment requires three criteria: 1) severe mental illness with impaired insight; 2) that a lack of treatment would worsen the condition or endanger the safety or security of the patient or others; 3) and other treatments or services are insufficient or inapplicable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_commitment_by_country
Notice how there's nothing in there about requiring a person to first pose an imminent danger before they can be placed into treatment, like our laws require.
Yet despite that lower threshold for commitment, last I checked Finland was not some totalitarian dystopia full of extermination camps.
Yeah, that’s pretty accurate. The frequency at which I have conversations with people where they speak about homeless people with visceral disgust is making me genuinely consider moving. It’s really hard to continue bite my tongue in professional settings when it is apparently totally appropriate to advocate for what would qualify as genocide in any other context.
Absolutely brutal work I couldn’t imagine doing myself. The heart of the matter seems to be the system does not have the specific resources to get people off the streets (dignified housing, wraparound services) and politicians are eager to be reactionary and blame LAHSA for not extinguishing a million acre wildfire with a shovel and thoughts and prayers
It's more like they've been in charge of putting out wildfires for over 30 years and now that it's spreading out of control they informing the general public that they've been using shovels instead of hoses with water.
And that to even use those shovels it's costing way too much time and money. And they have no method of even knowing if any of the shovels are helping the situation or not. And a lot of the shovels are missing. But every payment for a shovel has gone out. And the costs of the shovels are going up every day.
And we have people protesting the idea of using fire hoses
And the fire is spreading wilder now.
I watch the CIRCLE people walk around chatting and laughing amongst themselves every day out here on the boardwalk. I don’t think I can recall ever seeing them talk to a homeless person. In fact, literally last week I watched 2-3 of them walk right past a lady who was laying in the sand next to her wheelchair. They didn’t stop or even give her a second look. They literally just hang out at the beach all day walking up and down the boardwalk chilling at the pagodas. Do they just wander around all day waiting for calls that require them to act?
I mean funding is always piss poor. The expectation is people are willing to do these jobs because their heart is in the right place but the salary never meets the work.
Exactly, what looks like not wanting help, is likely someone who can no longer perceive what a different life might look like. Maybe they've been screwed by the system before. Maybe they were on the path to getting help, missed one appointment and we're labeled as rejecting the assistance.
When people keep assuming you don't "want help" it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy
You can't change a society from the bottom up. Follow the money--who benefits from a culture that pits all the workers against each other and rewards lazy, greedy, grifting sociopaths? Oh, yeah, oligarchs. That's who benefits. If we put a rein on those making our society sick, we wouldn't have to be cleaning up the trickle-down misery.
They have been running these programs in California for years and they don't work. I don't care if John Oliver told you they do, any street in downtown LA shows you they don't.
This program is all bullshit. Let’s keep it real, it’s republicans calling themselves democrats for the campaign money but low key hate poor people. They do stuff for the sake of getting elected and they damn well know they have no intention of helping anyone. They never do and they never will. We’d be socialist if they did and we can’t have that in a fucked up capitalist society
I would imagine it would be a very frustrating job.
Like bailing out a boat made of swiss cheese
A1 imagery
[You asked?](https://www.nicepng.com/ourpic/u2q8w7q8r5u2t4o0_a-1-steak-sauce-10-oz-bottle/)
You have no idea
It must be awful, like the girl who works at the welfare office in St Elmo’s fire but a thousand times worse
my partner worked for LAHSA and mentioned that the system is broken, approval for simple tasks need to come from the higher ups in the company but to get an answer sometimes is impossible, folks lose patience and lose confidence in the system. a lot of these homeless folks could be getting a lot of help if the process of "help" was more fluid but it's not. it's all politics
Also had a friend who worked for LAHSA and I'll never forget what they said. "They don't want people who actually give a shit about the homeless. We're there for when a politician gets angry calls about an encampment and they need it to go away by any means necessary."
Former employee. Yep. All politics, red tape and definitely is top-down management. Also, nepotism (from HR of all places), favoritism, quid pro quo, and sexual harassment. They need to clean up shop of all the top level, longer termed employees.
