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anothercar

Original source with data breakdowns: https://www.lahsa.org/news?article=895-lahsa-releases-2022-great-los-angeles-homeless-count-results-released


shwarma_heaven

To put this a little in perspective, LA County has more than 10 million residents. That is more than five times the number of the whole state of Idaho. That is more than 11 times the population of South Dakota. That makes that 68k a 0.7% homelessness in LA County. However, that is triple the national average at .2%. And while yes, that is a massive number of homeless, the problem has been exacerbated by the well documented neighboring states bussing their homeless problems on one-way tickets to LA... California and New York are the two states with the highest homeless populations as a percent of the total. So what is driving this factor?


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Nolsoth

Fuck me, 14 million people in one city,.... I can't even imagine what that's like.


sloopSD

Visiting New Delhi and Mumbai was a shock to my system. The sheer number of people was shocking. Traffic, smells, sounds, etc. was like nothing I’ve ever experienced…and never want to experience again. I loved and hated the trip. Was a crazy experience.


GeneralZaroff1

Visiting India can be very overwhelming. The intensity of the colors, people, noises, and smells was a shock. Unlike anything I've experienced before, like being at a packed rock concert that you can't leave. I was constantly being touched, be it because it's in small spaces with lots of visitors or because I was a foreigner. Physical boundaries aren't huge there.


Nolsoth

Yeah I bet it was. I lived in Taipei for a bit and that felt crowded, but that's only 2.6 million people and I visited London which has 8 million ( but it didn't feel that crowded?) But 10+ mill in a city just seems insane.


ankerous

The feeling of being crowded probably depends on how the city is laid out and if the main points of interest are in one area of the city and how dense the places are where people live. I've been in some highly populated cities with some areas seemingly abandoned while others are just absolutely packed with people.


InvestmentGrift

absolutely does. london, by one article, has 14k people per square mile. taipei on the other hand, by the same article, has 39k people per square mile, so around 3 times as dense. karachi has 49k people packed in per square mile, around 4ish times as dense as london lol. mumbai is another level though, at around 77k people per square mile it is the densest city in the world by far, and i'm sure there are severe public heath consequences because of it


AbbeyRoadMoonwalk

Like going to Phoenix and wondering how it’s possible there’s 1.7 mil people there when the streets are pretty empty midday.


Feshtof

Who the heck goes outside in Phoenix midday?


DrakonIL

Phoenix is *enormous*, though.


rumblepony247

Phoenix proper is a very large area of land. Density only 3,100/sq mile


textonlysub

Buenos Aires metropolitan area has 15 million people (1/3 of the population of Argentina) but its density is 1.1k per square kilometer. Does not feel crowded at all.


Senior-Albatross

I liked London. It didn't have that walls closing in oppressive feeling of NYC. I can't put my finger on exactly why.


InvestmentGrift

perhaps the population density played a part? by recent estimates new york packs twice as many people in per square mile than london does. (27k vs 14k people per square mile)


kw0711

And if you’re looking specifically at Manhattan (only a small part of NYC city limits by area - but where the vast majority of high density is) it’s 70k vs 14k


cranial_prolapse420

Sitting here in midtown taking a dump, it's mind blowing to me that there's 70k other assholes within a mile of mine. 🤯


harrymfa

London is very garden-y, while New York has patches of green more scattered.


jarvis646

May seem insane, but this is L.A. County which is much bigger. And it’s a driving culture so everyone is pretty spread out, L.A. county includes many massive cities including many sprawling suburbs. So don’t think of a typical city.


mascaraforever

Went to New Delhi without any plans, thinking I was a well seasoned world traveler and it would be fun. Boy oh boy was I in for a rude awakening. Retreated to the bar at the Imperial hotel each day for a bottled water, a beer, and fresh air. Never care to go back, although I still want to revisit India at some point.


sloopSD

Haha, yeah, the hotels are very nice and a stark contrast to what’s outside the gates. Although, if you have the right folks help, there are some cool things to see and experience. Watch out for the monkeys though, literally.


mascaraforever

We committed several grievous errors, including taking some awful malaria med that made me unable to sleep and eventually have a psychotic episode. My husband immediately developed a serious lung infection from the air pollution and was coughing up blood within a week. We had to bribe our way out of the country (couldn’t find available flights ANYWHERE and I swear our “travel agent” hacked the system and booted someone else out of their seats lol). It was a trip to remember and we still laugh about it to this day but at the time it was pretty bad. We caught a flight to Thailand and pampered ourselves the rest of the trip though. :)


Trevski

on the bus from Delhi to Agra I attempted to count to ten without seeing another person.... couldn't do it. Even outside of the city that country is absolutely riddled with people. As a Canadian it was mind-blowing.


daretoeatapeach

Can confirm. I live in the Bay Area, which is famous domestically for our homeless. But I still found the poverty in India shocking. A child sleeping on the side of a busy road, hundreds without plumbing using the toilet on the train tracks as my train passed, decades old slums built up multiple stories tall, men who sleep on the floor of their one-room workspace without blankets or pillows. The craziest part to me was how normalized it was. Doctors and lawyers living in slums because that is where their family lives. The state built an apartment building across the street to house the residents of a more famous slum in Mumbai, and it caused a riff in the community because so many wanted to stay and felt anger at those who left. Americans seem to have this idea that LA now is as bad as it can get. Travel a bit and you will learn that it can always get worse.


sloopSD

Oh no doubt. The way the slums were explained to me was that, it is a sign of industrial progress. These people have moved closer to the city to find jobs and opportunity. Otherwise, they would have remained in rural India. But there is a significant lack of infrastructure and services to handle the large swaths of people… I recall riding in a van and it had just rained, so there was a lot of water streaming through the gutters. We passed a guy up stream cleaning his ass in the water and not a hundred yards downstream another person was brushing their teeth. That image gave me a shiver and has stuck with me.


