Orange County Faces Legal Threat Over Anti-Camping Laws

I've been blogging on homelessness quite a bit, mainly because I'm moved by the plight of the homeless and I'm flummoxed by the pathetic public policy response. In the O.C., as I noted at the time of a bogus meme going around arguing that the Anaheim Stadium encampment was populated by illegal immigrants, most of the O.C. homeless are white working-class people who've been wiped out by economic change, especially coming out of the Great Recession. So folks might see why I have quite a different take on the issue than other conservatives, such as the otherwise outstanding Daniel Greenfield, at FrontPage Magazine: "ASIAN-AMERICANS ACCUSED OF INTOLERANCE FOR OPPOSING HOMELESS."

Asian-Americans, pfft.

Where was where the mass Asian-American protests against the Chinese birth tourism hotels here in Irvine? There weren't any. The Feds had to come in and shut them down. See, "'Maternity tourism' raids target California operations catering to Chinese." According to the report:

More than 400 women associated with the Irvine location have given birth at one Orange County hospital since 2013, agents wrote in the affidavit. One of the women paid $4,080 out of $28,845 in hospital bills when her bank account showed charges at Wynn Las Vegas and purchases at Rolex and Louis Vuitton stores, the affidavit said.

Nope, no massive protests against Chinese birth tourists committing immigration fraud and cheating local hospitals out of maternity costs. And the Asian-American community has demonstrated extremely slow assimilation into American political culture. It's half Asian-American in Irvine, and the population's large presence continues to drive Anglo-American retail institutions out of the area. The 99 Ranch Market across from my neighborhood is the anchor store for a nearly entirely Asian-American shopping center. Only the McDonald's and KFC remain from a least a half a dozen American restaurants, including Baskin Robbins, Marie Calendar's, and Subway.

In any case, here's today's front-page report on the new judicial ruling barring cities from enforcing anti-camping laws against the county's homeless --- with the photograph of Diane Rutan, gathering her things from the downtown Santa Ana homeless camp. See, "Judge threatens to bar O.C. from enforcing anti-camping laws if it can't shelter homeless":

The political crisis over homelessness in Orange County approached a crucial moment Tuesday as a federal judge raised the prospect of barring local governments from enforcing anti-camping ordinances if officials cannot create temporary shelters for hundreds being swept out of tent cities.

The county for weeks has been struggling to find locations to place the homeless after removing them from an encampment along the Santa Ana River. A plan to place temporary shelters in Irvine, Laguna Niguel and Huntington Beach died amid loud protests from residents last week, and the problem is expected to get worse as officials move to clear out another tent city at the Santa Ana Civic Center.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter expressed frustration at the political stalemate during a hearing Tuesday. He said he could not decide where the shelters should go, but said he could prohibit cities from enforcing laws that ban people from camping in public spaces such as parks and river ways. Carter said that without those laws, Orange County communities could become magnets for homeless people.

In essence, the judge said Orange County can't have it both ways.

"We can't criminalize homeless by citing them in one location, and citing them in another location simply for being homeless," Carter said.

Carter is overseeing a case brought by homeless advocates trying to stop the removal of the homeless encampments. He stressed that the shelters don't have to be fancy, only that they be able to serve those who have nowhere else to live.

"This doesn't have to be a nice thing," Carter said. "It just has to be humane and dignified. That will probably get us through this crisis."

The county's two armories, which provide temporary shelter for up to 400 homeless individuals during the winter, are scheduled to close this month — adding a new layer of urgency as space is limited in other shelters throughout the county. Fullerton officials requested to keep the armory in their city open, but it's not clear if that will happen.

Orange County Board of Supervisors Chairman Andrew Do said he is pessimistic about the county and city officials finding a solution unless Carter steps in.

"At this point, I see us — the county — and the cities being at a standstill," Do said. "With each passing day we betray our responsibility to care for all of our residents as required by law."

Residents in Irvine and other cities have said they don't want homeless shelters in their communities, which is the same argument made by neighborhoods along the Santa Ana River that prompted officials to clear out the camps in the first place.

But Carter said the situation has forced certain cities to take on a disproportionate burden. He singled out Santa Ana, home to the county's only major emergency shelter

"Santa Ana is being forced to absorb all of the homeless because they're brought to this area for assessments and services," Carter said. "It's disproportionate."

Data presented by Santa Ana during the hearing back up that claim...

Keep reading.

The Graying of America's Homeless

It's not an easy problem to solve. Lots of homeless people have psychiatric issues and refuse services.

It's sad.

And that's downtown Los Angeles at the background photo at the link.

See, the New York Times, "Old and on the Street: The Graying of America's Homeless" (at Memeorandum):

LOS ANGELES — They lean unsteadily on canes and walkers, or roll along the sidewalks of Skid Row here in beat-up wheelchairs, past soiled sleeping bags, swaying tents and piles of garbage. They wander the streets in tattered winter coats, even in the warmth of spring. They worry about the illnesses of age and how they will approach death without the help of children who long ago drifted from their lives.

“It’s hard when you get older,” said Ken Sylvas, 65, who has struggled with alcoholism and has not worked since he was fired in 2001 from a meatpacking job. “I’m in this wheelchair. I had a seizure and was in a convalescent home for two months. I just ride the bus back and forth all night.”

The homeless in America are getting old.

There were 306,000 people over 50 living on the streets in 2014, the most recent data available, a 20 percent jump since 2007, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. They now make up 31 percent of the nation’s homeless population.

The demographic shift is mirrored by a noticeable but not as sharp increase among homeless people ages 18 to 30, many who entered the job market during the Great Recession. They make up 24 percent of the homeless population. Like the baby boomers, these young people came of age during an economic downturn, confronting a tight housing and job market. Many of them are former foster children or runaways, or were victims of abuse at home.

But it is the emergence of an older homeless population that is creating daunting challenges for social service agencies and governments already struggling with this crisis of poverty. “Baby boomers have health and vulnerability issues that are hard to tend to while living in the streets,” said Alice Callaghan, an Episcopal priest who has spent 35 years working with the homeless in Los Angeles.

Many older homeless people have been on the streets for almost a generation, analysts say, a legacy of the recessions of the late 1970s and early 1980s, federal housing cutbacks and an epidemic of crack cocaine. They bring with them a complicated history that may include a journey from prison to mental health clinic to rehabilitation center and back to the sidewalks.

Some are more recent arrivals and have been forced — at a time of life when some people their age are debating whether to retire to Arizona or to Florida — to learn the ways of homelessness after losing jobs in the latest economic downturn. And there are some on a fixed income who cannot afford the rent in places like Los Angeles, which has a vacancy rate of less than 3 percent.

Horace Allong, 60, said he could not afford a one-room apartment and lives in a tent on Crocker Street. Mr. Allong, who divorced his wife and left New Orleans for Los Angeles two years ago, said he lost his wallet and all of his identification two weeks after he arrived and has not been able to find a job.

“It’s the first time I’ve been on the streets, so I’m learning,” he said. “There’s nothing like Skid Row. Skid Row is another world.”

The problems with homelessness are hardly uniform across the country. The national homeless population declined by 2 percent between 2014 and 2015, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Some communities — including Phoenix and Las Vegas — have declared outright victory in eliminating homelessness among veterans, a top goal of the White House.

But homelessness is rising in big cities where gentrification is on the march and housing costs are rising, like Los Angeles, New York, Honolulu and San Francisco. Los Angeles reported a 5.7 percent increase in its homeless population last year, the second year in a row it had recorded a jump. More than 20 percent of the nation’s homeless lived in California last year, according to the housing agency.

Across Southern California, the homeless live in tent encampments clustered on corners from Venice to the San Fernando Valley, and in communities sprouting under highway overpasses or in the dry bed of the Los Angeles River. Their sleeping bags and piles of belongings line sidewalks on Santa Monica Boulevard.

Along with these visible signs of homelessness come complaints about aggressive panhandling, public urination and disorderly conduct, as well as a rise in drug dealing and petty crimes...

