11 ms·

Fire at a homeless encampment sparked Bel-Air blaze that destroyed homes

47 points by kyleblarson 9y ago

chrissnell 9y ago
Mayor Garcetti has been very soft on the homeless and refused to enforce laws targeted at these encampments: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-garcetti-homeless-20150630-story.html http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-garcetti-homeles...
- llukas 9y ago
  Doesn't it look like homeless get punished for being poor? Do they got anywhere else to go?
- zouhair 9y ago
  Yeah, right. They already live in camps, so why not just add walls around it, and maybe build some big ovens (so they can bake bread) and buy some gas too. That would be a fine solution.
  - crankylinuxuser 9y ago
    I hope to god you're not making some sort of nazi death camp "joke"...
- pizza 9y ago
  Look...maybe you have a low opinion of him.. maybe you see him as slacking off from his Mayorly duties or decrees or whatever he should, in your eyes, be doing, fine... and I'm sorry for this wall of text but I just cannot allow a comment like that to not bear my scrutiny. But just the !!insane!! rate of growth of the homeless in the last two years alone completely changes the game. It appears that, no matter where you look, all throughout the city of Angels is that housing is fucked expensive and in fucked supply. > The startling jump in homelessness affected every significant demographic group, including youth, families, veterans and the chronically homeless, according to the report. Homeless officials and political leaders pointed to steadily rising housing costs and stagnant incomes as the underlying cause. [0] I beseech you to be receptive to the idea that the problem goes far far far beyond simply flipping an "enforce preexisting laws" switch, or hiring more blue-suited hardasses that'll shine flashlights into the eyes of the homeless as they weather every night's accompanying total lack of guaranteed security... Your 2015 article is by Gale Holland -- now compare the urgency of her writing, from earlier in 2017. The title alone is enough to alarm the shit out of you... Headline: L.A. County homelessness jumps a 'staggering' 23% as need far outpaces housing, new count shows [0] > Even the homeless veteran population jumped in 2017, marking a backsliding of the gains made last year by city, state and federal programs that slashed the number of homeless veterans by a third. With the number of veterans placed into housing slightly down, the count of 4,828 homeless veterans was up ___ 57%. __ (emphasis mine, but holy shit!) > “There's no sugarcoating the bad news,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said at a news conference Wednesday where the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority released its report. “We can’t let rents double every year. I was particularly disappointed to see veteran numbers go up.” > Garcetti called homelessness a problem that has persisted “through administrations, through recessions,” adding, “Our city is in the midst of an extraordinary homelessness crisis that needs an extraordinary response. These men, these women, these children are our neighbors.” > The Homeless Services Authority linked the worsening problem to the economic stress on renters in the Los Angeles area. More than 2 million households in L.A. and Orange counties have housing costs that exceed 30% of income, according to data from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies included in the report. > According to the nonprofit California Housing Partnership Corp., median rent, adjusted for inflation, increased more than 30% from 2000 to 2015, while the median income was flat. -- Assume a plain-Jane compound interest growth formula (it's just a sketch, right?), use the rule of 72 with that 23% figure, and bam -- if that's how the process plays out, 3 years will be all it takes to double the number of people out on the street. That can't just be a linear issue of the number in bad situations either - it seems like super-linear complexity headache, with respect to the n = the growing number of disenfranchised people.. - How will you pay for the massive influx of cops necessary to address the doubled homeless population? - What about the impact on the small businesses or cafes or corner markets and shit that will have a slowly-but-surely drying up of customers? - Add to that, the ensuing evaporation of taxes funding the city.. - How much you wanna bet we won't have saved up enough to not hurt ourselves in the process of splurging on the whole 2028 Olympics extrava-freakin-ganza. Surely it'll be one of those hyper-spectacular moments in this boring dystopia of ours :) -- And, once again, because it damn well bears worth repeating -- LA's homeless population jumped by 23%... IN THE LAST YEAR ALONE. AND The year prior had a 