The Los Angeles Homeless Containment Thread (Jackson: inspections, square footage, golf)

[Finper]

Originally Posted by jm1982

Homeless showers might be coming to Metro rail stations soon .

—
To promote hygiene and quell the spread of infectious diseases among LA’s growing homeless population, Metro is weighing whether to put showers and bathrooms in or near some of its 93 train stations.


https://la.curbed.com/2018/4/25/1728...omeless-trains

What???!!! I thought Garcetti said they were trying to clear the homeless out of the metro stations?? Might as well let them put up tents in that cool Art Deco lobby at union station while there at it.

[jm1982]

Originally Posted by Finper

What???!!! I thought Garcetti said they were trying to clear the homeless out of the metro stations?? Might as well let them put up tents in that cool Art Deco lobby at union station while there at it.

Transit ridership down because of the homeless that cause problems ... gee whiz who would of thought..


—-
For regular Metro riders like Renee Jimenez, who travels the Red Line subway between Hollywood and downtown L.A., the homeless are unavoidable.

"Big problem, especially early in the morning, they’re always asleep, taking up more than one seat," Jimenez said.

For Metro, aiding the homeless is not only the right thing to do, it’s a business decision. Transit ridership has been declining and riders often complain about lack of cleanliness and safety issues when it comes to the homeless.

"Because of the body odor, and I see some with mental issues, you know," said Jimenez.

Audio: LA Metro to weigh expansion of homeless service efforts | 89.3 KPCC

[CA4Now]

Originally Posted by sickofla

"The world needs ditch diggers too" Yes, and these ditch diggers also need a place to lay their head at the end of the day.

We all want the lowly service people to be there for us when we want a burger or some clothing... but god forbid they want a place to sleep that costs less than $1500 a month... "not our problem, they should have done better in life".

Is that ever the truth.

[jm1982]

Originally Posted by sickofla

If minimum rents matched minimum wage we'd see less of this.

"The world needs ditch diggers too" Yes, and these ditch diggers also need a place to lay their head at the end of the day.

We all want the lowly service people to be there for us when we want a burger or some clothing... but god forbid they want a place to sleep that costs less than $1500 a month... "not our problem, they should have done better in life".

People want all the convenience that comes with service workers, but have no interest in making sure they have a standard of life that is livable. We should all be ashamed of ourselves.

There are certain economics at play . Someone can’t rent out a building for less than the mortgage and expenses or they are losing money .
Did you know the return / cap rate on most apartment buildings is about 3% in L.A these days . That’s if nothing goes wrong .

Many properties for sale you’d lose money on rents every month .

Many people don’t look at the other side of the story and think all these landlords are just greedy and all the rent is pure profit .

What are “ditch diggers” doing now ? Wages will go up when businesses or the city can’t find enough ditch digger job applicants .

We don’t need government mandated minimum wages or rent control .
We need the market to determine what rent and pay should be.

Not some government bureaucrats with a socialist wet dream .

[CaliRestoration]

Originally Posted by sickofla

If minimum rents matched minimum wage we'd see less of this.

Cool, sounds like a good idea.

How do you do it?

How do you get the market to provide rents at such a low cost in California?

It's one thing to say "I want this", but it's another to say "this is how we do it."

[LuvSouthOC]

Originally Posted by rodentraiser

I don't think I explained this very well. If I live where I am, I can reasonably expect to save maybe $300 to $500 a month. If I move out into my car, I can save upwards of $700 to $1000 a month. That makes a big difference in how soon I can get a property cleared (if I buy a cheap one that isn't), get septic on it, get a trailer on it, and then hook up to utilities. I can do all this in half the time if I move out from where I'm at and into my car.

No, there are no family or friends to help me. I wouldn't ask them to, anyway.

Years ago when I was doing SAR work, one of the things they had us do was go out in the woods and spend the night, minus our daypacks. We had to keep ourselves warm and safe throughout the night. I realized what that had done for me when an SAR group I was in several years later got deeper into the woods than we thought. The one thing you don't do when you're out in the boonies is wait till dark to set up a campsite. So as sunset came along, I was perfectly willing to camp out in the woods that night. The other group members ignored my suggestion and kept going, getting more and more worried, and wouldn't quit breaking trails through the brush as it got darker. Fortunately, we broke out into a road right before night. For them, the thought of spending a night out in the woods was something scary to be avoided, because they'd never done it before.