Keep reading.

Previous homelessness blogging here.

It's sad.

Irvine's Asian-American NIMBYism

Everybody's a NIMBY. I imagine I'm a NIMBY on some issues too. But I also think that the county's got a real crisis on its hands and the community needs to come together for solutions. Nobody --- not residents in Irvine, Huntington Beach, nor Laguna Niguel, among others --- wants to house the homeless within their city. But the homeless need help.

At LAT, "In fighting homeless camp, Irvine's Asians win, but at a cost":

In fighting homeless camp, Irvine's Asians win, but at a cost https://t.co/1yuRFguKhc pic.twitter.com/e7al7CDi8y

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) April 1, 2018

One by one, the buses pulled up to the Orange County Hall of Administration last week carrying posters with messages such as "No Tent City" and "No Homeless in Irvine."

Many of the hundreds on board were immigrants, and this would be their first experience joining a political protest.

A week earlier, county officials announced that they were considering placing emergency homeless shelters in Irvine as well as in Laguna Niguel and in Huntington Beach. All three cities immediately fought the plan, but the opposition was most fierce in Irvine.

Many of the loudest voices in the movement to block the shelter plan were Chinese Americans who came together through social media apps and various community groups. They were joined by immigrants from South Korea, India, Mexico and the Middle East, along with some whites.

They rallied to protect their community from what they see as the ills of homeless camps, which many argued don't belong in their famously clean, safe, family-oriented planned community. Their protests helped persuade the Orange County Board of Supervisors to overturn the shelter proposal, leaving the county without a homeless plan at a time when the population is growing and officials are shutting down tent cities along the Santa Ana River.

It was a big political victory for the diverse opposition from Irvine. But it also came at a price, with some accusing the residents of intolerance and simply wanting to keep the homeless out of their own cities without offering an alternative solution....

A regional problem, local politics

Officials in Santa Ana, where homeless camps have overwhelmed the Civic Center area, have argued that other communities need to help share the burden. Irvine is now the third-largest city in Orange County, behind Anaheim and Santa Ana. The sweeps of homeless camps along the Santa Ana River began after complaints of filth and crime by residents in the nearby cities of Santa Ana, Anaheim and Fountain Valley.

Lili Graham, a homeless advocate and litigation director for the Legal Aid Society of Orange County, described the Irvine effort as "amazing" but misguided. The proposed shelter site in the city had already been zoned "and determined to be appropriate for emergency shelters," she said.

"It was a loud group, but in a county of 3 million, it's one group. There was a lot of leadership there — and there needs to be a lot of leadership on the county level to solve this issue," she said.

But some Irvine residents said the solution should not include their city.

"They need to put them somewhere, maybe somewhere else in California," resident Angela Liu, who owns a legal services company, told the Board of Supervisors. "I really don't know where they can go. But Irvine is beautiful, and we don't want it to get destroyed."

Her view was far from isolated. Officials and residents in Huntington Beach and Laguna Niguel expressed similar sentiments. U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Costa Mesa) said he joined "the outrage that we are assuming responsibility for homeless people, taking care of their basic needs and elongating their agony."

Irvine's working with the county to develop some kind of transitional housing, other than that, I don't see much effort or support for policies that will help these people. We're not talking about endless welfare. It's about helping people get cleaned up and healthy. Getting them some place to stay, a safe and dignified place, while helping them transition to long-term residential security. 

Still more.

Orange County's Homeless Men On Guard After Three Murders by Suspected Serial Killer

In Santa Barbara in 1992 there was a series of murders of homeless transients that dominated the news at the time. My future wife and I had just moved down there from Fresno. Apparently Santa Barbara, with its temperate climate and laid-back, small town atmosphere, attracted a lot of homeless people. But I can still feel both the shock and rage I felt at the time of the murders. Someone had walked into the park and pumped bullets into the homeless as they slept. It's still unbelievable to me, the enormity of cruelty that is truly pure evil.

I'm reminded of those feelings with news of the rash of murders of homeless men in the O.C.  See Los Angeles Times, "Vulnerable homeless men try to foil Orange County killer":

Cary Singletary is 6-foot-2, an ex-boxer who once worked nightclub security, alternating coffee and water to stay alert through the small hours. Now, encamped on the streets of downtown Santa Ana, he's the unofficial sentry for what he calls "my people," a group of homeless whose wary existence is now shadowed by a new peril: a serial killer.

"Hopefully, they'll get the sick-minded coward," said Singletary 52, speaking of the string of stabbing deaths of middle-aged homeless men in Orange County that began just before Christmas. Singletary stood in a parking lot Thursday night clutching a safety kit — a whistle and flashlight, both donated by the Orange County Rescue Mission.

Singletary said he fears that the killer, who has attacked in neighboring Anaheim, Placentia and Yorba Linda, might strike next in Santa Ana. So he is up all night, drinking coffee, keeping watch for strangers. For company, he listens to R&B on his headphones. He sleeps in two-hour shifts on the public bus.

"If that serial killer wants to come at us, he'll have his hands full," said Singletary, who has been homeless for six months. "We've got some soldiers out here. I'm just one of them. If that whistle goes off, you'll have a whole army of homeless on him."

Across the county, at the urging of authorities, many of the homeless are seeking beds at emergency shelters, or making sure to sleep in groups outdoors, and taking pains to make themselves less conspicuous on the streets and riverbeds. Many say it is just another version of a skill they have practiced for years — survival — in a dangerous milieu. In some cases, efforts to help are complicated by mental illness, paranoia and a deep-seated fatalism.

Continue reading at the link.

More at Orange County Register, "Homeless homicides bring needs to light."

Say a prayer for the safety of these people.

L.A. County Removes Homeless From Freeway Underpasses

Some of these folks lived under freeways for years. Mind-boggling.

At LAT, "They made a home under L.A.’s freeways. But soon they could be forced to move":

Hope you give the story a read, and take a moment to marvel at the amazing photography of @GenaroMolina47. He always knocks it out of the park.

Also drop me a line with your thoughts, compliments or complaints about this sweeping change coming to LA. https://t.co/i6CD5jRWqT pic.twitter.com/9uyIaUsbIq

— Benjamin Oreskes🦅 (@boreskes) July 26, 2020

The 105 Freeway roared overhead as homeless outreach worker Daniel Ornelas knelt to speak with Genia Hope.

Hope’s home has been, for years, a sprawling complex of tents beside a tangle of freeways in southeast Los Angeles County. Like many homeless people, she has chosen to live under or near a freeway because it affords some measure of safety compared with other spots where homeless people bed down.

A rusted elephant trinket stood guard outside her tarps and tent, and inside she lounged on a black leather couch, smoking a cigarette alongside a rack of clothing.

Hope raised her now-grown children in Apple Valley and later followed a man to Bellflower. She lost her job at a rehab facility and then, after her partner died, grief, anxiety and struggles with addiction led her to the street.

Now, it looked as if Ornelas might just be able to help her. The COVID-19 pandemic has opened up a wealth of resources to help get people off the streets, and a recent order from a federal judge will unlock even more. But efforts to aid people like Hope are going to be complicated by a shortage of available shelter and fighting among government entities about how best to carry out the judge’s wishes.

Hope told Ornelas that living beside this freeway underpass, just off a bike bath that snakes along the Los Angeles River, was optimal. Police rarely hassled her here, and she had plenty of space to be alone. An on-again, off-again love interest lived nearby, and her homeless neighbors formed a supportive community.

One neighbor brought her some lunch and a strawberry slushie as she spoke with the outreach worker.

She jumped at the offer, excited at the prospect of getting to take a bath and sleep in a bed. Her matted blond hair needed washing, she said. It would be ideal if her boyfriend could join her — at arm’s length.

“If we could be at the same hotel and in separate rooms, that would be great,” she said. “Sometimes we just need a break from each other.”

