Wednesday, December 25, 2019

HALF MILLION HOMELESS IN AMERICA WHERE EVERY LEGAL IS ONE PAYCHECK AND ONE THOUSAND ILLEGALS AWAY FROM BEING HOMELESS

Trump Slams Gavin Newsom over Homelessness in Christmas Tweet

Homeless L.A. Christmas (Mark Ralston / AFP / Getty)
Mark Ralston / AFP / Getty
2:50
President Donald Trump slammed California Governor Gavin Newsom in a Christmas Day tweet for doing “a really bad job of taking care of the homeless population in California.”
The president, evidently catching up on recent tweets, reacted Wednesday to several posts from late last week. One of them was from conservative commentator Tomi Lauren, reacting to a spin room interview at the Democrat debate in which Newsom bashed Trump over housing policy.



In spin room at , @GavinNewsom slams Trump Administration and HUD for doing “nothing” on “housing first,” the priority to solve homelessness.

1,401 people are talking about this

Breitbart News also asked Newsom about homelessness, as well as the new problem of power outages that is changing the way Californians mange their lives. New statistics released by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development showed that California’s 16.4% increase in homeless was “entirely” responsible for the nation’s overall increase of 2.7% by early 2019.
Newsom told Breitbart News: “It is an embarrassment, it is unacceptable. And we’ve got to own it, we’ve got to own up and solve it.”
Joel B. Pollak
Volume 90%
However, Newsom and other Democrats in California insist the solution is more federal money for housing.
Experts argue that while housing may help, many homeless people are mentally ill or addicted to drugs, and other forms of intervention are needed, especially as some actually resist moving into permanent housing.
The Trump administration has been preparing contingency plans to invoke federal emergency powers and intervene in California’s homeless problem, perhaps by relocating homeless people to treatment centers on federal property.
Newsom did not respond to Trump’s tweet on Wednesday. He posted a tweet with photos of his family instead.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
Christmas 2019: More than half a million homeless in America

