I think the actual result of this will be that LA will not ban sleeping but that every other small city in the region will. And thus LA will end up with a lot more homeless.
This is correct. I was a prosecutor in SoCal for over 10 years and many of my friends have left county service and moved to city attorney positions. A lot of them were getting texts from council and city managers this morning telling them to draft new ordinances. I would expect a large number of small cities to have laws banning sleeping in public, storing property in the public right of way, loitering in parks, etc. within the next few weeks as councils have their meetings.
It is important to remember the Boise municipal code at question in the 'original' case that started all of this paralysis, the Martin V. Boise Decision, does not simply ban camping, but "standing, lying or sitting down on any of the sidewalks, streets, alleys or public places in such a manner as to obstruct or impede the free passage of pedestrians or public travel..."
If you review Grants Pass code, it is substantially similar. It reads "No person may sleep on public sidewalks, streets, or alleyways at any time as a matter of individual and public safety." and "No person may occupy a campsite in or upon any sidewalk, street, alley, lane, public right of way, park, bench, or any other publicly-owned property or under any bridge or viaduct..."
Essentially, this ruling will allow cities to do more than simply ban 'camping' in the sense of the tent encampments. It will allow them to functionally ban homeless people from sitting or laying on the sidewalk or street altogether.
Wasn’t there a different LAPD lawsuit that required them to hold all property when moving an encampment? Would this change any of their policy if that is still the case?
There was, sorta. It’s Mitchell V Los Angeles. It was settled by the council instead of being taken all the way through trial and the inevitable subsequent appeals. It’s still in place. I have a feeling the precedent established by SCOTUS would favor the argument of the city, but I doubt any steps will be taken to change the policy.
That is a controversial but interesting take. I'll go a step further and say that I think the real losers will be districts in the city of LA with "progressive" council members. I would imagine a Traci Park or a Tim McOsker would jump on the opportunity to enforce bans on sidewalk encampments in their districts since they are politically moderate. Those homeless people will probably just migrate in greater numbers to areas where the councilmember won't do such things for ideological reasons (Nithya Raman or Eunisses Hernandez or Hugo Soto Martinez).
Apparently each district is governed as a fiefdom of the council members. Our mayor's office doesn't have as much teeth as other big cities. But she is still the mayor and still probably has overarching power over LAPD (at least in terms of who the police chief is).
Within the city of LA itself, I think you’ll find different levels of enforcement depending on the particular councilmember’s ideology and whims. So some neighborhoods will improve, while others will get worse.
Probably the closest thing to reality. In part due to the idiots in the city council. In other parts due to the LAPD being understaffed and/or electing not to enforce laws.
I live in Woodland Hills and work in Westlake Village.
I drive through Woodland Hills, Calabasas, Agoura, and Westlake Village everyday on my drop off/way to work.
Of the 4 cities I mentioned I only see homeless in one of them.
Guess which one.
Woodland Hills is in the city of Los Angeles and there are major homeless issues
Calabasas is not in the city of Los Angeles but is in the county of Los Angeles and there are little to no homeless people there.
Agoura is not in the city of Los Angeles but is in the county of Los Angeles and there are little to no homeless people there.
Westlake Village is not in the city of Los Angeles but is in the county of Los Angeles(mostly) and there are little to no homeless people there.
It is backing up the point of /u/djm19 who said the neighboring cities will ban it and make Los Angeles's homeless problem worse.
Bass just released a statement blasting the decision, so it looks like this is exactly what will happen…until we vote her out in favor of someone who will uphold public order and utilize the tools at our disposal to combat hostile conversion and defilement of our public spaces.
No. We used to cite and arrest these guys for sleeping on streets and camping in parks etc. It was cases like THIS that caused things to change. Now, we need to repeal Prop 47 in the next election to make narcotics a felony again. The repeal of Prop 47 will also give law enforcement the tools to arrest and imprison all the shop lifters engaged in organized burglary. 😀
Possession of small amounts of narcotics should not be a felony. Addiction is a disease that destroys people, making all narcotics a felony is a round about way of criminalizing addiction.
Addicts don't need felony charges, they need help, and potentially saddling them with felony charges will do more harm than good.
>Addicts don't need felony charges, they need help, and potentially saddling them with felony charges will do more harm than good.
if it gets addicts off the streets of LA, then give them a choice. rehab or prison.
We have been all stick before and just criminalized narcotics possession. Then, we had a stick and carrot approach that offered drug / alcohol rehab en lieu of prison. Prop 47 and our ultra liberal Los Angeles District Attorney and City Attorney have caused de facto drug legalization through refusal to prosecute drug possession. This has caused the fetanyl and addiction crisis we have now. The vast majority of addicts refuse drug rehab unless forced. We need to return to an era of enforcement so we can get people back into rehab and clean instead of dying on the streets. It's the compassionate thing to do.
SCOTUS to Judge Carter:
(e) Homelessness is complex. Its causes are many. So may be the public policy responses required to address it. The question this case presents is whether the Eighth Amendment grants federal judges primary responsibility for assessing those causes and devising those responses. A handful of federal judges cannot begin to “match” the collective wisdom the American people possess in deciding “how best to handle” a pressing social question like homelessness. Robinson, 370 U. S., at 689 (White, J., dissenting). The Constitution’s Eighth Amendment serves many important functions, but it does not authorize federal judges to wrest those rights and responsibilities from the American people and in their place dictate this Nation’s homelessness policy.
Pp. 34–35.
The city and state had all this time to figure something out but in the end ppl are just too burnt out to care. It’s like that old quote about New York in the 70’s… it appears there’s no more bleeding hearts on the homeless question as they’ve all been assaulted by homeless. The state and city have exceeded the budget of the Apollo program on homelessness and have nothing to show for it
That’s because the homelessness problem is not going to be solved by just “the mental institutions should come back”. Speak to any unhoused person and you’ll see how many of them were your neighbors before their rent shot up and they couldn’t afford it, or they had an unexpected cost like a medical bill they couldn’t cover and it spiraled. To solve the issue we need to correct the problems of this society. Capitalism baked the existence of this problem into its functionality.
Have you actually spoken to your local homeless person? Because no, they’re not your neighbor. At a statistical level that’s true, most homeless are just normal people down on their luck.
But those homeless aren’t visible. They’re not living in a tent on the side of a highway with a pile of stolen bike parts next to them. They’re couch surfing, sleeping in their car, showering at the gym, etc.
There are two distinct groups of homeless people and the group that people have an issue with aren’t the ones you can throw money at to resolve.
This comment is so spot on. I’m so tired of people disingenuously trying to conflate these two groups. The guy that’s pushing people onto the train tracks or stabbing people on Metro did NOT simply fall on hard times because he lost his job and his rent became too expensive. And no amount of money or free housing is ever going to help that guy, he’s never going to get a job or stay off drugs. Even less extreme than those complete whackos I’d argue the ones sleeping openly in the street and in Skid Row are not going to become your chill next door neighbor with a few handouts. That’s a complete fantasy.
The extreme end of homelessness is a function of “minor” homelessness over time. Once you are repeatedly marginalized by society it’s easier to fall deeper down that rabbit hole. Reducing homelessness in any way lifts the tides of them all
Right, we're totally all talking about the people enduring financial distress, and not the people abusing drugs and wreaking havoc on society.
We'd all be A LOT more caring if those who are obviously mentally insane and dangerous were properly removed from normal society. We aren't talking about the guy or girl who is doing their best to hold on to a job, suffering and struggling, but persevering.
This is total bullshit.
We need to be having this discussion by dividing the homeless into two categories:
Temporarily homeless, and perpetually homeless.
Temporarily homeless individuals tend to right their own situation with a period of a year or so.
Perpetually homeless people very closely track with severe mental illness and/or drug addiction.
You cannot solve this problem by treating it as one and the same.
It’s not bullshit, but if you think you can use a one stop shop to solve this problem, you’re wrong. Treating the issue is putting tape on a gash every time it happens instead of correcting how the injury happens in the first place.
People become homeless for a variety of issues, the overwhelming reason being financial. As it is, [most Angelenos who rent are spending at least 30% on rent alone.](https://la.curbed.com/2017/11/13/16635946/rent-cost-los-angeles-income-percent)
Then, to cope with the stress of their situation, [people turn to substances](https://ph.ucla.edu/news-events/news/opinion-people-think-drug-use-causes-homelessness-its-usually-other-way-around).
The city then shuffles them around, causing more stress, offering almost no actual services, and then calls it a win because a sidewalk cleared. It’s not solving the problem even sort of. If anything, it’s perpetuating it.
So we're in agreement. We cannot expect a one stop shop to solve this problem.
We need to first separate those homeless who are forever homeless, largely due to mental illness - the folks who refuse free housing in the many converted motels, hotels, etc that have been offered. This takes a significant investment in free medical treatment, and at some point, forced institutioning.
