Posted on 09/11/2022 4:34:04 AM PDT by FarCenter
For much of the 20th century, Los Angeles symbolised the future. Over the course of the century, the population grew 40-fold to nearly four million people.
But now, for the first time in its history, the population of Los Angeles is in decline, falling by 204,000 between July 2020 and July 2021. LA was once a magnet for investors. But recently many of the area’s corporate linchpins – including aerospace giant Northrop Grumman, Occidental Petroleum and Hilton Hotels – have left, taking with them high-paying jobs and philanthropic resources.
Worse still, conditions in LA today are bordering on the medieval. Anyone visiting some of the most famous districts of urban Los Angeles – notably downtown, Hollywood and Venice Beach – sees clear signs of destitution, including sprawling homeless encampments, vast numbers of people living in vehicles and rampant crime. Last year, a UN official compared conditions on LA’s Skid Row, a poor downtown neighbourhood, to those of Syrian refugee camps. Smash-and-grab thefts at local 7-Elevens and the persistent theft of goods from railyards suggest this is a city that has lost control to the modern version of lawless highwaymen.
So-called progressives have long dreamed of transforming the famously sprawled Los Angeles into a dense, transit-oriented, sun-kissed version of New York. But despite massive corporate and government investment, attempts to do this have failed. Rather than a vibrant hipster paradise, LA’s urban core is dominated by the homeless, the poor, government workers and a few creative types – making for an odd juxtaposition of homeless camps and low-rent hotels alongside high-end restaurants and artists’ lofts. Meanwhile, newly built luxury apartments have suffered vacancy rates as high as 14 per cent – remarkable in a city so short of housing.
Unsurprisingly, some Angelenos have sought to reverse this disastrous course. Earlier this year, disgruntled residents united around property developer Rick Caruso in his insurgent campaign to become mayor of Los Angeles. Caruso spent over $24million of his own money on the first round of the election in June.
Caruso is the grandson of Italian immigrants, whose father founded the successful LA business, Dollar Rent a Car. And he has himself been a big player in California for years. His real-estate business, founded in 1987, is now worth more than $4 billion. Caruso has built shopping centres all over the metropolitan area, from the iconic Farmer’s Market and middle-class San Fernando Valley to the swanky Pacific Palisades. Yet Caruso’s mayoral bid appears to have stalled against the well-organised might of the city’s public-employee-driven political machine.
...
Critically, the city is also losing its appeal to families and the young. Over the past 20 years, Los Angeles County has lost nearly 700,000 people under 25 – the biggest per capita decline in youth among all large US counties. In contrast, its elderly population has surged by 500,000. The Los Angeles Unified School District, which is mostly inside the city boundaries, has lost over 40 per cent of its student body in just 20 years. Even immigrants, who have restored much of the city’s vitality in the past few decades, are no longer coming. Between the 2010 and 2020 censuses, the number of foreign-born residents in Los Angeles County fell.
Short take: Leftists screw up everything they touch.
That sums up this article.
the LEFT is why we cannot have nice things
The “homeless” are drug users. The “creative types” are the sellers of pornography and fantasy, its own kind of drug. They tolerate the drug users out of a distorted sense of compassion, since they sell a drug, themselves.
The model has no vibrancy or future.
Los Angeles like New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington DC and probably 50 smaller cities are the real indicators of an Empire crumbling.
The only real question is, who will clean up the pieces?
Wake me up when LA finally gets enough signatures to get rid of their DA. The far left Dem mayoralty candidate leads the sane guy by double digits.Obviously, they like dysfunction The best we can hope for is they secede to become Mexico’s northernmost province. We’ll even give them Hollywood if they agree to bus the homeless population into the Mexican interior.
When Orange County fell to the leftist mob (led by Latino women) that was the last nail in the coffin for L.A. L.A. is a mixed race, overtaxed, overregulated, third world hellhole.
Happy to say I was one of them, retiring from LAUSD in July 2020. In fact, since I actually left June 12, I think I led the exodus.
My mother’s cousin came back to the northwest IL farm life after his WW2 tour (B17 co-pilot). But by 1955 decided the wintertime sub-zero livestock chores were a real drag. He decided LA’s climate was the promised land. By ‘92 he was retired, and he and his wife could see the future there was not good, and moved to the Washington high desert.
It’s funny what the LA lifestyle does to people. They and their children were back for a visit in the mid 60’s. Big family gathering. Their sons looked like sissies to me. And they mocked our country boy clothes and shoes. Lol
We have new neighbors a 1/4 mile away in the woods here in south central TN. They are conservatives that lived near Pendleton. The rising crime, and every night noise from sirens and street racers finally drove them here.
Born and raised in LA - it was a beautiful dreamland. I left in 1976. I go back to visit from time to time, truly it is hell on earth. Unliveable between the traffic jams and orcs roaming the streets. Unfortunate we and especially our children live in these evil times. Dear God - we could use some air cover down here.
“During the 1920s and 1930s Los Angeles was a bastion of Anglo Protestantism, reflecting the values of Midwestern parishioners who had been carried to the Southland on the Southern Pacific Railroad. Well into the 1970s, Protestant denominational leaders enjoyed comfortable, influential ties with the city’s still-strong “downtown business
establishment,” which itself was largely Protestant.
The Immigration Act of 1965, however, created the condition for a radically different religious future for the City of Angels-a future that would anoint Roman Catholicism as the area’s dominant religious group. Today Roman Catholicism is the single largest faith tradition in Los Angeles County, with 294 parishes and 3,631,368 adherents.
Among Christians, 71% are Catholics. Between 1980 and 1997, Roman Catholicism experienced a 36% growth.”
Los Angeles County’s Ten Largest Faith Groups in 2000
http://www.prolades.com/glama/CRCC%20demographics%20%20Los%20Angeles.htm
Yep the world is ever changing be it for good or bad. Just
take a few minutes and reflect upon this land called the USA
since Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492. The USA is a
prime example of change that has occurred in the last 600 yrs.
Actually, I’d consider the ‘fall’ of Los Angeles with no more concern than I had for Mogadishu, Kabul or any other third world city. I certainly don’t consider it even remotely anything like ‘American.’
LA badly needs an 8.0 earthquake
BTW...... Tents are the quake resistant architectural homes of squatters
Call some place paradise
kiss it goodbye.
She Came From Jalisco, The One In Old Mexico
That does not solve the problem of the homeless. It simply shifts the burden to local hotel owners. The city voters can't seem to get rid of the current politicians who refuse to enforce the laws about setting up a shanty town on the sidewalks of LA. Until the voters decide to clean house, and it appears they don't want to, there's nothing the average person can do. Local politicians voted to make LA a sanctuary city, which also drains the city's coffers.
Also, a DA who says stealing is not a crime unless it's over $1000 and you can't recall him, then it's a lack of action on the voters' part who are dropping the ball.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.