> The latest official homeless count found 44,000 people living in county streets in a three-day period in January, a 12% increase in two years
This means that the number of homeless is up from 39,285 (44,000/1.12) to 44,000 in 2 years. That's an average increase of about 196 per month. So out of the 13,000 falling homeless each month, another 12,804 pull themselves out of it. That's a much more sensible number.
I absolutely think this is a problem that needs attention, but it's not at "the number of homeless is increasing by 13k each month" levels.
That does only take the possibility of "pulling themselves out of it" into regard as possibility to get out of the statistics. I can think of several other ways to get out of the statistics: E.g. Dying, moving into an other area ...
I accept, that the numbers are not complete and somehow misleading, but simple conclusions are too!
According to a report that came out a few months ago, there has been a 12% rise in homelessness in LA in the last 2 years. [1]
I believe that number is way underreported.
I don't have any evidence to point to. I've lived in Los Angeles my whole life and have spent a lot of time in and around the skid row area since the late 90's.
All I can say is that in the last year, the population on skid row has exploded. I don't know if its due to people being corralled into the area because of development in the Arts District, LA Live, etc, but the radius of skid row has at least doubled in the last year.
A couple weeks ago I drove through the area on a hot Sunday afternoon and I had to pull over because I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Block after block after block of streets full of homeless people. Not just the sidewalks, but the streets were full of crowds too. I've been to plenty of third world countries around the world, large and small, but never once have I seen so much misery in one place as I saw in DTLA a couple weeks back.
I'm curious how they do get accurate numbers on homeless. Is it just people checking into shelters?
I've been living in my car for 5 months now. I'm not on any homeless radar/reports/etc. How many more people like me are there that fly under the radar.
There should be zero homeless (or close to it) in the United States. The U.S. is the richest country in the history of the world, by a long shot, and growing wealthier every year. Certainly Americans can afford to provide basic food and shelter (and healthcare) to everyone. We lose sight of concrete reality when we get caught up in the economic and social philosophizing and political conflict; nothing justifies leaving a human being on the street, like a stray dog, when you can do something about it. There is no excuse.
You wouldn't be able to survive winters in Netherlands. Also social system is probably better.
Coming to LA and accidentally wandering few miles off downtown to warehouse district left me in shock. I was ready to jump in front of police car just to get me out of there.
I knew about the ghettos and drug problem just wasn't expecting it to hit me so hard. People living in tents, some lady sort of dancing or having convolutions. I've seen plenty of poor people in various countries, but nothing like this. Heck, homeless beggar in London will say good day to you.
Edit: I actually have some anecdotal experience about social care in Netherlands. One morning I woke up in acquaintances house after night of doing MDMA (and him, speed). Some lady was staring at me. She explained as the guy was living off social care, he was being monitored in case he needed some help or something like that. She didn't ask anything in particular or was judgmental. Looked like he had everything, a computer, decent place, skateboard and bmx bike. A night earlier he explained his both parents deceased.
Comparing data from different countries is very tricky.
You don't know how the statistics define homelessness (they aren't consistent even in a single country), you don't know who they count or how they count them.
For example in Europe the homeless statistics do not count or do not count the migrant population very well (at least in some countries cannot say for NL).
Number of homeless at any given time is also not the only factor if a person in NL is homeless for average for 3 months and in the states for 6 or 1 it makes a bigger impact than the total number.
The UK for example is probably very very bad at counting homeless they don't even want to call them that they call it "sleeping rough" (people who actually sleep on the street and not in housing) here according to the official figures England has only 2414 (est. 2014) homeless people (at any given time). London apparently has only 400 or so homeless people at any given night and even by living in the 2nd most expensive borough in London i can easily go BS about it without the need to jump to east London.
That said if you are arrested and are put in holding for the night you don't count for the "sleeping rough" statistics so it's very easy to poison such statistics with even simple police enforcement.
Not claiming that the Dutch authorities are doing anything like that (although I've seen quite a few homeless people being picked up if they are in central Amsterdam) but playing with the numbers of people who "don't count" in the eyes of many is far too easy.
