March 12, 2019

Homeless encampments will stay put under Los Angeles settlement

Overlawyers -“The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday agreed to settle a pivotal and contentious case on the property rights of homeless people — a decision that is likely to limit the seizure and destruction of encampments on skid row.” Since 2016 the city has been in litigation with civil rights lawyers representing homeless persons “and two Skid Row anti-poverty groups.”

Subsequently, “U.S. District Judge S. James Otero in Los Angeles issued an injunction [that] barred the city from seizing and destroying homeless people’s property on skid row unless officials could show it had been abandoned, threatened public health or safety, or consisted of contraband or evidence of a crime.” [Gale Holland, L.A. Times; Susan Shelley, L.A. Daily News] An estimated 2,000 persons live in the downtown L.A. encampments, and diseases little seen in peacetime in the modern era, including flea-borne typhus, have been making a comeback

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

This ‘problem’ existed long before Los Angeles City Council were and many charities came into being and will persist for years to come if we continue to address symptoms rather than the underlying disease. Oscar Wilde expressed this well: ‘their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease. They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor. But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible’ (The Soul of Man under Socialism, 1891).

Anonymous said...

I live out here. This is not about traditional poverty (at least in terms of wealth)

This is a spiritual condition. These are very dysfunctional people with all kinds of disorders. These are not people who just got laid off and are struggling. These people are broken and leaving them on the streets is criminal.

The other unreported part of this equation is the heavy drug use and dealing which is being done in these tent cities.

LA City Hall has been infested due to these conditions and they will do nothing about it. San Francisco is another tragedy. The "leaders" will continue to ignore the root causes since they all want to be considered "PC" and dare not look to be offensive in any way. I can't think of a more apt metaphor for our state government here. LA is fast becoming Mexico City.

Anonymous said...

I would spend the wall money on sending the homeless to college or trade schools.
The tax payers money that is spent or squandered helping or fighting other countries could be better spent providing a free college degree.
All 50 states have free public schools K-12 grade so we make it K-16
So we make community colleges free rather than waste the money on a wink wink wall.