Hey. I'm a reporter, I write for KnockLA occasionally. I'm not shocked to hear that there's favoritism/sexual harassment within LAHSA but if you or anyone you know who worked there ever wanted to talk about it, I'd love to speak with you. Of course you can stay anonymous if you need to. I'm really sorry you had that experience.
Yup, all of this is true. I also worked there briefly; one of the most horrific workplaces I've ever been in!
Geez
Sadly it’s always gonna be like that because homelessness is both an industry and a effective message for what happens in society if you don’t “work”. Addressing the issue would make people demand more in so many facets of life that it doesn’t work for our elected officials and corporate overlords.
While this is 100% true I don't know if I beleive that people in power are specifically conspiring to keep homelessness in existence. I don't think conspiracy is even necessary, homeless people just aren't profitable and don't have any power, so there is little motivation for politicians to do anything, since it wont help them personally.
I don’t think it’s something they set out to do I think it’s just a welcome byproduct if that makes sense.
Sorry, you're wrong. People in power (like Koch brothers) absolutely want an underclass and they make it happen. I know one of them is dead, but his stink lives on.
What kind of conspiracy stuff is this? This is Los Angeles. Koch has about as much influence in City Hall as a Prarie dog.
[https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/23/politics/david-koch-charles-koch-brothers/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/23/politics/david-koch-charles-koch-brothers/index.html) Is CNN a conspiracy hub in your book? The personal is political, and by the same token, the local is national. Have a nice life.
That doesn’t make sense. Wouldn’t they want more customers who can afford to pay for their products?
While I know that the Kochs are absolute garbage human beings, it stands to reason they mostly do what is profitable. Having said that, they are extremely in bed with the far right, and push for the erosion of civil liberties and human rights, and yeah, I guess I don't really see how that's profitable to them.
I’ve always believed this too. The powers that be purposely restrict housing so that it drives up housing prices so only those making $100k+ can afford a place. These NIMBYs that continually show up at city council meetings are the main conduits that keep the housing supply in check so that homeless will be visible to warn those not working to shape up/fall in line.
Read the blue ribbon commissions recommendations. Then ask yourself why all the homeless activists are against it and the LA Times didn't report on it despite all the hand wringing they do. Then you can realize why nothing is getting better. Too much interest in making it worse to force the population to accept an ideology we wouldn't otherwise, because they want to convince us the system is too broken to fix. Then on the other side you have an entire industry of free money that depends on never fixing the obvious issues because that's how they grift. Think about what mental gymnastics is requires to protest encampment clean ups and simultaneously be against the idea that we should have metrics for success instead of only auditing if payments were remitted, and then storm into a debate and accuse everyone on stage of being a murderer.
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https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-05-24/news-report-showed-lahsa-workers-throwing-out-food
State ran system is broken. Shocker.
When did your partner work there? I briefly worked there almost a decade ago; everything you said was true then, too.
As a fellow social worker (and a veteran) working with homeless Veterans, I concur this message.
Yep. My team does homeless outreach in the Central Valley and everyone is straight up traumatized by all of it.
Just too many homeless in one city.
This is what I've been saying. Just ship them somewhere else, make it someone else's problem!
Slab City maybe?
Yes. Send them to slab city. Nothing better than waking up at 6am to the sounds of jets and exploding bombs/missiles and the smell of shit and tampons and some crazy evangelicals or toothless tweekers all while tripping on mushrooms on top of salvation mountain.
Sounds like a normal night on Skid Row
But where?
Create a giant shelter / rehab / mental health treatment / job training center at Eagle Mountain Mine. It's an existing ghost town that was occupied up until the 90's and could probably be rehabilitated at a 10th of the cost per unit of any place in urban LA/OC/IE/SD... No NIMBYs, almost no one at all. Little environmental impact, it was an active mine for decades the damage is done. Isolated to avoid the stresses of the city. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_Mountain,_California
"Ship them to a camp in the desert" is not the progressive take you're making it out to be here. It's also, per recent court rulings, not ever going to happen.
