Homelessness in Los Angeles
On Skid Row, some 5,000 people are living in tents along the sidewalks.
I have recently come across a YouTuber called German in Venice. In many of his videos, he highlights social issues in Los Angeles, especially homelessness. I was aware of the number of people living on the streets in Los Angeles, after visiting here back in 2012. However, I was shocked to see how some of the more popular areas have people living in tents by the side of the road. However, since I visited in 2012, the amount of people that are living in camps, hostels and cars in the Los Angeles area has got significantly worse.
Hollywood is not as glamourous as you see in the movies, the popular tourist areas, like Hollywood Boulevard, are littered with CD sellers and street performers, trying to scrape a living in the expensive city. Here I witnessed a half-naked woman urinate on the sidewalk, with people walking by like it was a normal occurrence, which it clearly was.
The first thing that strikes me about Los Angeles is the wealth gap. Indeed, this is an issue in cities all over the world. However, to me, this gap is most visible in American cities, especially Los Angeles. As an Englishwoman, I visit London frequently, whilst the average house price in London is £514,000, and there are issues of homelessness, crime and poverty in London, what you do not see when walking down the streets of London are rows of homeless camps. So why do you in Los Angeles? What is different and why are there so many people living in poverty in the City of Angles?
A typical home in Beverley Hills will set you back $3,680,946, with houses for sale at over $26 million. Just 12 miles away, on Skid Row, some 5,000 people are living in tents along the sidewalks. In 2019, it was reported that there were almost 60,000 people in Los Angeles County that were homeless, living out in the open, sleeping in cars, tents or emergency shelters. Whilst the number of homeless people makes up 8% of LA residents, which would appear like a relatively small number, Los Angeles has the largest number of homeless in the USA who do not sleep in emergency shelters.
So what are the causes? According to an article written for the BBC back in 2019, the root cause is money. Housing in Los Angeles is just too expensive and jobs pay too little. Zillow report that the average house price in Los Angels County is over $700,000, with the average rental price for an apartment being over $2,300. Even with California having the highest minimum wage of all the states ($14.00 per hour for companies employing over 26 people and $13.00 per hour for companies with less than 25 employees), a person would have to work over 164 hours in a month (approx 41 hours a week) just to afford the rental price and that is before they have paid any taxes. Add on basic living expenses like utilities and food, so unless someone on minimum wage is willing to work 60+ hours a week, or work more than one job, the chance is, they would not be able to afford to live in LA.
So what is Los Angeles doing to tackle the problem? According to Mayor Eric Garcetti, his 2019–20 budget includes more than $460 million to try and ease the crisis. In addition, every year between 11,000 and 24,000 new housing units are approved. Despite this, we are now in 2021 and homelessness in Los Angeles has increased, with homeless encampments taking over Echo Park, Venice Beach and even Beverly Hills.
Despite the city trying to ease the crisis, it seems that it is getting worse, add a pandemic into the mix and more job losses and it looks like LA is heading towards a problem that is out of control, with ABC Eyewitness News reporting that homelessness in LA County expected to skyrocket by 86% in next 4 years.
Writing in January of 2021, Rob Hayes reports that, L.A. City Councilman Kevin DeLeon is pushing a new program to build even more homes for those on the street called the "25 by 25" proposal.
The program would see 25,000 new housing units by 2025. Indeed, creating affordable housing is what the county needs. However, as Rob Hayes further notes in his article, people need to be able to work to pay rents in the first place.
The resolution to the crisis is not one that can be solved overnight, it is going to take years and even decades and there is no easy solution to an issue that is so ingrained in Los Angeles.
If you would like to help, below are some charities that help the homeless in Los Angels.
https://www.shelterpartnership.org/
Downtown Women's Center - Every woman housed
The Downtown Women's Center (DWC) envisions a Los Angeles with every woman housed and on a path to personal stability…downtownwomenscenter.org
https://losangelesmission.org/
Sources
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49687478
About the Creator
Armchair Detective
Amateur writer, I mostly write about true crime.
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