A government program known as Project Roomkey, which aims to rent motel and hotel rooms for homeless people, has fallen short of its goals locally but still has vastly expanded the number of rooms available to homeless people vulnerable to COVID-19. As a result, Ornelas was able to quickly whisk Hope off the street. Like many outreach workers who serve the county’s swelling homeless population, he pays special attention to the underpasses and embankments near freeways.

Those areas became a subject of great interest and conflict after U.S. District Judge David O. Carter ordered city and county officials to provide space in shelters or alternative housing for residents living near freeway overpasses, underpasses and ramps. Once there is enough shelter, the agreement could pave the way for law enforcement to enforce anti-camping ordinances.

The order came during proceedings for a lawsuit Carter has been presiding over since March, when the advocacy group L.A. Alliance for Human Rights sued public agencies across the county, accusing them of allowing unsafe and inhumane conditions in homeless camps. Carter’s focus on the areas around freeways took many homeless advocates and government officials by surprise.

Many who could be forced to move said they were leery of going into temporary shelters, tiny prefab houses or sanctioned camping sites, because they felt confined by rules that prevented them from leaving after certain hours and put them in shared spaces that they would otherwise avoid.

And those coordinating where people living near freeways go next — the homeless service providers and outreach workers— say that the order will lead to needless confrontation between law enforcement and people living on the streets. They also say politicians’ attempts to comply with the judge’s desires focus far too much on interim housing options and will come at the expense of more permanent solutions...

More, and don't miss the great photos.

Officials Start Clearing Out Homeless Encampment Near Anaheim Stadium

Following-up from last week, "False Twitter Memes About Homeless Encampment Along the Santa Ana River Bike Trail."

Anaheim and Orange County officials launched the area's homeless eviction operation yesterday. Reading the Los Angeles Times' report, it turns out one woman's been living there for 16 years. I had no idea, man.

And as I noted at the blog post above, these are not migrants, illegal aliens, or refugees. These are mostly downtrodden white working-class folks. People have been priced out of the housing market, and the county lacks credible services for the homeless. What a bummer. The O.C. Register's piece indicates that 32 out of 33 cities in the county ban overnight camping for the homeless, which criminalizes homelessness. And the state's wasting billions upon billions of dollars building the bullet train to nowhere. Remember, these are progressive Democrats running the state, the holier-than-thou tolerance-preaching leftists. They're full of it, the degenerate hypocrites. No wonder people hate politics.

In any case, click the links:

Denise Lindstrom, a 49-year-old homeless woman, sits in a wheelchair at a homeless encampment on the Santa Ana River trail today in Anaheim, Calif. Authorities on Monday told the homeless living in the encampment that it is being closed down. | Photo @jaethephotog pic.twitter.com/If55OwYPif

— AP Images (@AP_Images) January 23, 2018

Hundreds of homeless face eviction or arrest as O.C. clears encampment amid shelter bed shortage https://t.co/FwK8tVVki8 pic.twitter.com/U5QSKdUgaw

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) January 23, 2018

Amid anxiety among homeless, law enforcement begins plan to gradually clear out Santa Ana riverbed encampments https://t.co/Ayz0LfJBEU pic.twitter.com/QmR1RBCHu3

— O.C. Register (@ocregister) January 23, 2018

Internet Company BBH Labs Under Fire for Exploiting Homeless as Mobile WiFi Hotspots

Actually, if the company had actually paid the homeless people some good money, I doubt it'd be a big deal. But $20 a day? That's less than minimum wage.

Talk about exploiting the vulnerable. Sheesh.

See New York Times, "Homeless People as Internet Hot Spots Backfires on a Marketer":

AUSTIN, Tex. — Which product at this year’s South by Southwest technology conference received more attention than perhaps any other?

Homeless people as wireless transmitters.

A marketing agency touched off a wave of criticism and debate when it hired members of the local homeless population to walk around carrying mobile Wi-Fi devices, offering conferencegoers Internet access in exchange for donations.

BBH Labs, the innovation unit of the international marketing agency BBH, outfitted 13 volunteers from a homeless shelter with the devices, business cards and T-shirts bearing their names: “I’m Clarence, a 4G Hotspot.” They were told to go to the most densely packed areas of the conference, which has become a magnet for those who want to chase the latest in technology trends.

The smartphone-toting, social-networking crowds often overwhelm cellular networks in the area, creating a market that BBH Labs hoped to serve with the “Homeless Hotspots” project, which it called a “charitable experiment.” It paid each participant $20 a day, and they were also able to keep whatever customers donated in exchange for the wireless service.

But as word of the project spread on the ground and online, it hit a nerve among many who said that turning down-and-out people into wireless towers was exploitative and discomfiting.

Tim Carmody, a blogger at Wired, described the project as “completely problematic” and sounding like “something out of a darkly satirical science-fiction dystopia.”

A commenter on the BBH Labs blog offered mock praise for the project, then complained that “my homeless hotspot keeps wandering out of range, and it’s ruining all my day trades!”

On Monday, the project’s scheduled last day, BBH Labs was scrambling to explain itself.

Again, it's the pathetic remuneration that's the real problem. No one forced these people to pose as mobile towers. Indeed, one of the dudes, Clarence Jones, responds, "“Everyone thinks I’m getting the rough end of the stick, but I don’t feel that,” Mr. Jones said. “I love talking to people and it’s a job. An honest day of work and pay”."

Also at Wired, "The Damning Backstory Behind ‘Homeless Hotspots’ at SXSW."

The Los Angeles Times indicates that these folks were also getting commissions off sales, so who knows? See: "Austin SXSW homeless hot spots stir debate."

City of Anaheim Removes Bus Benches Near Disneyland, So the Homeless Have One Less Place to Sleep

I have no recommended solution here.

After reading about homelessness, you find there are some people who don't want to be institutionalized. They don't want all the fancy rehab treatments and shelters. They want to be free, even with psychiatric problems. So, at some level you'll always have street-people. What to do? Well, for the City of Anaheim, remove more and more of the bus benches near Disneyland, lest you give the homeless too comfortable a shelter for the night.

I guess this is just one of those shake your head stories. I don't know.

At the Los Angeles Times, "While homelessness surges in Disneyland's shadow, Anaheim removes bus benches":

Sweat rolled down Ron Jackson’s face as he pondered, as he does every day just steps from “the Happiest Place on Earth,” where he would sleep.

The homeless man’s hangout in Anaheim had until recently been a grimy bus bench across the street from Disneyland.

Then, one day, the benches around the amusement park — including his regular spot outside of a 7-Eleven at Harbor Boulevard and Katella Avenue — disappeared.

Soon, people were competing for pavement.

“No more sleeping spot. Just concrete,” Jackson, 47, said on a sweltering day. “There were already people claiming the space.”

The vanishing benches were Anaheim’s response to complaints about the homeless population around Disneyland. Public work crews removed 20 benches from bus shelters after callers alerted City Hall to reports of vagrants drinking, defecating or smoking pot in the neighborhood near the amusement park’s entrance, officials said.

The situation is part of a larger struggle by Orange County to deal with a rising homeless population. A survey last year placed the number of those without shelter at 15,300 people, compared with 12,700 two years earlier.

Desperation amid Orange County’s riches

In a wealthy county known for suburban living and sun-dotted beaches, the signs of the homeless crisis are getting harder to ignore.

At the county’s civic center in Santa Ana, homeless encampments — complete with tents and furniture and flooring made from cardboard boxes — block walkways and unnerve some visitors. Along the Santa Ana River near Angel Stadium, whole communities marked by blue tarp have sprung up. In Laguna Beach, a shelter this summer is testing an outreach program in which volunteers walk the streets offering support and housing assistance to homeless people.

Cities across California — notably Los Angeles and San Francisco — are dealing with swelling ranks of the homeless. But officials in Orange County said most suburban communities simply don’t have the resources and experience to keep up.

Susan Price, Orange County's director of care coordination, said officials are trying to build a coordinated approach involving all of the more than 30 disparate cities that takes into account the different causes of homelessness, including economic woes, a lack of healthcare and recent reforms in the criminal justice system.

