Growing Homelessness in Los Angeles

George Will recommends that the Democratic Party nominates Los Angeles Mayor, Eric Garcetti for president in 2020. After all, Garcetti has colorful socks, like Canadian Prime Minister Justin Bieber, and his father Gil Garcetti prosecuted O. J. Simpson. Remind me of how that one worked out?

Anyway, we are well within our constitutional rights to ask how Los Angeles is doing under Mayor Garcetti. We examined the homelessness problem in San Francisco in the prior post, so why not turn our tired eyes, now, to Los Angeles. 

I probably do not need to remind you, but Los Angeles is a sanctuary city in a sanctuary state. For reasons the escape me, none of the reports on homelessness asks how much the sanctuary city policy has been a magnet for refugees from shithole countries. And how many of these illegal immigrants have simply turned California’s great cities into shitholes.

As opposed to San Francisco, where the local authorities seem to be completely clueless, Los Angeles has taken some action to solve the problem. It has tried to build homeless shelters around the city. You will recall that a leading local official in San Francisco proposed the same solution. So, rather than ship the local illegal migrant population back home, Los Angeles is bleeding its taxpayers in order to house them.

The strange thing is, the supply of homeless people is seriously outrunning the number of shelter beds.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

Los Angeles County's homeless population is increasing faster than the supply of new housing, even with the addition of thousands of beds in the last two years and millions of dollars beginning to flow in from two ballot measures targeting the crisis, according to a long-awaited report by the region's homelessness agency.

The report showed that officials two years ago far underestimated how much new housing would be needed when they asked city and county voters to approve the tax measures.

As a result, a $73-million annual shortfall in funding for the county's comprehensive homelessness program could more than triple, a Times analysis of the report found.

Providing permanent housing for the county's chronically homeless population would require more than 20,000 new units, about 5,000 more than projected two years ago, the report said.

Again, how many of those that Los Angeles wants to house permanently are American citizens? How many of them have the right to be here? No one is asking the question.

The 2015 homeless count, on which the previous analysis was based, put the number of people living on the streets across the county at just under 29,000.

Anyway, the more housing you build the more homeless people show up. The more you make a public display of your status as sanctuary city the more you attract refugees. It does not take too many IQ points to figure this out.

According to the new report, more than 6,000 new units of permanent supportive housing have been added since 2015. That includes newly constructed buildings as well as scattered placements in subsidized market rentals that are supported by traveling case managers.

The gains in housing, however, were outstripped by the rising homeless population.

The earlier report projected a reduction of 14% each year. If that had occurred, the total homeless population — including unsheltered and sheltered — would have dropped to 41,323 last year.

Instead, it climbed to nearly 59,000. The results of this year's count will be released in the spring.

Who knew?