8 ms·

A link in the OPs article that supposedly supports the conclusions derived from the data says: ...from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. Homeless po

A link in the OPs article that supposedly supports the conclusions derived from the data says: ...from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. Homeless population in the city of LA is up 48% just since 2013. The reporters data shows a 31% increase in the amount of arrests of homeless people. So, per-capita arrests have gone down. That's basic statistics. That would indicate that the headline of the article supported by the data... Huge increase in arrests of homeless in L.A. — but mostly for minor offenses ..is misleading. I lived in Santa Monica during the same time period. The homeless population has skyrocketed along with homeless crime. We moved further south because of the problem. The LA Times is a joke. The LAPD are not the best police department in the country, but I do believe they're doing their best with a complex problem the rest of our society has chosen to ignore since the 1980s. The homeless problem is not due to the police, but they are the ones we unfairly expect to deal with it.

pokstad 8y ago
Reminds me of the strong opposition in Irvine against emergency homeless shelters: https://www.ocregister.com/2018/03/27/o-c-supervisors-rescind-vote-to-place-homeless-shelters-in-irvine-huntington-beach-and-laguna-niguel/ https://www.ocregister.com/2018/03/27/o-c-supervisors-rescin...
wjossey 8y ago
I was having dinner with a buddy last week, and we were discussing the issue, as he lives in Mar Vista and I live in Beverly Grove (just recently having moved from Santa Monica). It's become a remarkable problem for the city, and it's hard to convey the impact if you don't live here. One thing I wondered was how we properly incentivize the city to take steps to manage the situation. Right now, the city brings in $6B in annual revenue (almost 25% of its budget) in property taxes. Despite the remarkable climb in homelessness, property tax revenue continues to climb, because property values are seemingly skyrocketing despite the issue. As an example, I live on a street where one half of a 100 year old duplex would run > $1M, with dozens of homeless people living within a hundred yards of my house. It's not uncommon for one to walk up and down the street, ringing doorbells asking for assistance, or harassing you as you walk down the street. Never mind the piles of trash & excrement left on the street. I've learned not to drive down the alleyway that runs perpendicular to my street, as it's not uncommon to have people sleep in the middle of the road. If property values were sinking because of the issue (which in a normal housing market would happen because of safety concerns), the city would be more well incentivized to come up with solutions. But, outside of just citizen complaints, city hall doesn't really have any skin in the game. Now, you could say, "You're part of the problem. If people like you are willing to move there, you cause the property values to rise." Well, yep, you're right. However, I WANT the city to solve this problem responsibly, and moving away doesn't help me be a part of this solution. I'm hopeful that the sales tax we self-imposed to raise funds to address the issue begin to help, but I'm mostly unimpressed with the changes thus far.
- dbasedweeb 8y ago
  The problem is that a city lacks the resources to manage a country-wide problem. A lack of social support, especially mental healthcare means that you have more than half a million schizophrenics aloe on the streets. The war on drugs creates yet another class of “untouchables” and the crossover between drug use and mental illness muddies the issue. This is something the federal government and states need to consider from the ground up, but instead they just shunt money to private sector cronies, prisons, and cops.
  - wjossey 8y ago
    I think that's fair, but there's a minimum they could be doing locally that they're not. If we can't fundamentally solve the problem, we can find some better ways to manage it locally. There's a bridge on RT 2 near the Glendale / Silver Lake area that can't be described as anything other than a public health hazard due to the amount of people, junk, and debris that line the sidewalks. The city chooses not to address it (for, what I optimistically hope are legitimate reasons), but it's been that way for going on 2 years now, so I begin to wonder. I appreciate the complexity of the drug & mental health issues (have an aunt who has been homeless much of her life b/c of mental health issues), and I also understand how as a society we decided to allow those with mental health issues to have the right to not enter treatment. It's a massively complicated situation (hence me not really stating true solutions, other than finding ways to incentivize better collective action).
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  One of the problems is people get interested in "helping the homeless" which often goes bad places, instead of reducing incidence of homelessness. One of the things we need to solve the latter issue is more housing being built, especially entry level housing. Some stats: https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/05/california-statistics-on-homelessness.html https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/05/california-... https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/05/seattle-statistics-on-homelessness-and.html https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/05/seattle-sta...
  - 8y ago
vondur 8y ago
I remember reading something a while back on how a large portion of the homeless in LA were being bussed here from other cities and states. Las Vegas has been doing it for a while. Other nearby cities used to send their homeless to Santa Monica as they let them camp out in the city parks. It'd be interesting to see how many of the homeless are natives or not.