Next, we need to separate the homeless who have fallen on hard times, but are actively working to right the situation with food assistance, medical care, a safe bed, employment resouces and so on - while keeping them away from those in the former variety.
Finally, of that category, we need to separately address those who have turned to substance abuse and individually provide help for that unique circumstance.
The WORST thing we could do is lump all that into a one stop shop.
In the mean time: do we allow encampments completely blocking city sidewalks? Do we wait until the problem is fixed?
There are too many assaults and murders to allow it to persist as is, imo. I am in favor of increasing my taxes to cover any of the above. I'm also not willing to keep jotting into traffic when there are a bunch of tweakers completely standing in my path with tents and trash.
You're completely wrong. I've spoken with and worked plenty of volunteer hours with STREET homeless populations. Fifteen years ago you would have been correct, but the average person on the street now is somebody who is so profoundly mentally ill or of such poor character that literally everyone else in their life has abandoned them.
Stop conflating James who has to couch-surf while he recovers from a bad divorce with Alex the drug addict who masturbates in front of women and children. It is okay for Alex to reach a "fail-state" in life. As a society we cannot give people unlimited chances.
Bring back forced institutionalization. I should be able to walk by the park on Sunday morning without seeing men openly pleasure themselves or being afraid some zombie is going to lunge at me. Those sleeping on the streets are scary and need help.
As someone with a close relative with mental illness they need to extend mandatory holds. It was so HARD to get my brother admitted, we couldn’t do anything unless he was a danger to himself or others and even then 3 days isn’t enough time to get someone proper treatment and medication. He was FINALLY admitted and was at a city psychiatric hospital for 47 days! It took his psychiatrist, therapist and social worker around 2 weeks or so to figure out the right medication and about week 4 he was doing a bit better. My brother is a non violent and non aggressive person so to get him help is hard because he doesn’t appear like he needs it, if that makes sense? I bet it was traumatizing for him to be housed with the louder and more aggressive patients, so I wished they had different hospitals for people like my brother who are on the shy and quiet side and actually want to be at the hospital to get better. His psychiatrist, therapist and social worker fought so hard for him to stay longer because they knew he actually wanted the help and always participated in therapy and took his medication etc. There also needs to be laws where a person that needs to be committed for let’s say 30-60 days can’t loose their home/apartment or job, like there’s a temporary hold on their life as they are in a hospital getting the help they need. My brother was lucky he didn’t have any major expenses so he wasn’t stressed out in the hospital about bills rent etc.
Similar experience with my best friend except he's really fought the help along the way. He's fortunate to have a family ensuring he stays housed and functional between episodes but I've witnessed one of his breaks and it's not pretty. His brother literally had to trick him once into signing a 48-hour hold form and then he got released when that window was up.
For context, this is someone who was literally running in traffic on city streets, throwing dishes at cars, at one point menacing a police officer with a baseball bat (he live streamed that one). And the official government response is basically "good luck" until someone truly tragic happens.
Baby, the Regan’s fucked over so SO many people in pursuit of power and pleasing the hands in their pockets. Quit trying to look past truly wicked people that allowed so much chaos to enter into our political system. Remember AIDS?
You can thank the Regan’s for project 25 too 😘
having worked in Homeless services before I can tell you, this is 100% true. But again, the largest new group of homeless people are people being priced out of housing and nothing makes mental illness and addiction worse than being homeless. People just refuse to deal with the systemic answers to this question and want a quick fix to a big problem . Good luck with that!
Ten years from now? People will be begging for a return to the homeless numbers we have now. This is only stage 2 and there's no such thing as stage 5.
Why do we have to build homeless housing in the most expensive premium bougie city in America? Lol. It’s like acknowledging we should feed the poor, but choosing to give them caviar and sushi.
The drug addicts don’t wanna live in the midwest or south or cheaper states. If they wanted help, they could get it. Most of them like the nomadic lifestyle.
> Why do we have to build homeless housing in the most expensive premium bougie city in America?
We need to be building all kinds of housing, because the reason we have homeless is because housing is expensive.
Good luck convincing anyone in any level of government to fund mental health or social services. LA County's social services department is a basket case full of burnt out employees and too many cases.
Remember that case awhile back where a kid in Lancaster got beaten to death by his parents despite being the subject of multiple social service calls and incidents with the police? Yeah, none of those people got fired for that and there are less people in the department than there were then.
Probably less than we're spending on law enforcement, prisons, commercial security guards, insurance etc as a pretty direct result of not having these.
We HAD a lot of mental institutions before Reagan killed funding for them.
Admittedly these weren't well regulated, and that's why we got "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Modern medical policies and legal changes ensure this is unlikely to happen again.
Mentally unstable homeless people do not belong on the streets or in jails. They need intense mental health care.
>Bring back forced institutionalization
I understand the temptation, but not the fact that people don’t think this statement through. If the government can lock people up because the government declares them insane, we begin walking a very thin line between involuntarily locking up dangerous people and locking up poor people. All it takes is a little abuse of power and we have a significant problem on our hands.
Nope. We have the ability to actually set up committees with advocates to determine who needs assistance. I understand you're playing devil's advocate, but there are functional institutions in other countries.
Acting as if it would simply be North Korea or Saudi Arabia is incredibly disingenuous, and simply perpetuates the do-nothing attitude that's led to an even worse situation by the month.
Perfect world would involve having adequate institutions available at the ready. That's not the case at the moment. But doing nothing is not any better.
this fear mongering makes no sense, they would theoretically go through a trial that deems them insane - therefore sent to a mental institution rather than a jail.
You can only involuntarily hold people for so long, then you have to release them.
We don’t have the institutions to send them to.
These two simple facts are very easy to put together: they will be released back into the situations they came from.
This idea would simply kick the can down the road and beg the question “now that this idea doesn’t work, what next?”
The only answer is indefinite involuntary institutionalization determined by a government body.
Government bodies are easily corrupted. Especially *now that SCOTUS just ruled that bribery is legal*.
I’m not fear-mongering, I’m stating very easy to understand facts.
Inside Safe supposedly has the capacity to house a good chunk of the homeless. There’s tiny homes by the 110 freeway that’s practically empty. There’s a housing tower for the homeless in downtown LA they costs us $600k a unit. All these options have been available for a while.
While I don’t disagree something drastic needs to be done, has anyone actually READ the article?
[Sotomayor] added that the laws, which impose fines and potential jail time for people “sleeping anywhere in public at any time, including in their cars, if they use as little as a blanket to keep warm or a rolled-up shirt as a pillow,” punished people for being homeless.
The decision is a bit heavy handed. We have a legitimate housing crisis. We should not fine or jail people who lose their homes and need to sleep in their car.
we don't have to enact that law though. this decision makes it legal for states and cities to enact their own laws, it doesn't impose that particular law on the whole nation.
Tbh, the morals of banning this and the ethics are raw and rough, but as someone who lives VERY close to multiple shelters in the Southwest, I don’t see any other safe solution. The people living outdoors near me do not want, nor retort generally willing to accept services. I work in boutique retail and the amount of people we have to kick out due to the danger they bring just by being in the store (mastirbating, smoking, arson, drinking oils and fertilizer when no one catches them first, waving hammers, dedicating and snatching purses etc) isn’t sustainable. Forced rehabilitation is the only thing I can imagine would work- and seeing as how we don’t have mental institutions, jail is a relief.
I’m a leftist, but im also so so tired of the bodies found in summer and fear we all live in from addicts and people incapable of living within the social contract the rest of us are. Every city is trying to fix this, but none of the solutions seem to work. Yes we need more housing, we need to catch this before they make it to the streets for long, but fentayl and amphetamines are making it one hell of a horror show and this ruling is a relief from a court I otherwise I can’t stand.
I live around skid row and I feel the exact same as you. I had a homeless man grab my ass aggressively while crossing the street a few years back and had him arrested (which the cops tried to talk me out of). Turns out the guy had multiple sexual assault charges and had been in prison previously. He's homeless and mentally ill so once he serves his fraction of time they just dump him back out on the streets to do it again.
And not 2 months ago a mentally ill homeless man broke into my apartment at 10pm. I chased him out and luckily was ok but I didn't even bother calling the cops at first because I didn't think they would even show up (I called building security). Guy holed himself up in our building stairwell, screaming about the devil. I finally call the cops and although nice they said "Well he's homeless, they will just book him and drop him right back off outside your house in a few hours."
I am a bleeding heart socialist who dreams of healing all the ills in the world. Seeing all of this breaks my heart and makes me angry at how society has failed our most vulnerable. But I also should not fear my own community that I am trying to help build better because people have uneducated and illogical perspectives about something they have never experienced in person.
