As Homelessness Surges in California, So Does a Backlash (NYT)

[dalton99a]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/21/us/california-homeless-backlash.html

As Homelessness Surges in California, So Does a Backlash
Tent encampments across California are testing residents’ tolerance and compassion as street conditions deteriorate.
By Thomas Fuller, Tim Arango and Louis Keene
Oct. 21, 2019 Updated 1:02 p.m. ET


A homeless encampment in San Francisco. Homelessness is an expanding crisis that many California residents say has tested the tolerance and liberal values for which the state is better known. Jim Wilson/The New York Times

OAKLAND, Calif. — Insults like “financial parasites” and “bums” have been directed at them, not to mention rocks and pepper spray. Fences, potted plants and other barriers have been erected to keep them off sidewalks. Citizen patrols have been organized, vigilante style, to walk the streets and push them out.

California may pride itself on its commitment to tolerance and liberal values, but across the state, record levels of homelessness have spurred a backlash against those who live on the streets.

Gene Gorelik, a property developer in Oakland and an aggressive critic of the homeless, recently suggested luring the thousands of homeless people in the San Francisco Bay Area onto party buses stocked with alcohol and sending them on a one-way trip to Mexico. “Refugee camps in Syria are cleaner than this,” he said in an interview at a fast-food restaurant in Oakland that overlooks a homeless encampment.

Homelessness is an expanding crisis that comes amid skyrocketing housing prices, a widening gap between the rich and poor and the persistent presence on city streets of the mentally ill and drug-dependent despite billions of dollars spent to help them.

Although rarely as coarsely as Mr. Gorelik — who made headlines recently when he tried to shower a homeless encampment in Oakland with dollar bills to persuade those living in tents to move elsewhere — residents say they have found themselves weighing concerns for the less fortunate against disruptions to their own quality of life.

“I do think this is, in a lot of ways, a test of who are we as a community,” said John Maceri, the chief executive of the People Concern, a social services agency in Los Angeles, who has noticed a stark uptick in hostility toward the homeless in recent months.

“Some people who I’d put in the fed-up category, they’re not bad people,” he continued. “They would describe themselves as left of center, and sometimes very left of center, but at some point they reach the breaking point.”

[enki23]

1. We don't have a lot of homeless because we are "liberal"

We have a lot of homeless because we are a state of vast wealth, and vast wealth inequality. They're priced out of the housing market.

[MurrayDelph]

7. Actually, I thought

we had a lot of homeless people because we have milder weather, so it's not as dangerous to sleep rough.

[Newest Reality]

2. I have seen no signs so far...

I haven't seen much to indicate that anything is really going to be done to really solve the problem of the domestically challenged.

Is this really about individuals or their proclivities considering the numbers involved and that it is nationwide? Or, is it about a systemic problem with our culture, values and views?

I think what we are seeing is merely a precursor to a potentially dramatic increase in people who do not have their own residences, in other words, the future is homeless. Automation is going to impact employment numbers increasingly with each new decade. Wages are not going to increase significantly enough to assure people's ability to keep up with rent prices if trends continue.

Another factor that is most troubling is the ten-thousand seniors who are reaching age 65 per day now. Half of them have little or no assets or pensions. It looks like the number of homeless seniors is going to skyrocket and we will be seeing them living in tents and the like. I am one of them.

So, we have what looks like the start of a major crises. Rents are not going to be going down and I see very little planning or attempts to mitigate the problem. I don't even see plans to break ground on low-income housing in many areas and that should be a priority since we will most definitely require it as the middle-class rapidly runs out of credit and can't keep up a tenuous lifestyle anymore.

[flibbitygiblets]

3. Homelessness is noticeably increasing over the past few years. It does feel like a crisis.

And very few people are talking about large-scale plans to do something about it.

[wheelman]

8. True enough but

but I think Yangs ideas about universal basic income have some merit and could do a lot to mitigate oncoming homeless crisis. I think it's sad he's the only one.

[flibbitygiblets]

10. Agreed. UBI has been used in other countries, even some US cities and seems to work well

Studies find that most of the recipients a) have jobs and b) use the extra $ for things like rent and food. Meaning, they'd are facing insecurity with regard to food and shelter.

I'd rather my taxes go to helping people live indoors and have access to food and medical care than pay for police to shuffle them around, and emergency rooms to treat them in the most expensive and ineffective manner possible.

[PatrickforO]

13. I second that. nt

[gopiscrap]

19. welcome to DU

[Jspur]

4. This is just a sign this country

is slowly becoming a third world country for 90 percent of it's citizens. For example todays Millennials don't have enough money to buy homes and the ones who are able to had their parents help. Generation Z will also not be able to afford to buy a house once they come of age due to real estate prices always increasing. We are going to have a country that has California type of cost of living everywhere. That's why I get angry when people say this epidemic is only happening because it's liberal California. That's a bunch of bs. What's happening is due to extreme wealth inequality which no state is immune to. It just happened to California first but historically whatever happens in California always eventually trickles down to the rest of the country.