Most cities "don't have capacity to respond to all the issues of homelessness effectively. That's why we need a regional strategy,” Price said. "Every city has been grappling with this issue and not all cities are full-service so that means we need to find out what each other is doing and figure out how to combine resources.”

The homeless problem often stands in stark contrast to the perceptions many have about Orange County...

Come to think of it, though, sounds like some of the people, just drinking and smoking pot, maybe need to just get cleaned up and find a job. You can't just be bumming for handouts all the time, panhandling and causing "broken windows" style crimes. If that's so, perhaps a city crackdown is indeed a remedy.

But it's like I said, I'm not sure what to do about this. Seems like homelessness took off in the O.C. after the Great Recession hit, and it hasn't subsided much with the so-called economic recovery.

Blame the Democrats, I guess.

Still more at the link.

The Montavilla Initiative

I'm a bleeding heart on homelessness, mostly because the leftist media gets the story all wrong, all the time. As noted previously, the bulk of O.C. homeless have been regular white working-class folks, busted down after the 2008 crash. It's not all Latinos and other minorities. Go to Anaheim and see for yourself.

In any case, at the Los Angeles Times, "Neighborhood advocates or vigilantes? A group in Portland makes life tougher for the homeless" (via Hot Air):

The Montavilla neighborhood is a place just about anybody might want to live in.

It has an “almost suburban” feel, a city website notes, but it’s near downtown Portland, with a population that’s more diverse than the city as a whole. Homes range from pricey modern to modest bungalow; businesses of every stripe do a bustling trade.

Last year Montavilla made Lonely Planet’s list of the 10 best U.S. neighborhoods.

It also broke apart over homelessness and rising crime.

Like many American cities, Portland struggles with homelessness. What’s the solution to getting people off the streets? What’s the right balance between compassion and safety? Why does the world’s richest country have so many people living in tents?

Last month, Portland-area voters funded $653 million for affordable housing, on top of $258 million in 2016. These are major investments for a city its size. But relief may be years away.

In Montavilla, the debate over homelessness has taken on an edge in the last two years as a neighborhood patrol has marched up to the line of vigilantism — and, some say, crossed it. Experts say similar groups have sprung up in other cities, including Long Beach and the west San Fernando Valley, as a conservative, tough-love response to the problem.

In June 2017, the Montavilla Neighborhood Assn. passed a resolution asking the city to “cease further sweeps of [homeless] camps,” which could be “unconstitutional and human rights violations.”

That fall, a new board of directors was voted in that included Micah Fletcher, a survivor of last year’s infamous stabbings by a white supremacist on a light rail train. Around the same time, however, a new conservative nonprofit, Montavilla Initiative, formed as an alternative. Battle lines hardened.

Montavilla Initiative began doing its own foot patrols; the city-partnered neighborhood association stopped doing them.

Interactions between citizen patrol groups led by Montavilla Initiative and the area’s homeless are now at the center of the neighborhood’s divide. On the one hand, local officials and homeless advocates accuse Montavilla Initiative of harassing vulnerable homeless people. On the other, leaders of the nonprofit say homeless encampments foster crime, and they’re just trying to make the neighborhood safer.

Multnomah County official Kim Toevs said Montavilla Initiative members harassed people who use the county’s largest needle exchange site, part of a program that has operated for 22 years in the neighborhood. It offers addiction counseling, exchanges millions of syringes annually, and gives out naloxone, proven to save lives by halting overdoses.

The county had to hire extra security after seven visits by the group, officials said.

“What we see here, about [their] behavior, harassing our clients, and making them feel stalked and scared, is hateful action,” Toevs said.

Ibrahim Mubarak, executive director of a homeless advocacy group, Right 2 Survive, said Montavilla Initiative members are “running havoc on houseless people,” slashing their tents, throwing cold water on them, following them around. “They’re all about getting [homeless] people out of the neighborhood,” he said.

Mubarak later acknowledged, however, that he had not witnessed the incidents himself, and had no proof that they were committed by Montavilla Initiative. “This is happening in the neighborhood to those people, but we don’t know for sure that it’s Montavilla Initiative,” he said.

Of 15 homeless people interviewed for this article, many said they’re aware of what they call the “neighborhood watchers.” One voiced support, but most said they were afraid of them. They don’t seem to differentiate between the new, Montavilla Initiative patrols and the ones the neighborhood association used to do...

More.

Young and Homeless in Rural America

It's hard out there. 

At the New York Times, "Most social services come through the schools — but it can be impossible to get to them":

One evening in June, Scott Cooper, a high school football coach in rural southern Ohio, received a text from Blake, one of his linebackers. Blake, who was 17, would miss practice the next day, and so would his brother Lee Jr., who was 15. Another text followed with an explanation: Their family had to move, and right away. They didn’t know where, but it would probably mean leaving River Valley High School.

In Cooper’s view, the brothers, each soft-spoken, each over six feet tall, had real promise. They’re “good kids,” he said, “very respectful, and their upside as players is very high.” They would show up on weekends to help make goody bags for team fund-raisers or sandwiches for a charity event. Sometimes they would stay after scrimmages with their mom, dad, little sister and two younger brothers, helping Cooper’s wife hand out hot dogs from a flowered crock pot until the sky streaked pink and the stadium lights popped on.

The family, including an older brother who had graduated from high school, had left their last home suddenly as well, just 18 months earlier. Before moving to Gallia County, they lived in Portsmouth, about an hour’s drive west, where the boys’ father, Lee, worked in landscaping and their mother, LeAnn, collected workers’ compensation after injuring her back as a home health aide. With a population of about 20,000, Portsmouth was hit particularly hard by the opioid epidemic and its fallout. The family rented a government-subsidized house between an abandoned building and a house where drug deals took place at all hours, LeAnn said. The neighbors rummaged through their trash and dumped needles and buckets of human waste in their yard. The sexual trafficking of children for drugs had become a significant local problem. Fearing for their safety, the family fled in December 2020. (I have used middle names or initials to protect the privacy of the families I met.)

Once they left subsidized housing, the family, like an increasing number of Americans, struggled to find a place that they could afford. They crowded in with LeAnn’s mother, then her sister, and as they searched, the children tried to keep up with their studies at their old schools. They had switched to remote learning during the pandemic, but rural internet access is spotty, and they often couldn’t log on. After three months, the family gave up on finding a place of their own and reluctantly moved to Gallia County, to live with Lee’s dad. Lee had a very troubled relationship with his father, and the family was not optimistic about the move. “It was a last resort,” LeAnn said grimly.

For a while, the arrangement worked better than expected. The kids enrolled in new schools, with Blake and Lee Jr. landing at River Valley High. They got good grades, and Blake wowed everyone with his beautiful tenor voice in show choir. In the spring, he started dating a girl he met in rehearsals for a school production of “Bye Bye Birdie.” Over time, LeAnn said, they “got back into who they used to be.”

But the situation with Lee’s father became volatile. The night Blake texted Cooper, his grandfather had thrown the family out. They had nowhere to go. Cooper wanted to help but didn’t know where to start. He asked the principal what to do, and he said: Ask Sandy. She’ll know.

Sandra Plantz, an administrator at Gallia County Local Schools for more than 20 years, oversees areas as diverse as Title I reading remediation and federal grants for all seven of the district’s schools, including River Valley High. In recent years, though, she has leaned in hard on a role that is overlooked in many districts: homeless liaison. Her district serves just under 3,000 students but covers some 450 square miles of an area that doesn’t offer much in the way of a safety net beyond the local churches. The county has no family homeless shelters, and those with no place to go sometimes end up sleeping in the parking lot of the Walmart or at the hospital emergency room. As homelessness increased in the county in recent years, Sandra and her husband, Kevin, a juvenile probation officer, found themselves at the center of an informal advocacy team.

In 2018, Kevin and a few other local law-enforcement agents started a group they called Code 10 Ministries to raise money to pay for motel stays for families in immediate need of shelter. When Cooper reached out to Sandra, she asked Kevin to have Code 10 pay for two rooms for two nights for Blake’s family at the Travelodge, a grim hotel across from the county fairgrounds.