20% growth rate!!!!! And when they go homeless, it's more often the case of a gradual, year-long descent because of inability to pay, rather than a pinpoint-able, spontaneous event that made your home suddenly unlivable or irretrievable. Look up the ancient Latin concept of the exiled man, homo saracer - a man whose life is worth so little that he may be murdered, freely and without any and all repercussion. Someone who is totally bereft of even being empathized with... How can it be that the society can discard people to such tsunamic extent that we barely bat an eye at the fact that these slums share zip codes with the ultra rich and yet live worlds apart. Right at this very moment you are reading this sentence, dozens of wanderers - blacks, whites, latinos, disabled, boys, girls - extremely cautiously stepping along the highway. Petrified by how instantly their bones could be crushed into dust when you share a lane with any of the hundred thousand or so totally fucking insane drivers that live around here. To live like a dog, to be defenselessly curled up to rest their weary souls. To have nowhere to go except for the side of the road where tipsy assholes toss their empty sodas out their passenger side windows... [0] http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-homeless-count-20170530-story.html http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-homeless-count-2...
  - mofino 9y ago
    Why can't they move to areas that they can afford? Why must people live in SF, LA, etc? I understand they may feel it's there home, but it's no longer fitting for them. If I break up a spider web in my basement, the spider moves because he has to survive. Living in extreme poverty isn't making a reasonable attempt at survival.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
juicyfroot 9y ago
That's hilarious. Lame SJWs
s0rce 9y ago
Seems like we are going to be seeing more of this with drier conditions and ever growing homeless camps across California. There are numerous fire code violations at these camps and these were devised for a reason. Not sure what the best course of action is but clearly something needs to happen.
- ajross 9y ago
  Devil's advocacy: must "something happen?". The point to allowing semi-permanent homeless camps is that people were being forced into hiding, sleeping in ditches and eating garbage. That's a serious social ill (no, I don't have numbers, but would be interested if someone does), and one that was trivially solved by allowing them to pitch tents and cook food. It's still not a great existence, but it's a whole lot better and it's something that lots of people will legitimately choose. And if the cost of that is some non-zero number of burned homes? Dunno, but my gut says that's a worthwhile trade. Not that I'd argue with running power to those camps and paying for some hot plates either, of course.
  - s0rce 9y ago
    I agree that a tent does seem to be a step up from a ditch but I'm not sure you can say the issue was trivially solved. At least in the bay area many of the camps are in parks. This seems like a very controversial opinion but I really enjoy walking around parks and this really isn't possible with bustling, trash filled homeless encampments occupying the neighborhood parks. I don't have a solutions but I don't think tent camps are the way to go either.
- dilap 9y ago
  Giving them houses might help.
  - Clubber 9y ago
    So, give them yours. Maybe rent a room for free or something.
jlgaddis 9y ago
That seems a bit ironic.
DoreenMichele 9y ago
Maybe we could do something crazy, like bring back SROs, instead of de facto as a society acting like we think it is better for people to sleep in a tent than have "sub standard" housing. Because tolerating rampant homelessness while turning our noses up at modest rentals basically amounts to the nation saying that is exactly what it thinks. Miner said she was skeptical of the proposed campaign to educate homeless people about fire risks. Yeah. A homeless person making a cooking fire is probably hungry and probably has no other viable option. Trying to "educate" the homeless about fire risks sounds like "Honey, we don't care if you starve. Just make sure you don't burn down any mansions. Kaythxbai."
- GarrisonPrime 9y ago
  I don't disagree, but I will point out that many homeless people want to be homeless, if being housed means submitting to questions and forms. Autonomy is a powerfully strong motivator.
  - DoreenMichele 9y ago
    The vast majority of homeless do not want to be homeless. If we provide enough affordable housing -- at market conditions, with no more forms and the like than other rentals -- you will be left with a much smaller number of quirky hobo-by-choice types. Shrinking the problem is very worthwhile.
    - TheCoreh 9y ago
