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?

@goldenoldie1

Excuse my naivety but the homeless people referred to on this thread could come to harm, having taken a drugs overdose, being attacked, run over, heart attack, anything really.

So in that scenario what would happen? They just get left to die on the streets in which they live? That is inhumane, please tell me there is a mechanism that will help?

I suspect if someone calls the police and/or ambulance they still come.

A video posted up thread about a place along the river in Santa Cruz explained that the people living there were not willing to leave even if they had a better place to go, “we live here.” This is the case with some homeless people. There are alternatives to being but they often involve lifestyle changes, like sobriety, that are not acceptable.

40 years ago most of these people would have been institutionalized in the US. At some point in the 80s those institutions were shut down and people shoved out the door.

@50ShadesOfCatholic
Your link relates to London Ontario, that’s in Canada btw

[quote Thighdentitycrisis]@50ShadesOfCatholic
Your link relates to London Ontario, that’s in Canada btw[/quote]
She knows. Several comments were made on the thread about it at the time ... 3 days ago.

This drive through video shows what it's like...

[quote wheresmymojo]This drive through video shows what it's like...

[/quote]

That is a lot of homeless people. Lots of litter and graffiti in the area. Would it be unsafe to walk through here?

I’d never walk through there. Even if the people were gone, any place that dirty is a no go for me. Philly can be pretty scary. The suburbs are nice. Heading there later for a Christmas party.

Maybe someone posted this previously but it’s very promising that the Mayor of San Fran is changing course.

sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2021/12/15/mayor-breed-orders-crackdown-on-crime-in-san-franciscos-tenderloin-neighborhood/?_gl=110s3c23_ga*cHRYTHI4SEtLUHhzQVVsYUp3Y1Q2d29uNGhrSWpLTmxuWVZiR3BpQmtETmoyMlZYNzB3VTFsRHNYYWpJcm52LQ..

twitter.com/samtlevin/status/1471904248753364994?s=21

The denial of the US left is similar to Stalin’s Useful Idiots, such as George Bernard Shaw and Beatrice and Sydney Webb who went on a tour of the USSR and came home eulogising about the Soviet workers’ paradise, apparently unaware of the appalling atrocities of the regime.
In fairness to them, their Soviet handlers made sure the tour was very carefully planned and under close and constant supervision.
The scenes in some American cities are less well hidden.

[quote julieca]@onlychildhamster they are more collective societies where you help each other out. Britain is a very selfish and individualistic society. I hate how selfish our society is.[/quote]
In many of those "collective societies" the work of caring, domestic arrangements etc falls largely to women.

@Davros it really depends, my mother stayed with her MIL for 29 years and she never cooked or did much housework.We ate outside. My mum was a career woman. My grandma is now in a care home but before that she had a domestic helper looking after her.

I actually think British women do way more housework than the women in my country! The majority of young women in my country don't cook, they have domestic helpers or eat out. My mum is so admiring of my MIL who raised 4 kids in UK and cooks and cleans, cos she has never done such things in her life.

29 years is a long time to have a MIL! My mother lived in a different country to her own mother and her MIL died less than 10 years after she got married. She had no family nearby of either side and, as for domestic help 😂

The Waltons 2021 ;

I believe the point about family units sticking together and helping one another is relevant in the sense of preventing drug use and mental illness and thus homelessness.

It is helpful to stable people who fall on hard times, but not addicts which is what we are really talking about in LA and beyond.

So I don’t think it’s the answer to the current crisis. Once someone is in active addiction or so far gone mentally that they wind up on the street, bringing them into your home is not something most people can manage. In fact, I think allowing my brother to move into my Dad’s home exacerbated his problems.

My brother was attending daily NA meetings and sponsoring others, exercising daily and held a full time job. He moved in with a girlfriend, quit his job, stopped the meetings, stopped exercising, took up drugs again, got kicked out, moved in with my Dad and spiraled further from there. He had endless family support his entire life. I myself paid his mortgage for a few years after a bad divorce. Dad paid his child support, and gave him everything he needed and more. We both took turns paying kids tuition. The support was endless. Within a few months he went through $50k inheritance.

That’s just an anecdote but statistics show that most of our homeless are suffering with mental illness and/or drug addiction.

Interview with Michael Shellenberger, author of Sanfransicko.

The title of the video is a bit click-baity, but it's an interesting interview and Michael comes across as a compassionate person.

I live in LA and I feel far safer here than in london but I don't frequent the tourist areas so I can't speak on that but maybe we are protected by being in a nice neighborhood.

@MissMinutes24 interesting post.

But Atlee created the NHS and he was a labour leader, not a tory (unsurprisingly)