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?

[quote 50ShadesOfCatholic]This is not a problem confined to California. Even in little New Zealand we have thousands of homeless people and human faeces in the street.

Our homeless people either sleep in the street, in refuges, tents, cars and garages with the "lucky ones" in emergency housing (motels).

London has always had a homeless population, I'm amazed so many posters are denying this.

london.ctvnews.ca/how-london-avoided-return-of-large-homeless-encampments-this-summer-1.5512501[/quote]
Where do you live? I've never seen human poop on the street here in a major NZ city.

It's mainly the camper van tourists who've been crapping in public in recent times.

Is it New Zealand, Canada?

@HunterGatherer

I blame Harry and Meghan, dragging the area down.

They've settled in Montecito which is a very naice area,

US journalists, academics and people working in the field have done thorough analysis of the problems and what would help, with a level of consensus: city, federal and central governments haven’t done those things.

My relative has just returned after a few years of living and working in LA. Would never go back, although there were some elements of living there he enjoyed, the surf mainly. There’s a guy who drives around skid row (which is apparently fairly central LA now) and just films out of his car window. It’s like scenes from a horror zombie film (I’m not going to link because it’s so disturbing and feels a bit voyeuristic). America has been fighting (or not) not only covid but a devastating opioid epidemic (caused largely by Perdue pharm marketing of OxyContin). Little social security and available healthcare, free access to guns, what did they think would happen? I think this is a similar story across America. I think Brits would be really shocked at the poverty and deprivation seen there on a daily basis. The US has a long history of ‘tent cities’. They don’t seem to have moved past the Hoovervilles of the depression era.

Certainly nothing on the scale of what I saw in SF tenderloin district when I was there just before the pandemic - it was truly, truly shocking. I'm used to seeing honelesee people living on the street with all their belongings etc and the mental health/addiction side of it from when it was actually a problem in London in the 90s, but I had never seen anything on that scale. People shooting up, defecating, having sex, lying in the road, lifeless bodies, people doing drug deals in front of you, dealers in flash cars selling to destroyed people - some with babies in a tattered pushchair - literally happening in front of me as I walked by, at 11am in the morning! God knows what it's like at night. And the pandemic must have made it worse.

It's all about the drugs and mental health there. Those people are treated like human waste. I was beyond shocked. I had never been to SF and was expecting all the charming trolley cars etc. It was filthy and full of really, really desperate people - many seemed to be older ex-military or younger with severe, severe drug problems. Nothing like I have ever seen in the UK in terms of scale and severity.

Even Palo Alto itself was a bit run down I thought and had its own homeless population, though it didn't seem as bad there. Then you drive past Google, FB, apple etc and think, how can they live in their mansions up the road from that and not feel bad? I felt bad as I got a taxi out of there.

Around 6 years ago we visited Berkeley (close to SF) for an American niece’s graduation, and SF. SF seemed OK then, although we heard complaints from locals about the crazy cost of housing.

However in Berkeley, all v nice on the surface, I was shocked to see a small park v. close to where niece had a waitressing job, literally full of homeless people sleeping rough.

As Dsis remarked, though, unlike where she still lives (Massachusetts) at least Berkeley is reasonably warm in winter.

Looking online the population of the area is over 18 million - and it is spread over a vast area, According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the Los Angeles–Anaheim–Riverside combined statistical area covers 33,954 square miles (87,940 km2), making it the largest metropolitan region in the United States by land area. Of this, the contiguous urban area is 2,281 square miles (5,910 km2)

This is huge - probably the number of homeless is no worse than many cities - it's just a bigger city.

London is 8 million and area of 607 sq miles, 1,500 km sq.

Brings some perspective. So it is 2.5 times the population of London over 3.5 times the area.

When you have a melting pot of a small number of people who are extremely wealthy and spend more on their dogs toys/accessories than families have to live on, the poverty, the guns, the drugs then it will boil over.
It's not a fair or equal society at all.

@MissMinutes24 the Tories absolutely did not bring in the NHS, that was the post ww2 Labour government. There was some cross party support for state funded healthcare in principle but the Tories actively tried to prevent it being a nationally run system.

Current Tories tend to avoid the overt religious extremism of the US right wing because it's generally not palatable to British voters but they definitely share some of their views and many Tory MPs are strongly anti-abortion and anti-gay rights. They believe that having lots of people on benefits is a problem that should be solved by taking away those benefits and leaving people to sink or swim rather than addressing the root causes of poverty such as low wages and high housing costs. I think you're probably right that they have a lot in common with the right wing of the US Democrats but let's not kid ourselves that they're some sort of benign force that couldn't eventually take us down the tent cities route if left unchecked.

As for the US I think it's rapidly approaching failed state status. There's too much of a divide between how people want to live their lives for anyone to reach enough of a consensus for meaningful change. Our own massive changes after WW2 came about because everyone believed things ought to be better, but too many Americans believe that things are just fine the way they are.

Democrats can't run cities.

@YourenutsmiLord

If SF is getting bad where will they move all the IT people who run the world via FB, Twitter etc At the moment people go there from all over the world for the jobs but perhaps they'll have to move the work elsewhere - or maybe many work from all over the world via zoom.

My DH works for fb and works out of the uk. No need to be stationed in the US to work for them.

There are two tent cities in Camden at the moment.

[quote CurtainTroubles]@BluebelllsRosesDaffodills central London is like that. There are tent camps along Park Lane and around most major stations. I live in westminster and there are homeless people sleeping on most major streets. I walked along Piccadilly today and must have counted at least 5 homeless men just lying on the street in sleeping bags.

The numbers increased noticeably during the first lockdown but have been steadily rising for years.[/quote]
This can't be comparable? Park Lane was like that 25 years ago. Holborn, Westminster...I did a lot of very early starts all around town back then, a few tents was the norm.

