The situation in LA

[Cheesefiend36]

www.nytimes.com/2021/12/12/us/los-angeles-mayor-race.html

I've been reading with interest that LA has had a terrible time of it since Covid and new anti prison sentence laws which has seen crime go up. I follow somebody who was in LA for a holiday last week and vowed never to go back after seeing the amount of poverty, homeless camps in tourist places, crime rates and a general feeling of not being safe. Lifeless bodies on the side of the road is apparently the norm with no body batting an eyelid

LAPD have recommended that tourists stay away because they can't keep them safe

Is anyone there right now or has been recently that can share their experience?
So much wealth there, how can this be happening?

@MaMaLa321 I lived with my DH's mum and his 3 sisters in a 3 bed Victorian terrace until we saved up 70k in 3 years and could afford to buy our flat (London)..my aunt who took in her sister and 3 nieces/nephews when they had nowhere to go had a 3 bed flat. We just make do with what we have, I suppose. But I think in UK/USA, people feel like they must make their own way in the world. Which is fair enough but it means that they could fall into a lot of bother. DH's younger sister is doing an overseas unpaid internship when she was on benefits in the UK. I have no idea how she is financing it as she isn't allowed to work in that country. I guess she is going through savings. We (DH and I) have sent her £500 twice but she pays us back. She was on housing benefit when in UK and she still didn't move back home even during the pandemic which would have saved her money (we had moved out by that time so lots of space). I don't really see how this is good from a financial point of view even if she looks more independent than her brother at her age, living in another country. DH has another sister who is renting in the same expensive city. Housing is even more expensive than London so they have little hope of buying if they are also renting and rents grow up so much that they were priced out of their neighbourhood when they moved away for a few months and had to settle for an apartment in the seediest part of the city. So I wouldn't like to be renting there long term...

The thing is they seem more independent than a lot of Asian kids who are still living with parents but really is this independence? Inflation and recession could very easily derail their finances...

Really interesting thread - bumping for later.

I went to SF and LA 8 years ago and was shocked then. Our tour guide told us that homeless people travel to California from all over the country because of the climate - better to be homeless somewhere warm.

What's it like further south in San Diego?

It is not about being a bleeding heart.
I don't know why you would bé against prevention. Why create the situations where you have unmedicated mentally ill and desperately poor people wandering the streets and the crime that comes from that?
Locking people up like this does not prevent a crime happened. You are locking people up once thefts, burglaries, assaults and murders have happened. Surely it is better to prevent as many of them happening as possible?
We can see with initiatives like the Glasgow gang project that a lot of murders and violence can be prevented. Of course not all, but a lot.

I toured the USA with my adult DD2 4 years ago. The only place we felt unsafe was San Fransisco even then. We stayed in a nice airbnb in a nice residential area, and yet the local supermarket had all items (even shampoo) in locked cabinets, and the locals were mostly using food stamps.
The piers were terrifying. I have never seen so many utterly hopeless human beings, many so drugged they were slumped or partly naked. We did not go out at night there.

The other place that surprised me, sadly was Hawaii. Utterly beautiful, and most areas are spotlessly clean, welcoming and lovely. But our Hawaiian friend was very clear on how awful the situation was, and away from the tourist areas the huge tent city was a sad surprise.

LA was souless. Venice Beach etc was just one big weed fest but grimy rather than scary. New York wasn't too bad, and in fact when we got off the subway and unknowingly walked into a 'bad' area we passed through (the only two caucasians there) and only realised later that it was probably unsafe.
We went to many States and met many wonderful people (it was our 'lifetime trip') but the disparity between the Haves and the Have nots, including some of the friends we stayed with, was startling and so sad.

@SecondClassmyass

And yes, lived and worked all over London for 30 years, there are no tent cities. This is fake news. There is more homeless in Leeds city centre than on Piccadilly.

"Fake news" is how I feel about whole thread, including description of LA.

I have family who live all over SoCal & Northern Cal, too. People on moderate incomes and lower. They post happy selfies on Facebook. Nobody is despairing or victims of daily constant crime. I suppose my aunt posted these items on her Facebook recently (amidst raging criticisms of Biden).

I had a nice time visiting London 3 months ago.

lljkk so you're in LA and your family are dotted about?

That's interesting, thanks.

Those Democrats sure do know how to run a city don't they ; appear to be doing a wonderful job on the East coast in Philadelphia too.

I am not prepared to believe that it's only cities run by Democrats which are absolute shit holes. Although I can well believe that the Republican run ones just drive people out and dump the problems on someone else.