- felipemnoa 8y ago
  Are you sure you are not just remembering this South Park Episode? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Living_Homeless https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Living_Homeless
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    It may sound like a comedy plot, but it's not. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/20/bussed-out-america-moves-homeless-people-country-study https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/... http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-homeless-bus-20180312-story.html http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-homeless-bus-201803... http://www.sfexaminer.com/sf-expanding-program-bused-10k-homeless-residents-town-past-decade/ http://www.sfexaminer.com/sf-expanding-program-bused-10k-hom...
    - cheriot 8y ago
      Every city does it so until someone comes up with relevant numbers I have to assume it's a wash. The only time it comes up is when people want to justify treating people inhumanely because "they're not from here".
      - telchar 8y ago
        Do you have some evidence that every city does it? That sounds like an unreasonable assumption to me. If it's the case I would think there would be quite a bit of evidence of various cities doing it, given how many there are.
swrobel 8y ago
Why exactly did you move? I live in Venice and while I won't dispute that homelessness is our #1 problem, I'd say it comes with the territory and it certainly isn't enough to make me consider leaving this amazing place.
- robotkdick 8y ago
  I worked in entertainment, so I had much incentive to stay. The main factor was stress, which was causing me health issues. I transitioned to tech, and now my wife and I both work remotely, so we searched a bunch of cities with airports nearby on the West Coast, and chose an arean north of San Diego. Our blood tests both show a marked improvement in health, and my issues (gout mainly) have gone away completely.
  - imnotadoctor999 8y ago
    +1 for the area north of SD improving health!
  - swrobel 8y ago
    Good for you, but I'm not sure what this has to do with the homeless issue. Your comment seemed to insinuate that you left because of it.
mirimir 8y ago
The police aren't the problem. They're just the enforcers. The problem is that nobody wants to deal with homelessness. They just want the homeless to go somewhere else. And one mechanism is harassment by the courts.
- wjossey 8y ago
  I'm not sure that's fair on the voters of LA. We passed a $1.2B sales tax to specifically try to go after the problem here (and not just push them somewhere else). As for the police, I honestly don't think I've ever seen one police officer harass a homeless person (or anyone really harass them, for that matter). Santa Monica police were always remarkably respectful when dealing with the homeless population there, and I don't believe I've ever witnessed an interaction between LAPD and any of the homeless near my current home.
  - mirimir 8y ago
    OK, perhaps LA is doing something about it. But LA courts were harassing homeless with ridiculous fines. I suspect that $35 would be a major budget item for a homeless person. Let alone additional tickets for failure to appear and pay. The article notes that arrests of homeless accounted for over 10% of total arrests in 2011, and almost 17% in 2016. Officers can be respectful while ticketing and arresting the homeless. And perhaps Santa Monica isn't targeting homeless as much as LA generally.
    - wjossey 8y ago
      As I’ve mentioned in other posts above, part of my experience is that the homeless are frequently harassing people and businesses on a daily basis to the level that I can believe the arrest rate should / could be higher. Whether it’s the woman who walked up to me, spit in my face, and then started screaming at me, or the countless guys who have followed my wife aggressively while walking home, it’s a major safety issue. I can imagine that in many situations, the police make whatever arrest they can in the moment, but lack the supporting evidence for more major charges, leading to situations where the “fines” look like the “cause” for arrest, but it’s not really. I say all this, but again reiterate that I hurt every day I have to walk four blocks to get groceries, and pass a dozen people in a remarkable state of sadness and disrepair. I want each and every one of them to get the help they deserve as human beings (regardless of why they got there, what their race or country of origin, just don’t care... they are human beings who deserve our support). But, i know it’s a collective action issue, and potentially a national issue, and so we have to find a way to make elect officials at a local and national level who are capable of addressing this challenge.
meuk 8y ago
I would interpret the headline as indicating a huge increase in absolute numbers, and I don't find it misleading. I've seen much more misleading interpretations and explanations of statistics (not necessarily intentional).
- robotkdick 8y ago
  Relative to the rise in the homeless population, there is no increase in arrests of homeless people. There's a decrease.
Shivetya 8y ago
Fortunately it is easy to see where LA collects its funds and how it spends them at http://cao.lacity.org/budget/ http://cao.lacity.org/budget/ Nine billion dollars per year with about 133m for homelessness? Though I was surprised at the nearly 2.5 billion for pensions and retirement programs. Depending on where you are in the document 42 cents of each dollar is accounted for in Police and Fire. You could presumably associate money with Home/Community environment services as part of the homelessness issue as it does do the cleanup