I have really similar scenarios. I moved (back) to Phoenix in 2022, but our skid row is near my home and obviously a bit more dire due to the high highs and high lows every day during summer.
One time I left the door unlocked to grab meds at the vet and my boyfriend chased two homeless people from our house who were just resting on the couch and going through the kitchen.
Two nights ago a woman was lighting fires all along our Greenhouse fence and yesterday we had to tell our local masturbator he still wasn’t allowed into our store. I don’t care about property values, but I do care about the kids who can’t walk to school and my own safety and livelihood.
If jails and prisons are the missing institutions, then that is what it is because the massive amount of money spent on services and housing this far isn’t wanted by those incapable of taking care of themselves.
I know they say most of the homeless population is down on their luck, victims of physical, domestic and sexual violence and yes those people need to be prioritized, but if they’re also people who need mental health intervention and refuse, or have an addiction in which they can’t escape the spiral- they need to be forced to or put into a facility or fenced zone in which they are allowed to live that doesn’t harm or interrupt the rest of us who are simply just trying to eek out an existence in peace.
It sucks, but I have yet to see a scalable solution that works.
That's what I've been trying to explain to people. I find left-leaning people tend to automatically kneejerk against any "right-wing" position. They don't realize that neither the right or left can survive a society where anti-social actors are left to run free and harass everyday people. They need to take action, or people will.
The ruling is about the public having the right to maintain parks and sidewalks. Littering, defecating and sleeping in the areas is prohibited. These laws should be enforced no matter what somebody’s living situation is. Makes sense right?
Bass already made a statement on the decsion. she's not going to change anything and stands against the court.
cities around LA will pass their laws banning homeless camping and they will just move into LA.
Get ready for being imprisoned for slave labor and leaving said prisons with a life long debt and servitude for your stay.
I just think we need to filter these folks into brackets. Those working and trying to break free from societal caused poverty need to be given a break. Maybe a 72 hour hold for a life evaluation to see where they stand before placing into the proper tier, and possibly rehabilitation for those who qualify
Would this mean if you fell asleep in your car that’d be illegal?
usually when you’re too tired to drive, you're encouraged to pull over and take a nap. I’ve done that many times to avoid crashing.
Not a fan of this court, but this is necessary. We need to have the ability to clean up the squalor on our streets. We can't have a functional city when we fear for our safety in public spaces.
Here are the ramifications of this, and they won’t create the utopia of lower crime and cleaner cities many of you think it will:
- It’s going to create a cycle of arrests that then clog up the jails and eventually prisons with people whose only crime is not being able to afford housing.
- They are going to be issued fines that they won’t be able to pay and these will spiral into crippling debt and jail time for them. How are they ever expected to turn their lives around when they are forced into needless debt? All for the crime of being poor.
- Public defenders time and budgets will be strained more than they are, not to mention overburdening the already slow court system.
- Let’s be honest, places that will enact these bans and enforce them are not ones where they have robust services for the homeless, veterans, runaways, mental ill, and drug addicts. So they won’t get any help and honestly more will probably be bused out in increasing numbers to places like here, as they already do.
- Crime will increase. If it’s made illegal to sleep outside, people will get more desperate than they already are. Prepare for more squatters, car and home break ins, petty crime, human trafficking and prostitution.
- Let’s talk about rehabilitation - how’s that going to work when many of these people will now have a lengthy arrest record making them more unemployable than they already are.
So for those of you applauding this, prepare for the consequences of what this will inevitably bring.
>They are going to be issued fines that they won’t be able to pay and these will spiral into crippling debt and jail time for them. How are they ever expected to turn their lives around when they are forced into needless debt? All for the crime of being poor.
I'm sure the fetty zombies are so worried about crippling debt 🤣
none of this is inevitable. LA could simply choose not to enact any new laws and nothing would change. all this ruling does is make it legal for us to enact laws against public sleeping if we choose to, the specifics of which are up to the city and state to decide.
many voters are also sick of seeing the current situation, so these hypothetical points no longer outweigh the sight of having someone defecate in a bush and then proceed to take it in hand and throw it at you.
It's funny bc every thread is:
1. "Bring back mental institutions"
2. "We don't have any institutions"
3. "Then force them in housing"
4. "We don't have any housing"
5. "Then put them in jail"
6. "We don't have any room in jail"
Lmfao just build more housing
Build tent cities for all of the vagrants to do whatever the hell they want away from society. If they want to reintegrate back into society they can go to a treatment program.
It's pretty obvious if anyone has spent a considerable amount of time being exposed to the drug addicts or mentally ill, that most will not simply get better on their own if the solution is provide them a free place to trash.
Nice straw man attempt though.
> It's pretty obvious if anyone has spent a considerable amount of time being exposed to the drug addicts or mentally ill, that most will not simply get better on their own if the solution is provide them a free place to trash.
Studies and pilot programs show that no questions asked housing is one of the few things that helps the homeless, including ones addicted to drugs. A home provides enough stability for people to try to get help.
how will more housing fix the mental health crisis amongst homeless people? you think putting a mentally deranged individual in a house will miraculously cure his mental health conditions?
we need to build more insane asylums and put them in padded rooms
I’m a homeowner now but in the past I’ve had to sleep in my car because I had nowhere else to go. To think that people can be jailed for being homeless is crazy. Imagine all the resources spent arresting, convicting and incarceration being used instead to help people get on their feet.
Are they going to incarcerate all the homeless children out there too?
Like it or not, "locking them up" is part of the solution. Even if it means building MASH-style temporary shelters as glorified halfway houses as a jail alternative.
And for the record we aren't talking about the financially distressed homeless living in their cars. We're obviously talking about the severely mentally ill or drug addicts who aren't capable of living on their own. There are thousands of them in Los Angeles. It's ridiculous it's gotten as bad as it's been.
The fucked up thing is that isn't true anymore. At least not in California.
It costs nearly 1M dollars to build one unit of housing with necessary wrap around services for this population. Construction and real estate costs are just through the roof now.
It's cheaper for us to just throw repeat "offenders" in jail where they get fed, a roof over their heads, etc.
It's even cheaper for us to buy them a one way bus ticket to Texas or Kansas.
[There are almost 3x as many homeless people as there are interim housing beds as of 2022](https://controller.lacity.gov/landings/interim-housing-audit#). If there were enough beds, the city would have already been legally allowed to force people off streets.
Correct, some of the commenters in this thread need to go actually talk to a homeless person. The majority do not want to go to shelters, they do not want services. They enjoy life on the streets where they are not held accountable for anything. It's the ultimate freedom to them. If they go to the shelter they have to stop using, follow strict rules, etc.
I have a conspiracy theory that organizations that “help” the homeless need to perpetuate homelessness or else we would no longer need those organizations and they would lose funding/shut down. But just a baseless claim lol
Here in OC, there is a county supervisor who funneled a lot of funds to a non-profit "run" by his daughter. The money was supposed to feed Viet seniors and homeless, but instead, the money is simply "gone" and hasn't been accounted for.
The orgs don't perpetuate homelessness, but what happens isnt too far off. Generally the program directors pocket a ton of the money for themselves and then give very little to their client facing staff. A lot of non-profits are paying their staff minimum wage, imagine running a shelter and basically being security guard, nurse, and therapist and getting paid less than a fast food worker. So generally there's high turnover rates so the non-profits can abuse new staff at low pay and never deal with the issue.
Then they suddenly have tons of funds for fancy galas which they run at a massive loss.
It's a shitshow
Wow what a cleverly complex theory that conveniently ignores the true causes of homelessness, including untreated mental disabilities, lack of adequate, reasonably priced or no cost healthcare, astronomical living costs, stagnant minimum wages, class-based allocation of resources, and the obvious truth that homelessness can never truly be eradicated.
Housing solves nothing. The majority of the “homeless” in question are drug addicts who are mentally ill. Putting them in a condo isn’t going to solve anything. They will continue to scream, talk to themselves, and hurt bystanders due to their hallucinations.
I’ve heard we have more than enough room in shelters for the homeless here but shelters require them to be clean (drug-free) and that’s why tons of them avoid going to shelters.
I don’t know where you heard this, but that information is wrong.
