Part of the story left out of this...is the cost situation for just about any housing. You could have bought some property in the 1970s for $70,000 and today it’d be worth $700,000. Go look for a 2-bedroom apartment and just shake your head over the going rate. Guys living out of cars, tents....it’s all part of the unaffordable housing trend, and the bubble that has grown in California.
They need to move these people to Rodeo Drive. Maybe we can move them onto movie studio lots. All that space going to waste. Time for them to step up and put their resources where their hearts are.
I wonder if the rich & famous would start to complain like the racists who do so now. /sarcasm
Just to give you an idea, the owners of my building paid me $20k to move out so they could get $2500 a month for my old small one bedroom apartment. I did and went to the northwest.
You will see plenty of the same sort of encampments on the sidewalks of San Francisco south of Market Street, and east of Mission.
It quite remarkable, and the worst, recently, I’ve seen in 30 years.
I just heard today this area has been bulldozed.
I could take such a video here. Under each freeway overpass is a mini tent city. In the bushes along the freeway and behind a big local park are similar set ups, minutes from my celeb filled neighborhood. "The Homeless" are everywhere around here. And the do-gooders want to "help them" as if giving them things would make less homelessness. No. It makes more.
Now that the GOP controls the country, we can look forward to more reports and videos of homelessness, even those depicted in rat-controlled cratnifornia.
We have always had I homeless population in California, especially LA, SF and Oakland. Even under more conservative governor like Deukmejian and Wilson because the mentally ill and drug addicts have been drawn to California.
But the last 3 years it seems the homeless population has exploded. We see tent cities in places where you would never expect them. The video here is along the Santa Ana River in the City of Orange near Angels Stadium. The city recently had the police clear the tent city out and many of them went to the Sanctuary City of Santa Ana. I feel a lot of this due to Jerry Brown essentially opening the doors of California to every illegal and derelict and they are flocking here in droves.
I live in the city of Pomona in the far eastern edge of LA County. I live in a community called Phillips Ranch. While 50% of Pomona is crap hole, it has some real nice areas too. Phillips Ranch is a real nice area. Pomona hasn’t had a lot of homeless until recently. There have been problems with the young homeless wandering into Phillips Ranch because of an area called “the jungle”, a heavily wooded area along the main drag where they have been tenting up and doing their meth. The started a fire last summer. The city has since fenced the area off.
This is 100 times worse than East St. Louis.
Wow.
The haves and the have nots have always been an issue but in places like CA with a million social programs it’s like a magnet for those in poverty.
I watched the one hour program about tent cities that popped up on YouTube a could of vids after the first one in the OP’s link and one thing I didn’t see were any kind of bathrooms or portapotties. Without those and the upkeep required of them; places like that have to smell really bad whenever the temps get up over 40 or 50 degrees. The other thing I didn’t see a lot of were cars and pickup trucks. Maybe they were at work when it was being filmed. In Cali it might be possible with the cost of rent and houses there.
I feel bad for those folks but sadly when they do get a few bucks in their pocket they immediately buy drugs and alcohol instead of saving up for a car or buy something they need. They just wait for things to simply be given to them because they know it will happen. People need to earn things to really appreciate them or be disabled and wish they could earn it.
Is this the ramp up for the iincreased number of homeless stories we’ve come to expect during Republican Administrations? We heard virtually nothing about them for 8 years.
A large part of the high cost of housing in populated areas of CA is self inflicted. Zoning restrictions and extensive green space preserves mean you can’t build enough housing for the market.
How do we measure the gap between the rich in Hollywood an Silicon Valley with the poor?
How does the California gap compare with the Utah gap... the most Republican state?
How does the California gap compare with the Kansas Gap where the Koch brothers live?
How does upward mobility of the poor in California compare with upward mobility in Texas?
Cali jungle.
Sinclair Lewis and EPIC (End Poverty in California) where are you when we need you!?
Only that isn't a bike trail along the Pacific Ocean, that's a bike trail south of Angel's Stadium along the Santa Ana river (specifically south of Orangewood and north of the 22.)
And much to the objections of local residents, many of those tents were relocated from within the river channel to what used to be a nice bike/jogging trail due to fears that those camping in the river basin would be swept away by the heavy rains.
City officials say that they've been working with county authorities to get these people 'relocated' again, but to participate in those programs, you have to submit to drug testing and background checks. The city will also cite you if your child puts up a tent in your front or back yard for a couple days; put it on the sidewalk or on a jogging trail, no one bothers you.
These ObamaTowns are everywhere, some with just a dozen residents, others with thousands. (Of course, should someone like Obama travel through these areas, all the tents are removed, by force if necessary, lest they pose a security risk to the eyes of the protected politician.)
At the corner of the 405 & 101 freeway there is Sepulvada park with a large dam and nearby are about 40 guys living in the brush and trees by a creek. The city is going to clear them out to clean up the creek which is filled with debris and overgrowth. The homeless will be moved out but will move back once the work is done. The newspaper interviewed one guy who has lived there for 2 years!