When I first saw the trailer for New Order earlier this year my first thought was LA:

@Peregrina its similar with london/manchester whom some people would always label as 'shitholes'. They are big cities with job opportunities in the service sector that are appealing to poorer people. Unfortunately, life in the big city isn't always easy and therefore people end up in messy situations. Such cities are also dominated by the young in search of job opportunities, immigrants in search of job opportunities ( many immigrants want to earn the maximum amount of money to send back home and don't mind living in cramped accommodation; cities often are cheaper if you are willing to share rooms as everything is in close proximity; immigrants can also get jobs in the community so no need to speak good english) and these people often tend to vote for left wing parties anyway.

The post war trend was that of suburbanization in UK/USA so people with a little bit of savings and were a bit more established and wanted to start a family tended to move out. in London, this did change a bit from the 1990s to 2010s as many families stayed in London and it was seen as a desirable place to live and a lot of areas underwent gentrification. But when I bought in london in 2019, I found that most people my age were buying outside london and this has accelerated during the pandemic. I think that in future, only the very rich, the very poor,ethnic minorities (which can belong to either group and also the middle class) and a transient expat/worker population would live in London. Ethnic minorities would probably stay in London for the community.

@Beefcurtains79

There are two tent cities in Camden at the moment.

Where? I live in Camden

@Peregrina

I am not prepared to believe that it's only cities run by Democrats which are absolute shit holes. Although I can well believe that the Republican run ones just drive people out and dump the problems on someone else.

Democrats do a terrible job at running big urban cities. That's just reality.

Does LA have homeless shelters, food banks or any council support to help with housing?

How would a homeless person get themselves off the street?

I wouldn't go near anywhere in the USA these days. It's near collapse. People working three jobs still can't pay their rent...entire middle class households living in pay by the night hotels..in one room.

That's a bit of a sweeping statement surely? I have friends in different parts of the USA, not mega wealthy, just ordinary people, and they don't live the way you suggest.

The Defund the Police movement is certainly not popular with poor people who live in urban areas. In fact Republican voting in black communities has risen. Defund the Police is a policy favoured by those who are either dubiously politically motivated or live safely and do not need the services of the police.

Furthermore in many cities it is incredibly difficult trying to recruit police now. Of course there are bad apples - in some forces no doubt there are whole barrels of rotten apples - but the alternative is a return to the Wild West.

I simply don’t understand any policy of ignor8ng “petty” crime. Any crime is a crime. Eg Someone stole a family member’s Christmas presents en route to Italy. Petty crime, yes? Hardly worth anyone’s time. WRONG! It sickens me to think some jerk ripping open presents with labels on and throwing aside the contents. But some would advocate that this is permissable .

How are you going to help a homeless drug user with mental health problems (inevitably caused by the drugs) ? Addiction is not a five-minute cure and the numbers of people are huge. You could throw the entire US budget at the problem and the root cause would still exist.

I don’t know what the answer is but patching up is not going to work.

I went to Washington DC in 2001 (before 9 11) and the number of homeless people there was just shocking. It was beyond anything we have here. My uncle goes back regularly and says it hasn’t got better. It is not suprising that Covid has made things worse.

The problem is that there is no support. My friend who has a good health care packing through her job has to pay a huge amount of money on top of this for her medications. It is 200 dollars for a Covid test. There are so many people with very limited access to healthcare.

I do agree with the capitalism on steroids comments. There is no social support and even the democrats can’t put in social projects that require funding (they abandoned an attempt at introducing maternity leave). It would be a good idea if some of the money that is currently being spent on sending people to prison was being invested in communities but just ignoring crime is not the way to do that. Arresting people and using alternatives to prison (such as rehab) would be better. A lot of the policies they want to implement would actually work if there was a lot more spending on social infrastructure but they don’t want to put this in (and there has not been a history of spending to build on).

@StillMedusa

I toured the USA with my adult DD2 4 years ago. The only place we felt unsafe was San Fransisco even then. We stayed in a nice airbnb in a nice residential area, and yet the local supermarket had all items (even shampoo) in locked cabinets, and the locals were mostly using food stamps. The piers were terrifying. I have never seen so many utterly hopeless human beings, many so drugged they were slumped or partly naked. We did not go out at night there.

The other place that surprised me, sadly was Hawaii. Utterly beautiful, and most areas are spotlessly clean, welcoming and lovely. But our Hawaiian friend was very clear on how awful the situation was, and away from the tourist areas the huge tent city was a sad surprise.