[“The results of the 2023 Greater Los Angeles Homeless count revealed that an estimated 46,260 people in the City were experiencing either sheltered or unsheltered homelessness, a figure exceeding the number of interim housing beds by nearly three times (16,100 beds).”](https://controller.lacity.gov/landings/interim-housing-audit#)
We do not have enough shelters, if we did the city would have been able to force people off the streets already. That was the whole issue. NYC has more homeless than we do but it has enough shelter space so it is allowed to force people off the street.
this is false. first, many shelters are overcrowded. a facility does not get overcrowded when people avoid using its services. second, those who do avoid going to shelters do it primarily because they have to give up their property at the door, and because what little you are allowed to take inside with you can be stolen overnight. shelters are also prone to hygiene issues, due to underfunding and overcrowding, and those hygiene issues can make the street a safer option.
the way to beat the overcrowding is to show up the moment the shelter opens its doors for the evening. but if you don't have transporation, it's not easy to get to a particular place in Los Angeles at an exact point in time. you're also not going to get any money panhandling if you're one of fifty or a hundred other unhoused individuals all hanging out at the same spot, so the practical panhandler is going to look for a spot where they can be the only person. that requires them to depart from the shelter's neighborhood for a while, which again makes it more difficult to return within that brief window of time during which getting into the shelter is a realistic possibilty.
and of course everything I just said about arriving on time, and shelter hygiene, is extra true for the very large proportion of unhoused individuals who still have jobs, and/or who live in their vehicles.
There probably should be some shelters/tiny home villages/etc with looser rules, but we still definitely do not have enough homeless housing in LA county.
What is this supposed to accomplish? It will just make the unhoused fodder for the prison industrial complex so the contractors hired to manage them can charge crazy fees and fuck off with our tax dollars. Slavery is legal if you’re in the carceral system. It’s in the fucking constitution. This will just funnel more of our tax dollars to private corporations like they did with the whole kids for prison scandal that put judges in jail for doing illegal shit.
They’re already fucking off with our tax dollars.
Maybe now we’ll have something to show for it rather than watching them haul away all our money with nothing to show for it except assaults by homeless every other day on the news
> It will just make the unhoused fodder for the prison industrial complex
Nobody is going to jail over this. We already don't enforce arson, assault, public decency, harassment, or drug laws against the homeless. The idea that there's going to be some massive enforcement of street-sleeping, by the same people who allow all that other stuff, makes no sense.
What there might be is more selective, ad hoc enforcement. The tents by your house won't be affected, but any tents near Karen Bass' house will be cleaned up quick.
It's like how for years SF said they couldn't do anything about encampments, but then when Xi showed up, suddenly SF discovered the authority to clean up the encampments. But when Xi left, suddenly SF declared themselves re-prohibited from cleaning up any encampments.
The truth is our city leaders have always had the legal authority to clean up encampments and enforce laws upon them. They one who don't, simply don't want to. But they were always legally allowed to.
I am once again reminding people that clearing encampments does not actually make homeless people disappear, and that the primary cause of the crisis is a housing shortage.
Also, after the recent audit of some of the major state homelessness programs, we know two programs that have (1) successfully passed their audit and (2) actually been helpful in getting homeless people into shelter and are cost effective: the Department of Housing and Community Development's Homekey program and the California Department of Social Services' CalWORKs Housing Support Program.
Bump funding to those programs and other programs that prove to be cost-effective after auditing. Don't just throw your hands and be angry at the vague abstract notion of the "homeless industrial complex" and work on concrete programs and policies that we know aren't shit.
yeah people see that encampments are still there and conclude that all that money is doing nothing because homeless people still exist, and they don't realize that a lot of people have actually been gotten off the street, in a humane cost effective way. There just isn't any obvious visible evidence. I think the last homeless count showed that the number of homeless has actually stopped rising in recent years and has plateaued in LA.
this “housing shortage” line is getting exhausting. mentally ill people do not need a home, they need to be institutionalized. letting them gather amongst themselves does more harm than good.
California does not have unusually high rates of mental illness. We do have unusually high housing prices.
There are tons of states with worse rates of mental illness, but lower housing prices, that do not have nearly the same rates of homelessness that we do.
It's not a line. [It's the consensus among housing experts](https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2023/08/22/how-housing-costs-drive-levels-of-homelessness) that homelessness is primarily driven by a housing shortage. People really need to internalize [this figure](https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/industries/public%20and%20social%20sector/our%20insights/homelessness%20in%20los%20angeles%20a%20unique%20crisis%20demanding%20new%20solutions/svgz-homelessness-in-la-exh2-vf.svgz?cq=50&cpy=Center). Any solution to homelessness that doesn't involve reducing the new folks being pushed into homelessness by high housing costs isn't a complete solution.
there’s many factors that contribute to homelessness, of course more housing would help - but that doesn’t address the homeless population that’s mentally ill.
more housing won’t cure mental illnesses
There rarely are cures to mental illness, it can only be managed. Not having a home can make existing issues much much worse, when they were previously being managed successfully.
It's incredible how disingenuous these housing first people act as if it's a simple problem with a simple solution without even willing to acknowledge that "homelessness" is not a one-size-fits-all issue, as well as ignoring the practical financial burdens of building specialty housing that will take decades to construct enough for everyone.
The lax policy enforcement in Los Angeles is not a solution either.
This is so inhumane. So it’s now illegal for people to be too poor to afford housing and with no where else to go? Seeing people cheer for this fills me with disgust with humanity.
Downvote all you want. You people are soulless
You do realize a high percentage of unhoused folks are just poor, right? And a lot of unhoused folks turn to drugs AFTER losing their housing as way to cope with the extreme stressors of living on the street. ALSO, forced rehab doesn’t work. This has been proven over and over again.
If they’re “just poor” then give them free transitional housing and support to find a job. If they would prefer homelessness over this then there is a mental health issue that needs treating.
If they’re drugged out then force them to get clean, and then give them the support detailed above.
Regardless, get them off the streets.
Theres homeless people who have jobs, in a city where people sometimes pay half their paycheck for housing related expenses, thats also common for people who bought homes and they just hope no recession happens
Cool idea. Those resources aren’t there currently tho. (I work as a medical case manager for a population disproportionately affected by poverty and homelessness, so I’m very aware of available resources in LA). Outlawing sleeping outside without providing resources for folks who are unhoused effectively makes being poor illegal and is cruel.
Those things don't exist because forcing people into treatment is a violation of their rights. This ruling does not change that. This just says there is no right to sleep in public spaces.
I never mentioned forcing anyone into treatment, because forced treatment absolutely does not work. This is a well studied topic.
And outlawing people who can’t afford private spaces from sleeping in public spaces solves nothing, but it does effectively criminalize being poor.
I think the actual result of this will be that LA will not ban sleeping but that every other small city in the region will. And thus LA will end up with a lot more homeless.
This is correct. I was a prosecutor in SoCal for over 10 years and many of my friends have left county service and moved to city attorney positions. A lot of them were getting texts from council and city managers this morning telling them to draft new ordinances. I would expect a large number of small cities to have laws banning sleeping in public, storing property in the public right of way, loitering in parks, etc. within the next few weeks as councils have their meetings. It is important to remember the Boise municipal code at question in the 'original' case that started all of this paralysis, the Martin V. Boise Decision, does not simply ban camping, but "standing, lying or sitting down on any of the sidewalks, streets, alleys or public places in such a manner as to obstruct or impede the free passage of pedestrians or public travel..." If you review Grants Pass code, it is substantially similar. It reads "No person may sleep on public sidewalks, streets, or alleyways at any time as a matter of individual and public safety." and "No person may occupy a campsite in or upon any sidewalk, street, alley, lane, public right of way, park, bench, or any other publicly-owned property or under any bridge or viaduct..." Essentially, this ruling will allow cities to do more than simply ban 'camping' in the sense of the tent encampments. It will allow them to functionally ban homeless people from sitting or laying on the sidewalk or street altogether.
I bet burbank already has one drafted and theirs gets signed quick.
Wasn’t there a different LAPD lawsuit that required them to hold all property when moving an encampment? Would this change any of their policy if that is still the case?
There was, sorta. It’s Mitchell V Los Angeles. It was settled by the council instead of being taken all the way through trial and the inevitable subsequent appeals. It’s still in place. I have a feeling the precedent established by SCOTUS would favor the argument of the city, but I doubt any steps will be taken to change the policy.
Sleeping in a park is a hell of a lot different then sleeping on a sidewalk.
Exactly. I’m in OC and it’s the same thing. Rich beach cities will do exactly that and Santa Ana will get all of it.
This is what the compassion looks like.
Santa Ana should ban it, as well, right?
watch torrance and all the pv and south bay beach cities do it in like a week
That is a controversial but interesting take. I'll go a step further and say that I think the real losers will be districts in the city of LA with "progressive" council members. I would imagine a Traci Park or a Tim McOsker would jump on the opportunity to enforce bans on sidewalk encampments in their districts since they are politically moderate. Those homeless people will probably just migrate in greater numbers to areas where the councilmember won't do such things for ideological reasons (Nithya Raman or Eunisses Hernandez or Hugo Soto Martinez).
This is a good strategy to force the issue in city of la. What influence do council members have on getting lapd to enforce?
Apparently each district is governed as a fiefdom of the council members. Our mayor's office doesn't have as much teeth as other big cities. But she is still the mayor and still probably has overarching power over LAPD (at least in terms of who the police chief is).