There's no doubt that the dutch social net is better, but large populations generate a large overhead it's always much easier to handle and provide social services to small population even at a fraction of the per-capita costs that the budgets of populated countries allow.
A lot of homeless people in the south of Europe comes from the north. I heard a lot of them speaking polish, for instance. They are running away from the hard winters.
I suppose is the same case in Los Angeles.
So, maybe, the homeless people from the Netherlands are not in the Netherlands.
Same here, I often talk to them, give them money (you can't give them food, so sometimes if they are nearby fast-food place or some store take them with you and buy the things they need).
There was a guy years ago that lived outside a store across West-side Pavillion (near Pico & Overland).
He talked to me that he was stationed in Germany long time ago, then came back here, something happened, lost all of his documents, but something was going to happen for him, and he really liked going back to Germany.
Years before this, somewhere on Ocean Park Blvd, across the Activision HQ, there were these two homeless old dudes, drunk and barely walking - and we said that we are programmers - and he asked as about "C" and that he worked at AT&T long time ago with Denis Richie, Ken Thompson, etc... and I don't know whether to believe him or not, but I doubt many people would know about the founders of the "C" language.
Are there any apps that A) make it easy for people to host homeless families or individuals, or B) let people offer housing at reduced rent after some type of qualification or just based on a profile or C) allow people to pay into pools similar to Section 8 to sponsor housing and then access funds from them -- sort of like a privatized streamlined Section 8 app.
This is a very interesting idea. Airbnb (or the sharing economy in general) for providing homeless housing in spare bedrooms.
Obviously a big problem is the fear many people have of poor people. I think it's mostly just fear of people who are different, but someone would have to give hosts confidence in their own safety. If you could solve that ...
This is an explanation forwarded by my mother, who knows a thing or two about scraping by to make ends meet:
Being poor sucks.
Yes, that's right: being poor. I'm talking about the constant stresses placed upon a person that is working a minimum wage job, barely able to afford their rent. Constant stress about money.
Now imagine for a minute I could tell you that stress is a choice. The alternative, the very scary "homelessness", "on the streets" --- is it really much worse? Could it actually be less stressful?
I think what happens is some of these people become homeless and realize that it isn't all that bad. For a subset of the population who can already get by on not a lot, not having a home (and the stress that comes with it) must be welcome. They become homeless and realize "I can do this, this could be my life. Let's live in a tent."
And there you go, someone who has decided to become "chronically" homeless.
I'll have to say there is something to be said about releasing all the conventional trappings of modern society: you no longer have to worry about bills, responsibility. You get to be outdoors. Sure, there are other problems, like where to find food and keep clean, and avoiding the police, but for some that is better than competing in the rat race of life, at what is the very hardest and poorest levels of society.
I have family that work for homeless shelters in NYC. Usually the ones he works with are the fresh homeless. These are foster kids that age out of the system, abused kids turned adults, and male spouses. The first 72 hours are the most critical. After that they start to have a mental breakdown. Being homeless becomes the new normal and they go feral. These are the homeless most people think of. They can no longer function in society. They are antisocial, unemployable, and have poor hygiene.
These homeless aren't living a hobo dream. They traded one form of stress for another. Now instead of worrying about rent they have stress from lack of sleep. The ones that choose to live in a tent because it is less stressful is actually quite small group.
It's reasonable that just sinking into homelessness can seem like a relief from some things. But don't assume that it's some easy "return to the wild" - anyone living in tent is at risk at having that tent knocked down (since it's on land to which they have no right, they being homeless) and being arrested for trespassing. Then given a ticket (that they can't pay) and then watching their fines go up for non-payment until they face serious jail-time that doesn't remove the ticket. And so-forth.
And without the tent, you risk death by exposure, as happens regularly to homeless people in any place without perfect weather.