Sandra then introduced the family to the process of applying for HUD housing. Subsidized housing from HUD is effectively a lottery; nationally there are only 36 units available for every 100 families who qualify, and the requirements can be hard to navigate. Plantz told them that purchasing their own motel room could set back the clock on when they could qualify as “HUD homeless” — vulnerable enough for long enough to be eligible for housing assistance. She found a woman from her church who would pay for a few more nights instead.

No one could afford to keep paying for the motel rooms, but neither did anyone want to see the family move to a tent in a park, which was an option they had been weighing. Cooper’s wife wanted to let the littlest children sleep at their house, but Plantz advised that this, too, could compromise their status as officially homeless. Cooper had an old camper he was fixing up for the county fair in August — just to get out of the sun on long days — and he offered it to the family. It had no water, working bathroom or propane tank for the stove. The oldest boys had to duck their heads every time they stood up, and they all slept on the floor or in the family’s minivan. June became July, then August, and no better housing option emerged. When the new school year began, Blake and Lee Jr. headed back to River Valley High — and a few weeks later, the family finally moved into HUD housing.

Families like Blake’s don’t fit easily into the “homeless industrial complex,” as some advocates for homeless youth and families have taken to calling the funding mechanisms, rules and priorities that determine the fates of millions of Americans who struggle with housing insecurity every year. The system is focused largely on adults experiencing homelessness in cities, and it is not well equipped to address the types of homelessness experienced by children and families, especially in rural areas. The limited data that exists suggests that rural students face homelessness in roughly the same proportion as their urban counterparts — and with far less in the way of a support system. In this vacuum of resources, schools sometimes offer the only form of help available to homeless families. Over the course of reporting in rural Ohio, I spoke with school officials, homeless advocates, students and their families. I met young people living in trailers that stank of sewage, mothers sexually harassed by predatory landlords, families who could not take their children to the doctor because they could not afford gas for the long trip. For all of them, the stakes of precarious housing were high. Homeless students have the worst educational outcomes of any group, the lowest attendance, the lowest scores on standardized tests, the lowest graduation rates. They all face the same cruel paradox: Students who do not have a stable place to live are unable to attend school regularly, and failing to graduate from high school is the single greatest risk factor for future homelessness...

Homeless People Cleared Out from Santa Ana River Trail

Brutal.

At LAT, "'It's been a night from hell': Homeless pushed out of Santa Ana River face uncertain futures": 

Lisa Weber pushed her red-rimmed glasses higher on the bridge of her nose Thursday morning as she pondered how best to move her belongings off the dirt trail she has called home for months.
Her blue eyes seemed to show a glimmer of hope in contrast with her doleful expression. A friend living in a tent farther down the trail passed by and waved.

Like other parts of California, Orange County has seen an uptick in its homeless population in recent years. Scores of homeless people who have set up camp in the past year along the quiet trail overlooking the Santa Ana River in Fountain Valley feel they’ve found safety and camaraderie there.

However, beginning Friday, Orange County sheriff’s deputies began evictions at the various homeless camps along the river as part of a crackdown sparked by complaints from nearby residents.

The situation underscores the tension created by the homeless surge in this suburban county, where officials removed bus benches near Disneyland after complaints from merchants and where a massive encampment in the Santa Ana Civic Center has sparked debate.

Many homeless people are now scrambling to figure out where to go next.

The county plans to permanently close the west side of the Santa Ana River flood-control channel between 17th Street in Santa Ana and Adams Avenue in Huntington Beach as it prepares to start maintenance of flood-control district property along the trail, officials have said. That area includes the Fountain Valley encampment.

“I’m on my way out the gate,” Weber said as she looked toward the fence at the entrance to the river trail on Edinger Avenue. “I’m not scared because I have a plan, but I know other people are worried about where to go.”

Weber said she likely will begin sleeping in her Oldsmobile, which she recently bought for $100. The car runs, she said, but not very well. She’s afraid it eventually will be impounded because of child support she owes from decades ago.

But right now, she figures it’s her best option...

More.

Third World Dump: Los Angeles Democrats 'Help' the Homeless with Public Toilets

If you read the New York Times' piece from the other day, "End of Apartheid in South Africa?", you would have noticed that black South Africans still live overwhelming in the poverty-infested "townships," one of the key institutions of apartheid. One of the photos at the story showed rows of porta-potties spread along garbage-strewn streets.

Well, it turns out Los Angeles Democrats have a Third World hellhole to emulate.

At the Los Angles Times, "L.A. adds more public toilets as homeless crisis grows":

Los Angeles officials have debated for decades how best to provide for one of the most basic needs of homeless people.

For those camped in the 50-block skid row district, the streets have been an open-air restroom — with only nine toilets available overnight in recent months to as many as 1,800 people camped on sidewalks.

Over the years, the city would install bathrooms and then haul them away after they were commandeered for drug use and prostitution. Some in downtown also worried the restrooms would give a permanence to the homeless camps, and argued that in the lawless atmosphere of skid row, people would not use them.

But with homelessness at crisis proportions, the first new public toilets on skid row in more than a decade opened Monday.

The action represents a new consensus among many downtown interests about how to provide the essential service on skid row. The restrooms also are expected to help in the fight against a statewide hepatitis A outbreak spread by poor hygiene in homeless camps that has killed more than a dozen people in San Diego.

The Los Angeles facilities will be decidedly different from those in the past, both aesthetically and culturally.

A key will be having full-time attendants, whom activists are calling "ambassadors," to monitor the restrooms and make people feel welcome. Homeless advocates also hope to have a snack stand and a bench for resting and chatting with friends, as well as provide feminine hygiene products, which are in short supply on skid row.

The new approach comes as the border between skid row and the rest of downtown is shifting. High-end development is rising at skid row's doorstep, and the tent cities that once were largely limited to skid row are spreading to other parts of the city.

"In other places, the bathrooms might be seen as something that's going to attract certain behaviors or people," said Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council director Nate Cormier, a South Park resident. "We have so many people under those conditions, we're all looking any way we can to turn the tide and deal with the crisis."

The latest $450,000 facility is modest — eight toilets and six showers, operating four days a week, in a trailer on a city-owned parking lot sandwiched between two homeless housing and service agencies. In addition to attendants, the toilets will be monitored by a maintenance crew and security, which organizers hope will forestall the problems that so long soured skid row bathroom politics.

A January expansion will increase the number of showers and toilets and add laundry facilities, officials said.

At the formal opening Monday morning, Mayor Eric Garcetti underlined the community’s role in the project.

"It is for decades that this community has cried out for the need for public restrooms," Garcetti said at the event, which featured a bongo and guitar trio and a dozen other city and county officials. "We know here that this is one step, but it is a critical step."

The celebratory atmosphere was broken when a skid row activist who worked on the project tore up the city certificate of appreciation that Garcetti had handed him.

"It's 10 years late and three times short," General Dogon, a member of the Los Angeles Community Action Network, an anti-poverty group, said as television cameras rolled. "This ain't nothing to what we laid out and what we need."

At the photo at the piece, "Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti tours the new Skid Row Community ReFresh Spot hygiene center."

We should dump his head in a public toilet and see how he likes it, the ghoul.

Los Angeles' Homelessness Crisis is a National Disgrace

The L.A. Times begins a series of editorials on the city's homeless crisis today.

It's a thoughtful piece, putting a lot of things in context, including recent local voter initiatives to fund new programs and housing to alleviate the crisis.

See, "Los Angeles’ homelessness crisis is a national disgrace":

"Years of infighting, mixed messages and failures of political will on homelessness must come to an end." https://t.co/ycV8YpVvg0

— L.A. Times Opinion (@latimesopinion) February 25, 2018

How did we get here? From the founding of this newspaper in 1881, the pages of The Times have been filled with stories of those we have called, at various times, vagrants, hobos, tramps, transients and drifters. And for as long as there have been homeless people, there has been a tendency to blame the victims themselves for their condition — to see their failure to thrive as an issue of character, of moral weakness, of laziness. Since the “deinstitutionalization” of the mentally ill in the second half of the 20th century, and the subsequent failure of government to provide the promised outpatient services for those who had been released, the problem has grown significantly worse.