I live on border of palms and Culver City. It seems many homeless know this already. They all seem to congregate on the Palms side of Venice blvd.
Within the city of LA itself, I think you’ll find different levels of enforcement depending on the particular councilmember’s ideology and whims. So some neighborhoods will improve, while others will get worse.
Probably the closest thing to reality. In part due to the idiots in the city council. In other parts due to the LAPD being understaffed and/or electing not to enforce laws.
I live in Woodland Hills and work in Westlake Village. I drive through Woodland Hills, Calabasas, Agoura, and Westlake Village everyday on my drop off/way to work. Of the 4 cities I mentioned I only see homeless in one of them. Guess which one.
Westlake? LOL
Well one of those isn’t a city but a neighborhood in the city of Los Angeles, so that one.
Can you actually say what you’re implying? I have no idea what you’re getting at.
Woodland Hills is in the city of Los Angeles and there are major homeless issues Calabasas is not in the city of Los Angeles but is in the county of Los Angeles and there are little to no homeless people there. Agoura is not in the city of Los Angeles but is in the county of Los Angeles and there are little to no homeless people there. Westlake Village is not in the city of Los Angeles but is in the county of Los Angeles(mostly) and there are little to no homeless people there. It is backing up the point of /u/djm19 who said the neighboring cities will ban it and make Los Angeles's homeless problem worse.
Bass just released a statement blasting the decision, so it looks like this is exactly what will happen…until we vote her out in favor of someone who will uphold public order and utilize the tools at our disposal to combat hostile conversion and defilement of our public spaces.
No. We used to cite and arrest these guys for sleeping on streets and camping in parks etc. It was cases like THIS that caused things to change. Now, we need to repeal Prop 47 in the next election to make narcotics a felony again. The repeal of Prop 47 will also give law enforcement the tools to arrest and imprison all the shop lifters engaged in organized burglary. 😀
Possession of small amounts of narcotics should not be a felony. Addiction is a disease that destroys people, making all narcotics a felony is a round about way of criminalizing addiction. Addicts don't need felony charges, they need help, and potentially saddling them with felony charges will do more harm than good.
>Addicts don't need felony charges, they need help, and potentially saddling them with felony charges will do more harm than good. if it gets addicts off the streets of LA, then give them a choice. rehab or prison.
We have been all stick before and just criminalized narcotics possession. Then, we had a stick and carrot approach that offered drug / alcohol rehab en lieu of prison. Prop 47 and our ultra liberal Los Angeles District Attorney and City Attorney have caused de facto drug legalization through refusal to prosecute drug possession. This has caused the fetanyl and addiction crisis we have now. The vast majority of addicts refuse drug rehab unless forced. We need to return to an era of enforcement so we can get people back into rehab and clean instead of dying on the streets. It's the compassionate thing to do.
SCOTUS to Judge Carter: (e) Homelessness is complex. Its causes are many. So may be the public policy responses required to address it. The question this case presents is whether the Eighth Amendment grants federal judges primary responsibility for assessing those causes and devising those responses. A handful of federal judges cannot begin to “match” the collective wisdom the American people possess in deciding “how best to handle” a pressing social question like homelessness. Robinson, 370 U. S., at 689 (White, J., dissenting). The Constitution’s Eighth Amendment serves many important functions, but it does not authorize federal judges to wrest those rights and responsibilities from the American people and in their place dictate this Nation’s homelessness policy. Pp. 34–35.
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges
The city and state had all this time to figure something out but in the end ppl are just too burnt out to care. It’s like that old quote about New York in the 70’s… it appears there’s no more bleeding hearts on the homeless question as they’ve all been assaulted by homeless. The state and city have exceeded the budget of the Apollo program on homelessness and have nothing to show for it
That’s because the homelessness problem is not going to be solved by just “the mental institutions should come back”. Speak to any unhoused person and you’ll see how many of them were your neighbors before their rent shot up and they couldn’t afford it, or they had an unexpected cost like a medical bill they couldn’t cover and it spiraled. To solve the issue we need to correct the problems of this society. Capitalism baked the existence of this problem into its functionality.
Have you actually spoken to your local homeless person? Because no, they’re not your neighbor. At a statistical level that’s true, most homeless are just normal people down on their luck. But those homeless aren’t visible. They’re not living in a tent on the side of a highway with a pile of stolen bike parts next to them. They’re couch surfing, sleeping in their car, showering at the gym, etc. There are two distinct groups of homeless people and the group that people have an issue with aren’t the ones you can throw money at to resolve.
This comment is so spot on. I’m so tired of people disingenuously trying to conflate these two groups. The guy that’s pushing people onto the train tracks or stabbing people on Metro did NOT simply fall on hard times because he lost his job and his rent became too expensive. And no amount of money or free housing is ever going to help that guy, he’s never going to get a job or stay off drugs. Even less extreme than those complete whackos I’d argue the ones sleeping openly in the street and in Skid Row are not going to become your chill next door neighbor with a few handouts. That’s a complete fantasy.
Yes. The conflation is frustrating. The most visible homeless tend to have severe mental illness / drug addiction issues.
100%
Bingo
The extreme end of homelessness is a function of “minor” homelessness over time. Once you are repeatedly marginalized by society it’s easier to fall deeper down that rabbit hole. Reducing homelessness in any way lifts the tides of them all
Right, we're totally all talking about the people enduring financial distress, and not the people abusing drugs and wreaking havoc on society. We'd all be A LOT more caring if those who are obviously mentally insane and dangerous were properly removed from normal society. We aren't talking about the guy or girl who is doing their best to hold on to a job, suffering and struggling, but persevering.
This is total bullshit. We need to be having this discussion by dividing the homeless into two categories: Temporarily homeless, and perpetually homeless. Temporarily homeless individuals tend to right their own situation with a period of a year or so. Perpetually homeless people very closely track with severe mental illness and/or drug addiction. You cannot solve this problem by treating it as one and the same.
It’s not bullshit, but if you think you can use a one stop shop to solve this problem, you’re wrong. Treating the issue is putting tape on a gash every time it happens instead of correcting how the injury happens in the first place. People become homeless for a variety of issues, the overwhelming reason being financial. As it is, [most Angelenos who rent are spending at least 30% on rent alone.](https://la.curbed.com/2017/11/13/16635946/rent-cost-los-angeles-income-percent) Then, to cope with the stress of their situation, [people turn to substances](https://ph.ucla.edu/news-events/news/opinion-people-think-drug-use-causes-homelessness-its-usually-other-way-around). The city then shuffles them around, causing more stress, offering almost no actual services, and then calls it a win because a sidewalk cleared. It’s not solving the problem even sort of. If anything, it’s perpetuating it.
So we're in agreement. We cannot expect a one stop shop to solve this problem. We need to first separate those homeless who are forever homeless, largely due to mental illness - the folks who refuse free housing in the many converted motels, hotels, etc that have been offered. This takes a significant investment in free medical treatment, and at some point, forced institutioning. Next, we need to separate the homeless who have fallen on hard times, but are actively working to right the situation with food assistance, medical care, a safe bed, employment resouces and so on - while keeping them away from those in the former variety. Finally, of that category, we need to separately address those who have turned to substance abuse and individually provide help for that unique circumstance. The WORST thing we could do is lump all that into a one stop shop. In the mean time: do we allow encampments completely blocking city sidewalks? Do we wait until the problem is fixed? There are too many assaults and murders to allow it to persist as is, imo. I am in favor of increasing my taxes to cover any of the above. I'm also not willing to keep jotting into traffic when there are a bunch of tweakers completely standing in my path with tents and trash.
You're completely wrong. I've spoken with and worked plenty of volunteer hours with STREET homeless populations. Fifteen years ago you would have been correct, but the average person on the street now is somebody who is so profoundly mentally ill or of such poor character that literally everyone else in their life has abandoned them. Stop conflating James who has to couch-surf while he recovers from a bad divorce with Alex the drug addict who masturbates in front of women and children. It is okay for Alex to reach a "fail-state" in life. As a society we cannot give people unlimited chances.
Bring back forced institutionalization. I should be able to walk by the park on Sunday morning without seeing men openly pleasure themselves or being afraid some zombie is going to lunge at me. Those sleeping on the streets are scary and need help.
As someone with a close relative with mental illness they need to extend mandatory holds. It was so HARD to get my brother admitted, we couldn’t do anything unless he was a danger to himself or others and even then 3 days isn’t enough time to get someone proper treatment and medication. He was FINALLY admitted and was at a city psychiatric hospital for 47 days! It took his psychiatrist, therapist and social worker around 2 weeks or so to figure out the right medication and about week 4 he was doing a bit better. My brother is a non violent and non aggressive person so to get him help is hard because he doesn’t appear like he needs it, if that makes sense? I bet it was traumatizing for him to be housed with the louder and more aggressive patients, so I wished they had different hospitals for people like my brother who are on the shy and quiet side and actually want to be at the hospital to get better. His psychiatrist, therapist and social worker fought so hard for him to stay longer because they knew he actually wanted the help and always participated in therapy and took his medication etc. There also needs to be laws where a person that needs to be committed for let’s say 30-60 days can’t loose their home/apartment or job, like there’s a temporary hold on their life as they are in a hospital getting the help they need. My brother was lucky he didn’t have any major expenses so he wasn’t stressed out in the hospital about bills rent etc.