And the campaigns the police conduct, to make it impossible to sleep in any given location, result in chronic sleeplessness in the homeless, which results in a variety of psychiatric disorders, a process which feeds on itself until the result is utterly destroyed human being one occasionally sees by the side of our roads.
A few people do competently navigate these problem to be successful hobos/tramps but this is not paradise.
This post seems a little naive to me, and certainly couldn't apply to every single person who no longer has a home in California. We've developed technology and built homes so that we didn't have to deal with living in the outside world - to keep the outside from coming in, so to speak - and it gives us choice and stability, if we are able to maintain our possession of it without too much stress and trouble. That it is still hard to keep a home in a lot of places should be a real concern - things like that are not good for anybody. Homelessness can hurt people and hurt communities. I'd want to see some real investigation rather than conjecture about whether these specific people are doing it out of choice, or whether they are capably dealing with the extremely difficult and unpredictable circumstances that often accompany homelessness. The perspective you are arguing from kind of seems sheltered to me. There have been many more people protesting across the U.S. in the last few years than have been living the idyllic and romantic hobo life, free from stress and want.
Your mother does not seem like much of an unassailable source of wisdom when it comes to the realities of poverty - maybe you should argue from a more personal or sourced perspective about what it is like to be poor or homeless and what kind of conditions folks in such a position experience?
That sounds like a decision made long after becoming homeless. I seriously doubt may people who have homes decide to abandon the lifestyle and take to the streets.
This is a good point. Homelessness is often a lot less stressful and scary than the modern rat race. Having spent a year living in my car I can see how very few want to go back to working all day to live paycheck to paycheck.
> The latest official homeless count found 44,000 people living in county streets in a three-day period in January [...]
Sounds like most of those 13,000 newly homeless people are the same every month - falling in and out of homelessness periodically.
> The group's analysis was based on records for 9 million county residents who received public assistance at any point between 2002 and 2010.
How can they have so many poor people when the total population of the county was 9,818,605 in 2010 according to Wikipedia? Do they give "public assistance" to rich people too?
This commenter's tone is flippant but he brings up a really good question! Why do 9 mil people get benefits in a city of 10 million? I spent a few minutes googling "la population churn" until I realized that sociologists use the more polite term "turnover".
Between 1985 and 1990, the mean migration turnover rate was 35%.[1] And if you look at the map, LA county is shaded the color of 41-65% turnover. Let's guess 50%.
So if we guess 50% turnover per 5 years still applies between 2002 and 2010, then it's reasonable that 15million - 20million people have lived in LA county during that time period. Given that 49% of the US population get government benefits [2], this checks out. Especially since LA county has a higher poverty rate than the rest of the country. [3]
"How can they have so many poor people when the total population of the county was 9,818,605 in 2010 according to Wikipedia?"
"The Census Bureau does not produce or publish a total count of the homeless population[0]."
So it is very likely the 9.8M you quoted for the total population is off. An additional factor is that this number does not likely include immigrants who may not wish to be counted for social or legal reasons. Whereas the 9M "county residents" probably did include many homeless and/or immigrant residents.
FTA, "9 million county residents who received public assistance at any point between 2002 and 2010."
That's a total count of distinct residents over 8 years. The 2000 census shows a population of about 9.3M[2]. But that .5M increase isn't just people who moved (or were born) in the county. Due to geographic mobility/migration[1], births, deaths, etc, the people who lived in LA county in 2002 are not necessarily the same people who lived in LA county in 2010.
FTA, "who received public assistance at any point ... 2007 to 2010 recession also drove many out of their homes".
Just about everyone I knew took government assistance during the recession. Whether it was food stamps, mortgage help, school lunches, unemployment or whatever. So the statistics maybe a little skewed since it contains a period of significant recession. (unemployment isn't technically public assistance, because an employee pays into it, but for people I know, it's still lumped in the same category as the other types of help)
L.A. is famous for being a place where people only live temporarily, so it's likely that both the people who fall into homelessness and the people on public assistance don't stay long and get replaced with a new group of people who fall into the same situation.