Today, a confluence of factors is driving people onto the streets. The shredding of the safety net in Washington and here in California is one. (Consider the inexcusable shortage of federal Section 8 vouchers for subsidized low-income housing, or the dismally low level of “general relief payments” for the county’s neediest single adults.)

At the same time, California is experiencing a severe housing shortage. Gentrification is taking more and more once-affordable rental units off the L.A. market, and restrictive zoning laws along with high construction costs and anti-development sentiment make new affordable units hard to build. Over the last six years, the rent for a studio apartment in Los Angeles has climbed 92%, according to UCLA law professor emeritus Gary Blasi, so that even people who have jobs can find themselves living on the streets after a rent spike or an unexpected crisis. As Blasi notes: “In America, housing is a commodity. If you can afford it, you have it; if you can’t, you don’t.”

Contrary to popular belief, the homeless in Los Angeles are not mostly mentally ill or drug addicted, raving or matted-haired or frightening — although a sizable minority meet some of those descriptions. They are not mostly people who drifted in from other states in search of a comfy climate in which to sponge off of others; the overwhelming majority have lived in the region for years. Today, a greater and greater proportion of people living on the streets are there because of bad luck or a series of mistakes, or because the economy forgot them — they lost a job or were evicted or fled an abusive marriage just as the housing market was growing increasingly unforgiving.

It will surprise no one to learn that it is the most vulnerable among us who usually end up without a place to live. According to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, more than 5,000 of the county’s 58,000 homeless people are children and more than 4,000 are elderly. About one-third are mentally ill. Some 40% are African American. Also heavily represented: Veterans. The disabled. Young people from the county’s overwhelmed juvenile justice system and its foster care programs. Men and women just released from jail, without the tools or skills needed for reentering society. Patients released from public hospitals — often with untreated cancers, infections, heart disease or diabetes. Victims of domestic violence.

All the great social issues of American society play out in homelessness — inequality, racial injustice, poverty, violence, sexism. Naturally, life expectancy for the homeless is short: about 47 years, according to skid row doctor Susan Partovi, compared with 78 in the population as a whole...

RTWT.

False Twitter Memes About Homeless Encampment Along the Santa Ana River Bike Trail

I've written about the O.C.'s homeless problem a few times now, and it's not because of "left-wing socialism," as at least a couple of commenters have argued on Twitter. There's a viral video of the homeless camp along the bike trail near Anaheim Stadium, and some tweeps are claiming that these are migrant camps with "refugees." That's just not the case. These are regular urban homeless encampments, and from what I've learned you've got the full range of people residing in them. The most common cause of homelessness is the lack of affordable housing. And usually the homeless are those with severe mental illness, people who normally refuse offers of temporary shelter (because they'll lose their freedom and be told what to do and how to live).

Unfortunately, in our tribal political era, fake memes aren't the exclusive domain of your political enemies. Sometimes people on your own side push false narratives, pernicious narratives. And this bothers me.

This person below, Ryan Saavedra, supposedly a "reporter" at the Daily Wire, did not respond to my tweet nor remove or make corrections to his comments.

Oh well. I'm a positivist conservative. I still believe in the truth. Truth should win out. In the end, conservatives will win when truth wins, so I'm sticking with it.

It is not. It’s a homeless camp next to Anaheim Stadium. Anaheim’s about as capitalist a city you’ll see in California. The problem is mental health and lack of jobs and affordable housing. Stop spreading fake memes. #TheOC https://t.co/bUVRGKg980

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) January 17, 2018

This video was taken in Orange County, California recently.

It is over 10-minutes long, only 2:20 can be uploaded to Twitter.

This is the result of socialism and left-wing politics. pic.twitter.com/8BYWuXo0ly

— Ryan Saavedra 🇺🇸 (@RealSaavedra) January 16, 2018

Clearing Venice Beach (VIDEO)

Kinda harsh evictions, actually. 

The police and city workers were rousting homeless folks at 2:00am, for supposedly as that time there were few other people around. That said, it seems to me evicting the homeless at that time of morning is a form of harassment and terrorism. 

It's gotta be done, of course, but a little more humanity for these folks, many of whom have psychiatric health issues. Sheesh.

At LAT, "Block by block, tent by tent, city crews remove homeless campers from Venice Beach."

Ursula was asleep on a beanbag under an umbrella on a patch of sand, just feet from the public bathrooms on Venice Beach when three LAPD officers shined flashlights on her and told her to move. It was just after 2 a.m. Thursday.

She told them she’d been given a hotel room the day before and had come back for the shopping carts teeming with possessions she left behind. But the effort left her too tired to return to the hotel.

“You’re going to have to get up and exit this area,” one officer said — as sanitation workers stood off to the side, ready to sort her belongings from trash.

“The park is closed.”

For more than three hours, a crew of about a dozen Los Angeles sanitation and recreation and parks workers accompanied by several officers from the Los Angeles Police Department went to work on Ocean Front Walk, sweeping up detritus from one portion of a homeless encampment that has set Venice on edge for months.

A tarp here, a blanket there. Bottles and cans and other consumer waste. But after all was said and done, after the eastern horizon had begun to glow with the impending dawn, they had moved only two people — Ursula and a man who had been reluctant to leave behind his paintings. The rest had left earlier in the week.

It was a case study in how difficult, and complicated, it can be to move unhoused people when the goal is to avoid the kind of blunt-force dispersal that the city carried out this spring at Echo Park Lake.

The crews had come back for a second consecutive morning, mopping up after last week’s deadline to clear the southern portion of the homeless camps from Windward to Park avenues, a stretch of about 650 yards. St. Joseph Center reported that it moved 72 people from the boardwalk to shelter or housing last week. City Councilman Mike Bonin, who represents Venice, said Thursday that about 90 people had been given shelter of some sort...

Still more at that top link.

 And I guess things didn't go so well. See, "L.A. delays the next phase of removing homeless people from Venice boardwalk."

Detroit Couple Hoped to Make It Big in Hollywood, Now They're Homeless

Dashed hopes on the hard streets of L.A.

At the Los Angeles Times, "They came to L.A. to chase a Hollywood dream. Two weeks later, they were homeless":

YES, LA DREAM ISN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE. They came to L.A. to chase a Hollywood dream. Two weeks later, they were homeless. Powerful ⁦@LATimescitybeat⁩ column https://t.co/nQp8jIbvYu

— Shelby Grad (@shelbygrad) October 19, 2019

So many people come to L.A. carrying little else but big dreams. One misstep, one con, one stroke of bad luck can be all it takes to derail them.

I recently met a young couple from Detroit whose journey here started with great hope.

They arrived last spring in possession of a promise, $800, two backpacks and two duffel bags.

The promise was what had prompted them to leave home. But it was broken that first day, before they left LAX.

Their interactions in our city then began to fray so fast that two weeks later they were sleeping on our sidewalks.

I asked them if I could tell their story in part to remind us all how swiftly disaster can strike, but also as a nudge to contemplate how we treat others — our newcomers, our most vulnerable, those we routinely write off.

Why tell a person you’ll help them if really you won’t? Some people like to toy, cats pawing at mice.

In Detroit, Loxk Calhoun (pronounced Lock, born DaShawn), had been scraping by for two years on his own since his mother kicked him out at 18. He was thrilled when someone in the music business encouraged him to come to L.A. He describes himself as an audio engineer who also writes music and raps and performs. He wants to be better known. The guy from L.A. said if Loxk just flew out here, he’d put him up and help make that happen.

But Loxk got here and he didn’t. He offered no help at all. When Loxk called from LAX, he said he’d be out of town for a long time.

Loxk and his girlfriend, Bri Meilbeck, who just turned 24, suddenly had only each other. They were novice travelers. They’d been together just one month. In a giant city, they had no one else whose support they knew they could count on.

