Look...maybe you have a low opinion of him.. maybe you see him as slacking off from his Mayorly duties or decrees or whatever he should, in your eyes, be doing, fine... and I'm sorry for this wall of text but I just cannot allow a comment like that to not bear my scrutiny.

But just the !!insane!! rate of growth of the homeless in the last two years alone completely changes the game. It appears that, no matter where you look, all throughout the city of Angels is that housing is fucked expensive and in fucked supply.

> The startling jump in homelessness affected every significant demographic group, including youth, families, veterans and the chronically homeless, according to the report. Homeless officials and political leaders pointed to steadily rising housing costs and stagnant incomes as the underlying cause. [0]

I beseech you to be receptive to the idea that the problem goes far far far beyond simply flipping an "enforce preexisting laws" switch, or hiring more blue-suited hardasses that'll shine flashlights into the eyes of the homeless as they weather every night's accompanying total lack of guaranteed security...

Your 2015 article is by Gale Holland -- now compare the urgency of her writing, from earlier in 2017. The title alone is enough to alarm the shit out of you...

Headline: L.A. County homelessness jumps a 'staggering' 23% as need far outpaces housing, new count shows [0]

> Even the homeless veteran population jumped in 2017, marking a backsliding of the gains made last year by city, state and federal programs that slashed the number of homeless veterans by a third. With the number of veterans placed into housing slightly down, the count of 4,828 homeless veterans was up ___ 57%. __ (emphasis mine, but holy shit!)

> “There's no sugarcoating the bad news,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said at a news conference Wednesday where the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority released its report. “We can’t let rents double every year. I was particularly disappointed to see veteran numbers go up.”

> Garcetti called homelessness a problem that has persisted “through administrations, through recessions,” adding, “Our city is in the midst of an extraordinary homelessness crisis that needs an extraordinary response. These men, these women, these children are our neighbors.”

> The Homeless Services Authority linked the worsening problem to the economic stress on renters in the Los Angeles area. More than 2 million households in L.A. and Orange counties have housing costs that exceed 30% of income, according to data from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies included in the report.

> According to the nonprofit California Housing Partnership Corp., median rent, adjusted for inflation, increased more than 30% from 2000 to 2015, while the median income was flat.

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Assume a plain-Jane compound interest growth formula (it's just a sketch, right?), use the rule of 72 with that 23% figure, and bam -- if that's how the process plays out, 3 years will be all it takes to double the number of people out on the street. That can't just be a linear issue of the number in bad situations either - it seems like super-linear complexity headache, with respect to the n = the growing number of disenfranchised people..

- How will you pay for the massive influx of cops necessary to address the doubled homeless population?

- What about the impact on the small businesses or cafes or corner markets and shit that will have a slowly-but-surely drying up of customers?

- Add to that, the ensuing evaporation of taxes funding the city..

- How much you wanna bet we won't have saved up enough to not hurt ourselves in the process of splurging on the whole 2028 Olympics extrava-freakin-ganza. Surely it'll be one of those hyper-spectacular moments in this boring dystopia of ours :)

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And, once again, because it damn well bears worth repeating -- LA's homeless population jumped by 23%... IN THE LAST YEAR ALONE. AND The year prior had a 20% growth rate!!!!! And when they go homeless, it's more often the case of a gradual, year-long descent because of inability to pay, rather than a pinpoint-able, spontaneous event that made your home suddenly unlivable or irretrievable.

Look up the ancient Latin concept of the exiled man, homo saracer - a man whose life is worth so little that he may be murdered, freely and without any and all repercussion. Someone who is totally bereft of even being empathized with...

How can it be that the society can discard people to such tsunamic extent that we barely bat an eye at the fact that these slums share zip codes with the ultra rich and yet live worlds apart. Right at this very moment you are reading this sentence, dozens of wanderers - blacks, whites, latinos, disabled, boys, girls - extremely cautiously stepping along the highway. Petrified by how instantly their bones could be crushed into dust when you share a lane with any of the hundred thousand or so totally fucking insane drivers that live around here. To live like a dog, to be defenselessly curled up to rest their weary souls. To have nowhere to go except for the side of the road where tipsy assholes toss their empty sodas out their passenger side windows...

[0] http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-homeless-count-2...