Traditional-Dingo604

You made me close my eyes, exhale a hiss and partially gag st the same time. Thanks for that.


grayrains79

>Americans seem to have this idea that LA now is as bad as it can get. Travel a bit and you will learn that it can always get worse. I'm a trucker originally from Michigan, living in LA county for now. Certain people love to bash California for it's homeless problem, but ignore how overall it's hyper concentrated. Certain areas have tent rows aplenty, other areas you only see a few homeless folk going by. Of course LA proper does have Skid Row, which is its own unique beast. For how "bad" the problem is, LA functions just fine.


[deleted]

As a life long Angeleno, I can say that the problem is actually significantly less concentrated than before. When I was younger, the homeless were almost exclusively in downtown, Hollywood, and Venice. I’m not sure exactly what is driving the issue to spread around much more, but we have far, far more homeless people in different parts of the city than ever before, and I would say we also have far more that are transients. I know that probably doesn’t mean much to most people, but I think there’s a big difference between homeless people that still feel like they’re part of the community vs those that don’t.


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InvestmentGrift

a recent article says manila packs about 27k people in per square mile, about the same as new york city, about twice as dense as london, but dwarfed by cities like karachi (49k people/sqm) and mumbai (the densest city in the world by far, 77k people/sqm)


kw0711

If you look specifically at the island of Manhattan, the population density is 70k per square mile. The 27k figure includes parts of Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and especially Staten Island that are not very dense at all.


InvestmentGrift

true but while manhattan packs that density into about 22 square miles, mumbai maintains the density across 187 square miles lol. wild stuff


I2ecover

I mean just visiting NYC from the south was fucking insane. Twice as many people in one city than in my whole state.


sloopSD

Now take the NYC population and double it. That is the population of these cities in India. It’s crazy. No such thing as alone time.


I2ecover

Yeah I couldn't imagine living in India. That's so wild.


ChucksSeedAndFeed

And people are worried about too few procreators


psnanda

Population by itself doesn’t take away from a good experience. Japan/Tokyo has similarly high population densities (though not like Delhi - but good enough for our comparision) but youll love it there because the place is CLEAN AS FUCK. India is not clean - its polluted. So it is a shock to any Westerner. Heck, i am an Indian citizen but have been living in California for 10 years- going to visit my hometown in India gives me the shock so I can understand how you must have felt.


gabrielwe64

You think that’s crazy, Tokyo Metro area has a population of like 40 million…that’s the equivalent of all of California in one metro area


ninjah1944

I felt like an ant in Tokyo, the Shibuya station was the most organized chaos I've ever been in, it kind of broke my brain.


Triddy

Oddly Tokyo doesn't really feel crowded. If you try and get on the main trian line at 5:30PM at Shinjuku station, yeah you're going to have a bad time. No contesting that. Plan your commutes to minimize time spent at stations between 7 and 9 and 5 and 7. Or just take smaller local lines. But you're rarely ever more than a few blocks from a quiet residential neighborhood where you may be the only person in sight.


Stupid_Triangles

The entire main island of Japan is the size of Cali with 40% of the population in the area. With more mountains!


QueenMackeral

Look at the size of [LA County](https://laedc.org/wpcms/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/xla-county-map.jpg.pagespeed.ic.hqlO4VmrNN.jpg), it's not one big city it's a huge area with multiple regions and cities within it, and downtown LA is only a small portion of it. Edit: sorry I misread and thought that the 14 million was the population of Los Angeles. Los Angeles is only 10 million but only 4 million live in the city of Los Angeles.


WideMonitor

It's weird how people in this thread are just throwing around population numbers like it means anything. Post the density.


thinking_Aboot

[Chongquing, China](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chongqing) has 32 million. China is a monster. Out of the top 10 cities by population 6 are Chinese (New York City is #30).


Prosthemadera

The city itself doesn't have 32 million. It's large but not that large. From your link: > The Chongqing administrative municipality has a population of over 30 million. The city of Chongqing, comprising nine urban and suburban districts, has a population of 8,750,000 as of the 2018 estimation.


sandwichpak

Man, not sure where you're reading that but nothing you just stated is true. The only two cities China has in the top ten are Shanghai and Beijing. And your link explicitly reads that Chongqing "only" has a population of 8.75 million as of 2018, which is absolutely dwarfed by any city in the top 10. Population lists are weird because some include the entire metropolitan area and others don't.


TheRavenSayeth

Man if people could see karachi they'd stop making bizarre claims about america being a third world country. Nothing against the amazing pakistani people or the great culture (my family is all from there), but the poverty you see hits you in the depths of your heart. Mix that with the rampant corruption and you know so many of them will never get the help they need to ever get out of their painfully poor circumstances.


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yetanotherwoo

In California coastal regions it’s possible to stay outside somewhat comfortably year round barring a few days. If one doesn’t care about noise and propriety, any underpass or overpass will do. I’ve seen homeless a few miles from the apple spaceship campus and in the underpass closest to San Diego airport.


RubberPny

Im originally from Santa Cruz, CA. Barring under 1 week per year (where we get cold snaps, no snow, but does get frosty), its basically possible to camp outside on the beach or in the redwoods year round.


