There are 20 units at the Pallet Shelter and 30 people from there have been moved to more permanent housing. This is a significant part of what’s changed in RB.
Pallet Shelter in Redondo Beach
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That’s great. Redondo Beach is a very wrestlable homeless problem. Maybe they can apply some of that stuff to LA. In South Redondo where I live we have I’d say a half-dozen older people pushing carts around.
Although the fuckers put up parking meters on Gertruda behind the post office where RVs used to park. Absolutely unnecessary. No one ever uses the meters. They only put those up to run off the RV people, who never caused any problem. Really pisses me off. I thought about going in with a sawzall at 3am and cutting them all down.
Redondo is on the order of one hundredth the population of LA County. One or two hundred pallet shelter spots would do something.
I believe they have some equivalent in LA. The first article I posted talks a lot about them.
One big problem seems to be that you either let people do drugs in the shelters, which causes problems. Or encampments spring up near the shelters where people in the shelters go to do drugs, which obviously pisses off the neighbors.
They do, but I don’t think they have as many per capita.
L.A. is throwing a lot of money at the problem and Garcetti made it his signature issue. It doesn’t seem to me like lack of will is the problem.
It seems like they’re getting a lot of the low hanging fruit like wirelessgrinder talked about. Now they’re running into various harder to solve issues like the articles mention.
LA has a map of where people who live in their vehicles can park (they also have a map of where they have strong enforcement of no tents - and thus of where they have little or no enforcement). There are also some public and and many churches where people can park. This issue can be addressed and the best solution is to widely distribute these areas. What was learned, and it was learned, about public housing is that giant projects create giant problems. The projects that people love to hate were all built in the 60s or earlier. Since then, most assisted family housing is small and/or completely integrated with market housing and few people even notice them.
I got semi-close with a woman who lives on the streets in Atlanta during the pandemic. Probably cooked/brought her dinner 50 or so times during winter 2020/2021.
I initially knew about her because she lived on the stoop of my building and the HOA kicked her off because she would pee there. Then she moved to a bench down the block in front of an office building so the office building removed the goddamn bench. After that she was about 3 blocks away next to a church. She had I believe very severe autism. Such immense distrust of everyone that she basically wouldn’t talk to a soul (hard to blame her on this count). No substance issues.
After a while of learning her preferences and stuff and cooking food for both of us, I realized she didn’t want my home cooked food as much as fast food–either hamburgers or taco bell. She started wanting to give me cash to go get her food from those specific places (there wasn’t a fast food within like half a mile). I never took her money, but I started to feel like goddamn doordash. But she always seemed to actually have a lot of cash. I tried to give her a lot of water, but she mainly wanted soft drinks. I got angry when she started littering the stuff I was giving her and said she has to get this stuff into a trash can if this is gonna continue.
One time there was a homeless guy there who was really aggressively saying that she is his wife. She didn’t say a word, just sat there staring blankly. Sometimes other homeless people in the area would get pissed that I was giving her food and nobody else food.
I don’t live there anymore, and she doesn’t stay there anymore. I’ve seen her randomly walking around Midtown so I know she’s still alive, but that’s about it.
I walked away from this without a single concrete idea of how to help her in a significant way. I do understand that she only wants help under 100% completely her own terms and will not budge on that one bit. It’s “hard” to help her in a sense, but in another sense that’s bullshit because all you need to do is talk to her half a dozen times and she will accept help–or, at least, assistance with paying for food. She doesn’t really panhandle or ask anyone for money. Just sits there, all day, every day. I get the impression she has concluded that this is the only possible lifestyle for her.
All I can think of is that the structural problems that failed her date back generations, and cannot be fixed with xyz program. We need to rethink a host of programs, policies, and social problems that eventually lead to people being in this situation, and that means rethinking a lot of society. It takes a society where people don’t think they are antagonized and abused by authority to build a trusting relationship that will cause unhoused people to seek help. But as a society that is genuinely antagonizing and abusing these populations, we shouldn’t be so surprised that unhoused populations are reluctant to accept “help” beyond asking for cash.
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Yeah my dad just moved into what I think is basically a project in Kansas City (he just got on section 8) that most of my friends, who have lived in midtown their whole adult lives, didn’t even know was there. A bunch of 4-plexes sort of tucked away inside a bland residential neighborhood, which is perfect. They seem to run it pretty well too.
And this was the result of a SCOTUS decision that there is freedom in the US and people can’t just be denied a place to exist. Cities either had to provide housing or quit running homeless people off. Cities are allowed to do things like prohibit it in certain areas and LA has decided which areas are allowed or not.
Yeah the parking meters was clearly a solution to the problem that they couldn’t just run people off from Gertruda. Total bullshit. People parked their RVs on that street for 20 years (and i’m sure before I moved to the area) w/o any issue.
I wonder if the SCOTUS thing actually forced their hand? Before I know they would give people time limits. I think there was some unofficial two week rule or something. Then once they couldn’t give time limits, they put up the meters. No idea if that’s what happened.
If it’s just a 4-plex, it’s probably the owner accepting Section 8 and some of the units may be Section 8 and some could be market. The Section 8 buildings in an area that accepts them are generally better maintained because the Housing Authority will stop your payment for things as small as a missing faceplate on a light switch. The property owner gets generally somewhat higher and more reliable rents, but they have to keep up with maintenance.
Some Section 8 otoh is packaged with whole projects - not like Cabrini Green (15000 people at one time) - but still on the order of a hundred units.
It’s like 30 4-plexes spread out over several sections. I think it was a planned project. If it was a commercial property it’s the most boring apartment complex ever built. KC usually doesn’t do giant campuses like that. I think most there are section 8 from what my dad has found out.
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Yea as far as fixing the problem obviously things like universal healthcare and social safety net would do a lot to help one group of homeless not just be replaced by more the next day. It needs to be all encompassing, helping people get off the street and helping make sure people don’t get there in the first place
If you are on NextDoor, I’m sure you’ll find people who had issues.
RVs are lining the street that goes through the Ballona Wetlands and some of the residents who live like a quarter mile away up on the hill in Playa Del Rey are always trying to get them moved.
Yeah I think everyone who was in Redondo moved to Ballona. There’s also a bunch of RV blocks around Venice.
I did this this year.
6 minutes in is the person whose van I helped build out. (I did the solar obv)
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Part of me thinks we should just let the homeless build tent cities on beaches and if the homed have a problem with that, they can massively reorganize society to fix the problem of homelessness so they can have their homeless-free beaches to engage in leisure class activities.
obligatory coz it’s a great show and these guys are geniuses
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