[dalton99a]

9. It is also an issue in Texas:

A downtown Austin sidewalk includes camp sites constructed by homeless individuals.
Christopher Neely/Community Impact Newspaper


Homeless people have set up camp under Highway 290 in South Austin. Marjorie Kamys Cotera for The Texas Tribune

https://www.texastribune.org/2019/10/02/gov-greg-abbott-threatens-intervene-austins-homelessness-crisis/
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott threatens to intervene in Austin’s “homelessness crisis”
Abbott’s office lamented reports of “violence, used needles, and feces littering the streets of Austin and endangering Texas residents.”
by Alex Samuels and Davis Rich Oct. 2, 2019 Updated: 5 PM

[Skittles]

14. fuck ABBOTT

that piece of shit doesn't seem to understand that homeless people are AMONG the Texans he is supposed to "protect and serve"

[eissa]

5. It is a crisis

Democrats don’t seem to know what to do, lest they be labeled “intolerant” and republicans seem to be enjoying seeing the state struggle with this.

It’s not just “income inequality.” It’s a lack of mental institutions and drug clinics, which is where most of the homeless belong. Building more shelters without addressing the root reason why most end up on the streets won’t solve anything.

[Demovictory9]

6. one bedroom rent $1500 to $2000

[eissa]

11. Is moving out of state not possible?

I’m not being sarcastic, but genuinely want to know: if things are getting tough for someone financially and they realize they can’t afford to live in their current city/state, why wouldn’t they move before ending up on the streets? I’m certainly not implying that it’s easy just to pick up and relocate, but some are making the decision to move and live in states with a lower cost of living. Seems that’s the logical choice rather than being on the streets.

Also, CA has large swaths of rural areas where rent is a little more reasonable. If this was a case of simply higher rents in the larger cities, wouldn’t we see more migration to those areas? But we don’t because most of these people are suffering with mental illness or addiction, and simply throwing money at them will fix nothing. They need shelter AND treatment; one without the other is pointless.

[Coventina]

17. It takes money to relocate across country. I've done it as a poor person, so I have the experience.

If you want to take any of your things, you need a truck.

Or, if you are willing to forgo all your stuff, you still need some sort of reliable transport for just yourself and your clothes.

If you have a family, it is a nightmare.

Then you get to a new state and then what?

Do you have enough cash to put a deposit on an apartment?

Do you even have the cash for a cheap, temporary flop?

How do you secure your belongings, if you rented a truck?

How long does it take to find a job and get that first paycheck?

It's not easy. Not at all.

ETA: Also, do you have good enough credit that someone will even rent to you? That's a big issue as well. If you are being forced out of your community due to economic pressures, chances are, you have bad credit and therefore will remain homeless.

[2naSalit]

12. Not all these people are mentally ill

or drug addicts, a lot are priced out of their homes or potential homes, many lost their homes in fires, lest we forget, and many can't work enough jobs to pay rent.

I was in San Diego last year and I saw all the dog beach and any open space filled with homeless with their run down RVs, pu trucks and cars, tents. It was really something for me to observe and made me glad that I wasn't in that place while I was homeless a year before that... I lived in my car in a state that's mostly north of the 45th parallel, and there are plenty of homeless here in the north as well.

[Joe941]

15. My family left cali when I was younger because it was too expensive.

Not what we wanted but it was a wise financial decision.

[PatrickforO]

16. We need to rethink how we take care of one another. Our hardscrabble

'pull yourself up by the bootstraps' capitalist utopia doesn't work for everyone. The proof? Everyone doesn't have enough.

Think for a moment about the billionaire parasites. There's something freakish about feverishly amassing huge amounts of wealth, and something downright immoral about then protecting that wealth by buying off and bribing politicians. Billionaire parasites in big oil, for instance, have bought 'science' that 'shows' how climate change is a hoax, which it isn't. Big plastics billionaires and corporations have done the same to 'show' that plastic is great and deny it contains carcinogens when the reality is that it does, and that one plastic bottle can take upwards of 450 years to decompose. The ocean is FILLED with plastic trash. It's in the fish at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, for God's sake.

I mean, think about how we live. All the waste. The conspicuous consumption. Then think of that in light of these homeless people, and those beyond our borders, of whom 25,000 a day die of starvation. Starvation. Imagine in this world dying of starvation.

Think of all the species we're killing with our big industrial agriculture, and the death of the rain forests.

So many things we're doing wrong.

And this Gorlik? He's a victim of our times. He sees the homeless and they make him have a whole bunch of mixed feelings - maybe guilt, irritation, fear and others, and he becomes hostile. Others become hostile.

So I ask, what are you willing to give up so these people can have enough?

It's a hard question, isn't it?

And until we can answer it with loving and generous actions that uphold the human dignity of all people, and organize ourselves to ensure all people have enough, we will be a loathsome species - a cancer upon this planet. The only species that, if we went extinct tomorrow, EVERY OTHER FORM OF LIFE ON THIS PLANET would actually be BETTER OFF.

Does it hurt to hear that? Does it make you angry? is your first instinct to react with hostility to me, maybe ridicule me? See what I mean?

We still have people on here who 'don't want to raise taxes to give me healthcare.'

Just saying...

[Coventina]

18. I'm with you 100% n/t