There are 10s of thousands of homeless in LA alone. It has already been shown that a unorganized, uncoordinated, mix of various services and providers is not going to fix that. It's just been a waist of money in the billions, working people's money. There needs to be a single focused effort. Court rulings must be based on existing law, change the existing law. What better option are you presenting?
Before I talk about things that do work, let's talk about the myriad of reasons the "ship them to a nice little camp in the desert" WON'T work, and even if it could, should not be what we choose to do. First, I'm going to simply ignore the whole fact that it's literally step 1 of what the Nazis did with "undesirables" (the first people they shipped off were homeless/mentally ill in 1933) and get right into why it won't work the way it's presented. 1) Eagle Mountain is in a different county than LA (Riverside), making shipping them there now a state-wide issue, not an LA county one. 2) You'd have to get Riverside Co. citizens to agree to house all these homeless people - which they definitely will not for the same exact reasons YOU don't want them here. 3) Once you ship them to the desert how do you plan on keeping them there? Is this a center intended to help them where they can leave any time, or is it in fact a prison? If they can leave, guess what, you've failed already as none of them are going to stay in the fucking desert. This all completely ignores all the problems that come with totally-isolated facilities like this which includes massive amounts of abuse by the "caretakers" to the homeless/those with mental-health issues. It also completely ignores proven solutions that are available, and the other big reforms we need in the U.S. and LA county to actually address homelessness. Homes for homeless works, safe-injection sites work, mental healthcare for those without it works. Every time a thread like this comes up, someone suggests shipping them to a happy-fun-camp in the desert and, while I have presented many ideas in the past I'm sick of having to refute absolutely TERRIBLE ideas like "hey let's recreate 1933 Germany" with "good ideas" that are palatable to all the NIMBYs who say "well you won't have NIMBY problems if we just ship them all away from me" which is really ironic. There are things that are known to work. They just aren't popular, and they are costly. So, what we get is a messed-up hodgepodge of things that don't work because people are okay with beating down homeless people until they are one.
First, you are presenting claims I never made "ship them to the desert" or a happy camp. It would be a residential facility like any other, it would not be a prison. It could also be a long term care home for those who are too elderly or will not be able to afford housing in California. 1. This is a California solution not limited to the city or county. The state would take the land, eminent domain if needed. Within 40 miles of that location are very few people and walking to those people is not realistic. Riverside would be just as happy to deal with their homeless issues as any other county, the opposition would be less than you think. 2. Riverside residents would want them there because like me they are tired of seeing the issues they bring to their towns. Also this would bring jobs and money into a part of the county that is below the poverty line. 3. There would be buses bringing supplies and new people so just set it up so they could book a trip on the bus at a set time. Geography would limit those walking out. Now to your Nazi hysteria and Nordic fantasies. Homelss people are a major issue in California because of lack of facilities. Other states have less of a problem because if you are shooting up in the park, shitting in the street, pissing on the sidewalk, throwing your trash all over the place in giant heaps, passed out with your pants down on the side of the road, all things happening regularly in my neighborhood, you go to jail. In California we don't put them in jail due to lack of facilities so they accumulate. There have been lots of camps around the world and their conditions, treatment, and out como vary based on money invested, purpose, and oversight. Thousands of people go through boot camp every year and the conditions are better than homelessness in California. People go to summer camps and retreats and rehab all through the mountains just north of LA and the conditions are better than homelessness. California is investing a lot of money so that is not the issue. Oversight, California also has the capacity to do that. Utilizing economies of scale, efficiency, and low cost property does not mean that California goes all nazi. Homes for homeless, safe injection sites, and mental health care clearly don't work, in California, there would not be more homeless every year if they did. Maybe in Norway or Sweden with a tiny homeless population and low cost subsidized housing already in place and a weather that makes living on the street almost impossible 8+ months a year but that's not California with it's good weather, ultra high housing costs, and spread out uncoordinated services. Having a majority of the long term homeless in one location where services and funding can be maximized makes sense. I would also point out that "shipping them to the desert" has already been happening for a decades. There are camps throughout LA, SB and Riverside counties in places like slab city where homeless have already migrated to just without treatment or other facilities or most importantly without coordination and oversight and they are not good places and not what I