      Don't rentals require a credit score, a stable source of income, and usually a guarantor?
      - DoreenMichele 9y ago
        Yes. But I am trying to make the distinction that most poverty relief programs are much more invasive and bureaucratic than most market based solutions. I am thinking of low cost rentals where they require you to live there and won't rent it to well off people looking for a weekend getaway that is cheaper than a motel. But other than that, I don't want a lot of extra requirements tacked on.
imgabe 9y ago
Well if that's not some kind of social commentary, I don't know what is.
sitkack 9y ago
I have a modest proposal.
kurthr 9y ago
What's not really mentioned here is that these sorts of encampments are usually build along CA freeways because those are policed only by the state (Caltrans / CHiPs) rather than the locality (city/county). Even when there is an obvious hazard (garbage buildup and drift into the road, visible fires burning, throwing objects at cars, walking/crossing the highway or on/off ramp) nothing is done. Typically, it takes a call to your CA state senator to get any action (caltrans doesn't respond to messages within a month).
- tiredwired 9y ago
  Yes, there is one between my complex and a highway in San Jose. There was a big fire there last week. No news coverage. We were lucky it did not burn our homes down. These people have been offered help in the past and refuse it. The area gets cleared out and they return. They harass women in the neighborhood and steal everything they can get their hands on. They have to go.
  - zxcmx 9y ago
    Go where, though?
    - tiredwired 9y ago
      The arsonists and thieves can go to jail. The rest can take advantage of the existing programs and stop refusing help.
sunstone 9y ago
Can you say, "False economy?". See, I knew you could.
pizza 9y ago
Heard of the quote "You don't hate Mondays - you hate capitalism" ? I doubt the urge to scapegoat the homeless will become a widespread one, but I'm sure that some (ie land grabbing developers..) need to hear this: "you don't hate the homeless - you hate how they serve as a reminder that you can always face ruin. The more you make, the harder it gets to empathize with a guy with a sign, or even to look him in the eye for more than a glance...
- crankylinuxuser 9y ago
  I hate the fact that we have involuntary homeless. We have more than enough in this country to fix that. It's a choice of the voting public and the politicians that scorn and hatred and blame is pushed on them.
pizza 9y ago
When I first got to Baltimore there were a lot of studies on cities, and I became very involved in the problem of housing -- housing finance, housing collapse in the inner city, housing conditions in general. I was fascinated to do a series of reports for the city, and also for other agencies, about how to approach the whole question of urban regeneration, which is very much on the agenda there. It was extraordinary to me that some of the ideas I got for that came out of reading Engels's famous saying on the condition of the working class in England in 1844; and also the housing question where he says the bourgeoisie had only one way to solve its housing problem: it moved it around. When I started to look at what some of the proposals were, they were about gentrification, which, in effect, would displace people and just simply move the problem around. So I made a big pitch in these reports, saying, "If you're going to address this question, you can't address it in a way that simply moves it around. In order not to move it around, we have to deal with basic questions about income distribution, wealth and the like, and, also, of course, racism, and housing markets and so on." This was a very important principle that came out of reading Engels, and then importing it. I put it into these reports; I didn't cite Engels. I didn't cite Engels, and everybody thought this was a fantastic insight, and somebody said to me, "Where did you get that from?" I said, "From Engels," and they said, "Who is he?" "Tom Engels, the local congressman"! "Does he work for the Brookings Institution?" or something like that. It was funny. But this was how I would sometimes find myself using this stuff in factual ways, and it resonated with people. I got a lot of encouragement to stay with this framework, that when you actually laid it out, used it in this way, using these kinds of concepts, people understood what you meant. The only time they turn around and walk the other way is when you tell them where it came from. http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people4/Harvey/harvey-con2.html http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people4/Harvey/harvey-con2....
vorotato 9y ago
People are either a liability or an asset, and how California responds to their housing crisis will ultimately play out in the consequences.

