The future of Skid Row (Los Angeles, Glendale: apartment, insurance, crime)

[Aldous9]

Originally Posted by martin lutha muddafu kang

being homeless is a choice, plain and simple.

the average american, watches six hours of television a day. the average american, stuff his fat face with cheeseboigers from mcdonalds. the average american, decides to indulge in alcohol/drugs.

it's simple, really, spend your time working/educating yourself and eating rice/beans. real easy to live with roommates if times are rough.

homelessness is a choice. i hate zero sympathy for those losers.

It's often a series of bad choices that lead to a bad outcome. But being homeless is not a choice for the majority of the homeless population.

I work around the homeless and the majority of them are completely unemployable. You take a 50 year old crack addict that's lived on the streets for 10+ years and even if he were to get sober what could he do for employment? He's 50 but he has the body of a 70 year old that has been ravaged by drugs and living on the street.

[martin lutha muddafu kang]

Originally Posted by DistrictDirt

The problem with people that don't know what they're talking about is that they tend to keep right on speaking, loudly and often.

I live on the edge of Skid Row at 8th and Los Angeles. Come down here and I'd be happy to give you a tour. We'll walk up to 6th and San Pedro and you can see all the people having arguments with themselves in the street that are clearly "not mentally ill". Until then, kindly stop flapping your gums about things you know nothing about. Cheers.

again, the overwhelming majority of scumbags are there by choice, plain and simple. legitimate cases "mental illness" are present in the minority, not majority of people. someone who's drunk/high out of his mind and mumbling to himself is worthy of my sympathy? no.

claiming that those people are helpless and victims of circumstance is a joke, akin to the fat girl argument that her problem is her "genes" and not the "jeans". right, americans are somehow special.

don't want to be fat? don't eat garbage.
don't want to live on the street? be responsible and don't do drugs.

that's all there is to it.

now go write to your pals back home in suburban ohio and tell 'em how cool and edgy you are for moving to los angeles.

[Aldous9]

Originally Posted by martin lutha muddafu kang

again, the overwhelming majority of scumbags are there by choice, plain and simple. legitimate cases "mental illness" are present in the minority, not majority of people. someone who's drunk/high out of his mind and mumbling to himself is worthy of my sympathy? no.

claiming that those people are helpless and victims of circumstance is a joke, akin to the fat girl argument that her problem is her "genes" and not the "jeans". right, americans are somehow special.

don't want to be fat? don't eat garbage.
don't want to live on the street? be responsible and don't do drugs.

that's all there is to it.

now go write to your pals back home in suburban ohio and tell 'em how cool and edgy you are for moving to los angeles.

Most homeless people are not there by choice. You are shockingly ignorant. Also, one out of four homeless people in Los Angeles is a Veteran. But, to you they are just scumbags. I'm not surprised you're not sympathetic to the plight of homeless people. I bet you aren't capable of empathy.

[MordinSolus]

He's obviously a troll. Just ignore him.

[SandyCo]

I'm seeing more homeless people in my area, too. There used to be only a few, but now they seem to have taken over a corner of the park nearby. I'm torn between having some sympathy (where are they supposed to go?) vs. wanting a clean, safe environment for families. I was approached recently by a homeless guy panhandling at the burger place just down the street, and quite honestly, I'd rather not have to deal with that.

There are a lot of mentally ill people who can't stay on their medication, so they can't hold even a menial job, and their families have given up on them due to our sadly lacking healthcare. My mother was schizophrenic; I tried to get her into a locked nursing facility when I had conservatorship of her for a year, but there were never any beds available. At the end of that year, I gave up conservatorship. If anything had happened to her, I could have been held responsible. With my own family to raise, I couldn't take that risk even though it just about broke my heart. She came to a very sad end, as she was murdered on Thanksgiving night in 1987. Schizophrenia is basically a broken brain that never heals. There are medications that can help, but the side effects can be awful, and mentally ill people don't often realize how sick they are.

I'm not sure what the answer is, and apparently, neither do our elected officials.