In a fix, Loxk called another contact on his phone — a music producer he hadn’t yet met. He was relieved when this virtual stranger said that he and Bri could come stay. But the West Hollywood house they arrived at, which looked like a mansion on the outside, turned out to have bedroom after bedroom crammed with bunk beds. Bri and Loxk didn’t know how many there were or even whose house it was.

They also didn’t know that the producer to whom they had given some money owed rent — until one night after dark they got the word that the landlord wanted them gone at once.

This was the moment when they slipped into homelessness and slipped out of the world as they’d known it. They were the only ones who noticed. They had just $50 left.

As they strained to lug all they owned out the door, they knew that they would have to own less. At a dumpster, they shed a lot of favorite clothes, including Bri’s pink Adidas track suit.

Where to go was a problem. They didn’t know L.A.

But there had been a moment during those early days when they were feeling so overwhelmed by the strangeness of it all that they needed to get away and be alone. So they’d splurged on a cheap room at the Las Palmas Hotel in Hollywood, which in “Pretty Woman” is where Julia Roberts lived in the tough times before Richard Gere.

They’d liked that little brush with fame, though there’d be no fairy-tale rescue for them. Now pushed out of the house, they went back to the Las Palmas and scaled the fence of the park next door. Trying not to be seen, they avoided the playground’s rubber mats and lay down on pavement under Bri’s faux fur coat. All that night, she kept her eyes open.

A couple of years earlier, Bri had gotten very close to finishing college. She’d had her act together. She’d never imagined this.

“I was very scared. You could hear people yelling and screaming. I thought someone was going to rob us,” she told me. On her phone, she searched the discussions on the social news website Reddit, typing in phrases: “I just became homeless,” “Where do homeless people go in L.A.?”

Early the next morning on Venice Beach, the two bummed a smoke from a homeless man with a dog. He offered up tips for their new life.

Wear fresh socks to avoid infections. Go to St. Joseph Center for help. He walked around with them looking for a tarp and pieces of cardboard for their bedding.

That night and for a few nights to come, until they could get their own, he let them sleep in his little tent, squeezed in with him and his German shepherd, in front of the Public Storage at 4th and Rose avenues...

More.

Beverly Hills Accused of Running Homeless Man Out of Town with Private Security

And the guy was apparently well liked.

At LAT:

Have Beverly Hills “greenshirts” run a homeless man out of town? https://t.co/Kiw300hMR5 pic.twitter.com/9N0mps7UGA

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) July 5, 2016

George Saville slept on a cot in a downtown homeless shelter. In the morning, he would catch the bus to Beverly Hills.

There, Saville’s wit and wide knowledge of news, entertainment and sports drew a circle of admirers, including a half-dozen people who took their morning coffee at Urth Caffe.

The cafe owners supported him. Sports stars such as Lamar Odom and Jason Kidd stopped by for daily tidbits of information. Arab royals from the Beverly Wilshire Hotel asked him to pose in their selfies, Saville’s supporters said.

“He’s smart; he has historical references,” said Maria Belknap, a business manager and Urth patron. “He knows the L.A. Times and New York Times inside and out and he can talk about everything.”

“At best he is charming, at worst he is harmless,” said television host Larry King, who eats breakfast nearby and has slipped him cash on occasion. “Every community has a panhandler, and Beverly Hills is not so far above it.”

City officials, however, call Saville an opportunist and “aggressive panhandler” and considered drawing up a “shame list” to pressure cafe owners to stop catering to him.

After a run-in with a city-funded private patrol, known to locals as “greenshirts,” Saville was charged with two misdemeanors and ordered to stay away from the restaurant. Saville’s friends call the charges bogus and merely a ploy to drive the 57-year-old homeless man out of town.

“What you’ve mounted is an extrajudicial squad of greenshirts [who] are there to clear the streets of undesirables,” David Lyle, president of a television and digital content producers association, told the Beverly Hills human rights commission in May.

At a separate hearing, James Latta, the city’s human services administrator, countered that, “if it’s someone that wanted our help and needed help, we’ve got it for him. But this individual doesn’t want it.”

Saville’s clash with officials raises questions about how far cities can go to clear public spaces of indigents — and what obligation, if any, homeless people have to accept services and shelter...

L.A.'s Skidrow Homeless Exploited to Buy iPhones at Pasadena Apple Store

This is sick.

At KTLA, "Homeless People Hired to Buy iPhones for Businessman in Pasadena (VIDEO)."

And at LAT, "Homeless used to buy iPhones in Pasadena left stranded, unpaid (VIDEO)":

Fights break out at Pasadena Apple store as iPhone frenzy gets out of hand; 2 arrested. http://t.co/9KEi20wYax pic.twitter.com/s309pa8Ld3

— Jim Roberts (@nycjim) September 20, 2013

Dozens of people picked up on skid row by an enterprising man hoping to secure a load of new iPhones said they were left unpaid and stranded at the Pasadena Apple store.

Dominoe Moody, 43, said he was taken to Pasadena from a downtown Los Angeles homeless mission with several van-loads of people to wait in line overnight for the latest iPhone.

He was promised $40, but said he wasn’t paid because after handing the man the iPhone, the man was taken away by police when people became upset with him.

“It didn’t go right. I stood out here all night,” he said, adding that he has no way to get home.

Pasadena Police Lt. Jason Clawson confirmed that a fight broke out about 9 a.m. as a man left the store with multiple iPhones.

Other people who were in line and hired by the man began fighting with him because they said they weren’t being paid enough, Clawson said. Police escorted the man from the scene, he said.

Most people weren’t paid by the man, Moody said, estimating that 70 to 80 were recruited and driven to the store to wait in line.

“They need to bring him back ... to pick up the people that he brought here,” said Vivian Fields, 49. “We have no way to get home.”

Fields, who is in a wheelchair, said she was approached by recruiters at a homeless shelter on skid row and arrived in Pasadena on Thursday about 7 p.m. She waited overnight at the store.

Pasadena police are not investigating the incident, Clawson said.

"It's not a police issue. It's a business issue," he said.

Actually, it's an exploitation issue.

Pisses me off. Someone should pop the f-ker who stiffed these people.

Oakland Eco-Fascists Slammed for Caring More About Baby Herons Than City's Homeless

You have to read to believe it, but then again, it's Oakland, right next door to Berkeley, a.k.a, Moscow by the Bay.

At the New York Times, "Birds Leave Nest Involuntarily, and Oakland Fumes":

OAKLAND, Calif. — It started as a well-intentioned attempt by the United States Postal Service here to rid its trucks of bird droppings: A tree trimmer was hired to prune the lush ficus trees that grow next to the post office’s parking lot, not far from City Hall. But in the course of the job, five baby black-crowned night herons fell from their nests and were injured.

At first there were reports that the birds had been fed into a wood chipper — not true — and from there the story took on a life of its own. Residents and city officials called for avian justice. Bird lovers from France, Romania, Serbia, Sweden, Ukraine and even New Jersey signed an online petition with the headline “Oakland Chainsaw Massacre” that called on the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to press charges against the perpetrators.

They have gotten their wish and more: The tree trimmer, Ernesto Pulido, 26, is staring at a possible federal charge of violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918.

“I’m not a gangster,” said a contrite Mr. Pulido, who has visited the bird shelter where the victims are recuperating and voluntarily paid $2,500 for their medical care. “I’m just a guy who’s making a living day to day.”

Since the incident in early May, Mr. Pulido has moved his pregnant wife and young daughter to another house, he said, because he was receiving threats. He added that he loved animals and was raised in Mexico with more animals than people.

But in Oakland, a city that has been rapidly gentrifying, concern for the birds runs very high — higher, some people complain, than concern for the city’s large homeless population. Downtown Oakland has long been known for its high crime rate and gritty urban feel, despite the recent arrival of young people and food lovers, whose presence has prompted some people to call the city “the new Brooklyn.”