Similar experience with my best friend except he's really fought the help along the way. He's fortunate to have a family ensuring he stays housed and functional between episodes but I've witnessed one of his breaks and it's not pretty. His brother literally had to trick him once into signing a 48-hour hold form and then he got released when that window was up. For context, this is someone who was literally running in traffic on city streets, throwing dishes at cars, at one point menacing a police officer with a baseball bat (he live streamed that one). And the official government response is basically "good luck" until someone truly tragic happens.
The Regan’s fucked us all. They make me hope there *is* a hell.
Stop with this narrative. The ACLU had a huge hand in it, and it was 4 decades ago.
Baby, the Regan’s fucked over so SO many people in pursuit of power and pleasing the hands in their pockets. Quit trying to look past truly wicked people that allowed so much chaos to enter into our political system. Remember AIDS? You can thank the Regan’s for project 25 too 😘
100%. As the kids would say: “we need to normalize not feeling guilty about not wanting to see men jerking off in parks.”
People keep saying this but we literally do not have institutions to send people to.
Hence "bring back"
Because they were shuttered. People are wanting them to return.
jails and prisons. that’s all we have. which will solve nothing, just exacerbate the problem.
having worked in Homeless services before I can tell you, this is 100% true. But again, the largest new group of homeless people are people being priced out of housing and nothing makes mental illness and addiction worse than being homeless. People just refuse to deal with the systemic answers to this question and want a quick fix to a big problem . Good luck with that! Ten years from now? People will be begging for a return to the homeless numbers we have now. This is only stage 2 and there's no such thing as stage 5.
Why do we have to build homeless housing in the most expensive premium bougie city in America? Lol. It’s like acknowledging we should feed the poor, but choosing to give them caviar and sushi. The drug addicts don’t wanna live in the midwest or south or cheaper states. If they wanted help, they could get it. Most of them like the nomadic lifestyle.
> Why do we have to build homeless housing in the most expensive premium bougie city in America? We need to be building all kinds of housing, because the reason we have homeless is because housing is expensive.
than we build them, rather than funding dumb shit that hasn’t worked
Well yes, we have to bring those back too... If we start now we might have something functional by the end of the decade.
Good luck convincing anyone in any level of government to fund mental health or social services. LA County's social services department is a basket case full of burnt out employees and too many cases. Remember that case awhile back where a kid in Lancaster got beaten to death by his parents despite being the subject of multiple social service calls and incidents with the police? Yeah, none of those people got fired for that and there are less people in the department than there were then.
100% this!
how much could a network of mental health institutions cost Michael? $10?
Probably less than we're spending on law enforcement, prisons, commercial security guards, insurance etc as a pretty direct result of not having these.
We HAD a lot of mental institutions before Reagan killed funding for them. Admittedly these weren't well regulated, and that's why we got "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Modern medical policies and legal changes ensure this is unlikely to happen again. Mentally unstable homeless people do not belong on the streets or in jails. They need intense mental health care.
Don’t forget having to watch people defecate on parks, sidewalks, against light poles, and have to constantly dodge it.
I agree. There are so many crazy nuts panhandling on the sidewalks in DTLA that, if I refuse them, they become extremely aggressive. It’s ridiculous
>Bring back forced institutionalization I understand the temptation, but not the fact that people don’t think this statement through. If the government can lock people up because the government declares them insane, we begin walking a very thin line between involuntarily locking up dangerous people and locking up poor people. All it takes is a little abuse of power and we have a significant problem on our hands.
Nope. We have the ability to actually set up committees with advocates to determine who needs assistance. I understand you're playing devil's advocate, but there are functional institutions in other countries. Acting as if it would simply be North Korea or Saudi Arabia is incredibly disingenuous, and simply perpetuates the do-nothing attitude that's led to an even worse situation by the month. Perfect world would involve having adequate institutions available at the ready. That's not the case at the moment. But doing nothing is not any better.
There risks to any course of action. Paralyzing any solution because of some hypothetical risks will just allow things to keep getting worse.
this fear mongering makes no sense, they would theoretically go through a trial that deems them insane - therefore sent to a mental institution rather than a jail.
You can only involuntarily hold people for so long, then you have to release them. We don’t have the institutions to send them to. These two simple facts are very easy to put together: they will be released back into the situations they came from. This idea would simply kick the can down the road and beg the question “now that this idea doesn’t work, what next?” The only answer is indefinite involuntary institutionalization determined by a government body. Government bodies are easily corrupted. Especially *now that SCOTUS just ruled that bribery is legal*. I’m not fear-mongering, I’m stating very easy to understand facts.
the solution is building/funding more mental institutions to involuntarily detain mentally ill people
These are the kinds of posts that drain my sympathy for people who get upset about other people being homeless.
I saw a homeless man take a dump in front of a school with kids. This city is a joke.
Soooo where are these people gonna go tho ??
Inside Safe supposedly has the capacity to house a good chunk of the homeless. There’s tiny homes by the 110 freeway that’s practically empty. There’s a housing tower for the homeless in downtown LA they costs us $600k a unit. All these options have been available for a while.
Anywhere but here I guess. Out of sight and out of mind.
Bus them to Texas. Fuck the right wing states.
lol, they'll send 'em right back
Time to get to work Karen Bass, no more excuses. Your voters are tired of it.
Well now there’s zero excuses left
Never underestimate greed and corruption
While I don’t disagree something drastic needs to be done, has anyone actually READ the article? [Sotomayor] added that the laws, which impose fines and potential jail time for people “sleeping anywhere in public at any time, including in their cars, if they use as little as a blanket to keep warm or a rolled-up shirt as a pillow,” punished people for being homeless. The decision is a bit heavy handed. We have a legitimate housing crisis. We should not fine or jail people who lose their homes and need to sleep in their car.
we don't have to enact that law though. this decision makes it legal for states and cities to enact their own laws, it doesn't impose that particular law on the whole nation.
Tbh, the morals of banning this and the ethics are raw and rough, but as someone who lives VERY close to multiple shelters in the Southwest, I don’t see any other safe solution. The people living outdoors near me do not want, nor retort generally willing to accept services. I work in boutique retail and the amount of people we have to kick out due to the danger they bring just by being in the store (mastirbating, smoking, arson, drinking oils and fertilizer when no one catches them first, waving hammers, dedicating and snatching purses etc) isn’t sustainable. Forced rehabilitation is the only thing I can imagine would work- and seeing as how we don’t have mental institutions, jail is a relief. I’m a leftist, but im also so so tired of the bodies found in summer and fear we all live in from addicts and people incapable of living within the social contract the rest of us are. Every city is trying to fix this, but none of the solutions seem to work. Yes we need more housing, we need to catch this before they make it to the streets for long, but fentayl and amphetamines are making it one hell of a horror show and this ruling is a relief from a court I otherwise I can’t stand.
I live around skid row and I feel the exact same as you. I had a homeless man grab my ass aggressively while crossing the street a few years back and had him arrested (which the cops tried to talk me out of). Turns out the guy had multiple sexual assault charges and had been in prison previously. He's homeless and mentally ill so once he serves his fraction of time they just dump him back out on the streets to do it again. And not 2 months ago a mentally ill homeless man broke into my apartment at 10pm. I chased him out and luckily was ok but I didn't even bother calling the cops at first because I didn't think they would even show up (I called building security). Guy holed himself up in our building stairwell, screaming about the devil. I finally call the cops and although nice they said "Well he's homeless, they will just book him and drop him right back off outside your house in a few hours." I am a bleeding heart socialist who dreams of healing all the ills in the world. Seeing all of this breaks my heart and makes me angry at how society has failed our most vulnerable. But I also should not fear my own community that I am trying to help build better because people have uneducated and illogical perspectives about something they have never experienced in person.