The tent cities I have heard about in the US are very different aren't they?

It seems to me that the root of the problem is drug and alcohol addiction.
This causes people to lose everything, not just their home and income but the support of their family as well. Even the charities that provide hostel accommodation will not provide a bed for active users. Therefore the only option for addicts is the streets.

Then you have the fallout of the addicts on wider society, the gangs, the guns, the crime etc.

Yes, mental health issues are in the mix too, did this cause the addictions or is it a product of it? Anecdotally, I can report my brothers mental Heath will never recover from his fall into the spiral of addiction.

What is the answer? On the face of it, you would think that in a civilised wealthy society these people should be helped, rescued, etc.

But how?

@Beefcurtains79 Camden, New Jersey?

@Bionicname

This is unfettered Capitalism eating itself. There isn’t much of a safety net, no nhs, health care is tied to your job; it can be astronomical and ruin lives really quickly. Not sure if the US has anything like furlough either? It’s a society that values individual success, and the appalling flip side to that is - if things go wrong you’re on your own. It creates an undercurrent of misery and wasted lives and crime and drug abuse even at the best of times. Add to that a pandemic where things go wrong for great numbers of people and you have a society with no resilience that just breaks apart.

Capitalism collapsed in 2008, particularly in the US. This is the zombie ruins.

America is in decline. Economically, socially and culturally.

Bit of an aside to this interesting thread, but the NHS was not started by the conservatives in GB, the founder was a Welsh Labour MP

The tent cities in places like LA literally stretch on for miles and miles
I live in Cardiff and am aware of an increase in street homelessness it is ver visible. However I have looked at the you tube videos the homeless cties in LA are unimaginable to most British people

Yes Manzana...a Labour Health Minister called Aneurin Bevan introduced the NHS. Honestly read that post in utter disbelief..outrageous lies

[quote raspberrymuffin]@MissMinutes24 the Tories absolutely did not bring in the NHS, that was the post ww2 Labour government. There was some cross party support for state funded healthcare in principle but the Tories actively tried to prevent it being a nationally run system.

Current Tories tend to avoid the overt religious extremism of the US right wing because it's generally not palatable to British voters but they definitely share some of their views and many Tory MPs are strongly anti-abortion and anti-gay rights. They believe that having lots of people on benefits is a problem that should be solved by taking away those benefits and leaving people to sink or swim rather than addressing the root causes of poverty such as low wages and high housing costs. I think you're probably right that they have a lot in common with the right wing of the US Democrats but let's not kid ourselves that they're some sort of benign force that couldn't eventually take us down the tent cities route if left unchecked.

As for the US I think it's rapidly approaching failed state status. There's too much of a divide between how people want to live their lives for anyone to reach enough of a consensus for meaningful change. Our own massive changes after WW2 came about because everyone believed things ought to be better, but too many Americans believe that things are just fine the way they are.[/quote]
I'm not even British, but I admire post war Labour party very much and british people for voting for that party despite Churchill winning the war.

The world be a better place if we had another Clement Atlee in every country of the world.

We do have tent cities in the UK. Castlefields in Manchester has had a tent city for a while now and Piccadilly gardens also has a huge homeless problem. I grew up in the late eighties/early nineties and very rarely saw a homeless person.

The number, and type, of homeless in LA and SF is way, way worse than anything I've seen or heard about in London or any European city. I don't think you can appreciate how bad it is unleed you've been there recently, in the last few years. Its not just 'same but on a bigger scale' . The opioid crisis and, dare I say it, legalisation or marijuana probably, have taken a massive, massive toll on these places and the people caught up in it. Watch the Simon Reeve documentary on California, it's very good on this. Also Dopesick on Netflix.

It's not just about poverty. It's the drugs. I saw tech guys on the streets passed out early in the morning. One guy drove up in a Tesla, parked on the street, sat on the pavement next to some wasted people, received something and slumped to the floor a few minutes later. The floor was the pavement, in a puddle of urine. I have to repeat that I saw all this, as a tourist, straying into tenderloin at 11.00 on a weekday morning. We also say a wasted older guy step out off the pavement into the road and get hit by a car. Car continued. Volunteers came out and picked unconscious (or dead/dying?) man up and propped him up against a wall and went on by. Another guy wa bleeding heavily, we asked a volunteer if we should call an ambulance. He told us the fire brigade was already on the way. We asked why the fire brigade, not an ambulance and were told ambulances won't come out for these people as so out of it and no insurance. Fire people arrived, picked him up, put him on a stretcher, wheeled him over the road and dumped him in a shelter. Literally tipped up the stretcher and poured him in the window.

I really don't think we have this level of whatever it is in the UK.

@LifeIsWhat

I am shocked and what genuinely puzzles me is: Isn't California a democratic party state? And the democratic party in the US is all for equality and tax the rich and look after the poor? Also, aren't Apple, Google - the big tech companies support the democratic party to look after the poor (sorry for the paraphrasing)? How come the reality is like this?

Democratic Party have a shocking record at running big cities.

California was a Republican state not long ago.

@mantlepiece

It seems to me that the root of the problem is drug and alcohol addiction. This causes people to lose everything, not just their home and income but the support of their family as well. Even the charities that provide hostel accommodation will not provide a bed for active users. Therefore the only option for addicts is the streets.

Then you have the fallout of the addicts on wider society, the gangs, the guns, the crime etc.

Yes, mental health issues are in the mix too, did this cause the addictions or is it a product of it? Anecdotally, I can report my brothers mental Heath will never recover from his fall into the spiral of addiction.

What is the answer? On the face of it, you would think that in a civilised wealthy society these people should be helped, rescued, etc.

But how?

War on drugs and the Big Pharma industry a huge issue.