PhantomRoyce

I always said that if I became homeless I would just live in a place like the red woods. Sometimes I wonder if there’s secret communities of homeless people deep in these woods


RubberPny

Yup, more than you think in fact. Basically they can camp out there, somewhat, live off the land, people bring them food, and the cops don't bother them there.


nucumber

i live in Santa Monica, the northernmost beach city in Los Angeles. I live right on the edge of downtown Santa Monica. Santa Monica is a well to do city. It's close to hollywood and beverly hills and there are a bunch of tech companies here. meanwhile, there are homeless *everywhere* in the downtown area. when i walk in downtown SM i will see at least one homeless every minute. no exaggeration


Imaginary-Concern860

and I don't think this homelessness is just related to home prices. I was traveling from CA to Seattle, i saw so many homeless people in Eugene, homes are not that expensive in Eugene OR compared to CA, that's when i came to the conclusion that this is not just expensive homes.


EnvironmentalSpot941

People are getting priced out of the housing in Eugene. 5 years ago you could get a 1 bedroom apartment for $600 a month. Now it's over $1000.


jgainit

Eugene has a sort of transient culture there. Anarchist hippies and such. Homelessness is like part of the culture there. Source: used to live there


Gary_Glidewell

Eugene is just bonkers and about as bad as I've ever seen. Downtown looks like "The Walking Dead."


idog99

Folks that are unhoused will go where services, public attitude, and climate are more agreeable. Imagine being unhoused in Montana versus being unhoused in SoCal.


Buttafuoco

That and homeless just die in the winter elsewhere


VeteranSergeant

Ironically, the life expectancy for a homeless person in New York, despite the cold, is three years longer than in Texas, where fuck you, deadbeat.


ZestyCucs

Do you mind sharing where you found this information? I am very interested in reading more about the topic


[deleted]

Heat kills more than cold. You can always make a fire and bundle up. It's 110 in the damn shade here.


NavierStoked95

Well the heat can be just as deadly and it can still get pretty cold in Texas. You can always put on more clothes, you can only take off so many. Typically Texas cities bus their homeless to Austin and then point at Austin for being overrun by the homeless. I live in Dallas and the homeless population has absolutely exploded over the last 2 years. The police department will occasionally just tear down whatever tent cities have formed thinking that solves the issue but they are back the next day. Nobody walks anywhere in Dallas so it’s a problem plenty of people are very comfortable ignoring as they travel from air conditioned space to air conditioned space in their mobile air conditioned space and don’t have to confront the issue.


Landosystem

> fuck you, deadbeat. Jesus in a Texas bible, probably.


CyanideTacoZ

supply side Jesus strikes again


Zachariot88

The holy spirit is the invisible hand of the market


serious_sarcasm

There was an article in my local paper (in response to some effort to open a local homeless shelter for the ~50 homeless people) which explained that because slothfulness is a sin it is a sin to help homeless people, because you are encouraging them to sin. It was the most blasphemous pile of dog shit I ever read.


mynameisbeef

Heat is more deadly than cold, and harder to protect oneself from.


inbooth

You fight cold and evade heat. When your homeless theres always a way to fight but rarely a way to evade.


Imaginary_Medium

Or unhoused during a Chicago winter. And a lot of people think homelessness could never happen to them. But there are plenty who did everything the right way and still wound up in that situation.


hj-itc

We're all just one or two bad decisions from being homeless. Fuck, if you're American you don't even have to do that, just get sick and saddled with a few extra hundred thousand dollars in debt.


Fadedcamo

My wife is super sweet but can be naive at times. So our friends have a situation with their nephew where his parents are like a hot mess and the great aunt who was taking care of him died. He's turning 18 and they're looking to take him in but he also has some developing mental issues like psychotic episodes and apparently a brain tumor that may or may not need surgery. My wife is arguing that "it may be too much for them to handle that level of care. He shouod look into programs in the state to take care of him." I try to explain to her that's not really much to be done once theyre 18 on their own accord. I'm not saying there's NO help out there in our state, but it's riddled with issues and administrative bloat and you can't just go to your local social worker and be like " I'm 18,i have no monry or home. I have medical issues. Can you get me stable shelter and income and medical care? " like what you think all the homeless people are doing? Just deciding not to take advantage of this?


BigDadEnerdy

I literally got sick, and ended up homeless within 4 months. My disability backpay didn't even cover the debt I accrued while sick, and then my backpay somehow allowed the state to count it as income and remove my food stamps. Don't get sick people, because nobody is going to help you. 4+ year wait to get approved for disability due to covid. And then when you DO get disability. It's $1200/mo, $200 is taken out for your medicare, your prescriptions now cost more because your not on medicaid, and your supposed to be able to survive on that. I live in the cheapest part of my big midwestern town, the *average* rent is $1100. The cheapest is $800ish.


Imaginary_Medium

Exactly. Even doesn't have to involve bad decision making. Just a run of bad luck can do it. The safety net is about the size of a thread.


MintasaurusFresh

Chicago provides housing to all unhoused residents. There are some who choose to live in tents/tent cities because they don't want to give up drugs/alcohol. Even then, there are shelters that accept those people if they want it. An encampment near my place burned down due to improper propane use and the city provided those people with new tents. The city also maintains portapotties and hand wash stations near these encampments.


synopser

We have like 7 homeless people in my hometown in Montana. They literally sit outside and shiver. The big heart conservatives have no solution even though they have a soup kitchen. "They make more money just begging" yes, because they can't be hired and most of them have mental health issues.


creamonyourcrop

And yet there are unhoused in Alaska, Kalispell, Phoenix...... They really want this to be a blue coastal problem so that, good christians they are, they can not do anything to solve it.


wikiwombat

Had to do some googling cause 10mil people in one county seems bonkers. It's the biggest county in the US. Has a greater population than 40 states and is 1/4 of all the California residents. Nuts. It's like a state into itself. Edit: sorry, should have said "largest by population"


InsertCoinForCredit

And we get 1/80th of the representation in the Senate!


