“just to remove what many critics consider an eye sore.”

Not just an eyesore. Real vectors for disease and crime.

Consider the scale of the problem. Los Angeles has a much bigger homeless problem than Little Rock, Arkansas does - both in total and per capita.

Also, consider the politics and players involved. Homeless advocacy is a big business in LA; it pays well. I imagine being a homeless advocate results in much less grant money and government assistance funding in Arkansas than it does in California, so the intent in Little Rock is more to solve the problem, and less to profit from it.

Homelessness is a multi-faceted problem and will require the meshing and syncing of several "solutions" and a long time to solve. Modern Americans like one-shot solutions to problems, not long slogs. It's easier for a politician to sell "this program will solve the problem tomorrow," than it is to sell, "I have nothing to offer but blood, sweat, toil, and tears."

Mental illness and substance abuse are major drivers of the homeless problem, but poverty and housing costs make better and more politically-viable soundbites. So, we ignore rampant mental illness, drug abuse, and alcoholism as drivers and focus on building expensive apartments for the homeless.

We decided in the '60s that psychotropic drugs would free us from the expense and bother of maintaining mental institutions. So, we shut them down and got out the prescription pads. That didn't work very well since mentally ill people cannot be counted upon to take their meds regularly and monitoring programs are expensive and cumbersome, perhaps more so than mental hospitals. Modern homelessness is one of the unintended (and unforeseen) consequences of taking the easy way out.

And before anyone goes laying the entire blame at the feet of Ronald Reagan, who as governor did cut public funding for social programs, the California bill closing government mental institutions was signed by governor Pat Brown -- Jerry's father (another political dynasty). The thought behind this was that voluntary medication was more humane than institutionalization, especially after movies and books -- like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest -- swayed public opinion with portrayals of institutionalization as monstrous (in reality, it was sometimes monstrous).

Real vectors for disease and crime. ~ Isab at October 29, 2019 3:46 AM

LA has a typhus problem - caused mainly by the presence of large amounts of homeless people and the poor hygiene habits they've developed living on the streets.

With tent cities, public urination and defecation, rising crime, gang violence, and beggars in the streets, California is rapidly devolving into a Third World country. This is not a trend we want to encourage.

The #1 obstacle to these kinds of programs: government employee unions.

If someone predicted half a century ago that a Los Angeles police station or indeed L.A. City Hall would be in danger of periodic, flea-borne infectious typhus outbreaks, he would have been considered unhinged. After all, the city that gave us the modern freeway system is not supposed to resemble Justinian’s sixth-century Constantinople. Yet typhus, along with outbreaks of infectious hepatitis A, are in the news on California streets.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/06/california-third-world-state-corruption-crime-infrastructure/

That's just the start. Here's the dagger in the heart. Many of the local/county governments have under financed the retirement fund, and the health benefits come out of the current budget.

The truth is that there is no revenue surplus had by California state government. In fact, the state’s long-run obligations far exceed projected revenue collections to the tune of $1 trillion in unfunded pension liabilities alone. When factoring in the cost of non-pension benefits for state workers, such as health care for retired government employees, the debt facing California taxpayers rises further.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickgleason/2019/04/16/no-californias-finances-are-not-back-in-black/#1d90eb7437b5

Oh, how's the monorail to no where coming along?

And I have been assured that having work requirements is raaaaaaaacccccissssst!

Republicans’ Fixation on Work Requirements Is Fueled by White Racial Resentment

https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/06/trump-administrations-fixation-on-work-requirements-for-snap-benefits-is-part-of-a-long-racist-policy-history.html

Most companies treat their employees as the enemy...is this really a change?

The results of the studies for here that I have seen indicate it wouldn't work or at least not be effective. One, it would such a small percentage that would be part of the program. Another legal issue is that it is a unionized position so they would have to go through the normal hiring process and pay the negotiated wages or strike some other deal with the union. Which at least at one point the union was absolutely against as there had been recent cuts to union positions.

Slutty Amish gal has good taste. (picture)

Many of the homeless do not want to go to available shelters. We eliminated compulsory mental health commitment even for those obviously deranged and unable to take care of themselves. Housing policy in most major cities is aimed at destroying cheap housing. There used to be SRO (single room occupancy) hotels, like a dorm. You get a single room, bathroom down the hall. A place to keep your stuff, get mail, and get drunk. Since shady people lived there, progressives lobbied to get them torn down (and won) so these people ended up on the street. It seems that having minimal housing offends our sense of propriety.

As to work, I read an account by a guy with a landscaping business in either san fran or phoenix who every time he encountered a homeless person gave them his card and said he had work--just show up, don't even submit an application. He said he gave out over 100 cards and not a single person ever showed up.

"...movies and books -- like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest -- swayed public opinion with portrayals of institutionalization as monstrous (in reality, it was sometimes monstrous)."

I wish most inpatient psychiatric facilities today were as nice as the one portrayed in Cuckoo's Nest. Other than Nurse Ratched and the archaic therapies of the 60's it didn't look that bad.

cc: "Many of the homeless do not want to go to available shelters."

I don't blame them. Many homeless shelters are not safe places to be. I used to make a lot of referrals to homeless shelters in the area, often even calling and reserving a space for the person I was referring. One night at around midnight a homeless 17-year-old girl for whom I had reserved a bed at a shelter showed up where I worked. I asked her why she didn't go to the shelter and she said, "Because I don't want to have to have sex with a bunch of creepy men." That had been her unwilling experience, for the profit of someone else, when she'd gone there before. She said at night when she had no place to go it was safer to hide somewhere until daylight. Or she could come to my psych unit on the nights I was working and I would always admit her.

I spent some days checking out the shelters and the areas around them, and I stopped referring people to them, especially young women. A lot of predators there, many of them not poor or homeless, for the sole purpose of preying on vulnerable people, for money or sex or just for sport. It was especially unsafe for young women.

I also learned that you have to be careful what you give someone who's vulnerable and has no safe place to stay. I gave a shiny, new, cheap metal coffee pot to a 74-year-old man who'd been heating coffee in a nasty old tin can, and someone beat him up to take it from him. I got him another one, but before giving it to him I banged some dents in it, broke part of the handle and splattered some ugly green paint on it.

IRA: When factoring in the cost of non-pension benefits for state workers, such as health care for retired government employees, the debt facing California taxpayers rises further.

Just wondering: don't retired California government employees have Medicare, like other retired people have to have, and like some people want to have for everybody?

Just wondering: don't retired California government employees have Medicare, like other retired people have to have, and like some people want to have for everybody?

Ken R at October 29, 2019 10:08 PM

Not when they retire at 50, they don’t.....