pokstad 8y ago

Reminds me of the strong opposition in Irvine against emergency homeless shelters: https://www.ocregister.com/2018/03/27/o-c-supervisors-rescind-vote-to-place-homeless-shelters-in-irvine-huntington-beach-and-laguna-niguel/ https://www.ocregister.com/2018/03/27/o-c-supervisors-rescin...

wjossey 8y ago

I was having dinner with a buddy last week, and we were discussing the issue, as he lives in Mar Vista and I live in Beverly Grove (just recently having moved from Santa Monica). It's become a remarkable problem for the city, and it's hard to convey the impact if you don't live here. One thing I wondered was how we properly incentivize the city to take steps to manage the situation. Right now, the city brings in $6B in annual revenue (almost 25% of its budget) in property taxes. Despite the remarkable climb in homelessness, property tax revenue continues to climb, because property values are seemingly skyrocketing despite the issue. As an example, I live on a street where one half of a 100 year old duplex would run > $1M, with dozens of homeless people living within a hundred yards of my house. It's not uncommon for one to walk up and down the street, ringing doorbells asking for assistance, or harassing you as you walk down the street. Never mind the piles of trash & excrement left on the street. I've learned not to drive down the alleyway that runs perpendicular to my street, as it's not uncommon to have people sleep in the middle of the road. If property values were sinking because of the issue (which in a normal housing market would happen because of safety concerns), the city would be more well incentivized to come up with solutions. But, outside of just citizen complaints, city hall doesn't really have any skin in the game. Now, you could say, "You're part of the problem. If people like you are willing to move there, you cause the property values to rise." Well, yep, you're right. However, I WANT the city to solve this problem responsibly, and moving away doesn't help me be a part of this solution. I'm hopeful that the sales tax we self-imposed to raise funds to address the issue begin to help, but I'm mostly unimpressed with the changes thus far.

dbasedweeb 8y ago
The problem is that a city lacks the resources to manage a country-wide problem. A lack of social support, especially mental healthcare means that you have more than half a million schizophrenics aloe on the streets. The war on drugs creates yet another class of “untouchables” and the crossover between drug use and mental illness muddies the issue. This is something the federal government and states need to consider from the ground up, but instead they just shunt money to private sector cronies, prisons, and cops.
- wjossey 8y ago
  I think that's fair, but there's a minimum they could be doing locally that they're not. If we can't fundamentally solve the problem, we can find some better ways to manage it locally. There's a bridge on RT 2 near the Glendale / Silver Lake area that can't be described as anything other than a public health hazard due to the amount of people, junk, and debris that line the sidewalks. The city chooses not to address it (for, what I optimistically hope are legitimate reasons), but it's been that way for going on 2 years now, so I begin to wonder. I appreciate the complexity of the drug & mental health issues (have an aunt who has been homeless much of her life b/c of mental health issues), and I also understand how as a society we decided to allow those with mental health issues to have the right to not enter treatment. It's a massively complicated situation (hence me not really stating true solutions, other than finding ways to incentivize better collective action).
DoreenMichele 8y ago
One of the problems is people get interested in "helping the homeless" which often goes bad places, instead of reducing incidence of homelessness. One of the things we need to solve the latter issue is more housing being built, especially entry level housing. Some stats: https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/05/california-statistics-on-homelessness.html https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/05/california-... https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/05/seattle-statistics-on-homelessness-and.html https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/05/seattle-sta...
- 8y ago

vondur 8y ago

I remember reading something a while back on how a large portion of the homeless in LA were being bussed here from other cities and states. Las Vegas has been doing it for a while. Other nearby cities used to send their homeless to Santa Monica as they let them camp out in the city parks. It'd be interesting to see how many of the homeless are natives or not.