47 points by kyleblarson 9y ago

Mayor Garcetti has been very soft on the homeless and refused to enforce laws targeted at these encampments: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-garcetti-homeless-20150630-story.html http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-garcetti-homeles...

llukas 9y ago
Doesn't it look like homeless get punished for being poor? Do they got anywhere else to go?
zouhair 9y ago
Yeah, right. They already live in camps, so why not just add walls around it, and maybe build some big ovens (so they can bake bread) and buy some gas too. That would be a fine solution.
- crankylinuxuser 9y ago
  I hope to god you're not making some sort of nazi death camp "joke"...
pizza 9y ago
Look...maybe you have a low opinion of him.. maybe you see him as slacking off from his Mayorly duties or decrees or whatever he should, in your eyes, be doing, fine... and I'm sorry for this wall of text but I just cannot allow a comment like that to not bear my scrutiny. But just the !!insane!! rate of growth of the homeless in the last two years alone completely changes the game. It appears that, no matter where you look, all throughout the city of Angels is that housing is fucked expensive and in fucked supply. > The startling jump in homelessness affected every significant demographic group, including youth, families, veterans and the chronically homeless, according to the report. Homeless officials and political leaders pointed to steadily rising housing costs and stagnant incomes as the underlying cause. [0] I beseech you to be receptive to the idea that the problem goes far far far beyond simply flipping an "enforce preexisting laws" switch, or hiring more blue-suited hardasses that'll shine flashlights into the eyes of the homeless as they weather every night's accompanying total lack of guaranteed security... Your 2015 article is by Gale Holland -- now compare the urgency of her writing, from earlier in 2017. The title alone is enough to alarm the shit out of you... Headline: L.A. County homelessness jumps a 'staggering' 23% as need far outpaces housing, new count shows [0] > Even the homeless veteran population jumped in 2017, marking a backsliding of the gains made last year by city, state and federal programs that slashed the number of homeless veterans by a third. With the number of veterans placed into housing slightly down, the count of 4,828 homeless veterans was up ___ 57%. __ (emphasis mine, but holy shit!) > “There's no sugarcoating the bad news,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said at a news conference Wednesday where the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority released its report. “We can’t let rents double every year. I was particularly disappointed to see veteran numbers go up.” > Garcetti called homelessness a problem that has persisted “through administrations, through recessions,” adding, “Our city is in the midst of an extraordinary homelessness crisis that needs an extraordinary response. These men, these women, these children are our neighbors.” > The Homeless Services Authority linked the worsening problem to the economic stress on renters in the Los Angeles area. More than 2 million households in L.A. and Orange counties have housing costs that exceed 30% of income, according to data from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies included in the report. > According to the nonprofit California Housing Partnership Corp., median rent, adjusted for inflation, increased more than 30% from 2000 to 2015, while the median income was flat. -- Assume a plain-Jane compound interest growth formula (it's just a sketch, right?), use the rule of 72 with that 23% figure, and bam -- if that's how the process plays out, 3 years will be all it takes to double the number of people out on the street. That can't just be a linear issue of the number in bad situations either - it seems like super-linear complexity headache, with respect to the n = the growing number of disenfranchised people.. - How will you pay for the massive influx of cops necessary to address the doubled homeless population? - What about the impact on the small businesses or cafes or corner markets and shit that will have a slowly-but-surely drying up of customers? - Add to that, the ensuing evaporation of taxes funding the city.. - How much you wanna bet we won't have saved up enough to not hurt ourselves in the process of splurging on the whole 2028 Olympics extrava-freakin-ganza. Surely it'll be one of those hyper-spectacular moments in this boring dystopia of ours :) -- And, once again, because it damn well bears worth repeating -- LA's homeless population jumped by 23%... IN THE LAST YEAR ALONE. AND The year prior had a 20% growth rate!!!!! And when they go homeless, it's more often the case of a gradual, year-long descent because of inability to pay, rather than a pinpoint-able, spontaneous event that made your home suddenly unlivable or irretrievable. Look up the ancient Latin concept of the exiled man, homo saracer - a man whose life is worth so little that he may be murdered, freely and without any and all repercussion. Someone who is totally bereft of even being empathized with... How can it be that the society can discard people to such tsunamic extent that we barely bat an eye at the fact that these slums share zip codes with the ultra rich and yet live worlds apart. Right at this very moment you are reading this sentence, dozens of wanderers - blacks, whites, latinos, disabled, boys, girls - extremely cautiously stepping along the highway. Petrified by how instantly their bones could be crushed into dust when you share a lane with any of the hundred thousand or so totally fucking insane drivers that live around here. To live like a dog, to be defenselessly curled up to rest their weary souls. To have nowhere to go except for the side of the road where tipsy assholes toss their empty sodas out their passenger side windows... [0] http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-homeless-count-20170530-story.html http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-homeless-count-2...
- mofino 9y ago
  Why can't they move to areas that they can afford? Why must people live in SF, LA, etc? I understand they may feel it's there home, but it's no longer fitting for them. If I break up a spider web in my basement, the spider moves because he has to survive. Living in extreme poverty isn't making a reasonable attempt at survival.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