24 December 2019
This Christmas approximately 568,000 people, a population equivalent to the state of Wyoming, will mark the holiday in homeless shelters, tent encampments or in the rough, all across the United States.
Some of the homeless will not make it to Christmas as the death toll continues to mount. In Los Angeles County, a focal point of the social crisis, one thousand of the estimated 44,000 unsheltered homeless population have died in both 2018 and 2019, nearly three lives per day, side by side with the glitter of Hollywood and the wealth and privilege of Beverly Hills.
A man walks past a mural of angel wings titled "Africa Wings" by artist Colette Miller in Los Angeles' Skid Row area, home to the nation's largest concentration of homeless people, Friday, Sept. 1, 2017. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
This year marked the third year in a row in which the Department of Housing and Urban development recorded an increase in the number of people living outdoors in its annual January point in time survey. This figure is likely a significant undercount as it is taken during the coldest time of the year and done by volunteers who are unable to canvass all the areas where people seek to survive without shelter.
How many will die from exposure and other causes on the holiday is unknown, but the reality is that thousands of unsheltered people are dying on the streets, encampments, abandoned homes and backlots of cities across the country every year. Tens of thousands will go to sleep Christmas Eve out on the streets of America and it is likely that dozens will not wake up in the morning.
Annual vigils and protest marches were held Thursday night in several hundred cities across the US to remember the homeless men and women who died this year. So far this year, in Washington, D.C., 117 homeless individuals have lost their lives in the nation’s capital, a huge jump over the 54 recorded in 2018. Santa Clara County, California, home to Silicon Valley, saw 161 homeless deaths. Riverside County, California, recorded 95 deaths; Portland, Oregon, marked 43 deaths, the most in that city since 2015; Salt Lake City, Utah, which recently cut the number of shelter beds by 400, saw 94 homeless deaths; Boulder, Colorado, marked 48 deaths, a doubling from 2018; and in Springfield, Illinois, that state’s capital, 13 homeless people died on the streets this year.
At a time when the ruling elite is celebrating the continued rise in the stock market and patting themselves on the back for historically low unemployment figures, the number of people who are being thrown out on the streets is on the rise. This is not a contradiction: the records set on Wall Street are based ultimately on increasing exploitation of workers through the deployment of new technologies and efforts to drive down wages, including by the creation of an increasingly desperate layer pushed to the absolute limit.
The grim figures on homelessness are a snapshot of just one part of the deepening social crisis which is gripping America as 2019 comes to an end. The opioid overdose crisis, gun violence and a rising suicide rate has driven down life expectancy, an event unprecedented among the world’s leading economies and in America’s own history.
The economic recovery since the 2008 recession has seen low-wage jobs proliferate as part of the “gig economy,” leaving millions on the verge of destitution in the event of an emergency or an accident. Workers now rely on apps like Uber and GrubHub for a tenuous employment at low wages, or turn to companies like Amazon where they can be worked to the point of exhaustion or death in a warehouse for $15 an hour.
The social and economic gap between the bottom 90 percent and the top 10 percent has never been wider. Two very different Americas exists within the geographic borders of the United States. Record corporate profits and stock buybacks continue to fill the pockets of the wealthy, while workers are forced to tighten their belts and work more for less.
A recent analysis of Census data by Pew Trusts found that the poverty rate increased in 30 percent of all US counties between 2016 and 2018, impacting working people of all kinds, black, white, Hispanic and Native American alike.
The richest one percent of Americans, with access to the best health care their money can buy, live more than a decade longer than the poorest one percent who are among those dying on the streets. And conditions of life for those at the top have never been better, with the three wealthiest families, the Waltons, the Kochs, and the Mars, controlling $349 billion, more than 4 million times the net worth of the median US family.
The 400 richest people in the US combined have more wealth than the bottom 64 percent. Under President Donald Trump, corporate and estate taxes have been slashed, ensuring that ever more wealth is funneled to the very top of society. Last year 91 of the largest corporations paid zero or negative federal income taxes and for the first time the richest individuals paid a lower tax rate than the poorest.
Despite the conventional presentation in the media and the claims of both parties that things have never been better, pointing to the mounting piles of wealth at the top, the reality for the majority of Americans is a deep social crisis.
It is notable that growing numbers of indices about the social crisis have not factored into the Democratic primaries nor have they sparked any sense of urgency from the mainstream media. While Trump promises to “Keep America Great” (for the super-rich), the Democrats simply ignore the desperate conditions confronting the working class in favor of appealing to those in the upper ten percent on the basis of identity politics.
At the Democratic presidential debate last week in Los Angeles, the epicenter of the national homelessness crisis, the subject was avoided by all the candidates on the stage. Not one referred to the fact that the death toll among homeless people in the Los Angeles area was approaching the one-thousand mark, including the self-styled “democratic socialist,” Bernie Sanders, whose politics are those of a moderate liberal of the 1960s.
Heading into the new year, the obliviousness and callousness of the American ruling class in relation to the real conditions of life for millions of workers make the French aristocrats before 1789 look like paragons of foresight and generosity.
The top one percent and the politicians in the Democratic and Republicans parties who represent them are sitting on a social powder keg. The last year was marked by a resurgence of the class struggle all over the world from France to Sudan, Algeria, Chile and Mexico, and to the United States itself where the number of strikes is on the rise.
That opposition by millions to increasingly unbearable conditions will erupt in mass struggles in the United States is inevitable but the great social problems, including homelessness and poverty, will only be resolved under the leadership of a working-class political party fighting consciously for socialism.


That's California and illegal immigration. The state has squandered hundreds of billions on illegal immigration in the 20 years since I've been gone. They could use that money today. They desperately need it back to pay for the hundred-billion-dollar job of upgrading and modernizing their electric grid.
Census: Number of ‘majority Hispanic’ US counties doubles
by Paul Bedard
November 21, 2019
In the latest evidence of the effect Latin American immigrants are having on the United States, the number of U.S. counties that have turned majority Hispanic has doubled.
New Census Bureau data analyzed by the Pew Research Center found that from 2000 to 2018, the number of majority Hispanic counties jumped from 34 to 69.
What’s more, the overall number of U.S. counties that turned majority minority-based, mostly Hispanic or African American, also surged to 151 from 110 in 2000. Most of those counties are in Southern California and along the Mexico-U.S. border.
“Overall, 69 counties were majority Hispanic in 2018, 72 were majority black and 10 were majority American Indian or Alaska Native. The majority American Indian or Alaska Native counties are unique in that most have experienced overall population declines since 2000, even as the share of American Indian or Alaska Native residents in these counties remained fairly flat,” said the Pew analysis.



pewone.png
Other reports have shown that the share of immigrants, mostly Hispanic, have continued to break records due to legal and illegal immigration and the baby boom among new arrivals.
The majority black counties are also in the South, though mostly from Louisiana and to the east.
“While the black share of the total U.S. population has not changed substantially over the last two decades, the number of majority black counties in the U.S. grew from 65 to 72 between 2000 and 2018. One contributing factor may be migration of black Americans from the North to the South and from cities into suburbs,” said Pew.