If I extrapolate that (44000 mentioned in another post) to the size of my country we should have some 20000 homeless people here... Jeez, the US calls itself the "richest country in the world"....
We have practically no homeless people, maybe a couple of hundred who don't want the help.
How is it that you can't take care of the less fortunate even though you have money to by all the crap in thew world?
Sorry for being a harsh, smug, nordic country resident, but sometimes the wonderland of the US does seem a little cold.
Does the US call itself the "richest country in the world" more frequently than anyone else does? Which country do you reside in, incidentally?
You'll also find people here claim the homeless "don't want help." It doesn't mean they're correct in their assessment.
Speaking of a little cold, in some places being homeless is more feasible than others. LA is certainly one of those places.
It also depends on your standards. I'm not saying we don't have a huge homeless problem -- we absolutely do. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, home to some of the most expensive housing in the world, and there are many homeless here (or at least in SF proper).
It also depends on who you consider a person. When I was living in France, I once remarked that I was surprised that there were so many homeless people, and that it seemed like there were almost as many as my hometown. The reply was "oh, no, they're not homeless, they're Roma."
[+] [-] delecti|10 years ago|reply
This means that the number of homeless is up from 39,285 (44,000/1.12) to 44,000 in 2 years. That's an average increase of about 196 per month. So out of the 13,000 falling homeless each month, another 12,804 pull themselves out of it. That's a much more sensible number.
I absolutely think this is a problem that needs attention, but it's not at "the number of homeless is increasing by 13k each month" levels.
[+] [-] PythonicAlpha|10 years ago|reply
That does only take the possibility of "pulling themselves out of it" into regard as possibility to get out of the statistics. I can think of several other ways to get out of the statistics: E.g. Dying, moving into an other area ...
I accept, that the numbers are not complete and somehow misleading, but simple conclusions are too!
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] p_monk|10 years ago|reply
I believe that number is way underreported.
I don't have any evidence to point to. I've lived in Los Angeles my whole life and have spent a lot of time in and around the skid row area since the late 90's.
All I can say is that in the last year, the population on skid row has exploded. I don't know if its due to people being corralled into the area because of development in the Arts District, LA Live, etc, but the radius of skid row has at least doubled in the last year.
A couple weeks ago I drove through the area on a hot Sunday afternoon and I had to pull over because I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Block after block after block of streets full of homeless people. Not just the sidewalks, but the streets were full of crowds too. I've been to plenty of third world countries around the world, large and small, but never once have I seen so much misery in one place as I saw in DTLA a couple weeks back.
1. http://circanews.com/news/us-homelessness-recession-1
[+] [-] carcamper|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jorgenhorstink|10 years ago|reply
82,000 homeless on a population of 9,818,605 [2]; 0.835%
I just compared it to the 2012 stats for The Netherlands (highest homeless count in 2012).
27,300 homeless [3] on a population of 16,779,575 [4]; 0.163%
That was a bit surprising to me. It looks like there are 5 times more homeless per capita in LA than in The Netherlands...
[1] http://www.laalmanac.com/social/so14.htm [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_County,_California [3] http://www.cbs.nl/nl-NL/menu/themas/bevolking/publicaties/ar... [4] http://statline.cbs.nl/Statweb/publication/?VW=T&DM=SLNL&PA=...
[+] [-] hackuser|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dzhiurgis|10 years ago|reply
Coming to LA and accidentally wandering few miles off downtown to warehouse district left me in shock. I was ready to jump in front of police car just to get me out of there.
I knew about the ghettos and drug problem just wasn't expecting it to hit me so hard. People living in tents, some lady sort of dancing or having convolutions. I've seen plenty of poor people in various countries, but nothing like this. Heck, homeless beggar in London will say good day to you.
Edit: I actually have some anecdotal experience about social care in Netherlands. One morning I woke up in acquaintances house after night of doing MDMA (and him, speed). Some lady was staring at me. She explained as the guy was living off social care, he was being monitored in case he needed some help or something like that. She didn't ask anything in particular or was judgmental. Looked like he had everything, a computer, decent place, skateboard and bmx bike. A night earlier he explained his both parents deceased.