[wetness]

I lived downtown for three years, but only under dire circumstances as I would have never chosen to live there ... and I imagine that is how some people end up there (i.e. sudden change in domestic situation and low funds to work with). Anyway, it was/is every bit the hellish social experiment as had previously been described.

Frankly, people who are unable to care for themselves are a danger to themselves and to others. They should be in a supervised housing situation of some kind, but of course no one is willing to pay for or maintain such an expensive endeavor, so they are left to roam free on their own, in the name of not violating their rights. And no, just providing housing for them is not a solution because they still display the kinds of behaviors that got them homeless in the first place. They need supervision to minimize those behaviors.

Westwood has a good number of homeless/crackheads/street people as well, that seems to be gradually increasing. And you know they are not local homeless; they come here from East and South L.A. and downtown. The Metro bus system seems to facilitate that. Also, an interesting study was done that found that over 60% of the street people begging for change in WW are not homeless, but are merely professional panhandlers who come here to take advantage of the the generosity of the naive college students. I worked in WW when I lived downtown, and there were a number of these characters who boarded at the same bus stop where I boarded the 720 every morning at 4:30am. They each had their own angle and their own "post" they reported to every day with all the discipline of a regular job. The business improvement district that launched a couple years ago has been effective in reducing this sort of activity, but when you travel beyond their maintained area, you still see the high numbers of real homeless... the ones who stay in the same spot every day with their carts of stuff and camping out at the bus stops.

[seain dublin]

Originally Posted by DistrictDirt

The problem with people that don't know what they're talking about is that they tend to keep right on speaking, loudly and often.

I live on the edge of Skid Row at 8th and Los Angeles. Come down here and I'd be happy to give you a tour. We'll walk up to 6th and San Pedro and you can see all the people having arguments with themselves in the street that are clearly "not mentally ill". Until then, kindly stop flapping your gums about things you know nothing about. Cheers.

Who put a gun to your head and told you to move there?

You're like someone who moves to an area that is on the flight path to LAX or JFK, than complains about jet noise. The airport was there first.

Even if you work downtown there are many places you could have lived where you wouldn't be exposed to that and still be within close proximity to work.

Kind of like moving to Glendale if you don't like being around Armenians. And expecting the area to change to suit you.

[bruhms]

i see nice apartment complexes, condos, etc. being built everywhere inthe city. just dump them in those places

[Aldous9]

Originally Posted by lenny brez

right, estimates say up to 20% of bums are vets, what difference does that make?

you're seriously trying to argue 100% of those people aren't there willingly?

right, they chose to drop out of school, abuse drugs, be lazy, etc., the vast majority of them.

what's disgusting is that bum advocates want to pick the pockets of hardworking citizens, to subsidize these losers. all those feelgood bull**** organizations in and around skid row, the so-called "non-profits" who rake in tens of millions for themselves, living quite lavishly at the expense of taxpayers.

the whole scene is pathetic: go nowhere scumbags suckling on the udders of society and the parasites who enable them / line their coffers.

just raze the entire place already and start anew.

You sound like the same guy. Same bad grammar. Same use of the word "scumbag".

You just don't know what you're talking about and I'm not going to feed the troll.

[MordinSolus]

Originally Posted by lenny brez

obviously, 'cause people with differing opinions are "trolls" and "must be silenced". jim jones, scientology, et al much?

when bum advocates stop harassing the general public for money, we'll stop caring about what you losers do. last time i checked, the united states is still somewhat of a democracy, not a leftist dictatorship.

if you people care so much about those filthy animals, go take them into your own homes and clean up the area yourselves. stop bitching and moaning to productive citizens to fund your childish little adventures.

You, Kang, Marilyn and others of your ilk posting about this are trolls because you make these baseless claims as though they are facts and discount actual evidence because it doesn't jive with your sociopathic and moronic worldview. You don't even bother to offer anecdotal evidence. In your mind you're right because you're angry and the facts are wrong because they don't match what you've decided reality must be.
Pro-tip: the angriest person is usually the dumbest.