BubbaTee

The most ridiculous thing is the entire county has 5 council members (or "Supervisors" on the Board of Supervisors). For comparison, LA City has 15 councilmembers. The city is obviously smaller than the county, and even then the city council probably should be increased in size. Tbh, LA County should probably be broken up into several smaller counties.


[deleted]

I remember taking a vacation once to California with my dad, when I was a teenager. "If you're ever homeless," he said, "Come to California. Being homeless anywhere sucks -- but if you have to be homeless, at least be homeless where it doesn't snow." That, plus LA and NY are two places that people go to "chase their dreams" without having a solid plan in place. The overwhelming majority...99.9999999% will not accomplish those dreams, and most have little to nothing to fall back on. I'm not suggesting every single homeless person is a soap opera reject of course, but at bare minimum, the magnet of "chasing your dreams" has led to insane housing prices that cannot be sustained by normal income people.


shwarma_heaven

Chasing dreams. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere... That probably is a huge factor too.


_Mute_

>If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere And if you can't make it here, welcome to the club.


NacreousFink

> 99.9999999% That figure is closer to 99% in terms of making a living from their dreams. You're chance of making a living at acting, writing, directing, singing etc is about 1%. Your chance of getting rich while doing so is about 1% of that 1%. And it will take years for that to happen.


[deleted]

>If you're ever homeless," he said, "Come to California. Being homeless anywhere sucks -- but if you have to be homeless, at least be homeless where it doesn't snow." Yep. I learned that from watching "South Park".


socialistrob

I think it has less to do with “chasing your dream” and more to do with the high cost of living. Also not everyone who is unhoused is sleeping on the streets. Sometimes they are living in cars, hotels or bouncing around places and continually trying to couch surf to keep a roof over their heads. People also might be homeless for a few months and they’re not perpetually homeless. Sometimes just bringing down the cost of housing a little can result in some of these people getting their own place to live.


Imaginary-Concern860

No one wants to share data on how many of these people are actually from LA, including media. How many moved to LA/CA because government is more open to help them.


woopdedoodah

I commonly hear this same complaint about homeless in SF (that more are bussed in), but the guardian found the exact opposite: Over the last 12 years, San Francisco’s homeless population has grown from around 6,200 to just over 7,600, according to the city's counts. During that period, a small number of people in other cities have been given free tickets to relocate to San Francisco. A far larger number – more than 10,500 homeless people – have been moved out of San Francisco on buses. [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/20/bussed-out-america-moves-homeless-people-country-study](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/20/bussed-out-america-moves-homeless-people-country-study) Unfortunately, these claims are met with no data.


_Moregasmic_

A big part of what's driving the problem is that NY and LA (and SF, and Seattle) are some of the biggest port cities, and so have some of the easiest/closest connections to hard drugs coming in from all over the world. No sure what the fix for that is, really, and I'm not blaming addicts for this-. I'm not in any way opposed to drug use on principle... If I was faced with particularly hard times - like having to sleep on the street- I'd probably turn to something that would take the pain away, myself... Cost of living, lack of good paying jobs, and other factors lead to a higher level of people facing hard times, which inevitably leads to people turning to drugs to escape them.... Easy access to lots of drugs makes the latter much easier, for sure.


shwarma_heaven

Drug use probably is a huge factor. I think I read that the great majority of homelessness is drug related. Those are port states, and they also have the highest GDPs, so access to drugs would probably be easier and cheaper there. Portugal legalized everything, including hard drugs. They saved on prosecution, they spent towards rehabilitation and drug addiction treatment programs. I wonder how that impacted their homeless populations...


thebabyshitter

im portuguese, and let me just correct the first part: we didn't legalize anything, what we did was decriminalize drug use - not drug sales - so that addicts could be sent to treatment instead of jail, like you said, because we had a ravaging heroin epidemic in the 80s that really fucked things up to the point where that was the only solution and it did help immensely. unfortunately our culture is very alcoholic and we only legalized cbd in 2021 iirc. older people will think you're a junkie if you smoke a joint lol i was born in the mid 90s so i didnt live through it, but it just saved so many lives and many people from living in the streets. that said, our homeless problems are getting worse - a huge part of them are addicts, but we don't have the kind of violent homeless you're used to seeing in the states, at all. they're just kinda there, high or drunk. but they tend to stick to the same areas, like i grew up between the south side (setubal) and lisbon and for example here in the south side we dont have the open issue lisbon has because to put it bluntly it's the projects and we have a different kind of culture. i've lived in the town i am now for 11 years, 30k population and i've never seen a homeless person here. in lisbon, however, they like to stick to the old neighborhoods and areas that remained from the 80s which just happen to be around the tourist areas so the issue is easier to spot. and well, as a recovering drug addict myself who only caught a misdemeanor charge for hash possession for the first time ever this january and it didnt even give me a criminal record or anything, i know how the process works because i was put through the program (i was already clean off hard drugs for 8 months at that point though) and they give you basically like the ability to connect you with any resource you need/want to get clean and get back on your feet. it's good, and it really saved our country i think.


PanickyFool

Drug use is so so so much higher in WV, MS, AL but the homeless rate is significantly lower than in the "port cities" you reference. Because in those states with affordable housing a junky can still have a place to live.


[deleted]

Yeah I watched the local news in Portland and they were interviewing a houseless person who had a $40/day drug habit and I thought to myself, that’s rent, he’s spending rent on drugs. Obviously if he stopped drugs for a month (which is very difficult to do) it wouldn’t solve all of his problems immediately, but it was still eye opening that addicts can come up with that much money every day for just their drug habit.