[+] [-] coldtea|10 years ago|reply
Why wouldn't there be? US/California is famous for its homeless multitudes. You cannot miss them in downtown SF for example.
The Netherlands (and most of Western Europe) has much better social protection.
[+] [-] hnpc123|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cgrubb|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dogma1138|10 years ago|reply
The UK for example is probably very very bad at counting homeless they don't even want to call them that they call it "sleeping rough" (people who actually sleep on the street and not in housing) here according to the official figures England has only 2414 (est. 2014) homeless people (at any given time). London apparently has only 400 or so homeless people at any given night and even by living in the 2nd most expensive borough in London i can easily go BS about it without the need to jump to east London. That said if you are arrested and are put in holding for the night you don't count for the "sleeping rough" statistics so it's very easy to poison such statistics with even simple police enforcement. Not claiming that the Dutch authorities are doing anything like that (although I've seen quite a few homeless people being picked up if they are in central Amsterdam) but playing with the numbers of people who "don't count" in the eyes of many is far too easy.
There's no doubt that the dutch social net is better, but large populations generate a large overhead it's always much easier to handle and provide social services to small population even at a fraction of the per-capita costs that the budgets of populated countries allow.
[+] [-] RobertoG|10 years ago|reply
I suppose is the same case in Los Angeles.
So, maybe, the homeless people from the Netherlands are not in the Netherlands.
[+] [-] rconti|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coderbrew|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] malkia|10 years ago|reply
There was a guy years ago that lived outside a store across West-side Pavillion (near Pico & Overland).
He talked to me that he was stationed in Germany long time ago, then came back here, something happened, lost all of his documents, but something was going to happen for him, and he really liked going back to Germany.
Years before this, somewhere on Ocean Park Blvd, across the Activision HQ, there were these two homeless old dudes, drunk and barely walking - and we said that we are programmers - and he asked as about "C" and that he worked at AT&T long time ago with Denis Richie, Ken Thompson, etc... and I don't know whether to believe him or not, but I doubt many people would know about the founders of the "C" language.
[+] [-] ilaksh|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hackuser|10 years ago|reply
Obviously a big problem is the fear many people have of poor people. I think it's mostly just fear of people who are different, but someone would have to give hosts confidence in their own safety. If you could solve that ...
[+] [-] Kinnard|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mayneack|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] iamleppert|10 years ago|reply
Being poor sucks.
Yes, that's right: being poor. I'm talking about the constant stresses placed upon a person that is working a minimum wage job, barely able to afford their rent. Constant stress about money.
Now imagine for a minute I could tell you that stress is a choice. The alternative, the very scary "homelessness", "on the streets" --- is it really much worse? Could it actually be less stressful?
I think what happens is some of these people become homeless and realize that it isn't all that bad. For a subset of the population who can already get by on not a lot, not having a home (and the stress that comes with it) must be welcome. They become homeless and realize "I can do this, this could be my life. Let's live in a tent."
And there you go, someone who has decided to become "chronically" homeless.
I'll have to say there is something to be said about releasing all the conventional trappings of modern society: you no longer have to worry about bills, responsibility. You get to be outdoors. Sure, there are other problems, like where to find food and keep clean, and avoiding the police, but for some that is better than competing in the rat race of life, at what is the very hardest and poorest levels of society.
[+] [-] yardie|10 years ago|reply
These homeless aren't living a hobo dream. They traded one form of stress for another. Now instead of worrying about rent they have stress from lack of sleep. The ones that choose to live in a tent because it is less stressful is actually quite small group.
[+] [-] joe_the_user|10 years ago|reply
And without the tent, you risk death by exposure, as happens regularly to homeless people in any place without perfect weather.
And the campaigns the police conduct, to make it impossible to sleep in any given location, result in chronic sleeplessness in the homeless, which results in a variety of psychiatric disorders, a process which feeds on itself until the result is utterly destroyed human being one occasionally sees by the side of our roads.
