I know. You are missing NOTHING here. I used to feel like this place was the center of the universe, because it is a very self important city, but if you came back today you would be shocked. Life quality is so much better elsewhere.
Homeless where you NEVER saw homeless before. Cops can do NOTHING unless the tent is over x feet long or some STUPID camping violation!!! Defacating on streets is NO BIG DEAL apparently. Why are diseases rampant in third world places where there are no sewers?? Hm...
And the south central gangs wised up. In a bad way. I know you once lived there. Well, they figured out that having territory where they live was not much. To pick from. So they have chosen territories in other neighborhoods in the valleys and hills, and they just come through in nice cars and rob and burgle. They don’t care if you are home. They just come in, grab quick money and jewelry etc, and go. They drive nice cars, they walk the streets here pretending to be jogging or walking dogs etc.
Worst is by the freeway areas where there is brush: these areas are FILLED with homeless encampments. There used to be one or two guys in there, fairly well hidden. Not any more.
Yet certain southlamd towns that aren’t run by LA still are clean and beautiful. Manhattan Beach for instance. You can live there if you have $2 million to buy a 1950s 2 bedroom wooden teardown. They have a great school district, a strong police dept that has everything, and the best weather in LA. But the house we used to live in was worth $1m5, now it’s worth $3 mil. In 5 years.
The picture you paint of SoCal is just horrifying, Yaelle.
Twelve years ago, I looked around L.A. and tried to imagine what conditions there would be like when my (then) little children came of age. I didn’t like what I saw in my mind’s eye, and concluded that I didn’t have the right to choose that future for them.
It’s what motivated my wife and I to uproot ourselves from our natural home, and relocate to someplace where our kids would have a fighting chance at having a normal life. That place turned out to be North Texas. I knew we’d made a good choice when we got here, but it took me three or four years to fully appreciate what an excellent choice it was.
At this point, I’m not sure if I’ll ever step foot in L.A. County again. My last trip to California in 2010 unnerved me so bad, I couldn’t wait to get back to Texas. I almost teared up and kissed the ground when I got to Dallas.
I’ve often thought that California may survive this era of degradation and rot, but they’re going to have to hit rock bottom before they collectively wake up to the fact that liberal, progressive, political ‘solutions’, do not work.
I hope for all our sakes that California turns back toward sanity, and saves itself.