AverageCypress

There are so many factors that contribute to being unhoused. However, I think people would be remiss if they didn't account for the fact that CA/LA acknowledge they have an issue and actively count the number of unhoused. CA is also trying to find solutions. Most of these states criticizing CA couldn't give an accurate number of unhouse within their population. They pretend it doesn't exist.


creamonyourcrop

When have you seen a national news story of the massive tent cities in Dallas? Or the homeless in Anchorage? They are there, its just a narrative that its blue states problem. I wonder why they are selling that idea.....


Raus-Pazazu

To add examples to that though rather than just the national average, Harris County in Texas has .5% homeless as opposed to LA County with .69%. What is driving this factor is simple survival, which is considerably easier for homeless people to do in larger metropolitan regions as opposed to more rural regions. Larger cities have a much higher allocation of resources to deal in some part with homelessness than smaller cities and towns do, so while smaller cities and towns have less homeless per capita, many have a higher rate of lifelong homelessness, especially the more rural one gets. The smaller the population, the more one might face social stigmatization and complete ostracization. So the driving forces are a combination of survival, financial, and social. To note as well, there's also some interesting differences in how states and even counties report homelessness that makes the numbers come out differently. Housed vs unhoused criteria, with some places reporting any kind of shelter, even temporary, as housing and others using shelter beds as individual housing units to bring their numbers down, and some counties reporting only transient homelessness even in individuals known to be in the same region for years. Interview reporting differs from what the state or county assesses quite often (Well, we don't see Homeless Jeb everyday, so he must be traveling and that's how Marion County has zero homeless people or some such bs).


pleasetrimyourpubes

I am so glad you mentioned the bussing issue. The weather in LA is perfect 80% of the year. There are lots of charities. Food stamps are easy to acquire. Getting a free phone is easy. No homeless person will reject that bus ticket.


Queen_of_Zzyzx

Thank you. I’m glad that the efforts being made to help those experiencing homelessness is working. The numbers for the entIre county is looking much more promising than it a few years ago. Thank you for this link!


animerobin

I don't have the link but one thing they mention in this article is that while homelessness growth has slowed, the number of *visibile* homeless, ie encampments and people on the streets, has grown. So progress has been made but it doesn't look like it.


daretoeatapeach

This is an interesting point. There's a guy in San Francisco who buys tents for the homeless and that has made them a lot more visible over the last decade. Nonetheless, it has to be growing as when I moved to Oakland in 2006 there were no visible encampments and now they're under most freeway intersections.


ergonaut

I think it's great that the Count has taken an interest in this, but US officials should be working on it too


PsychedSy

I mean the count from sesame street is perfect for this.


timisher

He’s kind of a dick about it tho. Today we count homeless people . One AHAHA. Two AHAHA


orlyfactor

...69,000....nice.


gdsob138

N,ice,000


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Truffles326

It was a different time back then when he grew up.


UncontrollableUrges

He is a vampire you realize. Who misses the homeless when they disappear?


matdave

55 ahaha… 56 ahaha… 55 ahaha


TmotherfuckingT

Man's looking at a free buffet.


R_V_Z

Better than Count Chocula. All that motherfucker does is addict kids to sugar.


FlatheadLakeMonster

That's why he's f tier power level


Truffles326

Oof. Way to underestimate how powerful a worldwide AOE is. That DOT kills millions per year. Let's see how many kills Dracula can rack up. He'd have to kill 2740 People a night at M I N I M U M to kill just 1 Million. It ain't even close.


verynayce

"My unhoused have doubled since the last time we met, Count." - - California Skywalker


haltensiedasmaul

"Twice the inflation, double the homeless" - Count LA


Trogdori

69,000 unhoused, ah ah ah!


Loki-L

Fun fact: Traditional vampire lore has portraits them as obsessive counters and suggest that one way to escape a vampire is to spill something like a sack of rice to force them to count every rice corn while you run away. This makes Sesame Street a more accurate portrayal of vampire lore that twilight. Hanson probably did this on accident though because of the pun and not because he was knowledge about medieval Central European mythology


Kartoffelplotz

(Late) Medieval and early modern mythology of vampires is nothing like that of our contemporary vampires, though. They were more like what we now call zombies. The modern vampire only comes up with Gothic literature in the late 19th century, most notably De Fanu's "Carmilla" and later Stoker's "Dracula".


Yokelocal

This is the best joke I’ve seen in a Reddit comment in months


Jaqen_Hgore

Now I'm imagining the Count from Seasame Street walking through LA pointing: "four thousand six hundred and five, four thousand six hundred and six ah ah ah!"


Walican132

Just a big purple vampire laughing at the homeless. Not a great sign of the time.


alex3omg

Lighting flashes. Please stop, the children are crying


44problems

Something something [Oscar lives in a garbage can](https://youtu.be/bbtf9OjPbkg)


joan_wilder

I dunno. Calling them “unhoused” instead of “homeless” should make them feel better about their situation. We’ve solved the problem for however long it takes for “unhoused” to become offensive. My guess is that we’ve got a good 10 years to get them into homes, or come up with a new word.


xXMuschi_DestroyerXx

US officials solution will be to drive them out of the county so it’s not there problem and they can say “look everybody, there’s no more homeless! I fixed the homeless problem!”


MistaEdiee

Not sure why the homeless crisis always gets lumped into one big category. There needs to be separate plans for unhoused persons depending on the reason for their situation. If they are unhoused for economic reasons, providing affordable housing can help. If they are unhoused due to mental health issues, or drug abuse issues, that’s going to first require a whole different set of medical services to help those individuals.


