As Homelessness surges in California, So does a Backlash

[D4thincarnation]

WE ARE DOING JUST FINE IN CA. And it looks like our Immigrants are better than yours too! 😂

New economic data puts the California economy at $2.747 trillion ?bigger than most nations. The ranking puts in fifth in the world, just ahead of the United Kingdom, which is on $2.625 trillion. The difference is striking given California's population of 40 million to the UK's 66 million.

Besides this was a story about homelessness and u brought up immigration. At least give stats showing how many homeless Immigrants are in Ca. Again, I live in a City that shares a name with a Mexican beer. Besides the occasional drunk paisa outside a liquor store, the homeless in Ca are either white tweakers or black crackheads.

California has more immigrants than any other state. California is home to almost 11 million immigrants�about a quarter of the foreign-born population nationwide. In 2017, the most current year of data, 27% of California's population was foreign born, more than double the percentage in the rest of the country.


Yeah, you just got a homeless problem, a crime problem a drug problem.

Population below poverty line: 13.3% (absolute) 19.0% (relative)

19% live in poverty. Sure sounds like you are doing great

[Boxfan83]

Make a fkin concentration camp out there in death valley and put them in those.

Ive always thought just give them a sh.t ton of heroin and meth and drop them in Death Valley lol

[D4thincarnation]

And Ca has opened more jobs than any other state in the Nation for months now...

4.1% unemployment, 3.8% in the UK.

[Boxfan83]

California has more immigrants than any other state. California is home to almost 11 million immigrants�about a quarter of the foreign-born population nationwide. In 2h 017, the most current year of data, 27% of California's population was foreign born, more than double the percentage in the rest of the country.


Yeah, you just got a homeless problem, a crime problem a drug problem.

Population below poverty line: 13.3% (absolute) 19.0% (relative)

19% live in poverty. Sure sounds like you are doing great

Just stop bro. We have google in Ca too! Its probably faster too! I heard it takes like 16secs for a webpage to load there 😂

As of 2017, 20% of UK people live in poverty including 8 million working-age adults, 4 million children and 1.9 million pensioners. Research by the JRF found nearly 400,000 more UK children and 300,000 more UK pensioners were in poverty in 2016-17 compared with 2012-13.

[1bad65]

Gov Abbott has given the city of Austin until Nov 1 to clean up its' homeless situation. Basically they have given the homeless the right to squat on any public lands. Without water, or sanitation services.

Not quite, though close.

They can't squat on any public lands, as City Hall was exempted. Those Austin ******* politicians are big time NIMBYs, ya know.

Now Austin has cleaned out at least one city park downtown within the last couple of weeks. I don't know why/how, but it went from being home to a good two dozen or so to totally clean and is staying clean.

I have seen some tent Hoovervilles up in North Austin, and they say South Austin is getting really bad.

The plan now seems to be to try and push them out of downtown and mostly into South Austin. The city recently approved a new shelter, and it's South as opposed to the rest which are downtown.

That's creating some clashes, as the South Austin people don't want their neighborhoods overran with homeless people that the downtown crowd (who runs the city) are welcoming and coddling.

[D4thincarnation]

Just stop bro. We have google in Ca too! Its probably faster too! I heard it takes like 16secs for a webpage to load there 😂

As of 2017, 20% of UK people live in poverty including 8 million working-age adults, 4 million children and 1.9 million pensioners. Research by the JRF found nearly 400,000 more UK children and 300,000 more UK pensioners were in poverty in 2016-17 compared with 2012-13.

In 2014, 6.5% of the United Kingdom's population was classified as being in persistent poverty; that equates to approximately 3.9 million people. The UK's poverty rate overall in 2014 was the 12th highest amongst all European nations at 16.8%, however; it has the third-lowest persistent poverty rate.


And btw

Average UK broadband speeds soaring, but rural areas left behind. The average speed of UK broadband connections has jumped by more than 25% in the last year, Ofcom has revealed. As of May 2018, the average download speed is 46.2Mbps is 10Mbps on the 36.2Mbps average reported in April 2017. That's a 27.62% increas


California Internet Connections and Coverage. When it comes to speed California is on par with the country's average, with an average speed of 12.22 (country 12.32). California placed 28th overall in the country.