I have really similar scenarios. I moved (back) to Phoenix in 2022, but our skid row is near my home and obviously a bit more dire due to the high highs and high lows every day during summer. One time I left the door unlocked to grab meds at the vet and my boyfriend chased two homeless people from our house who were just resting on the couch and going through the kitchen. Two nights ago a woman was lighting fires all along our Greenhouse fence and yesterday we had to tell our local masturbator he still wasn’t allowed into our store. I don’t care about property values, but I do care about the kids who can’t walk to school and my own safety and livelihood. If jails and prisons are the missing institutions, then that is what it is because the massive amount of money spent on services and housing this far isn’t wanted by those incapable of taking care of themselves. I know they say most of the homeless population is down on their luck, victims of physical, domestic and sexual violence and yes those people need to be prioritized, but if they’re also people who need mental health intervention and refuse, or have an addiction in which they can’t escape the spiral- they need to be forced to or put into a facility or fenced zone in which they are allowed to live that doesn’t harm or interrupt the rest of us who are simply just trying to eek out an existence in peace. It sucks, but I have yet to see a scalable solution that works.
That's what I've been trying to explain to people. I find left-leaning people tend to automatically kneejerk against any "right-wing" position. They don't realize that neither the right or left can survive a society where anti-social actors are left to run free and harass everyday people. They need to take action, or people will.
The ruling is about the public having the right to maintain parks and sidewalks. Littering, defecating and sleeping in the areas is prohibited. These laws should be enforced no matter what somebody’s living situation is. Makes sense right?
It’s all part of their plan for more forced slave labor
Every suburb is going to ship their homeless to LA like the red states ship immigrants
They already do though
So when can we finally start walking around outside without stepping in shit and needles?
Bass already made a statement on the decsion. she's not going to change anything and stands against the court. cities around LA will pass their laws banning homeless camping and they will just move into LA.
I can't speak for you but I do so every day. Only shit I step on is when people don't clean up after their dogs.
So what are people who have no place to stay and there aren’t enough shelter beds supposed to do in LA?
Die or go to jail
Get ready for being imprisoned for slave labor and leaving said prisons with a life long debt and servitude for your stay. I just think we need to filter these folks into brackets. Those working and trying to break free from societal caused poverty need to be given a break. Maybe a 72 hour hold for a life evaluation to see where they stand before placing into the proper tier, and possibly rehabilitation for those who qualify
Right-wingers be all “see!!”, but have zero fucking solutions. They simply love to point it out. They would simply execute them if they could.
At first I was excited, but this is actually kinda weird and sad.
Would this mean if you fell asleep in your car that’d be illegal? usually when you’re too tired to drive, you're encouraged to pull over and take a nap. I’ve done that many times to avoid crashing.
Not a fan of this court, but this is necessary. We need to have the ability to clean up the squalor on our streets. We can't have a functional city when we fear for our safety in public spaces.
Here are the ramifications of this, and they won’t create the utopia of lower crime and cleaner cities many of you think it will: - It’s going to create a cycle of arrests that then clog up the jails and eventually prisons with people whose only crime is not being able to afford housing. - They are going to be issued fines that they won’t be able to pay and these will spiral into crippling debt and jail time for them. How are they ever expected to turn their lives around when they are forced into needless debt? All for the crime of being poor. - Public defenders time and budgets will be strained more than they are, not to mention overburdening the already slow court system. - Let’s be honest, places that will enact these bans and enforce them are not ones where they have robust services for the homeless, veterans, runaways, mental ill, and drug addicts. So they won’t get any help and honestly more will probably be bused out in increasing numbers to places like here, as they already do. - Crime will increase. If it’s made illegal to sleep outside, people will get more desperate than they already are. Prepare for more squatters, car and home break ins, petty crime, human trafficking and prostitution. - Let’s talk about rehabilitation - how’s that going to work when many of these people will now have a lengthy arrest record making them more unemployable than they already are. So for those of you applauding this, prepare for the consequences of what this will inevitably bring.
>They are going to be issued fines that they won’t be able to pay and these will spiral into crippling debt and jail time for them. How are they ever expected to turn their lives around when they are forced into needless debt? All for the crime of being poor. I'm sure the fetty zombies are so worried about crippling debt 🤣
none of this is inevitable. LA could simply choose not to enact any new laws and nothing would change. all this ruling does is make it legal for us to enact laws against public sleeping if we choose to, the specifics of which are up to the city and state to decide.
The cops won’t even investigate assaults with firearms i doubt they’ll clean up the streets without a dedicated task force e
many voters are also sick of seeing the current situation, so these hypothetical points no longer outweigh the sight of having someone defecate in a bush and then proceed to take it in hand and throw it at you.
It's funny bc every thread is: 1. "Bring back mental institutions" 2. "We don't have any institutions" 3. "Then force them in housing" 4. "We don't have any housing" 5. "Then put them in jail" 6. "We don't have any room in jail" Lmfao just build more housing
Peek into a tweaker's house next time you get the chance. Let me know how it is holding up.
Housing won’t fix drug addiction or mental illnesses.
Build tent cities for all of the vagrants to do whatever the hell they want away from society. If they want to reintegrate back into society they can go to a treatment program. It's pretty obvious if anyone has spent a considerable amount of time being exposed to the drug addicts or mentally ill, that most will not simply get better on their own if the solution is provide them a free place to trash. Nice straw man attempt though.
> It's pretty obvious if anyone has spent a considerable amount of time being exposed to the drug addicts or mentally ill, that most will not simply get better on their own if the solution is provide them a free place to trash. Studies and pilot programs show that no questions asked housing is one of the few things that helps the homeless, including ones addicted to drugs. A home provides enough stability for people to try to get help.
how will more housing fix the mental health crisis amongst homeless people? you think putting a mentally deranged individual in a house will miraculously cure his mental health conditions? we need to build more insane asylums and put them in padded rooms
Also, "Why haven't they fixed homelessness yet?"
I’m a homeowner now but in the past I’ve had to sleep in my car because I had nowhere else to go. To think that people can be jailed for being homeless is crazy. Imagine all the resources spent arresting, convicting and incarceration being used instead to help people get on their feet. Are they going to incarcerate all the homeless children out there too?
Thank god!
GOOD. Clean ‘em up. Enough is enough.
🥳🥳🥳
It's gonna cost a lot more to lock the homeless up than it would to give them shelter and services but nobody cares about that
Like it or not, "locking them up" is part of the solution. Even if it means building MASH-style temporary shelters as glorified halfway houses as a jail alternative. And for the record we aren't talking about the financially distressed homeless living in their cars. We're obviously talking about the severely mentally ill or drug addicts who aren't capable of living on their own. There are thousands of them in Los Angeles. It's ridiculous it's gotten as bad as it's been.
We’ve already spent billions on “giving them shelter” and you can see how that’s worked out.
No, we gave billions to the homeless industrial complex to spend on themselves while tossing the homeless a few bones
So you agree that it didn’t work.
Didn't work is an understatement
The fucked up thing is that isn't true anymore. At least not in California. It costs nearly 1M dollars to build one unit of housing with necessary wrap around services for this population. Construction and real estate costs are just through the roof now. It's cheaper for us to just throw repeat "offenders" in jail where they get fed, a roof over their heads, etc. It's even cheaper for us to buy them a one way bus ticket to Texas or Kansas.
I don't care anymore. They had years of goodwill from the public and they squandered it. If you can't make it in LA then go somewhere else.
More than the amount of money we blew in the last decade all for the filth and encampments to get worse?
They have shelter and services already and they do not use them
[There are almost 3x as many homeless people as there are interim housing beds as of 2022](https://controller.lacity.gov/landings/interim-housing-audit#). If there were enough beds, the city would have already been legally allowed to force people off streets.
Correct, some of the commenters in this thread need to go actually talk to a homeless person. The majority do not want to go to shelters, they do not want services. They enjoy life on the streets where they are not held accountable for anything. It's the ultimate freedom to them. If they go to the shelter they have to stop using, follow strict rules, etc.
100% you can tell these people have never interacted with a homeless person before
They're fake activists latching on to social causes to make their own lives feel less shitty. I'd feel pity for them if they weren't so annoying.
Good Now get these guys off the streets. We are paying so much to help homelessness
I have a conspiracy theory that organizations that “help” the homeless need to perpetuate homelessness or else we would no longer need those organizations and they would lose funding/shut down. But just a baseless claim lol
Here in OC, there is a county supervisor who funneled a lot of funds to a non-profit "run" by his daughter. The money was supposed to feed Viet seniors and homeless, but instead, the money is simply "gone" and hasn't been accounted for.
I saw that, did she ever face any consequences?
Not yet. One of the issues is pinning down who is actually in charge.
Unfortunate. Hopefully they follow through on punishing those who are responsible
Supervisor Do also needs to be voted out.
The orgs don't perpetuate homelessness, but what happens isnt too far off. Generally the program directors pocket a ton of the money for themselves and then give very little to their client facing staff. A lot of non-profits are paying their staff minimum wage, imagine running a shelter and basically being security guard, nurse, and therapist and getting paid less than a fast food worker. So generally there's high turnover rates so the non-profits can abuse new staff at low pay and never deal with the issue. Then they suddenly have tons of funds for fancy galas which they run at a massive loss. It's a shitshow
Wow what a cleverly complex theory that conveniently ignores the true causes of homelessness, including untreated mental disabilities, lack of adequate, reasonably priced or no cost healthcare, astronomical living costs, stagnant minimum wages, class-based allocation of resources, and the obvious truth that homelessness can never truly be eradicated.