A few people do competently navigate these problem to be successful hobos/tramps but this is not paradise.
[+] [-] squeeze|10 years ago|reply
Your mother does not seem like much of an unassailable source of wisdom when it comes to the realities of poverty - maybe you should argue from a more personal or sourced perspective about what it is like to be poor or homeless and what kind of conditions folks in such a position experience?
[+] [-] sandworm101|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yardie|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ohsnap|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] strathmeyer|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stefantalpalaru|10 years ago|reply
Sounds like most of those 13,000 newly homeless people are the same every month - falling in and out of homelessness periodically.
> The group's analysis was based on records for 9 million county residents who received public assistance at any point between 2002 and 2010.
How can they have so many poor people when the total population of the county was 9,818,605 in 2010 according to Wikipedia? Do they give "public assistance" to rich people too?
[+] [-] civilian|10 years ago|reply
Between 1985 and 1990, the mean migration turnover rate was 35%.[1] And if you look at the map, LA county is shaded the color of 41-65% turnover. Let's guess 50%.
So if we guess 50% turnover per 5 years still applies between 2002 and 2010, then it's reasonable that 15million - 20million people have lived in LA county during that time period. Given that 49% of the US population get government benefits [2], this checks out. Especially since LA county has a higher poverty rate than the rest of the country. [3]
[1] Migration Turnover Rates in United States Counties [2006] http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=13...
[2] Census: 49% of Americans Get Gov’t Benefits; 82M in Households on Medicaid http://cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/census-49-...
[3] L.A. County leads California in poverty rate, new analysis shows http://articles.latimes.com/2013/sep/30/local/la-me-poverty-...
[+] [-] dsp1234|10 years ago|reply
"The Census Bureau does not produce or publish a total count of the homeless population[0]."
So it is very likely the 9.8M you quoted for the total population is off. An additional factor is that this number does not likely include immigrants who may not wish to be counted for social or legal reasons. Whereas the 9M "county residents" probably did include many homeless and/or immigrant residents.
FTA, "9 million county residents who received public assistance at any point between 2002 and 2010."
That's a total count of distinct residents over 8 years. The 2000 census shows a population of about 9.3M[2]. But that .5M increase isn't just people who moved (or were born) in the county. Due to geographic mobility/migration[1], births, deaths, etc, the people who lived in LA county in 2002 are not necessarily the same people who lived in LA county in 2010.
FTA, "who received public assistance at any point ... 2007 to 2010 recession also drove many out of their homes".
Just about everyone I knew took government assistance during the recession. Whether it was food stamps, mortgage help, school lunches, unemployment or whatever. So the statistics maybe a little skewed since it contains a period of significant recession. (unemployment isn't technically public assistance, because an employee pays into it, but for people I know, it's still lumped in the same category as the other types of help)
[0] - https://www.census.gov/2010census/news/releases/operations/c... [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographic_mobility#In_the_Uni... [2] - http://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/DEC/00_SF1/DP...
[+] [-] ewzimm|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kisstheblade|10 years ago|reply
We have practically no homeless people, maybe a couple of hundred who don't want the help.
How is it that you can't take care of the less fortunate even though you have money to by all the crap in thew world? Sorry for being a harsh, smug, nordic country resident, but sometimes the wonderland of the US does seem a little cold.
[+] [-] rconti|10 years ago|reply
You'll also find people here claim the homeless "don't want help." It doesn't mean they're correct in their assessment.
Speaking of a little cold, in some places being homeless is more feasible than others. LA is certainly one of those places.
It also depends on your standards. I'm not saying we don't have a huge homeless problem -- we absolutely do. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, home to some of the most expensive housing in the world, and there are many homeless here (or at least in SF proper).
It also depends on who you consider a person. When I was living in France, I once remarked that I was surprised that there were so many homeless people, and that it seemed like there were almost as many as my hometown. The reply was "oh, no, they're not homeless, they're Roma."