LA was souless. Venice Beach etc was just one big weed fest but grimy rather than scary. New York wasn't too bad, and in fact when we got off the subway and unknowingly walked into a 'bad' area we passed through (the only two caucasians there) and only realised later that it was probably unsafe.
We went to many States and met many wonderful people (it was our 'lifetime trip') but the disparity between the Haves and the Have nots, including some of the friends we stayed with, was startling and so sad.

Why did you have to put "the only two caucasians there".

I was interested in what you had to say until that part. Unnecessary.

@gofg

I wouldn't go near anywhere in the USA these days. It's near collapse. People working three jobs still can't pay their rent...entire middle class households living in pay by the night hotels..in one room.

That's a bit of a sweeping statement surely? I have friends in different parts of the USA, not mega wealthy, just ordinary people, and they don't live the way you suggest.

Exactly. Sweeping and misleading. I also have various friends across the US as well as quite a few former colleagues I keep in touch with (I used to work in Denver, NYC & Houston) and this statement in no way represents the country they live in. And they are just normal people, no-one's earning big bucks.

I haven't been to LA in almost a decade so it's obviously got much worse. But pre-Covid I was in Denver a lot on business and I was really shocked at the number of homeless people there. I was told that Denver was popular because the city claimed to provide overnight shelter beds (mattresses on a floor really) for everyone but actually the take-up was relatively low.

Homeless advocacy group Denver Homeless Out Loud offered the following reasons why people chose to sleep on the street rather than go to a shelter:

All those who love their husband or wife and feel safer together than separated as shelters do to couples…
All those who work late nights and can’t get into a shelter…
All those who work nights and have no option to sleep in a shelter in the day...
All those who work early morning day labor and can’t get out of the shelter in time to work…
All those women who are traumatized by male staff in the bunk areas waking women to kick them out…
All those with pets or service animals who are rejected from shelters…
All those who can’t conform to regimented rules…
All those who can’t handle being ordered around and degraded by staff…
All those with insomnia who can’t watch TV or read but must be in bed with no cell phones...
All those who have stayed in a shelter program for ninety days with a promise of housing to no avail and given up on service providers…
All those who have been kicked out at 3 a.m. for no fault of their own because staff failed to sign them in or enter their chores in the records…
All those who need food in the night and fear being kicked out for keeping food with them in bed against the rules…
All those who don’t want to sleep with bedbugs...
All those suffering a drug addiction that can’t pass a urine analysis to stay in the shelters…
All those don’t make it in the lottery to get a bed…
All those who can’t get down on the floor to sleep on a mat…
All those with more than two bags of belongings who either go into the shelter and lose their property, or stay outside to keep their property...
All those trans-gender folks who have been abused in a shelter or forced to strip to prove their sex…
All those who want their time back from waiting in lines for early admission hours to get into a shelter…
All those who don’t want to be preached to by shelter providers…
All those with mental health struggles who can’t handle being around hundreds of people in a tight space…
All those released from the hospital at 1 a.m. onto the streets…
All those physically unable to move about when police ask them...
All those who feel safer staying outside with friends than in a building with strangers…
All those who feel safer or happier staying by themselves on the streets than with hundreds of people in a shelter…
All those who prefer the dignity of a tent to the warehousing and dehumanizing treatment of a shelter…
All those who want control of their own life and choices…

More heroin and now crystal meth too is going to be flooding out of Afghanistan and hitting US and European streets soon. If anything it’ll get worse.

@DottyHarmer

The Defund the Police movement is certainly not popular with poor people who live in urban areas. In fact Republican voting in black communities has risen. Defund the Police is a policy favoured by those who are either dubiously politically motivated or live safely and do not need the services of the police.

Furthermore in many cities it is incredibly difficult trying to recruit police now. Of course there are bad apples - in some forces no doubt there are whole barrels of rotten apples - but the alternative is a return to the Wild West.

I simply don’t understand any policy of ignor8ng “petty” crime. Any crime is a crime. Eg Someone stole a family member’s Christmas presents en route to Italy. Petty crime, yes? Hardly worth anyone’s time. WRONG! It sickens me to think some jerk ripping open presents with labels on and throwing aside the contents. But some would advocate that this is permissable .

Agree, it's an absurd position.

Defund the Police is a policy favoured by those who are either dubiously politically motivated or live safely and do not need the services of the police

You missed out the third group - those who move in criminal circles and so would really quite like any consequences to be hampered