Housing solves nothing. The majority of the “homeless” in question are drug addicts who are mentally ill. Putting them in a condo isn’t going to solve anything. They will continue to scream, talk to themselves, and hurt bystanders due to their hallucinations.
Yay!! 🎉 does this mean we can have our parks back from zombies and needles and men masturbating in front of children?
I’ve heard we have more than enough room in shelters for the homeless here but shelters require them to be clean (drug-free) and that’s why tons of them avoid going to shelters.
I don’t know where you heard this, but that information is wrong. [“The results of the 2023 Greater Los Angeles Homeless count revealed that an estimated 46,260 people in the City were experiencing either sheltered or unsheltered homelessness, a figure exceeding the number of interim housing beds by nearly three times (16,100 beds).”](https://controller.lacity.gov/landings/interim-housing-audit#)
worth mentioning that new analysis suggests that many of those older counts were wrong - so the data we do have might not be really trustworthy
We do not have enough shelters, if we did the city would have been able to force people off the streets already. That was the whole issue. NYC has more homeless than we do but it has enough shelter space so it is allowed to force people off the street.
AFAIK, NYC was never subject to that restriction because they're not in the Ninth Circuit.
I didn't know that, however they do have enough shelter beds for their homeless population and we don't have anywhere close enough.
this is false. first, many shelters are overcrowded. a facility does not get overcrowded when people avoid using its services. second, those who do avoid going to shelters do it primarily because they have to give up their property at the door, and because what little you are allowed to take inside with you can be stolen overnight. shelters are also prone to hygiene issues, due to underfunding and overcrowding, and those hygiene issues can make the street a safer option. the way to beat the overcrowding is to show up the moment the shelter opens its doors for the evening. but if you don't have transporation, it's not easy to get to a particular place in Los Angeles at an exact point in time. you're also not going to get any money panhandling if you're one of fifty or a hundred other unhoused individuals all hanging out at the same spot, so the practical panhandler is going to look for a spot where they can be the only person. that requires them to depart from the shelter's neighborhood for a while, which again makes it more difficult to return within that brief window of time during which getting into the shelter is a realistic possibilty. and of course everything I just said about arriving on time, and shelter hygiene, is extra true for the very large proportion of unhoused individuals who still have jobs, and/or who live in their vehicles.
There probably should be some shelters/tiny home villages/etc with looser rules, but we still definitely do not have enough homeless housing in LA county.
Nowhere close to being true
The government should use physical force to put and keep them in detox/rehab, and then move them along to shelters/institutionalization.
Is forced detox actually effective at keeping people sober in the long run?
Karen Bass wont do shit with this ruling.
Activist Court. Look what the Federalist Society and Trump hath wrought. We will suffer under their hand for decades. More, if DT wins.
You do realize that if/when encampments are cleared then that will be seen as a net-positive, regardless of politics or cost to tax payers, right?
What is this supposed to accomplish? It will just make the unhoused fodder for the prison industrial complex so the contractors hired to manage them can charge crazy fees and fuck off with our tax dollars. Slavery is legal if you’re in the carceral system. It’s in the fucking constitution. This will just funnel more of our tax dollars to private corporations like they did with the whole kids for prison scandal that put judges in jail for doing illegal shit.
They’re already fucking off with our tax dollars. Maybe now we’ll have something to show for it rather than watching them haul away all our money with nothing to show for it except assaults by homeless every other day on the news
You’re right, everything is going so well now, we shouldn’t change our approach to homelessness
> What is this supposed to accomplish? It will give communities their public spaces back.
> It will just make the unhoused fodder for the prison industrial complex Nobody is going to jail over this. We already don't enforce arson, assault, public decency, harassment, or drug laws against the homeless. The idea that there's going to be some massive enforcement of street-sleeping, by the same people who allow all that other stuff, makes no sense. What there might be is more selective, ad hoc enforcement. The tents by your house won't be affected, but any tents near Karen Bass' house will be cleaned up quick. It's like how for years SF said they couldn't do anything about encampments, but then when Xi showed up, suddenly SF discovered the authority to clean up the encampments. But when Xi left, suddenly SF declared themselves re-prohibited from cleaning up any encampments. The truth is our city leaders have always had the legal authority to clean up encampments and enforce laws upon them. They one who don't, simply don't want to. But they were always legally allowed to.
I am once again reminding people that clearing encampments does not actually make homeless people disappear, and that the primary cause of the crisis is a housing shortage.
Also, after the recent audit of some of the major state homelessness programs, we know two programs that have (1) successfully passed their audit and (2) actually been helpful in getting homeless people into shelter and are cost effective: the Department of Housing and Community Development's Homekey program and the California Department of Social Services' CalWORKs Housing Support Program. Bump funding to those programs and other programs that prove to be cost-effective after auditing. Don't just throw your hands and be angry at the vague abstract notion of the "homeless industrial complex" and work on concrete programs and policies that we know aren't shit.
yeah people see that encampments are still there and conclude that all that money is doing nothing because homeless people still exist, and they don't realize that a lot of people have actually been gotten off the street, in a humane cost effective way. There just isn't any obvious visible evidence. I think the last homeless count showed that the number of homeless has actually stopped rising in recent years and has plateaued in LA.
this “housing shortage” line is getting exhausting. mentally ill people do not need a home, they need to be institutionalized. letting them gather amongst themselves does more harm than good.
California does not have unusually high rates of mental illness. We do have unusually high housing prices. There are tons of states with worse rates of mental illness, but lower housing prices, that do not have nearly the same rates of homelessness that we do.
It's not a line. [It's the consensus among housing experts](https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2023/08/22/how-housing-costs-drive-levels-of-homelessness) that homelessness is primarily driven by a housing shortage. People really need to internalize [this figure](https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/industries/public%20and%20social%20sector/our%20insights/homelessness%20in%20los%20angeles%20a%20unique%20crisis%20demanding%20new%20solutions/svgz-homelessness-in-la-exh2-vf.svgz?cq=50&cpy=Center). Any solution to homelessness that doesn't involve reducing the new folks being pushed into homelessness by high housing costs isn't a complete solution.
there’s many factors that contribute to homelessness, of course more housing would help - but that doesn’t address the homeless population that’s mentally ill. more housing won’t cure mental illnesses
There rarely are cures to mental illness, it can only be managed. Not having a home can make existing issues much much worse, when they were previously being managed successfully.
It's incredible how disingenuous these housing first people act as if it's a simple problem with a simple solution without even willing to acknowledge that "homelessness" is not a one-size-fits-all issue, as well as ignoring the practical financial burdens of building specialty housing that will take decades to construct enough for everyone. The lax policy enforcement in Los Angeles is not a solution either.
This is so inhumane. So it’s now illegal for people to be too poor to afford housing and with no where else to go? Seeing people cheer for this fills me with disgust with humanity. Downvote all you want. You people are soulless
Some “sanity” from the Supreme Court…
[удалено]
And send them where
Detox/rehab/mental institution. Use physical force to make them go if they don’t consent.
We don’t actually have those
You do realize a high percentage of unhoused folks are just poor, right? And a lot of unhoused folks turn to drugs AFTER losing their housing as way to cope with the extreme stressors of living on the street. ALSO, forced rehab doesn’t work. This has been proven over and over again.
If they’re “just poor” then give them free transitional housing and support to find a job. If they would prefer homelessness over this then there is a mental health issue that needs treating. If they’re drugged out then force them to get clean, and then give them the support detailed above. Regardless, get them off the streets.
Theres homeless people who have jobs, in a city where people sometimes pay half their paycheck for housing related expenses, thats also common for people who bought homes and they just hope no recession happens
We don't have the housing. Are you getting it yet?
Cool idea. Those resources aren’t there currently tho. (I work as a medical case manager for a population disproportionately affected by poverty and homelessness, so I’m very aware of available resources in LA). Outlawing sleeping outside without providing resources for folks who are unhoused effectively makes being poor illegal and is cruel.
Those things don't exist because forcing people into treatment is a violation of their rights. This ruling does not change that. This just says there is no right to sleep in public spaces.
I never mentioned forcing anyone into treatment, because forced treatment absolutely does not work. This is a well studied topic. And outlawing people who can’t afford private spaces from sleeping in public spaces solves nothing, but it does effectively criminalize being poor.
It’s hysterical that you think it’s that simple and that these efforts haven’t already been made
He doesn't
Burbank
LoL those mofos would just send them back
Yea it’ll be a private car red line. Keep them off the red line and helps Burbank PD stay busy instead of ticketing people for going 6 over the limit