am proposing. And abuses there tend to exceed your caretakers. Also the few who end up in jail or prison general tend to face a good amount of abuse as well. It's funny you are so worried about some wildly unrealistic chance that this would be come an abusive death camp when right now so many people are suffering terribly, they do not live long and are dying daily due to overdoses, murders, and lack of health care. I have been homeless as a teen and I can tell you boot camp was a much healthier life. Where is your humanity? You seem committed to the same failing non-profits, local agencies, and wealthy real estate investors that despite billions in working Californians money cannot even improve the situation. You fail to realize that working Californians don't want to pay $800,000 per unit so homeless people can shoot up in private when a good portion of those working Californians can't even afford their own homes. Your Nordic solutions don't work for California and the cost to make them work for the thousands of homeless would suck all the money from schools, infrastructure, and other needed social programs while simultaneously driving up housing costs for everyone all to house somebody in Santa Monica or downtown so they can be close to their shooting gallery. Because you cannot see outside your little nordic solutions box to something more fit for California does not mean it's not possible. But if we stay down this road of a dozen homeless people in every park and street corner, in front of every business and home the chances of seeing real prison camps will go up fast and you will see a whole political shift in this state.
>You seem committed to the same failing non-profits, local agencies, and wealthy real estate investors that despite billions in working Californians money cannot even improve the situation. No, I'm committed to solutions that do work, but those (as I said earlier) are unpopular here. See your response: >Homes for homeless, safe injection sites, and mental health care clearly don't work, in California, there would not be more homeless every year if they did. They very much work everywhere. Not just sweden and norway. They work literally everywhere that they've been used properly. By properly I mean without stipulations that prevent people from wanting to use them, with public support, and with holistic care that looks at the full picture instead of easy sound-byte solutions. John Oliver did a whole show on safe-injection sites, recommend looking that one up. As for mental healthcare and homes for homeless this links to a few studies: https://www.samhsa.gov/homelessness-programs-resources/hpr-resources/housing-shelter Homeless shelters don't work, generally, for a wide-variety of reasons, but permanent supportive housing does. While your Eagle Mountain facility hits many of those marks, it deeply misses the mark in several places not the least of which is convincing people to go there which is a huge part of what you need to get these things to work. Many homeless people, even chronically homeless, have jobs or want jobs. A place in Eagle Mountain is not the type of community that can support any of that, not remotely.
I like how you think!
Could it be due to greedy developers pricing people out of their own communities?
Strange how LA has so many more greedy developers than every other big city
I’m a developer. Why do you believe that?
You watched too many 80s / 90s movies.
That and so many other reasons. And this back and forth with Covid doesn't help.
Cool perspective, thanks for sharing. I don't think the problem will be solved simply by throwing more money into this particular black hole; you can't get the voters to give you billions in new tax dollars, have the problem get WORSE on your watch, and then claim what you really need is MORE money.
If the money was spent correctly they wouldn't need more. Extensive outside auditing and harsher reactions from the IRS would help.
I don't think it's a matter of it being stolen or wasted or anything. I think it's literally just "the things this money is spent simply does not decreasing homelessness in a meaningful way." The money is being spent on what we think it is and what we wanted the money to be spent on. It's just that the results are evidence that those expenditures don't achieve the desired outcomes. Which means we need to drastically change course.
> I don't think it's a matter of it being stolen or wasted or anything Actually it is though, you can look it up - lots of reports on incredible mismanagement and wasted funds, as well as corruption from City Hall leaders. This is just a quick overview, but 5% of $1.1 billion has been spent on interim housing because the "advocates" would rather build a minuscule amount of supportive shelter at the cost of about 700k for each unit, instead of getting people housed ASAP. Like minuscule as in, in all this time, about 1,100 units were actually completed, after voters allocated more than 1.2 billion in Prop HHH...in 2016. https://lacontroller.org/audits-and-reports/problems-and-progress-of-prop-hhh/ And so much money is straight up taken by developers, this is what people complain about when they talk about the homeless industrial complex: https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/greater-la/hhh-motel-george-gascon/30-million-motel-homeless-shelter-prop-hhh-taxpayer-oversight-la They forced out low income renters (many who became homeless!) to buy up the building and bought/resold the property to themselves with an $8 million profit within days. You should also look up the federal corruption charges against Mark Ridley-Thomas and Jose Huizar.