UK internet speed is on average nearly 4 times as fast as California.

[1bad65]

homeless shelters should never be put in heavy traffic areas I believe they should be place somewhere out of sight and somewhere where the homeless foot traffic will have the less likelyhood of crossing path with regular civilians.

In Austin, the main/biggest shelter is smack in the middle of the downtown entertainment district.

Needless to say, the homeless people constantly cross paths with the club goers, who of course have money on them.

The City Council can't quite figure out why they have so many robberies and muggings downtown, however.

[Boxfan83]

In 2014, 6.5% of the United Kingdom's population was classified as being in persistent poverty; that equates to approximately 3.9 million people. The UK's poverty rate overall in 2014 was the 12th highest amongst all European nations at 16.8%, however; it has the third-lowest persistent poverty rate.


And btw

Average UK broadband speeds soaring, but rural areas left behind. The average speed of UK broadband connections has jumped by more than 25% in the last year, Ofcom has revealed. As of May 2018, the average download speed is 46.2Mbps is 10Mbps on the 36.2Mbps average reported in April 2017. That's a 27.62% increas


California Internet Connections and Coverage. When it comes to speed California is on par with the country's average, with an average speed of 12.22 (country 12.32). California placed 28th overall in the country.

UK internet speed is on average nearly 4 times as fast as California.

U guys only have faster internet bcuz of free band width. You all are so poor you likely dont have any devices to connect 😂 if the UK were a US state itd be the 2nd poorest...

[Rhonda Drowsy]

As Homelessness Surges in California, So Does a Backlash
Tent encampments across California are testing residents?tolerance and compassion as street conditions deteriorate.




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 ******* 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.?br />
(What questions do you have about inequality in California? Ask them here, and a reporter may look into them.)

For many, that breaking point was the worsening squalor in the streets of cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco, where open-air drug dealing is rampant in some spots and where human feces and scattered needles and syringes have been found lying about. Those scenes have also proved a potent symbol for **********s like President Trump to showcase what they call the failures of ******* urban enclaves.

Homelessness has been an intractable problem in the largest California cities for decades, but it has surged in some areas in recent years. San Jose, the nation�s 10th-largest city, counted 6,200 homeless people this year, a 42 percent increase since the last count two years ago. In Oakland, the figure climbed 47 percent. And it rose 17 percent in San Francisco, and 12 percent in Los Angeles, where the county counted so many homeless people ?59,000 ?that they could fill Dodger Stadium.



For the first time in 20 years of surveys, the issue was noted as a major concern for Californians, according to a poll released last month by the Public Policy Institute of California. The situation has grown so dire that some Los Angeles officials have recently called for the governor to declare a state of emergency to free up funding for addressing homelessness, similar to what has been done to address natural disasters.

The frustrations have manifested themselves in ways that Bill Bedrossian, the chief executive of Covenant House California, a nonprofit group that operates shelters and programs for homeless youth, said illustrate an �increase in the lack of empathy.?br />
�People don�t want homeless people near them,?Mr. Bedrossian said. He and other leaders of Covenant House met with strong opposition at a raucous City Council meeting in Berkeley last month when they presented plans to buy a center that would offer housing and counseling services for up to 30 young homeless people.

�It�s the worst it�s ever been, as far as the backlash,?he said.

Residents of a street in San Francisco recently installed boulders on the sidewalk to deter people from erecting tents and sleeping there. In Los Angeles, homeowners have installed prickly plants for the same purpose.

Near Southwestern Law School in the Koreatown neighborhood of Los Angeles, a grass strip between the sidewalk and curb is fenced off with green plastic to keep homeless people away. But around the corner is an encampment with a few dozen tents.

