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In the summer of 2019, Fox News embarked on an ambitious project to synthesize the impact of progressive policies on the homelessness crisis in four West Coast cities: Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Portland, Ontario. 'Oregon. lack of security, sanitation and civility. Residents, homeless people and human rights defenders say that they have lost confidence in the ability of their elected officials to solve the problem. Most cities have thrown hundreds of millions of dollars on the problem to see it worsen. That's what we saw in Los Angeles.
LOS ANGELES – It's the stinking stench of alcohol and human waste that hits you first. Then it's visual – row after row of dirty tarpaulin tents piled on the sidewalk next to stacks of rotting garbage and broken down appliances. There are shells half dressed and drugged people wandering aimlessly in the middle of the street. A curse on cars. The others are just watching. There is fighting, prostitution and rodent burrows. It's the legendary Skid Row in Los Angeles and it's a disaster.
Like many west coast cities visited by Fox News, Los Angeles is facing a homelessness crisis. However, unlike the east coast, Los Angeles can not hide all of its homeless people in shelters or low-income housing.
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The failure of liberal policies, coupled with decades of neglect and mismanagement, has turned an old problem into a nightmare these days. Some fear that the City of Angels is about not to come back and get angry with the elect who speak loudly, but rarely deliver.
"I do not want to see them in front of the camera anymore," Marques Babers, who was living on Skid Row in adolescence, told Fox News. "I do not want them to write more articles about the extent to which they care or try to change things – I want to see them do it."
COLUMNIST TIMES BLOCK CITY LEADERS TO NOT RESPOND TO HOMELESS CRISIS
Throughout the state, officials have long lamented the horrors of homelessness while not adopting any significant law. Homeless advocates blame officials for using the crisis to promote their own political aspirations and manipulate an environment that allows them to dodge responsibilities.
"The best we can get from those elected to solve the problems is the good news," Pete White, founder of the Los Angeles Community Action Network, told Fox News. "Rumors that say" it's a humanitarian crisis "and that" we have to do something "for something to be nothing or pathways to criminalization."
The best thing we can get from those elected to solve the problems is the good news.
California accounts for most of the country's homeless population. Despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent on the problem, the number of homeless people in Los Angeles County rose for the third time in four years. The latest count released in June by the Los Angeles County Homeless Services Authority indicates that there are nearly 60,000 homeless people who live without permanent shelter each night. In Los Angeles, the number of homeless people in 2019 jumped 16% to 36,000, while the number of chronically homeless – those who live on the street for more than a year – has risen 17%. The staggering three quarters of the city's homeless population are unprotected.
The sobering statistics come after two voter-approved tax hikes and an effort of $ 619 million last year to tackle the problem through social services and new housing.
The latest increase in numbers has resulted in dramatic press releases, anxious editorials and a ton of fingering by elected officials. In the merry-go-round, local officials claim that the state is actually not enough. The California governor says it's Washington's fault for slashing federal funds and President Trump reacts by attacking the Democratic government's skills.
"California is a shame for our country," said Trump at a rally for the August campaign in Ohio. "It's a pity – the whole world is looking at it – look at Los Angeles with its tents and its horrible and horrible conditions."
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Several Angelenos Fox News have disagreed with the pace of progress.
"It looks like the situation is getting worse, not better," Whitney Beard, a worker at a café in downtown Los Angeles, told Fox News. "We've been hearing the same thing over the years in a loop."
California Governor Gavin Newsom swears an oath before the Chief Justice of the Supreme State Court, Tani Gorre Cantil-Sakauye, at its inauguration on Monday, January 7, 2019 in Sacramento, California. Newsom's wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, is on the poster, second right, and Hunter, right. (AP Photo / Rich Pedroncelli)
Things were supposed to change in November, when the California Democrats won the trio of legislative victories: the two houses of government and the governorship. With two-thirds of the votes likely in place and Governor Gavin Newsom's commitment to make housing a priority, there was optimism in the air. This came to an end when the Democrats struggled to get on the same page and adopt a law that would have increased the supply of housing in the state. They also canceled another highly publicized measure that would strengthen residential development near transit links and single-family neighborhoods.