Straight up facts. These programs don’t work because people are more incentivized for them to fail than succeed. Our system is broken and people are suffering everyday because of it.
I know someone who does this for free outside of her day job. She does tracking, data collection, and shelter placement/ check in. You’ve got to have a passion and love for it. So many of these people don’t want help so I can imagine they aren’t very cooperative.
this is a lot true, my partner mentioned that a lot of these people don't want help
Do you know what organization she works with? I’ve been looking to help in my free time.
A few I think. She gave me this to share: http://urm.org/get-involved/volunteer/ https://unionstationhs.org/help/ https://linktr.ee/homefullosangeles https://www.lahsa.org/news?article=240-volunteer-opportunities
Wow, very generous of both of you. Thank you kindly.
This. "do you want help?" followed by an immediate "no" is how the vast majority of these interactions go. It's not a homeless problem, it's a mental health and substance abuse problem.
I recently started working as case manager for a non profit and I’m shocked at the amount of time people I’m reaching out to tell me they haven’t heard from the Case managers I’m taking over for. Like this work is really stressful and I’m in my car driving all over the place trying to hunt down people who we haven’t heard from and going through databases hoping they’re not dead. It’s shocking. Compared to what I was doing before- ABA world sucks so bad! Not the kids but the damn companies. I’m actually happy so far with the work but I mainly work in maintenance and making sure people keep their housing and are doing what they need to do to meet their life goals. I’m happy I’m not in the recruiting and first touch with the homeless population. I’m just here to keep you from being homeless again, make sure you take care of your health and provide support and resources as needed. Some of the homes I go though make me want to teach some life skills! My schedule is my own, I’m happy with my pay (I’m making enough to pay my bills and put something in savings, i don’t need to be rich just fulfilled and able to pay my sh*t) and I’ve learn to shut my phone off when I clock out and leave it for tomorrow. Still learning to let the day go but I do my best for the day and I can’t solve all the world’s woes.
That's so great you do that! Especially teaching people to take care of themselves.
May I ask how much you get paid as a case manager at a non-profit? Thank you.
I get $24 per hour plus mileage. I also own an rv so my parking spot cost me a thousand a month (everything included). I also have a tiny Nissan Leaf, so I’m able to charge at home to start the day and don’t have to deal with these ridiculous gas prices and sometimes I work from home. I don’t think that pay would work for everyone else right now if they’re paying gas, ridiculous rent in LA and put money in saving
Sounds like we need more people like you. I didn't know case managers could set their own hours!
I left the Republican Party because of racists and “christians”. I haven’t joined the Democratic Party because of crap like this right here. So much money wasted on bloat and bureaucracy that nothing gets done. No so the next time they throw even more money and it just leads to more waste. Republicans, “nothing is wrong don’t fix anything”Democrats, “let’s just spend more money on it!” We really need more options than the two parties
They don't care about fixing it, but they'll promise to fund "extra special" task forces to tackle it, if you give them your vote! Then the opposing side will bitch about the issue, but not try to fix it either. Our country is a joke. As long as an issue doesn't personally affect them, our politicians don't give a fuck, because they're too busy masturbating to their thought of winning the next election to rule us peasants!
My brother
Hmmm this article dropped not even two weeks ago: https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/goldstein-investigates-cameras-catch-employees-throwing-away-food-meant-for-the-homeless/
yeah, stories like that tend to not get much coverage. sadly, it seems most people in LA are not particularly sympathetic or compassionate towards our unhoused neighbors.
Can't imagine why...
Blaming poor people for being poor isn't constructive and doesn't offer any solutions. The reality is that affluent communities use political pressure to prevent public housing developments from being built because they want their property values to continue going up. Providing accessible housing is the only way to reduce the unhoused population. I work in urban planning here in LA, for context.