Census Bureau: Immigration Driving Half of U.S. Population Growth


JOHN BINDER

Immigration to the United States is now driving nearly half of all population growth in the country instead of increased birth rates, the U.S. Census Bureau finds.

The latest Census Bureau estimates on the U.S. population reveal that about 48.5 percent of all population growth is driven by the country’s mass illegal and legal immigration policy, where more than 1.5 million foreign nationals are admitted to the country every year.
(Axios)
Axios analysis by Stef Knight details the growing share to which immigration is increasingly driving population growth across the U.S. Since 2011, for example, the level to which immigration has accounted for overall population growth has increased more than 13 percent.
According to the Wall Street Journal analysis, about nine percent of U.S. counties are growing solely because of immigration. This concludes that about nine percent of counties have regional birth rates that do not exceed the annual number of deaths in the area.
Similarly, the Wall Street Journal notes, more than half of all population growth in states like Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Kansas, and Michigan, among others, is because of immigration.
Though pundits have claimed that the country’s admittance of 1.2 million legal immigrants a year is necessary to increase birth rates, researchers have found that the growth of the immigrant population has little impact on birth rates.
Center for Immigration Studies Director of Research Steven Camarota discovered in his latest study this year that “immigrant fertility has only a small impact on the nation’s overall birth rate,” citing that immigrants in the U.S. raise the nation’s birth rate for all women by two births per 1,000 women.
“Immigration has a minor impact because the difference between immigrant and native fertility is too small to significantly change the nation’s overall birth rate,” Camarota noted in the study.
At current legal immigration levels, the U.S. population is set to hit an unprecedented 404 million residents by 2060 — including a foreign-born population of 69 million.
The U.S. does not have to rapidly increase its total resident population and foreign-born population, as legal immigration moratoriums have been implemented in the past to give time for new arrivals to properly assimilate to American life. Halting all immigration to the country would stabilize the population to a comfortable 329 million residents in the next four decades.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder

Report: White House Prepares Plan to Save California from Homelessness
US tech giants split over corporate tax to help homelessAFP/Josh Edelson
JOEL B. POLLAK 21 Nov 2019
White House officials are reportedly preparing a plan for federal intervention in California to save the state from the growing homeless crisis, which state and local officials have been unable — or unwilling — to address.
President Donald Trump has raised the issue for months — often in attacking Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), whose San Francisco district has seen an explosion of homelessness and drug use on the doorstep of massive wealth.
Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump
I can’t believe that Nancy Pelosi’s District in San Francisco is in such horrible shape that the City itself is in violation of many sanitary & environmental orders, causing it to owe the Federal Government billions of dollars - and all she works on is Impeachment.....
However, the Trump administration has also hinted for months that it might take action. In September, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Dr. Ben Carson visited Skid Row in Los Angeles and warned that the city could suffer an “epidemic” if endemic diseases took advantage of squalid conditions in homeless encampments. The Washington Post reported at that time that the Trump administration was considering moving homeless people to an unused Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) facility.
The Post reported Thursday that a plan may soon be ready:
The plan is expected to be shown to Trump in coming weeks, officials said, perhaps as soon as next week. Trump will be able to select ideas for how to address the growing homeless problem in several major cities.
One person involved in deliberations said the administration’s plans are likely to target homelessness in Los Angeles and could include repurposing existing federal property, but the exact set of policy options to be presented to the president could not be learned. As part of the talks, officials have also discussed moving homeless people from specific areas and condemning certain properties, though it’s unclear whether those options will make it into the final plan.
The president would likely be on firm legal ground, as Breitbart News noted earlier this year:
The president could invoke the National Emergencies Act of 1976 to declare an emergency, and could also invoke the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act of 1988, which allows a president to override state authorities and bring in the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) if “he [the president] determines that an emergency exists for which the primary responsibility for response rests with the United States because the emergency involves a subject area for which, under the Constitution or laws of the United States, the United States exercises exclusive or preeminent responsibility and authority.”
Dr. Drew Pinsky warned earlier this year that L.A. could see an outbreak of bubonic plague — which is endemic in some rodents in the area — unless the homeless crisis were addressed.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

Illegal Immigration Is the Reason California Is Burning
By Wayne Allyn Root
Newsmax.com, October 31, 2019