juicyfroot 9y ago

That's hilarious. Lame SJWs

s0rce 9y ago

Seems like we are going to be seeing more of this with drier conditions and ever growing homeless camps across California. There are numerous fire code violations at these camps and these were devised for a reason. Not sure what the best course of action is but clearly something needs to happen.

ajross 9y ago
Devil's advocacy: must "something happen?". The point to allowing semi-permanent homeless camps is that people were being forced into hiding, sleeping in ditches and eating garbage. That's a serious social ill (no, I don't have numbers, but would be interested if someone does), and one that was trivially solved by allowing them to pitch tents and cook food. It's still not a great existence, but it's a whole lot better and it's something that lots of people will legitimately choose. And if the cost of that is some non-zero number of burned homes? Dunno, but my gut says that's a worthwhile trade. Not that I'd argue with running power to those camps and paying for some hot plates either, of course.
- s0rce 9y ago
  I agree that a tent does seem to be a step up from a ditch but I'm not sure you can say the issue was trivially solved. At least in the bay area many of the camps are in parks. This seems like a very controversial opinion but I really enjoy walking around parks and this really isn't possible with bustling, trash filled homeless encampments occupying the neighborhood parks. I don't have a solutions but I don't think tent camps are the way to go either.
dilap 9y ago
Giving them houses might help.
- Clubber 9y ago
  So, give them yours. Maybe rent a room for free or something.

jlgaddis 9y ago

That seems a bit ironic.

DoreenMichele 9y ago

Maybe we could do something crazy, like bring back SROs, instead of de facto as a society acting like we think it is better for people to sleep in a tent than have "sub standard" housing. Because tolerating rampant homelessness while turning our noses up at modest rentals basically amounts to the nation saying that is exactly what it thinks. Miner said she was skeptical of the proposed campaign to educate homeless people about fire risks. Yeah. A homeless person making a cooking fire is probably hungry and probably has no other viable option. Trying to "educate" the homeless about fire risks sounds like "Honey, we don't care if you starve. Just make sure you don't burn down any mansions. Kaythxbai."

