L.A. voters are angry, think elected officials aren’t equipped to solve homelessness

Elected officials have been phoning it in for decades. Now that we need some competent people in office, all we get are grandstanding morons who compete for the most clever tweets.

I don’t think voters are ready for all it will take to solve homelessness. It isn’t an LA or California problem. It’s a nation problem. LA can’t solve it.

Ugh. We can never "solve homelessness" until we break free from a black and white dichotomy of street homeless person as either total victim or total villain:

Either "homeless people are all victims of the system" (of $$ housing, low paid wages, no universal healthcare, small safety net, etc), and so we must strive to meet all their needs, without pressing on them too hard with normal societal expectations, because they're victims after all.

Or it's "homeless people are dangerous and unstable and a threat to good citizens", and we need to round them up and get them off the streets with any means possible, even if it means forcing them to comply.

Neither group can agree with one another, so we're in a weird limbo where people who are struggling with severe mental illness or drug induced psychosis can't be forced into treatment, people who are struggling financially but otherwise respectful and considerate are placed in the same shelters and housing programs as people with minimal to no moral compass who absolutely never want to reintegrate into society, and in the meantime we're still in a pandemic unable to deal with any of the original societal breakdowns that got us here (poverty, mental illness, drug abuse, lack of community, declining family units, etc.)

The thing is, both of these arguments are right, people can be victims, and also dangerous; people can have ended up in shitty circumstances through no fault of their own, and people can stay in shitty circumstances no matter how much you try to help them.

If we really want to "solve" this issue we need to keep this in mind, build a robust safety net for all citizens, increase and enhance and experiment with services to "rehabilitate" entrenched street homeless people and make sure people who are on the edge of street homelessness or general homelessness don't fall off of that edge, AND also effectively deal with people who DON'T want help, who want to stay on drugs, or unmedicated for their mental illness, or want to live a degenerate lifestyle. We will have to force these people into asylums, rehabs, and/​or jails. We'll want to make public streets, parks, freeway underpasses, whatever, inhabitable for living. If we want everyone to be housed we will have to HOUSE everyone, whether they want that or not.

If we can kumbaya come together here we could figure it out, but folks are just way too stuck in the mud on seeing it one way or another.

We've voted repeatedly to tax ourselves to try to address the problem and then local elected officials let a vocal minority shoot down every single attempt to do anything like actually build the homeless shelters we voted to tax ourselves to fund. No shit nothing gets done. Being an elected official equipped to solve homelessness means being an elected official willing to have a spine and not cave when the NIMBYs try to derail solving the problem.

Officials going to propose another tax for the homeless and everyone will vote to pass it because everyone wants to pretend they're making a difference without actually being boots on the ground.

Why would you think they could handle it to begin with?

how about LA enforce laws on the books. is it legal to pitch a tent in the middle of the sidewalk? openly use illegal drugs? no? then arrest law-breakers. keeping folks in jail is expensive, but at this rate it’s cheaper than all the wasted $$ thrown at useless tiny homes, etc

“The Boise Ruling” is what everyone needs to know/​learn about.

Stop hating on the local politicians - dealt a near impossible hand from the highest court in the land.

Edit : 9th circuit (Doesn’t sound as good)

How exactly do you solve homelessness? Providing free housing is not the answer because it will be vandalized and destroyed in a short period of time. Are we going to hire cleaners to constantly keep these apartments in order? I imagine they would be at high risk of being assaulted, robbed or worse.

Homelessness is a symptom of mental health issues. From my experience working in a homeless shelter, most homeless people do not want mental health treatment and you can't force someone to help themselves. A lot of people look at LA and say "but it's not bad in (insert city/​state) so clearly LA is doing something wrong" but fail to understand that many of those cities and states are sending their homeless straight to LA because the weather is habitable year-round and there are plenty of resources to live off of whether it's panhandling, stealing or accessing legitimate aid like shelters and food banks.