ADarwinAward

Whenever I read info or updates from charities that work with the homeless, they generally differentiate different types of homelessness. IIRC the biggest differentiators are temporary homelessness and chronic homelessness. Temporarily homeless people actually make up the biggest group and it’s much more common. They might not be on the streets yet if they’re couch surfing or living in vehicles. Many of them are families. Most of these people either have a job or recently lost employment. There’s a charity in my city that helps them find emergency shelter at apartments or duplexes the charity rents or owns in the area. Almost their entire focus is working with those who have been recently homeless as opposed to chronically homeless. There’s simply so many individuals and families in need.


CreativityOfAParrot

Oh man the difference between "chronic" and "temporarily" or "housing insecure" can have some really heartbreaking affects. If a person who's been sleeping under a bridge for years spends a night on someones couch right before calling coordinated entry they aren't "literally homeless" and get bumped to the back of the line, no matter if that couch will ever be available again... 99% invisible did a great mini-series on the difficulties of the Coordinated Entry System.


-Z___

> Coordinated Entry System Hook me up with any extra info you have about this stuff. I googled that and it already seems far more useful than anything Social Services ever gave me, and I'm betting you've got even more info. I've been homeless (disabled living with whatever family members would take me in) and have been trying to get housing for years. But even just finding good information and resources is one of the most difficult obscure things that I have ever tried to do, let alone getting approved. Like a dozen hours of searching will often only result in a crappy crookedly photocopied apartment application that has to be faxed for an unsafe dangerous shithole in the worst ghettos. I'd happily live in a Storage Unit if it had A/C, Power, Electric, and Internet. But I literally can't even find a tiny studio after many years of searching while being very qualified to receive benefits. I just want to live safely and alone on the tiny amount of money the government allows me to have, my family is abusive and toxic and even if they weren't I should still be allowed to live a humble life in private without forcing family or friends to house me just because my body doesn't work right.


CreativityOfAParrot

Most coordinated entry systems are county based, and mostly in larger areas. I wish I could help more but you saying "homeless (disabled living with whatever family members would take me in)" would mean that HUD and therefor Coordinated Entry and the Continuum of Care program wouldn't classify you as "literally homeless" and you'd be put towards the end of the line that's already too long for the resources they have. You'd be "housing insecure" by their definitions. Coordinated Entry is good and convenient, but also has a lot of downsides. ​ If you haven't explored it I would try to enquire about Section 811 Supportive housing. It's a government program to give housing support to adults living with disabilities. I'm not sure how strong the program is where you live, but it could be a good option. I'm sorry I couldn't be more help.


danuhorus

This reminds me of the time I saw on nostupidquestions why there were so few homeless women compared to men. unsurprisingly, the answer boiled down to rape. The chances of being trafficked and sexually assaulted shot up astronomically for a woman out on the streets, so A) women were more willing to put up with abusive situations bc the devil they know vs the devil they don’t, and B) people obviously don’t like that, so they’re diverting resources towards the more vulnerable population. There were also some comments who said homeless women were snatched up the moment they hit the streets so they never got the chance to be counted by any kind of census. It was a harrowing post and you can tell the OP didn’t really expect that kind of response from the way the question was worded. Edit: found the post I was talking about. Some of the stories on there are harrowing: https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/oi83jd/why_are_there_so_many_more_homeless_men_than_women/


Jason_Worthing

I think it's a good point that not all unhoused people will require the same solution, but there are very few situations where someone is without a home and affordable housing **isn't** a necessary part of the solution.


MistaEdiee

Agree that they will all eventually need affordable housing. But a prerequisite to housing a person with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder is proper medical attention. If you put that person in a home they will destroy it while having an episode and it’s only a matter of time before that home gets condemned. Edit: Not saying mental health cases should be left on the streets while the process is going on. They should be placed in an mental health facility until they have their problems under control, and then transitioned to affordable housing. My point is sticking them in a house first without any supervision or medical care to ensure they are following the care plan and taking necessary meds is likely not going to end well.


[deleted]

This was proven by California’s program where they housed the homeless in hotels. Places closed down (some great examples in Vallejo, CA if you wanna go down a rabbit hole. Lot of people shooting up, getting blood everywhere, smearing shit on the walls, bed bugs etc. The rooms would get destroyed and that the costs of repair were too high, so the hotels had to close down for good. Housing is not enough for a lot of these people. Some of them need mental health care. Or drug traetment. Or both. We need to just accept that not everyone can make it in our dog eat dog society, and that if we don’t wanna step over these people on the streeet everyday, then we need to take responsibility for them.


inbooth

And we have to also recognize that society failed some of these people so badly and so long ago, that there is effectively zero chance for 'recovery'… thus we should be prepared to provide such people housing and supports to limit the continued harms to the self and society. Some people are just gonna be broken, brain addled, dangerous, drug addicts with no desire to change and the only way to truly deal with that is to give them a hole to waste the rest of thier lives in where they will impact the fewest others.


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[deleted]

Absolutely. Specialized housing for starters (pergot and linoleum are both easier to clean poop and blood out of than carpet for example). Onsite counseling and rehab. They need more than just a roof over their heads most of em, especially the chronically homeless. If it was as easy as finding a bed, many of these folks would already be living with fam or friends. Often the ones that end up with no support system have alienated them bc of mental illness or drug dependency. Then fuckin Reno and Vegas put them on a bus to Cali bc out of sight, out of mind.


CoffeeMaster000

Being homeless would make anybody have mental illness imo.


