West coast homeless situation

[philip964]

A friend is visiting Portland OR with her family.

She called about visiting Crater Lake today. I recommended the boat trip. (It may not be open yet)

She changed the subject and said “ you won’t believe the homeless situation here in Portland. The kids are shocked at what they see. I said that we have homeless incampments under 59 near Richmondhere in Houston ,she replied, yeah but it’s not like this!

Everyday I see news stories about the homeless in San Fransisco, Seattle and Los Angles and what a problem it is becoming. I think I posted about a homeless man stabbing a homeowner earlier. So apparently from my friend’s comments it’s a real issue.

So is it the mild climate, big social net, liberal attitude, high cost of housing, greater drug use or all of these?

[flechero]

If I was homeless and could bum a ride, i'd go to San Diego! Little chance of freezing or overheating to death.

big social net, liberal attitude, high cost of housing, greater drug use

These things might very well contribute to the higher numbers of homeless, but I have no idea if they lure in people from afar.

[Soldev]

In Los Angeles it is common to find a homeless person sleeping in your front and/or back yard in the morning.
You will find homeless encampments every few blocks, along streets with large sidewalks and under nearly every freeway underpass.
Every neighborhood within the city of Los Angeles has this problem and there is no end to it.
The homeless leave their garbage and human waste everywhere. They open the street lights, expose electrical wires just to charge their phones.
The streets are not safe for children or pets, there are usually syringes, urine and feces littering the gutters and sidewalks.
Smaller cities surrounding Los Angeles don't seem to have this problem because they illegally pick them up and transport them to Los Angeles, or they have the law enforcement threaten them into moving out of their city.

I lived in Los Angeles from 1980 to 2017 and saw how it changed into the mess it is now.
I volunteered with the Los Angeles Fire Department CERT program and even ran for office in one of the neighborhood councils and won.
After years of hearing police reports (directly from the Senior Lead Officers) during public safety committee meetings about the homeless epidemic and crimes being committed by them I had enough of it. I sold my house and moved to Houston and I don't regret it.
Even after losing all my families belongings in the flood during Hurricane Harvey I still don't regret it.

The 3 main reasons the homeless are there are for the weather, drugs and support programs (free food).
I will never go back to California, even for a vacation, that place is not America, it is a third world slum.
There are 3 classes of people there: The Working Poor, The Homeless Poor and the Rich.

I cringe every time I see Democrats in Texas trying to push that same socialist agenda that ruined California.
Even though I may have been born and raised in California I have been and always will be a conservative.
My pro gun, pro 2nd amendment, conservative stance made me an outcast in the People's Republic of California especially after the last presidential election, all of us who supported President Trump were forced into hiding our beliefs and most of us ended up fleeing the state.

We MUST keep Texas Red now and forever or we will fall to the socialists who are bent on the destruction of our nation through the erosion of our rights as Texans and Americans.

If you think I am over exaggerating the problem, here are two recent news stories that prove my point:

Fox 11 Los Angeles News Report from February 23, 2018
Garbage created by homeless encampments is overwhelming the city budget


Los Angeles Article From February 1, 2018
L.A.'s homelessness surged 75% in six years. Here's why the crisis has been decades in the making
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-m ... story.html

[PriestTheRunner]

Worldwide economic growth by income:

That little negative bit.... That is lower-middle class America.


Middle skill production type jobs.
(Due to influx of cheap labor and massive reductions in available work. NAFTA sucks...)



Now combine that with the fact that there are as many people age 18-34 living with their parents as there are living out of the house and you can see the potential for homelessness.


Take away family support (IE- no parents to move back in with or a set of divorced parents (or single parent) that is unable or unwilling to take back in the up-to-34-year-old and you have a homeless person.


Also, most homeless people are under age 34. Real homelessness doesn't fit the '60 year old war veteran' stereotype that is so often portrayed.

So basically, when we eliminate middle class jobs, reduce real-world pay for millions of Americans over the course of decades, and reduce available job positions- don't be surprised when homelessness starts growing... :/

I just hope that Trump will follow through with his stated foreign financial policy positions and start rebuilding the middle class. AND hopefully when he is out in 6 years, the Republican party will have woken up to the fact that we can't continue to sell out manufacturing and other middle class jobs to support corporation's bottom lines.

Very useful report: https://www.hudexchange.info/resources/ ... Part-1.pdf

Decent article about middle class: http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/arch ... -destroyed

[PriestTheRunner]

We MUST keep Texas Red now and forever or we will fall to the socialists who are bent on the destruction of our nation through the erosion of our rights as Texans and Americans.

cough-cough: https://texasnationalist.com/

[ELB]

"Terrified" San Francisco Tourists Shocked By Aggressive Vagrants, Discarded Needles, Dead Bodies

In other news:
Almost Half of San Fransisco Bay Area Residents Want to Leave

Places like Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles, and San Francisco are turning themselves into Third World Countries from the inside out, meaning not that they are importing Third World people but that they are structuring their societies as Third Word: A few rich people on top, a LOT of poor people on the bottom to service their houses and industries, and a very few in the middle class to act as overseers for the poor people, and a government that enforces the situation, particularly with taxes and zoning restrictions, taxes, environmental rules, taxes, occupational permits, taxes. The heavy regulation and taxes that are manageable for rich people, but not for a strong, free-market oriented middle class. This eliminates upward mobility for both the poor and the middle class. The middle class leaves because it can, and the poor stay for the subsidized housing (when the use it), the welfare, the free needles, etc. They keep voting for the people who provide them these things.