They aren’t. All CA knows how to do is pass legislation to tax people more under the guise of a good cause and then misspend the funds. Roads are still shit, LAX is still shit after a decade+ under construction, homeless still out there peeing on everything being ornery yet still needing help, energy prices going up, every building is falling apart. Dont even start with LAUSD. Or practical infrastructure for public transit. Beyond useless.

And the cops are nonexistent unless somebody died.

Trouble is anyone who becomes mayor of this town is just using it as a stepping stone to govern either CA or the nation. Theres def an incentive problem for cities that have reached a certain size.

got my car broken into last night by a homeless guy for the second time in 3 months so fuck them let the fentanyl handle them

Oh they are equipped all right... they get tons of funding and it goes where???

I'm sure we all know what type of homeless most people are citing when they say they're fed up. Too bad the ACLU is dead set against allowing people to be helped from their ivory tower.

Newsflash. It’s not just a housing problem. It’s a drug and mental health issue also. Spending billions of dollars to build shanty homes isn’t the solution. It doesn’t add up and we’re wasting tax dollars.

Pretty sure I’ll be exploring my options out of LA County if this next election doesn’t provide some kind of hope that they’re going to change something with the homeless situation.

$600 Million of our dollars, a year. Let that sink in. What do they have to show for it. It’s an utter disgrace.

The homeless should be relocated to unpopulated states such was the Dakotas, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, Kanaas etc..

I don't have faith that any of them could even tie their own shoes, let alone solve any problems

It’s fucking criminal that we don’t have facilities for the mentally ill. How many of the people on the street are there because they have serious psychological problems that are untreated?

The main problem with homelessness is that crackheads across the country (both non functional, and working , criminal and on the street ) are obsessed with fightimg every law and mandate in the name of freedom. These people have united. What are we supposed to do and how can we help demanding people that refuse to contribute to society? I'm new to reddit. If anyone can suggest a subreddit for me i would appreciate it because i am fed up. Lets throw race, culture and faith out of the window. I am in America and I am surrounded by idiots who refuse to do any type of valid research ? Also idiots who would rather be edgy than improve society. How can we solve problems and deal with people who refuse to read and get educated on one side and also people who refuse all help on the other side? They are just gonna just take my tax dollars and waste them out to zero with nobody willing to compromise huh?

A San Franciscan figured it out over 100 years ago.

THE GREAT PROBLEM IS SOLVED. We are able to explain social phenomena that have appalled philanthropists and perplexed statesmen all over the civilized world. We have found the reason why wages constantly tend to a minimum, giving but a bare living, despite increase in productive power:

As productive power increases, rent tends to increase even more -- constantly forcing down wages.

Advancing civilization tends to increase the power of human labor to satisfy human desires. We should be able to eliminate poverty. But workers cannot reap these benefits because they are intercepted. Land is necessary to labor. When it has been reduced to private ownership, the increased productivity of labor only increases rent. Thus, all the advantages of progress go to those who own land. Wages do not increase -- wages cannot increase. The more labor produces, the more it must pay for the opportunity to make anything at all.

-- Henry George, Progress and Poverty

But California went and did the exact opposite of what he suggested and instead voted in Prop 13. Now here we are.

https://schalkenbach.org/​library/​henry-george/​drake-p+p/​pchp23.htm

Time to drain the LA swamp. Seriously. Between how COVID was/​is handled, homelessness and our housing crisis, enough is enough. There are qualified and capable people out there who can be the new leaders.

This issue needs some tough moves and liberal officials are way too hesitant to be the one to do it given how liberal CA tends to be

Yes, LA city voted officials are not capable of changing the entire American economy. Big surprise.

It's pretty sad to drive down one of the most famous streets in the world, Sunset, and see it lined with homeless block after block. The city needs to house everyone and fix this problem.

It’s so crazy to see the decline. I don’t see and end to it. If you step in poo on the street in k town or downtown, good chance it’s human.