�I think they care more about animals than us,?said Lucrecia Macias, a nurse who lived in a house in Palmdale before cancer wiped her out financially and led her to the streets. �They�re making parks for dogs but they�re not building housing for us.?br />
Lynell Cain, who also lives in a tent at the encampment, said the community response had grown worse in recent months. �They�ll kick you out of stores,?he said. �They won�t even let you into laundromats to wash your clothes. The bus driver won�t pull over.?br />
Josh Rubenstein, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department, called homelessness �the crisis of our generation.?Despite high-profile violent attacks such as a beating death on Skid Row, an intentional fire at an encampment in Eagle Rock, and an arson attack on Skid Row in which a homeless musician died, Mr. Rubenstein said, the authorities had not seen an increase in violence toward the homeless attributed to the community backlash. (Some cases have involved violence among homeless people, and in others, such as the Eagle Rock case, the motive is unclear.)

Still, he acknowledged a growing frustration among residents. �There are strong, strong feelings on all sides of this issue,?he said.

Part of that exasperation, at least in Los Angeles, comes from two publicly approved actions in recent years ?a sales tax increase and a bond measure ?to spend billions of dollars on the problem of homelessness, which officials pledged would mitigate the issue. But thickets of regulations in California stand in the way of a quick housing fix.

�I think those of us in the service-provider community always knew we weren�t going to solve the problem,?said Mr. Maceri of the People Concern. �But I think the expectation was we were going to make a significant dent. So on the one hand, the message is we have all these resources to quote-unquote solve this problem. And what the general public sees is, it�s not getting solved, it�s not getting better, it�s getting worse.?br />
In San Francisco, residents have opposed plans by the city to build a homeless shelter in a wealthy waterfront district filled with newly built office buildings and condominiums.



�Putting mentally ill people and people with drug abuse problems in residential areas is careless,?said Paneez Kosarian, a technology company employee who joined neighbors in opposing the shelter, which a judge said could be built.

Last month, Ms. Kosarian made headlines when security camera footage showed her wrestling with a man outside the front door to her apartment building. Before he attacked her, the man warned her that the world had been taken over by robots. The episode prompted local news coverage of other attacks by people who appeared to be mentally ill.

DISTURBING VIDEO: Terrifying video shows a woman being violently attacked by an unknown man outside a luxury condominium complex in San Francisco

Watch the full video here:

— KRON4 News (@kron4news)

Ms. Kosarian and others cite city estimates that half of the homeless people in San Francisco have substance abuse issues, and say the crisis is being misdiagnosed as purely a lack of housing. Mayor London Breed announced this month that San Francisco would begin enforcing a state law that makes it easier to force mentally ill people off the streets.

�This is definitely a more complicated definition than just homelessness,?Ms. Kosarian said. �Even during the daytime, I fear walking alone.?br />
Few have been more outspoken about the homeless than Mr. Gorelik, the property developer. �Compassion is counterproductive,?he said, adding that services for the homeless only encourage homelessness to flourish. Charities in California provide food, clothing and tents to homeless people. California cities also provide many services. But shelter is more elusive in the state, where more than two-thirds of the homeless live outdoors, compared with 5 percent in New York.

Mr. Gorelik said he saw a connection between the 90 homeless encampments in Oakland and crime. His construction sites have been burglarized nine times, he said, and his car has been broken into twice.




Candice Elder, the founder and executive director of the East Oakland Collective, an organization that assists homeless people, described Mr. Gorelik�s views as very extreme, even as anti-homeless sentiments had become more widespread.

�When people think about the homeless crisis, sometimes humanity goes out the window,?she said. �People say, �I don�t like what�s going on. I don�t want them near our school, get rid of them.��

Ms. Elder said it was understandable that residents had concerns about cleanliness and safety around the homeless encampments. But she argued that people should not be forced to leave an encampment until they are provided with housing.

�When people complain,?she said, �they are not combining the complaint with a compassionate solution.?br />
Meanwhile, in Los Angeles�s San Fernando Valley, homeless people living in an encampment in Chatsworth have had rocks thrown at them from cars, have had insults yelled at them and have been pepper-sprayed, according to Paul Read, 43, who assists the homeless there.

And about two weeks ago, Mr. Read said, he confronted a man shooting pellets from a rifle into a cluster of tents. The man told him it was �target practice.?br />

Dana White is licking his chops. Future UFC champions.

[Rhonda Drowsy]

AOC & Eisenhower were right.
Tax the 10+ million at 70%