The Los Angeles Homeless Containment Thread (San Bernardino: walls, for sale, apartment complex)

[Tulemutt]

Originally Posted by Racer46

It does help many, but in LA with the number of homeless they could never build enough due to finding enough land or old buildings and ... the money. They could if they could build them in outlying areas, but then many of the homeless will not go there. No real solution in just providing housing especially if the requirements must be minim al to get some of the addicted to move in. It works, but is only a partial solution.

Housing programs such as structured by Housing First aren’t required for the majority of homeless. HF is focused on getting the worst and most vulnerable cases off the streets. When you consider that more than half of the big numbers thrown around - 55,000 / 60,000 homeless in LA County - aren’t living in the various encampments and Skid Row, right there the housing concerns go way down. Approximately 15,000 people, for example, are living in their vehicles ... not a good situation, for sure, but most of these are not folks who are causing the greatest disruptions, expense, and eyesore. These people could be accommodated more safely through municipal parking options such as what Santa Barbara has offered for many years quite successfully.

The chronic unsheltered problem is huge, but less than half the big numbers generally used to impress negative narratives. But even within the 25,000 ~ there are sub-populations that have some resources that could be applied to subsidized housing. There are a LOT of older folks receiving some form of Social Security, retirement or disability, who are unable / unsuited for employment ... and their checks simply aren’t enough to live on: rent, food, rx, etc. People in unemployable condition - regardless of fault - become resigned to their hopelessness. The old SRO room rentals are all gone. They give up. Some seem to be even happy on the streets ... some folks are born with a personality that can find happiness even in the worst of times and circumstances. This is where the myth arises: “They like living on the street!”

There are also homeless who are employed part and full time, but can’t qualify for landlord approval due to reasons such as bad credit or past criminal convictions. The numbers of these working homeless vary from time to time but range usually over 10% of the homeless ... sometimes up to double that. They live in tents sometimes, or cars, or couch surfing, shelters ...

[CA4Now]

Originally Posted by Veritas Vincit

... it's becoming increasingly clear that the only way to curb homelessness is to ensure there's an alternative option for every single person affected by it, and that they accept this alternative option whether they like it or not.

It's harder than it looks.

“People are so fed up. I understand,” he said. “The councilman is doing everything he can.”

Back at the Fallbrook Avenue underpass, Dermit talked with Carolus, the man who had been homeless for five years, about how he’d previously expressed some desire to go into a hotel room or shelter.

The timing just wasn’t right, Carolus said. He wanted to reconnect with his young daughter and begin to sort through his personal belongings before making another transition. Dermit listened intently, offering support and a promise that he wouldn’t abandon him during this transition.

Still, on Oct. 27, things would have to change, he said.

“We’re here to help you get into shelter,” he said. “On that date, though, you’re going to have to move from here. They’re not going to let you keep the tent here.”

Chaos, confusion as judge pushes plan to clear homeless camps from near freeways:
https://www.latimes.com/homeless-hou...meless-housing

[T. Damon]

Originally Posted by Racer46

It does help many, but in LA with the number of homeless they could never build enough due to finding enough land or old buildings and ... the money. They could if they could build them in outlying areas, but then many of the homeless will not go there. No real solution in just providing housing especially if the requirements must be minim al to get some of the addicted to move in. It works, but is only a partial solution.

The homeless advocates, or, grifters of the billions of dollars of taxpayer’s money flowing their way, value nothing as they do their cash cow. The rest of us are the dregs of the earth and have no business whatsoever to believe that we shouldn’t have to endure the filth, disease, chaos and violence of the homeless encampments everywhere because only the homeless’ needs, piles of excrement and thieving, violence behavior is to be tolerated and protected, no one else’s needs or wishes can be considered or validated. Watching things get worse the more money is allocated towards the problem is not to be questioned, we must pay more and endure more.

We are just the host to the parasite. This is the world (state) in which we live in.

[CA4Now]

St. Joseph Center, the Venice-based charity started nearly 45 years ago by two Catholic nuns, coordinated an extraordinary, months-long effort to move the campers of Skid Rose into housing.

Teams funded by the offices of L.A. County Supervisors Sheila Kuehl and Mark Ridley-Thomas helped coordinate operations between the city and county. Bonin’s office was deeply involved, as were the LAPD, the city sanitation department, Parks and Rec, LAHSA and even the Urban Forestry Division of the Bureau of Street Services.