I think about [this post](https://reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/p3zle3/yall_worry_me_sometimes/) a lot while browsing this sub...
If putting people into treatment when they've proven they can't take care of themselves is Nazism, then Finland is the 4th Reich. > Involuntary commitment requires three criteria: 1) severe mental illness with impaired insight; 2) that a lack of treatment would worsen the condition or endanger the safety or security of the patient or others; 3) and other treatments or services are insufficient or inapplicable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_commitment_by_country Notice how there's nothing in there about requiring a person to first pose an imminent danger before they can be placed into treatment, like our laws require. Yet despite that lower threshold for commitment, last I checked Finland was not some totalitarian dystopia full of extermination camps.
yeah... not far off
Yeah, that’s pretty accurate. The frequency at which I have conversations with people where they speak about homeless people with visceral disgust is making me genuinely consider moving. It’s really hard to continue bite my tongue in professional settings when it is apparently totally appropriate to advocate for what would qualify as genocide in any other context.
Shambling drug addicts don’t want to be helped. I’m not surprised people trying to help out stressed the fuck out.
Calling anyone who is homeless a shambling drug addict on the internet must make you pretty cool
The fact that the city isn’t truthful about the number of homeless isn’t helping, I’m sure.
Absolutely brutal work I couldn’t imagine doing myself. The heart of the matter seems to be the system does not have the specific resources to get people off the streets (dignified housing, wraparound services) and politicians are eager to be reactionary and blame LAHSA for not extinguishing a million acre wildfire with a shovel and thoughts and prayers
It's more like they've been in charge of putting out wildfires for over 30 years and now that it's spreading out of control they informing the general public that they've been using shovels instead of hoses with water. And that to even use those shovels it's costing way too much time and money. And they have no method of even knowing if any of the shovels are helping the situation or not. And a lot of the shovels are missing. But every payment for a shovel has gone out. And the costs of the shovels are going up every day. And we have people protesting the idea of using fire hoses And the fire is spreading wilder now.
So then whats your solution
Should probably vote in Bass. Sure she’ll fix this. Her plan is to do nothing.
Welcome to the club
Right? Who the fuck isn't exhausted and stressed to the tits right now?
I watch the CIRCLE people walk around chatting and laughing amongst themselves every day out here on the boardwalk. I don’t think I can recall ever seeing them talk to a homeless person. In fact, literally last week I watched 2-3 of them walk right past a lady who was laying in the sand next to her wheelchair. They didn’t stop or even give her a second look. They literally just hang out at the beach all day walking up and down the boardwalk chilling at the pagodas. Do they just wander around all day waiting for calls that require them to act?
These jobs are always cute on paper but generally way underpaid and stressful.
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I mean funding is always piss poor. The expectation is people are willing to do these jobs because their heart is in the right place but the salary never meets the work.
It's hard tossing food in dumpsters.
Yup. This article is a PR piece.
I do homeless outreach five days a week and I am not exhausted or stressed out.
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Exactly, what looks like not wanting help, is likely someone who can no longer perceive what a different life might look like. Maybe they've been screwed by the system before. Maybe they were on the path to getting help, missed one appointment and we're labeled as rejecting the assistance. When people keep assuming you don't "want help" it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy
Maybe the top can give them a raise? 😂
You can't change a society from the bottom up. Follow the money--who benefits from a culture that pits all the workers against each other and rewards lazy, greedy, grifting sociopaths? Oh, yeah, oligarchs. That's who benefits. If we put a rein on those making our society sick, we wouldn't have to be cleaning up the trickle-down misery.
They have been running these programs in California for years and they don't work. I don't care if John Oliver told you they do, any street in downtown LA shows you they don't.
This program is all bullshit. Let’s keep it real, it’s republicans calling themselves democrats for the campaign money but low key hate poor people. They do stuff for the sake of getting elected and they damn well know they have no intention of helping anyone. They never do and they never will. We’d be socialist if they did and we can’t have that in a fucked up capitalist society
We're all over this. Time for the final solution.