[Wolverine]

Oreagon has about the highest "welfare" reimbursement, as relates to cost of living, of the contiguous 48 states. I personally know a family of 5 that moved from OK to OR specifically for that reason.

80 years ago Okies moved to the west coast for work. Now Okies move to the west coast to not work. SMH

[philip964]

https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2018/06 ... mp-fights/

Fights in homeless camps worries nearby homeowners.

[philip964]

In Los Angeles it is common to find a homeless person sleeping in your front and/or back yard in the morning.
You will find homeless encampments every few blocks, along streets with large sidewalks and under nearly every freeway underpass.
Every neighborhood within the city of Los Angeles has this problem and there is no end to it.
The homeless leave their garbage and human waste everywhere. They open the street lights, expose electrical wires just to charge their phones.
The streets are not safe for children or pets, there are usually syringes, urine and feces littering the gutters and sidewalks.
Smaller cities surrounding Los Angeles don't seem to have this problem because they illegally pick them up and transport them to Los Angeles, or they have the law enforcement threaten them into moving out of their city.

I lived in Los Angeles from 1980 to 2017 and saw how it changed into the mess it is now.
I volunteered with the Los Angeles Fire Department CERT program and even ran for office in one of the neighborhood councils and won.
After years of hearing police reports (directly from the Senior Lead Officers) during public safety committee meetings about the homeless epidemic and crimes being committed by them I had enough of it. I sold my house and moved to Houston and I don't regret it.
Even after losing all my families belongings in the flood during Hurricane Harvey I still don't regret it.

The 3 main reasons the homeless are there are for the weather, drugs and support programs (free food).
I will never go back to California, even for a vacation, that place is not America, it is a third world slum.
There are 3 classes of people there: The Working Poor, The Homeless Poor and the Rich.

I cringe every time I see Democrats in Texas trying to push that same socialist agenda that ruined California.
Even though I may have been born and raised in California I have been and always will be a conservative.
My pro gun, pro 2nd amendment, conservative stance made me an outcast in the People's Republic of California especially after the last presidential election, all of us who supported President Trump were forced into hiding our beliefs and most of us ended up fleeing the state.

We MUST keep Texas Red now and forever or we will fall to the socialists who are bent on the destruction of our nation through the erosion of our rights as Texans and Americans.

If you think I am over exaggerating the problem, here are two recent news stories that prove my point:

Fox 11 Los Angeles News Report from February 23, 2018
Garbage created by homeless encampments is overwhelming the city budget


Los Angeles Article From February 1, 2018
L.A.'s homelessness surged 75% in six years. Here's why the crisis has been decades in the making
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-m ... story.html

Glad to have you here. Very sorry for you loss with Harvey.

[ELB]

Diseased Streets

The Investigate Unit spent three days assessing conditions on the streets of downtown San Francisco and discovered trash on each of the 153 blocks surveyed. While some streets were littered with items as small as a candy wrapper, the vast majority of trash found included large heaps of garbage, food, and discarded junk. The investigation also found 100 drug needles and more than 300 piles of feces throughout downtown.

The quote is from a bay area NBC station. The station has a 9-part series on what a pit SF has turned into.

Left Coast Lawlessness

Portland, Oregon, has continued to experience rapid urban decay in recent years, and the consequences for businesses and residents have been dramatic. In 2016, Columbia Sportswear, a major retailer, relocated a considerable number of its staff to downtown Portland. A little over a year later, in a scathing opinion piece in the Oregonian, the company’s CEO voiced his regret over the decision. Employees reported repeated criminal offenses, “daily defecation” in the store’s front lobby, and fears of physical violence. One female employee ran into moving traffic to escape a transient individual, screaming that he was going to kill her.

…

Judith Arnell closed her jewelry store after customers felt unsafe entering her shop. She noted that vagrants would frequently defecate on the front steps of her business. Fed-up small-business owners took their concerns to Portland’s Democratic mayor, Ted Wheeler, who offered owners training on how to secure their stores—and then promptly blamed Department of Housing Secretary Ben Carson for not doing enough to support affordable housing.

[03Lightningrocks]

When I read stuff like this it reminds me of a line from a movie I watched about a civil war soldier that goes off to fight. Two women left alone are talking and one exclaims, "They create the storm and then stand outside and scream damn, it's raining". Perfect analogy to how Democrats work.

[EastTexasRancher]

We just got back from Kauai, and it's insane. Every park has a group of homeless people hanging out in tents, without tents, etc. They take up the restrooms, live under the bridges by the beaches, etc. Sooo many of them.

[rotor]

Using the term homeless is like using the term undocumented. Homeless renders sympathy, a family that has had their home foreclosed on and now are living on the streets. These people we need to help. Actually, most of the "homeless" are either drug users, alcoholics or psychotics. So, lets not call them the homeless but what they were called in the past, bums or hobos. There are many youtube videos documenting these outlyers of society. A reasonable society does not put up with this. A progressive society thinks that building homes for these "homeless" is the way to go. Just as long as it is in your neighborhood. And as we embrace more legalized drug use we can only expect more of this. Everyone high on marijuana and they don't care what happens.
So I propose we not use the term "homeless" for these bums, hobos, vagrants and derelicts.

[03Lightningrocks]

I agree that drug addiction is a major part of the problem. Unfortunately it is a whole lot more serious than simple marijuana. Many of these folks are addicted to Heroin, Methamphetamine and Crack.