Would have been awesome if he did this at the start when it was obvious where things were headed before they destroyed our government, but I’ll take it.
I have worked with unhoused populations in L.A. for the past 7 years and have past experience managing a housing provider agency. I currently work at a housing services agency.
The idea that the communities have “substantial resources” is laughable. It seems like there’s a lot of money, but there really isn’t. My agency is one of the larger agencies in L.A. and we struggle. It’s not even “the heads take all the money in pay”. Nah, there’s just not enough money.
It’s definitely not as easy as “just build more housing”, though I wish it were. Even “housing first” doesnt work well enough and it even backfires quite often.
Newsom’s idea of moving people along doesn’t work either. That’s what was happening before housing first came along and it didn’t help shit.
I will say that substance use issues, physical and mental health need a lot more attention and treatment options that are available to all.
If anyone wants to discuss the issues, feel free to AMA. I’m open to suggestions that’ll make my job easier.
If anyone in the L.A. area wants to help, the following link has connections to jobs at a lot of services providers in L.A. county.:
Also, when it comes to money for our agency, most of our money comes from private/corporate donors, local taxes, and the Feds. The state doesn’t provide as much financial assistance to our agency.
That money also has to cover transportation (ubers/whatever) to places to obtain documentation, paying for client necessities, moving vans if needed plus the moving crew, security deposits and other move-in costs, utility setups and past due bills, damage mitigation to keep clients from being evicted…I can go on and on. There’s not enough money.
In capitalism, there is an upward funnel through which money goes from the poorest to the richest. You need a way to take some off the top and inject it back at the bottom of the funnel to keep everything working. Jobs are part of that, but clearly that alone isn’t working.
Whether it’s through UBI or public services or whatever, there has to be a way to keep that money churning.
I don’t know. I’m not an economist, but that seems to be a fundamental flaw in the current system. When the rich have all the money (envisioning a far off day when AI really can do all our jobs) the economy breaks and we are forced to throw all the wealth (and the wealthy) into a big volcano. Which honestly doesn’t sound all that bad, but it’ll be painful between now and then. I think UBI is a potential fix.
I also think it needs to be thought out really, really hard. Because there are people out there waiting to prey on the unsophisticated with their payday loans and their buying annuities (what else is UBI, really?).
Or do away with capitalism but I’m old and that sounds scary.
In North Korea, homeless are swept into some dark corner, away from liberal eyes. Wait a year or two before the abhorrent conditions literally kill them. Throw the body in a furnace and make room for the next group of people who couldn’t afford another $200/mo rent increase.
Or maybe they got illegally towed and lost their job. Illegally evicted to turn the home into an AirBnB. Maybe their boss Illegally withheld pay.
The collapse of an imperial core is experienced by seeing homeless people die one by one until you’re one of them.
Ah just kidding it’s actually the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the entirety of recorded human history this happens in.
I’m from tornado alley, now I live near Portland. We had a freak lightning storm a few days ago here, like nothing I’ve ever experienced. The thunder was so loud I thought we were being bombed by planes. r/Portland had dozens of threads of others confirming how abnormal this storm was. It seemed… fake. Planted. Idk, it was crazy.
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