Many mornings in September and October, I would drive along Rose Avenue and see St. Joseph workers in purple shirts on the scene, trying to figure out what kind of services and persuasion the folks in tents needed to accept their help.

And then, the tents began disappearing, replaced by tall chain-link fencing that remains to this day. On Oct. 26, the last tent came down.

Amid the burgeoning homelessness crisis in Venice, some encouraging news:
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...couraging-news

[CA4Now]

"In the spring of 2018, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti put his personal stamp on the city’s response to homelessness by announcing a departure from its primary focus of building permanent housing. Garcetti proposed to open a homeless shelter in each of L.A.'s 15 council districts.

Garcetti has largely made good on that goal, defying the skepticism that greeted his plan, called A Bridge Home. Rallying council members to the cause and making deals for public and private land from San Pedro to Canoga Park, the mayor has opened at least one shelter in all but one council district. So far, 20 are up and running and five more are nearing completion. By early next year they will have added nearly 2,000 new shelter beds to the city’s inventory.

But a Times review shows that Garcetti’s signature homelessness program, which has cost about $200 million, has had less success living up to its promise to move people on the streets into permanent housing and improve the communities around the shelters with enhanced policing and increased sanitation services."

https://www.latimes.com/homeless-hou...-mixed-results

[CA4Now]

The school day is about to begin for these children, who amid the COVID-19 pandemic are sheltering with their families at the Hyland Motel in Van Nuys. Every Monday and Tuesday since mid-August, these homeless students — as few as five or as many as 12 — have congregated in the carport, where volunteers help them navigate hours-long Zoom classes.

They are just a fraction of the L.A. Unified School District’s estimated 11,000 homeless students, who, according to data, are especially vulnerable to the pandemic’s learning impacts: lower grades, attendance rates and online participation.

https://www.latimes.com/california/s...ng-pod-carport

[CA4Now]

The main tool we have to work with is the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act, which sets parameters for when a person can be compelled to accept treatment, including long-term care. But the act was passed more than half a century ago and was not designed to address mental illness, addiction and homelessness as they exist today. We need better and more nuanced tools of engagement to reach people who are in dire need yet refuse to accept care.

To start, we need laws and practices that enable mental health workers to help those who simply won’t accept mental health care voluntarily. Laura’s Law, passed in 2002, allows for court-ordered outpatient treatment in certain circumstances, but it hasn’t been fully implemented and does not include the power to medicate at this time.

We need to look far and wide for ideas. One tool being used with promising results in other countries, for example, is “psychiatric advance directives.”

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...s-homelessness

[Cida]

Here's a little interesting background. New Yorker writer Francesca Mari wrote about the interesting idea of homeless people to guard empty houses, but there was this information, too.


Using the Homeless to Guard Empty Houses
As the pandemic makes an already terrible housing crisis worse, a new version of house-sitting signals a broken real-estate market.
Empty houses are a strange sight in an area that has one of the most severe housing shortages in the United States. L.A. has the highest median home prices, relative to income, and among the lowest homeownership rates of any major city, according to the U.C.L.A. Center for Neighborhood Knowledge. Renting isn’t any easier. The area has one of the lowest vacancy rates in the country, and the average rent is twenty-two hundred dollars a month. On any night, some sixty-six thousand people there sleep in cars, in shelters, or on the street, an increase of thirteen per cent since last year.
The housing shortage was caused, in part, by restrictive zoning, rampant nimbyism, and the use of California’s environmental laws to thwart urban development. In 1960, Los Angeles was zoned to house some ten million people. By 1990, decades of downzoning had reduced that number to 3.9 million, roughly the city’s current population. Then, in 2008, the subprime-mortgage crisis struck, and in the years that followed thousands of foreclosed homes were sold at auction. Because they had to be purchased in cash, many of them were bought by wealthy investors, private-equity-backed real-estate funds, and countless other real-estate companies, leaving less inventory for individual buyers. In the end, the 2008 crash made housing in California even more expensive.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...d-empty-houses

[1AngryTaxPayer]

How does anyone expect to get them out after you "invite" them onto your property? Answer, nearly a year.

[Racer46]

Originally Posted by 1AngryTaxPayer

How does anyone expect to get them out after you "invite" them onto your property? Answer, nearly a year.

And if you move back in, you get to live with them.