A firefighting helicopter makes a water drop over the Easy Fire on October 30, 2019, near Simi Valley, California. (David McNew/Getty Images)
California is collapsing in front of our eyes. Everyone with the money and common sense is running for their lives. The question is why is this happening to such a rich and beautiful state?
Let's start with a comparison of the taxes in California with my state of Nevada (right next door to California). While California was burying its citizens with among the nation’s highest personal income taxes, highest corporate income taxes, highest sales taxes, and highest gas taxes, Nevada’s citizens have enjoyed among the lowest taxes in the country.
That could be why millions of people have left California in the past decade — almost all for the low tax states like Nevada, Texas, Florida, Utah, Colorado, Washington, and Arizona. Those states lead the nation in population growth, while California and other high tax, blue states lead the nation in population loss.
Keep in mind this was all before the nonstop blackouts and $6 per gallon gas in California.
Who can live in a place where the electric utility company shuts off the power to homes and businesses for days on end, multiple times per year? Because the wind is blowing hard? California has truly become a Third World Nation.
Keep in mind, this is what you got for all those high taxes.
So why is this happening? I lived in California for 15 wonderful years. The winds howled back then too. We had 80 MPH Santa Ana winds. And plenty of fires, floods, mudslides, and earthquakes. I lived through all of them. My home almost burned three times. My car was almost carried away by a massive mudslide.
Yet in my 15 years in California, no one shut off electricity because the wind was blowing. No one shut off electricity because there was the threat of a fire.
I’m not a California hater. I loved my time in California. It is the most beautiful state in America, with the greatest weather. But something has dramatically changed since I left. Today I wouldn’t live there if you gave me a $5 million oceanfront mansion for free.
What’s changed is disastrous liberal policy.
Lots of liberal ideas ruined California: high taxes, stifling regulations, climate change policy, permissive policies towards homeless encampments, the highest welfare benefits in the nation, a $15 minimum wage. It’s impossible to run a business in California. Restaurants are closing by the hundreds.
California has become an unlivable third-world hellhole.
But despite all those liberal policies that have contributed to the rot of California, one issue is at the root of California’s current problems. One issue stands heads and tails above all the rest.
First and foremost, illegal immigration is the problem. Since I left two decades ago, California has collectively spent hundreds of billions of dollars on illegal aliens and their bills — public schools, free meals at school, special bi-lingual teachers, healthcare, housing allowances, low income energy assistance, aid to families with dependent children, prisons, cops, courts, public defenders, welfare, food stamps, and a hundred other government handouts. And don’t forget special lower college tuition for illegal immigrants.
Can you imagine if all those billions of dollars were instead spent on new infrastructure, moving power poles underground, upgraded electrical equipment, modernized electrical systems, homeless vets, more cops, and better schools for children born in California. Can you imagine what a better place California would be for its own citizens?
Think about it in personal terms. What if a husband and father has a drug problem. He's addicted to cocaine or heroin. He spends $20,000 a year on his drug addiction for 20 years. That's $400,000. But his life remains in control. Until one day he finds out his child has cancer. The bill is $100,000 (after insurance pays). But he doesn't have the $100,000. His child is dying. If only he had the $400,000 back that he wasted on drugs.
That's California and illegal immigration. The state has squandered hundreds of billions on illegal immigration in the 20 years since I've been gone. They could use that money today. They desperately need it back to pay for the hundred-billion-dollar job of upgrading and modernizing their electric grid.
But they don't have the money. It's all been wasted on illegal aliens. And it's gone forever.
I guarantee you one thing Californians: if you had all that money back, you wouldn’t be sitting in the dark.

In my next column, I’ll get to Part II of the disastrous mistakes of liberalism that have destroyed California. Think idiotic environmental policies and climate change fraud.
That's another few hundred billion dollars wasted — and gone forever. Think about that, as you sit in the dark, shivering or sizzling, with your food spoiling.
Think about that as you fill up your gas tank with $5 our $6 per gallon gas, driving on crumbling highways, in massive traffic jams.
All the money to fix your misery was spent on illegal aliens, not you. How does that make you feel?
Trust me, if you impeach President Trump and elect Democrats to run the country, Democrats will turn the whole America into one big crappy, miserable, unlivable California.
Except you won't even get the sunshine and perfect 75 degree days.
Wayne Allyn Root is the host of "The Wayne Allyn Root Show" on Newsmax TV, nightly at 8 p.m. ET, found on DirecTV channel 349, Dish TV channel 216, or at NewsmaxTV.com. He is also a nationally syndicated radio host. Wayne Allyn Root is a former libertarian vice presidential nominee. He is the best-selling author of "The Power of Relentless." Read more reports from Wayne Allyn Root — Click Here Now.