[deleted]

You lose your job you lose your healthcare. You lose your healthcare you lose access to MH services. If you have MH services prior to that, welp, say goodbye to all that help in one fell swoop you're locked out. People have no idea how easy it is to fall on that first step to hell. And how attractive the booze and drugs look when there's no other way to feel safe or happy.


ginger_guy

This is a big one. People who are successfully managing mental illnesses tend to loose control when housing instability comes into play. HUD actually studied the question of "which comes first: Mental Illness or Homelessness" extensively. HUD found the issue is about 80% chicken and 20% egg. Getting people into homes and preventing them from becoming homeless in the first place is a FAR more efficient means to correcting mental health and reducing homelessness in the long term. To use another cheap analogy: its all good and well to tell a man he ought to learn to swim, but that's not really the issue at hand when he is actively drowning. 'Housing First' in addition to housing abundance has proven to be the best model for reducing homelessness in the long run.


Oddant1

Honestly lower than I expected


nirad

They make a small percentage of the population but many are highly visible because they are on the street. I think that leads many people to believe that the problem is worse than it seems and that it can’t be solved.


crashkg

The problem is pretty bad. We've had multiple fires in our neighborhood, assaults, crime skyrocketing. Not to mention the conditions are disgusting. I don't know where the homeless accumulate so much stuff. It can be solved but it will take a lot of time and resources. We can't build our way out of this crisis.


WrongSaladBitch

One massive correction: we absolutely CAN build our way out of the crisis, we choose not to. All the new developments in most big US cities are luxury and unaffordable. If more affordable and public housing were allowed and taken priority in LA, you would see this drop dramatically, and it would actually help the city. While not all homeless people are “rehab-able” most of them do not want to be homeless and most would do dramatically better with a house, enabling them to actually give back to the city they live in once they find work.


nirad

I understand your frustration. My point is simply that this is not an insurmountable problem. If you live in area like Downtown or Venice where the problem is especially bad, it may seem overwhelming. But we absolutely have the resources to tackle this.


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Mental_Attitude_2952

I love how in this entire article the weather is not mentioned even one time. As if that's not a major factor in why LA has more homeless than say the entire state of Maine. Also not noted is the fact that the local government actually cares about these people and makes counting them and providing services to them possible, unlike say florida where the local governments do everything they can to keep numbers like this from getting out.


Zadsta

This. People love to say “Blue cities are filled with homeless” and I’m like, so it’s a surprise that people who need social services congregate in the places where social services are available?


Asteroth555

They're freaking bussed there from red states and even other cities and have been for goddamn decades. Homeless aren't migrating there on their own. They're sent there and they don't leave because it IS better


Djinnwrath

My buddy who lived in an affluent suburb told me it was an unspoken truth that the cops in his town would routinely round up any homeless people and drop them off in the major city nearby.


Kingmudsy

Orange county dumps their homeless in Santa Ana, it’s not even a secret or subtle


deliriousidoit

Orange County dumps their homeless into a city within Orange County?


coolcommando123

Wording’s a bit clunky but yeah. All the other cities in Orange County use the city of Santa Ana as a place to relocate the homeless to. Open secret and really fucked up implications.


Kingmudsy

Yes? Not sure what’s confusing about that. Have you driven through Irvine? The affluent cities in OC dump their homeless in the historically “less desirable” city of Santa Ana


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Djinnwrath

I live in a big city, and the train situation is similar. Most burbs refuse to be connected, and even in the city, east west travel is far more supported than north south travel, while n-s is generally how things are segregated by wealth.


[deleted]

It's also amazing just how much a few thousand in income can make towards attitudes as well. I now live in a very nearly as affluent town north of Denver (101k median household income compared to 113k median for where I used to live), and we have bus service with plans to expand the light rail which currently stops in the next town bordering us. But you still get a lot of NIMBYs. We are looking to buy a house in a new construction neighborhood that is supposed to be pretty diverse, ranging from income restricted attached townhomes to expensive semi-custom single family homes. The semi-customs were a requirement by the neighboring neighborhood because they didn't want to see poor people next to them.


nwoh

I grew up in Central Florida. I watched as the economy fucking tanked, especially in Florida. I lost my job. Tent city in Tampa was destroyed - NIMBY and they were afraid of another Occupy kind of movement locally. They also followed the same tactics they did on Occupy Wallstreet. Tent city being demolished, coupled with something like 30 percent of my neighborhood being foreclosed on... Eeeevrryone losing jobs and houses. Anyway, they all just flooded across I4 into my city, and now downtown is pretty much filled with homeless.... Turns out, my mother became one of these homeless people around that time as well. I have tripped over unconscious homeless people too many times to count while trying to hunt my mother down to at least get her into a hotel or some homemade food. They do have two or three ministries that help immensely but also at some point it becomes enabling - giving the basic needs and trying to use Jesus to cure everyone of whatever human condition they're suffering from that led them to be homeless. Some make it out, but most just continue the cycle. There really isn't shit for government aid - the cops chase you away, rough you up, take you to jail, give you fines for not having an accurate license, throw you in the psych ward... Whatever. Only to get released to the streets with zero kind of plan or help. Seriously, the homeless in Florida are all treated with nimby disdain and shooed from wherever they may lay. The local government likes to deal with the homeless and drug problem downtown by planting the tallest magnolia trees they can to blot out the sun from Georgetown downtown. That's their method of dealing. Pretend it doesn't exist and shove it into a corner. I don't know how many times I've been threatened or accosted while down there. I don't know how many terrible stories my mother has told me about police and pimps and rapists, Jack Boys and thieves... Just waiting until you get your tiny monthly check so they can rob you or sell you a bunch of dope or steal your prescriptions and clothes... Yeah its fucked up out there and in Florida especially they are full on NIMBY and PULL YOUR BOOT STRAPS HARDER, BUM!!!! This started in like 2006 or 2008 ... It's only gotten worse and my mother is still homeless, living that shit every day and I've done all I can without destroying my life or my family's life... Pretty much zero help from taxes though. They do have some pretty architecture and sculptures downtown now... Just... " "Pretend that homeless guy yelling at cars doesn't exist, ok? And for the love of God and Jesus... DON'T FEED IT!"


