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Homicides are up 10.6% in Los Angeles. [ [link removed] ] Robberies are up 17.6%. Robberies at businesses are up 43.6%. So of course, the election conversation is about a crack down on crime. Put those criminals in jail and keep them there.
Except, of course, this is entirely the fault of the government. California, like every other state in the nation and, frankly, many other Western countries, has been in the depths of a housing crisis for decades. We’ve known it. We’ve known it was going to get worse. And yet, the government has refused to build housing. So the housing we do have gets more expensive. And so homelessness rises.
Homelessness in Los Angeles is up more than 50% since before COVID. Los Angles is AT LEAST 500,000 housing units short and hundreds of thousands of shelter beds short. So people live on the streets. In tents. And boxes. Before COVID, 25% of unhoused people in Los Angeles had full time jobs. But not for long. It’s hard to keep a job when you can’t shower regularly, can’t get a good night’s sleep, can’t change your clothes. When you’re the constant victim of crime and assault, by other unhoused people, cruel strangers, the police. And so you lose the job, and you stay homeless. Maybe you get another job, minimum wage. Where in Los Angeles can you afford rent on $15 an hour? Average rent is $1663 for a studio which, first of all, you will not find, second, you will not get because you’re competing against housed people with jobs who are desperately seeking affordable apartments, and, even if you do get it, you need a deposit and first and last month’s rent to even get in. In every city in America, you need to be working at least 2.5 full time minimum wage jobs to afford a two bedroom apartment. That’s 100 hours a week [ [link removed] ].
So you stay unhoused, you may end up on drugs- many of our clients start taking uppers to stay awake at night so they don’t get assaulted or robbed or worse- or you may end up disabled, almost certainly you’ll get arrested for loitering or sleeping on a bench or existing and then you have a criminal record so good luck getting a job now. And you’re hungry. And desperate. So you commit a crime. And then the people demand that you be put away for good.
But the government could have just built affordable housing. Los Angeles and every other city in America are building luxury high rises at an impossible rate. Not so much with Section 9 homes.
And all of this is before Grants Pass. All of this is before the Supreme Court of the United States says that it is legal for cities to make it illegal to be involuntarily homeless. When they do, the focus will shift from solving homelessness to fighting crime. Again. And we’ll send more people to our already overcrowded jails, instead of putting them into the homes that can change their lives. We’ll create criminals instead of productive citizens. We’ll doom ourselves as we doom them.
This is the cycle. It never stops repeating, and unless we take mass action and we take it quickly, it never will.
Hoping SCOTUS sees the light,
Kat
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