GarrisonPrime 9y ago
I don't disagree, but I will point out that many homeless people want to be homeless, if being housed means submitting to questions and forms. Autonomy is a powerfully strong motivator.
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  The vast majority of homeless do not want to be homeless. If we provide enough affordable housing -- at market conditions, with no more forms and the like than other rentals -- you will be left with a much smaller number of quirky hobo-by-choice types. Shrinking the problem is very worthwhile.
  - TheCoreh 9y ago
    Don't rentals require a credit score, a stable source of income, and usually a guarantor?
    - DoreenMichele 9y ago
      Yes. But I am trying to make the distinction that most poverty relief programs are much more invasive and bureaucratic than most market based solutions. I am thinking of low cost rentals where they require you to live there and won't rent it to well off people looking for a weekend getaway that is cheaper than a motel. But other than that, I don't want a lot of extra requirements tacked on.

imgabe 9y ago

Well if that's not some kind of social commentary, I don't know what is.

sitkack 9y ago

I have a modest proposal.

kurthr 9y ago

What's not really mentioned here is that these sorts of encampments are usually build along CA freeways because those are policed only by the state (Caltrans / CHiPs) rather than the locality (city/county). Even when there is an obvious hazard (garbage buildup and drift into the road, visible fires burning, throwing objects at cars, walking/crossing the highway or on/off ramp) nothing is done. Typically, it takes a call to your CA state senator to get any action (caltrans doesn't respond to messages within a month).

tiredwired 9y ago
Yes, there is one between my complex and a highway in San Jose. There was a big fire there last week. No news coverage. We were lucky it did not burn our homes down. These people have been offered help in the past and refuse it. The area gets cleared out and they return. They harass women in the neighborhood and steal everything they can get their hands on. They have to go.
- zxcmx 9y ago
  Go where, though?
  - tiredwired 9y ago
    The arsonists and thieves can go to jail. The rest can take advantage of the existing programs and stop refusing help.

sunstone 9y ago

Can you say, "False economy?". See, I knew you could.

pizza 9y ago

Heard of the quote "You don't hate Mondays - you hate capitalism" ? I doubt the urge to scapegoat the homeless will become a widespread one, but I'm sure that some (ie land grabbing developers..) need to hear this: "you don't hate the homeless - you hate how they serve as a reminder that you can always face ruin. The more you make, the harder it gets to empathize with a guy with a sign, or even to look him in the eye for more than a glance...

crankylinuxuser 9y ago
I hate the fact that we have involuntary homeless. We have more than enough in this country to fix that. It's a choice of the voting public and the politicians that scorn and hatred and blame is pushed on them.

pizza 9y ago

When I first got to Baltimore there were a lot of studies on cities, and I became very involved in the problem of housing -- housing finance, housing collapse in the inner city, housing conditions in general. I was fascinated to do a series of reports for the city, and also for other agencies, about how to approach the whole question of urban regeneration, which is very much on the agenda there. It was extraordinary to me that some of the ideas I got for that came out of reading Engels's famous saying on the condition of the working class in England in 1844; and also the housing question where he says the bourgeoisie had only one way to solve its housing problem: it moved it around. When I started to look at what some of the proposals were, they were about gentrification, which, in effect, would displace people and just simply move the problem around. So I made a big pitch in these reports, saying, "If you're going to address this question, you can't address it in a way that simply moves it around. In order not to move it around, we have to deal with basic questions about income distribution, wealth and the like, and, also, of course, racism, and housing markets and so on." This was a very important principle that came out of reading Engels, and then importing it. I put it into these reports; I didn't cite Engels. I didn't cite Engels, and everybody thought this was a fantastic insight, and somebody said to me, "Where did you get that from?" I said, "From Engels," and they said, "Who is he?" "Tom Engels, the local congressman"! "Does he work for the Brookings Institution?" or something like that. It was funny. But this was how I would sometimes find myself using this stuff in factual ways, and it resonated with people. I got a lot of encouragement to stay with this framework, that when you actually laid it out, used it in this way, using these kinds of concepts, people understood what you meant. The only time they turn around and walk the other way is when you tell them where it came from. http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people4/Harvey/harvey-con2.html http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people4/Harvey/harvey-con2....

vorotato 9y ago

People are either a liability or an asset, and how California responds to their housing crisis will ultimately play out in the consequences.