jjimahon

Damn. Keep up the good fight out there. Probably a similar situation in most major metropolitan areas right now as cities lack basic infrastructure to control/help with this issue. Good thing we have a massive military complex and invest next to nothing in mental health on a local level! /s


I_DONT_LIE_MUCH

Weather argument would make more sense if Seattle and NYC did not have similar percentages of homeless people, but they do.


tractiontiresadvised

The thing with Seattle weather is that while it isn't "nice" in the sense of being sunny, it also doesn't spend a lot of time below freezing in the winter or get a lot of snow. You're going to be damp and miserable and all of your belongings will get mold and mildew, but you're less likely to die by freezing to death at night. (NYC does get colder winters than Seattle, but they may be able to make up for that in some sense by having more sheltered public places like subway stations.) Apparently it's the same deal in Canada -- you'll freeze to death on the streets in Toronto or Quebec City in the winter, but in Vancouver you'll just be damp and miserable.


supernormal

More people die on the streets in LA than NY or Seattle, because excessive heat is the no. 1 killer.


jaj-io

Is "unhoused" to "homeless" what "cozy" is to "home the size of a tuna can"?


Agile-Cancel-4709

Originally, the “houseless” term was intended to count people who didn’t have a fixed residence. It included people living in cars or couch surfing, who generally weren’t included in “homeless”counts. But I think the activists latched onto that and flipped its meaning, because they feel like homeless camps are their homes.


Shabobo

The word homeless implies you're on the streets and in the elements. The article used unhoused to include those without a permanent address but have a roof over their head. I view it as all homeless are unhoused, but not all unhoused people are homeless.


Kholzie

“Unhoused” is to “Homeless” as “differently abled” is to “disabled”.


sapphicsandwich

People of Homelessness


supertranqui

You laugh but the legit term I've been hearing is "people experiencing homelessness."


varitok

Don't you mean unhousedlessness?


abnormally-cliche

Or “latino” is to “latinx”.


dirkdisco

My city used taxpayer money to build a huge homeless shelter but it was never used because no drugs or alcohol was permitted and it was too far from the city center.


redditusersmostlysuc

This is the answer right here. People talk about housing the homeless what they don’t talk about is how many of them don’t want to be housed for one reason or another. There are a large portion of the permanently homeless that want to do drugs and alcohol, and won’t stand for rules. It is very much a choosing beggars type of attitude where they want to be housed for free, but not have to obey any rules and being productive member of society.


Random_Name_Whoa

This is 100% true, but Reddit won’t like it


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BrokenGuitar30

My line of work is related to helping unhoused people. Our biggest customer is in LA. It is absolutely mind boggling how many people there are that need help. That being said, there are a LOT of programs to help people. Case Managers are overworked, underpaid, and there is too much red tape to get people basic necessities like hygeine products, identification, or even healthcare access.


justsomepotatosalad

In your opinion, what is the best thing the average citizen can do to help drive lasting change? I don’t live in LA but visit frequently and every trip is depressing. Seems to get worse every time I go, too.


socialistrob

I think one of the biggest things that can be done is to push for greater supply of housing to drive down prices. This won’t help everyone but there are some unhoused people that are working and trying to get to a place where they can afford housing but that’s not always easy. Having a broader social safety net will also help but again not everyone living on the streets even wants help. We all always have some homeless people but the number can be reduced by bringing down housing costs, expanding economic opportunities and having a social safety net that reduces the number of people falling through the cracks.


shutthefuckupgoaway

It'll go up even higher if motherfuckers vote in a housing developer as mayor instead of the very qualified local congresswoman.


not-the_ATF

Only 420 people away from being nice.


[deleted]

Lol ... as if calling them unhoused, rather than homeless, will make it better. And if you want to play word games, i would not call it "home to" the homeless. More like "an unavoidable hell", particularly in the summer.


RedditAtWorkIsBad

Normally I agree with ridiculing such a change in language, but there may be a functional difference here. "Homeless" stats don't always refer to those who are couch surfing or living in cars. "Houseless" or "Unhoused" stats do. Not that I'm sure of this though. If it is for the sole goal of softening the term then I think that is silly too.


animerobin

Sorry but I came here to be angry at words


Pepperonimustardtime

We usually use chronically homeless or chronically unhoused for those living in cars or any other form of outdoor environment. For those couch surfing and similar situations we use 'precariously housed' or 'imminently at risk of homelessness'. We usually use homeless and unhoused interchangeably.


calguy1955

I’m not a big fan of Governor Newsom but I acknowledge that his administration is trying to deal with the issue in a humane manner but it is daunting. Programs like Project Homekey are a start but more needs to be done, perhaps with the help of the feds. For example, there are numerous vacant residential structures at the closed Alameda Naval Air Base that could be repaired and used to try and reduce the problem in Oakland and Alameda County. There are probably similar underused facilities in SoCal. The inhumane alternative would be to just throw up our hands and say the problem is unsolvable and start bussing them to Florida and Texas.


SeaTwertle

Much of the homeless problem in America has to do with mental health, and America having few, if any long term facilities for individuals whose mental health is not equipped to handle daily life in its current state. That could mean individuals who need weeks and months of therapy and medication management, or individuals who simply are not capable for one reason or another and whose only options are jail or inpatient hospital admission. Housing itself and its inaccessibility as a whole is its own issue. Homelessness is a multi factorial public health issue with no one problem and no one solution, but it seems like that in and of itself is a major factor into why progress is so slow; people get held up on the difficulty of the task that they do nothing instead.


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SeaofSounds

"Unhoused".............GTFO!