felipemnoa 8y ago
Are you sure you are not just remembering this South Park Episode? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Living_Homeless https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Living_Homeless
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  It may sound like a comedy plot, but it's not. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/20/bussed-out-america-moves-homeless-people-country-study https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/... http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-homeless-bus-20180312-story.html http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-homeless-bus-201803... http://www.sfexaminer.com/sf-expanding-program-bused-10k-homeless-residents-town-past-decade/ http://www.sfexaminer.com/sf-expanding-program-bused-10k-hom...
  - cheriot 8y ago
    Every city does it so until someone comes up with relevant numbers I have to assume it's a wash. The only time it comes up is when people want to justify treating people inhumanely because "they're not from here".
    - telchar 8y ago
      Do you have some evidence that every city does it? That sounds like an unreasonable assumption to me. If it's the case I would think there would be quite a bit of evidence of various cities doing it, given how many there are.

swrobel 8y ago

Why exactly did you move? I live in Venice and while I won't dispute that homelessness is our #1 problem, I'd say it comes with the territory and it certainly isn't enough to make me consider leaving this amazing place.

robotkdick 8y ago
I worked in entertainment, so I had much incentive to stay. The main factor was stress, which was causing me health issues. I transitioned to tech, and now my wife and I both work remotely, so we searched a bunch of cities with airports nearby on the West Coast, and chose an arean north of San Diego. Our blood tests both show a marked improvement in health, and my issues (gout mainly) have gone away completely.
- imnotadoctor999 8y ago
  +1 for the area north of SD improving health!
- swrobel 8y ago
  Good for you, but I'm not sure what this has to do with the homeless issue. Your comment seemed to insinuate that you left because of it.

mirimir 8y ago

The police aren't the problem. They're just the enforcers. The problem is that nobody wants to deal with homelessness. They just want the homeless to go somewhere else. And one mechanism is harassment by the courts.

wjossey 8y ago
I'm not sure that's fair on the voters of LA. We passed a $1.2B sales tax to specifically try to go after the problem here (and not just push them somewhere else). As for the police, I honestly don't think I've ever seen one police officer harass a homeless person (or anyone really harass them, for that matter). Santa Monica police were always remarkably respectful when dealing with the homeless population there, and I don't believe I've ever witnessed an interaction between LAPD and any of the homeless near my current home.
- mirimir 8y ago
  OK, perhaps LA is doing something about it. But LA courts were harassing homeless with ridiculous fines. I suspect that $35 would be a major budget item for a homeless person. Let alone additional tickets for failure to appear and pay. The article notes that arrests of homeless accounted for over 10% of total arrests in 2011, and almost 17% in 2016. Officers can be respectful while ticketing and arresting the homeless. And perhaps Santa Monica isn't targeting homeless as much as LA generally.
  - wjossey 8y ago
    As I’ve mentioned in other posts above, part of my experience is that the homeless are frequently harassing people and businesses on a daily basis to the level that I can believe the arrest rate should / could be higher. Whether it’s the woman who walked up to me, spit in my face, and then started screaming at me, or the countless guys who have followed my wife aggressively while walking home, it’s a major safety issue. I can imagine that in many situations, the police make whatever arrest they can in the moment, but lack the supporting evidence for more major charges, leading to situations where the “fines” look like the “cause” for arrest, but it’s not really. I say all this, but again reiterate that I hurt every day I have to walk four blocks to get groceries, and pass a dozen people in a remarkable state of sadness and disrepair. I want each and every one of them to get the help they deserve as human beings (regardless of why they got there, what their race or country of origin, just don’t care... they are human beings who deserve our support). But, i know it’s a collective action issue, and potentially a national issue, and so we have to find a way to make elect officials at a local and national level who are capable of addressing this challenge.

meuk 8y ago

I would interpret the headline as indicating a huge increase in absolute numbers, and I don't find it misleading. I've seen much more misleading interpretations and explanations of statistics (not necessarily intentional).

robotkdick 8y ago
Relative to the rise in the homeless population, there is no increase in arrests of homeless people. There's a decrease.

Shivetya 8y ago

Fortunately it is easy to see where LA collects its funds and how it spends them at http://cao.lacity.org/budget/ http://cao.lacity.org/budget/ Nine billion dollars per year with about 133m for homelessness? Though I was surprised at the nearly 2.5 billion for pensions and retirement programs. Depending on where you are in the document 42 cents of each dollar is accounted for in Police and Fire. You could presumably associate money with Home/Community environment services as part of the homelessness issue as it does do the cleanup