Other failures have been attributed to the division of interest groups and a passive approach to the governor's office – though he denies it.
Babers, who was living on Skid Row at the age of 15, said she felt used by officials who were trying to score political points and wanted the words promised and the promises worthy of mention. an Oscar are useful when the cameras turn in the end.
REPORT – On May 30, 2019, photos of tents housing homeless people line a street in downtown Los Angeles. (AP Photo / Richard Vogel, File)
The political theater was fully exhibited at a press conference in June on the south steps of City Hall. The photo op and the presser were presented to Fox News as historical and we were told that the city would finally begin to take its spiral crisis seriously. But instead of tackling one of the worst man-made disasters in US history, council members took turns attacking the cameras and denigrating Trump.
A mile away, among dirty needles and broken bottles, White says he's frustrated but not surprised.
There is even a joke among the homeless downtown. They mock the elected officials who declare breathlessly how "shocked" they are by the rise of homelessness and the deterioration of living conditions in the street.
"They are shocked! Shocked!" A woman living on Skid Row said, exasperatingly channeling the Renault captain of "Casablanca". "Why are they shocked? We stayed here all this time, they are the ones who do not come down here."
Why are they shocked? We have been here all this time. They are the ones who do not come down here.
Although homeless camps are appearing on motorways and underpasses, the largest concentration of unprotected Los Angeles people live on Skid Row. The downtown area, commemorated in films like "The Sting" and "The Little Shop of Horrors" as a last resort of winos and junkies, has long been a garbage dump for hospitals, jails and other cities and states wishing to get rid of their homeless. Today, the neighborhood of about 50 blocks located just east of the city center offers a dystopian panorama of human misery, where empty-eyed residents wander through their makeshift shelters. , sailing around broken armchairs, discarded syringes, garbage and human garbage. The unhealthy conditions have made it a real petri dish of diseases ready to be infested with rodents.
A homeless man sits under his tent along the Interstate 110 highway in downtown Los Angeles in May 2018. Mayor Eric Garcetti is paying a political price for the homelessness crisis in the city. An effort is under way to recall the mandate of the two-term Democrat following widespread complaints about homeless camps throughout the city. (AP Photo / Richard Vogel, File)
It's become so serious that Newsom has mentioned it in its State of the State address in 2019.
"Our homelessness crisis is increasingly a public health crisis," Newsom said. "Last year, there was an outbreak of hepatitis A in San Diego." Recently, there was a syphilis outbreak in Sonoma, and now, typhus in Los Angeles. Is a medieval disease, in California, in 2019. "
Our homelessness crisis has become more and more of a public health crisis … And now, typhus in Los Angeles. Typhus. It is a medieval disease. In California. In 2019.
LOS ANGELES DOWNTOWN WASTE CONTINUE TO DEVELOP ONE MONTH AFTER SEVERAL TYPHUS BUSINESS: REPORT
Today, few, if any, solutions are possible.
The indignant inhabitants say they are ready to silence their elected officials.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti is already feeling the heat.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti on the podium, surrounded by city sanitation workers, talks about the homelessness problem in the city at a press conference in Los Angeles on June 19 2019. Councilor Mike Bonin, on the far left, is the city councilor. (AP Photo / Damian Dovarganes)
The Democratic mayor flirting with a presidential bid for 2020 has been closely scrutinized for failing to address the issue of homelessness sufficiently urgently. His office announced in 2018 his intention to build 15 shelters, but things had started badly. In 2016, voters approved the HHH Proposal, a $ 1.2 billion bond for the construction of 10,000 homes for the homeless, but so far, only a handful of they opened their doors. The two-term mayor, however, says the crisis would be much worse without his leadership.
Not everyone is convinced.
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In June, political commentator Alexandra Datig launched a long-term effort to remove Garcetti from office. She claimed that the mayor could not "handle the crisis" and that he "had to resign".
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Garcetti, who argued that the greatest political progress was happening at the local level, called the recall effort a "political game."
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