Wendy Jackson, executive director of the East Oakland Community Project, which provides housing for the homeless, said that when people help baby birds, “it feels pure to them.” Their attitude toward homeless adults is less charitable: “They think those adults should be able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” she said. “Often, that is not possible.”

More.

Shoot, they'd murder the homeless before they'd lift a finger against those birds.

Environmentalists are fascist totalitarians. This story is utterly disgusting.

America's Extreme Poverty

From Professor Angus Deaton, at the New York Times, "The U.S. Can No Longer Hide From Its Deep Poverty Problem":

This is a horrifying read from Angus Deaton. Alas, I fear he underestimates the ability of Americans to hide from reality. https://t.co/tpODq5u1yc

— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) January 25, 2018

You might think that the kind of extreme poverty that would concern a global organization like the United Nations has long vanished in this country. Yet the special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, recently made and reported on an investigative tour of the United States.

Surely no one in the United States today is as poor as a poor person in Ethiopia or Nepal? As it happens, making such comparisons has recently become much easier. The World Bank decided in October to include high-income countries in its global estimates of people living in poverty. We can now make direct comparisons between the United States and poor countries.

Properly interpreted, the numbers suggest that the United Nations has a point — and the United States has an urgent problem. They also suggest that we might rethink how we assist the poor through our own giving.

According to the World Bank, 769 million people lived on less than $1.90 a day in 2013; they are the world’s very poorest. Of these, 3.2 million live in the United States, and 3.3 million in other high-income countries (most in Italy, Japan and Spain).

As striking as these numbers are, they miss a very important fact. There are necessities of life in rich, cold, urban and individualistic countries that are less needed in poor countries. The World Bank adjusts its poverty estimates for differences in prices across countries, but it ignores differences in needs.

An Indian villager spends little or nothing on housing, heat or child care, and a poor agricultural laborer in the tropics can get by with little clothing or transportation. Even in the United States, it is no accident that there are more homeless people sleeping on the streets in Los Angeles, with its warmer climate, than in New York.

The Oxford economist Robert Allen recently estimated needs-based absolute poverty lines for rich countries that are designed to match more accurately the $1.90 line for poor countries, and $4 a day is around the middle of his estimates. When we compare absolute poverty in the United States with absolute poverty in India, or other poor countries, we should be using $4 in the United States and $1.90 in India.

Once we do this, there are 5.3 million Americans who are absolutely poor by global standards. This is a small number compared with the one for India, for example, but it is more than in Sierra Leone (3.2 million) or Nepal (2.5 million), about the same as in Senegal (5.3 million) and only one-third less than in Angola (7.4 million). Pakistan (12.7 million) has twice as many poor people as the United States, and Ethiopia about four times as many.

This evidence supports on-the-ground observation in the United States. Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer have documented the daily horrors of life for the several million people in the United States who actually do live on $2 a day, in both urban and rural America. Matthew Desmond’s ethnography of Milwaukee explores the nightmare of finding urban shelter among the American poor.

It is hard to imagine poverty that is worse than this, anywhere in the world. Indeed, it is precisely the cost and difficulty of housing that makes for so much misery for so many Americans, and it is precisely these costs that are missed in the World Bank’s global counts.

Of course, people live longer and have healthier lives in rich countries. With only a few (and usually scandalous) exceptions, water is safe to drink, food is safe to eat, sanitation is universal, and some sort of medical care is available to everyone. Yet all these essentials of health are more likely to be lacking for poorer Americans. Even for the whole population, life expectancy in the United States is lower than we would expect given its national income, and there are places — the Mississippi Delta and much of Appalachia — where life expectancy is lower than in Bangladesh and Vietnam.

Beyond that, many Americans, especially whites with no more than a high school education, have seen worsening health: As my research with my wife, the Princeton economist Anne Case, has demonstrated, for this group life expectancy is falling; mortality rates from drugs, alcohol and suicide are rising; and the long historical decline in mortality from heart disease has come to a halt...

Keep reading.

The other day, over at my local Ralph's supermarket on Culver and Walnut in Irvine, I saw a young woman with a baby panhandling for money in the parking lot. The baby was in a chest sling, sleeping; the woman was holding a sign, asking for money, which I couldn't read very well. I didn't even flinch. I walked over to her and asked if she and the baby had enough to eat. She said yes and held out her hand, showing some of the dollar bills folks had given her. I gave her a couple of bucks and urged her to get inside and get some food.

I remember when living in Santa Barbara, the staff at the local homeless mission told us not to give cash handouts to the city's downtown homeless people. The mission gave us food tickets that the homeless could use if they went down the organization's main shelter, which was on the south side of Highway 101. I guess a lot of panhandlers weren't buying food with the cash, but rather alcohol, drugs, or who knows what? But the beggars are persistent and ubiquitous, especially on State Street downtown. You want to help when you can, until you become so tired of the solicitations you give the beggars a wide berth (and I did that sometimes).

In any case, now I've been thinking about the homeless camp in Anaheim, and debating whether I should go over there myself to do a photo-blog. I'm not as motivated on this stuff as I used to be, although I'm just curious to check out the encampments. Many of the people there told the police they weren't moving, and it's a miles-long encampment, so I doubt we've heard the last of the news from that location.

And of course the homeless issue is just one facet of poverty in America; it's the most visible one, and gets a lot of media attention, especially given the current scale of the problem and the community backlash. As longtime readers will recall, I used to live in Fresno, and anyone who drives up Highway 99, and stops by and drives through some of the small migrant farming towns, which routinely have poverty and unemployment rates in the 30 and 40 percent range, knows what I'm talking about. It's hard out there. In California public policy is so bad it's a national disgrace. Remember, the so-called bullet train is scheduled for billions of dollars in cost overruns and may never be completed. How much money is being wasted on these high-theory policy programs, which mostly are focused on combating "climate change" as opposed to making any person's life better, to say nothing of relieving poverty? It makes me mad.

Note something else about Professor Deaton's essay: It reaffirms President Trump's nationalist focus of making our own country great again. We should be working in fact to help our own people more than we're helping other populations in other countries around the globe. Thinking about his findings, and his exhortations for citizens to give more, Deaton writes:

None of this means that we should close out “others” and look after only our own. International cooperation is vital to keeping our globe safe, commerce flowing and our planet habitable.

But it is time to stop thinking that only non-Americans are truly poor. Trade, migration and modern communications have given us networks of friends and associates in other countries. We owe them much, but the social contract with our fellow citizens at home brings unique rights and responsibilities that must sometimes take precedence, especially when they are as destitute as the world’s poorest people.

What to do?

Well, don't rely on the Democrats to make any serious efforts to combat poverty and improve economic performance at home. That's not the agenda of the "intersectional" left right now. This radical intersectionality finds its home among the coastal urban elites in big cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, New York, Boston, and elsewhere. The poster child for the urban elitist mindset is California State Senator Scott Wiener, notorious for authoring legislation decriminalizing HIV-infected blood transfusions. He's also one of state's leaders behind the urban density movement, cosponsoring a recent bill seeking to change California's zoning laws to allow high-density and high-rise housing near urban public transportation centers. The rationale? To reduce "climate change," what else? If you build more units near transportation centers, less people will rely on private vehicles, with less pollution, so the theory goes. But the types of folks targeted by these policies are high-income tech- and cultural-sector workers who help drive up property values, already high property values, and keep low-income workers out and the poor down. Leftist policies are driving the unaffordable housing trends in the state. (See Berkeleyside for more, "Berkeley mayor on Wiener-Skinner housing bill: ‘A declaration of war against our neighborhoods’.")

You're going to have poverty. You're going to have it in a market economy. Those times when we've seen dramatic reductions in the poverty rate have been during periods of robust economic growth. We're currently seeing something of this right now, with the black unemployment rate falling to its historic low in December. (This happened during the late-1990s too, when the first dot com boom pushed national unemployment down to under 4 percent.) A rising tide lifts all boats, I heard somebody say.

Lots more could be added here, but I'll have to save more commentary for later.

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