The point is, once you do something "scary" and survive it, the situation doesn't hold a lot of fear anymore. I've been homeless under the worst circumstances. Moving out into my car when I have land, water, a place to camp during the day, an SSDI check coming in every month, and money in the bank, pfffttt. Child's play.

I wish that could be true for everyone out on the street.


Hey, I wanted to buy a house, too. And I had no way to tell if it was a good decision or a bad one. But as I said, hindsight is 20/20. If I could do it over again, I wouldn't. But I'm not going to get that chance, am I? So the best thing to do is to quit worrying about it, learn from it, and move on.



There are Google workers and other tech workers in Mountain View and Sunnyvale living out of vans and campers in their employers' parking lots right now. Some are doing it because they want to save money and some are doing it because even with what they're being paid, they can't afford a place to live in the Bay Area.

In 1981, I rented a small house and a yard for $330 a month. A one bedroom apartment then for $400 a month was expensive. When I came up to Washington state, I was able to rent a two bedroom apartment for $545 a month and had no problems making that rent. Today, you can't find a one bedroom apartment in this small city that will rent under $1300.

Rents are out of control. Again, depending on the source, homelessness increases anywhere from 4% to 15% for every hundred dollars rents go up. People laugh because the largest homeless populations live on the West Coast. It might be the weather, but it's no coincidence that the West Coast also has the highest rents in the country. And the many of the "new" homeless are families and people who up till now, have been working full time and paying rent.

It's way past time we look at the correlation between rising rents and homelessness.



I've been looking throughout the US for cheap places to live. Guess what? The cheapest and most affordable places to live are far from larger towns and services. I've even been turning those towns down because it does me no good to save money on a place to live if I have to spend the same amount of money for gas driving an hour each way just when I need groceries, or a doctor's appointment. And for people who need to work for a living, forget it. Even if they get the money to move, even if they manage to find a place to live in after they move there, the lack of jobs in some of these cheaper places is appalling.

I myself moved to the Puget Sound area when California got too expensive. It cost a lot of money and I had a place to live and a job waiting when I got here. It wiped out my savings to move here, but I can only imagine how much more it would have cost if I had had to stay a month or more in a motel if I didn't have a job to go to or a place to live the next morning.

And as I've asked over and over, where do you move when all the cheap places are gone? I moved here because I couldn't afford California. Now I'm faced with moving again to someplace cheaper. What happens if the taxes go up so high I need to move once more and I find myself basically priced out of the US? You laugh at that, but it's coming. There are no places where the average apartment rent can be paid on minimum wage anymore.

We know the middle class is going. Does it have to end up on the street before anyone decides something has to be done?

Consider spending less time looking for the cheapest possible place to live and instead look for ways to increase your income. By the way, I hear Jackson, Mississippi is inexpensive. Why not there or are you looking for cheap places that APPEAL to you?

[2sleepy]

Originally Posted by jm1982

There are certain economics at play . Someone can’t rent out a building for less than the mortgage and expenses or they are losing money .
Did you know the return / cap rate on most apartment buildings is about 3% in L.A these days . That’s if nothing goes wrong .

Many properties for sale you’d lose money on rents every month .

Many people don’t look at the other side of the story and think all these landlords are just greedy and all the rent is pure profit .

What are “ditch diggers” doing now ? Wages will go up when businesses or the city can’t find enough ditch digger job applicants .

We don’t need government mandated minimum wages or rent control .
We need the market to determine what rent and pay should be.

Not some government bureaucrats with a socialist wet dream .

I disagree, the poster who said that is on target. It's a fact that rent has become unaffordable for many working class and fixed income retired people. It's due to wage stagnation for the past 25 years, congress had an opportunity to do something about it with that massive tax bill they passed - they could have based tax cuts on wage increases, i.e. no wage increase to your employees-no tax break.

[CaliRestoration]

Originally Posted by 2sleepy

, i.e. no wage increase to your employees-no tax break.

Terrible policy from an economic perspective. That would actually increase unemployment.

[2sleepy]

Originally Posted by CaliRestoration

Terrible idea from an economic perspective. That would actually increase unemployment.

And why would that happen?

[CaliRestoration]

Originally Posted by 2sleepy

And why would that happen?

Simple.

Companies who have to spend their economic profits, as directed by the government, on wage increases that are above the market set level for compensation for a specific position won't be able to spend that money on:

- New employees
- Expansion (launching new product, new locations, etc)
- R&D

e.g - Spending $50,000 to pay janitors more money has a lower positive net effect than $50,000 spent on R&D to develop a new product that the market is demanding.