CALIFORNIA IS A STATE WITH 15 MILLION ILLEGALS  - NOW DO THE MATH ON THE HOUSING CRISIS AND HOMELESSNESS

Californians cite homelessness as top concern for first time ever, survey finds
By BEN CHRISTOPHER | CALmatters
PUBLISHED: October 7, 2019
Californians are increasingly pessimistic about the future of the state and are more worried about housing and homelessness than ever before.
And at least according to one major poll, they’re beginning to take it out on Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Democratic state Legislature.
California Governor Gavin Newsom speaks at the Henry Robinson Multi-Service Center in Oakland, Calif., on Tuesday, May 21, 2019. Newsom announced the formation of the Homeless & Supportive Housing Advisory Task Force and has pledged $1 billion of the state budget to fight homelessness. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)
In new survey results released today, the Public Policy Institute of California found that more likely voters now disapprove of Newsom’s job performance than approve.
But the new round of numbers are in sharp contrast to a survey released last week by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies, which found likely voters approving of Newsom by a margin of nearly 20 percentage points.
The PPIC poll also found that 1 in 4 Californians now point to housing and homelessness as the “most important issue facing people in California today.” Of the 1,700 adults surveyed, 15% listed “homelessness” as a top concern and 11% named housing.
Another 15% said “jobs and the economy.”
While jobs are a perennial concern for Californians, this is the first time the state’s homeless crisis was a top source of public angst, said PPIC president Mark Baldassare.
“We started polling in 1998. It’s never been tied for number one,” he said. “Democrats, Republicans, independents all had it in the first tier of concern.”
Those concerns are part of a broader feeling of “political and economic malaise” across the state, he said.
Roughly half of the respondents said that the state is headed in the “wrong direction.” Likely voters were even more pessimistic, with 54% offering a grim prognosis of the state’s future, including 60% of political independents.
And that seems to have translated into lower approval ratings for the state’s elected lawmakers.
Nearly a year into his first term, the poll found that 44% of likely voters disapprove of the governor. That’s the first time the survey has found more voters with a negative opinion of the state’s governor than a positive view since 2012.
The survey had other bad news for state lawmakers, one of whom happens to be running for president. An outright majority of likely voters (51%) said that they disapprove of the state Legislature and 46% disapprove of U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris.
residential support for California’s junior senator fell to just 8% among Democratic-leaning voters statewide — well behind Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, who were in an effective three-way tie for first place.
The poll ought to give the new governor a bit of public opinion whiplash.
On Monday, the Berkeley IGS poll reported that 60% of registered voters either strongly or somewhat approve of the governor’s job performance versus 39% who do not.
The much higher approval rate in the Berkeley survey is likely due to the fact that while the Public Policy Institute’s phone survey allows respondents to register no opinion, Berkeley’s online poll does not.
Even the Berkeley survey offered a mixed bag for the governor when you scratch beneath the surface: 42% of respondents said that they only “somewhat approve” of the governor.
“A lot of his approval is mild,” said Mark DiCamillo, who runs Berkeley’s poll. “It’s sort of like, ‘He’s okay.’ ‘I guess so.’”
There are other methodological differences between the two surveys, though both are respected and have established track records for accuracy. Even if well-designed and administered, individual polls may occasionally produce out-of-whack estimates just by random chance.
Today’s new polling also offers mixed news for supporters of some of the ballot measures likely to be on the 2020 ballots.
Asked about a $15 billion bond that would fund public school infrastructure construction and upkeep, 54% of likely voters in the Public Policy Institute survey said that they would vote for it. Supporters are still waiting for Gov. Newsom to sign a bill that would place the measure on the March ballot.
But likely voters are evenly divided (47% to 45%) on a proposal, often referred to as “split roll,” that would raise property taxes on large companies, resetting rates based on the current market prices of land and buildings. That idea is opposed by all of the state’s major business groups.
“Split roll clearly being under 50% is a difficult place to start, especially knowing that there is a ‘no’ side to that ballot initiative that is not shy about spending millions of dollars,” said Baldassare.
HOMELESS IN CALIFORNIA   -  MEXICO’S SECOND LARGEST CITY WITH A MULTIBILLION DOLLAR MEXICAN WELFARE STATE THAT INCLUDES WELFARE SUBSIDIES FOR MEXICANS NOT LAWFULLY IN THIS COUNTRYing Medieval in California’s Streets
Fueled by progressive indifference, the state’s public-health crisis is mounting.
June 4, 2019 
California
Health Care
California, to some people’s way of thinking, is the most modern state in the country, if not the most cutting-edge place on earth. It’s progressive, hip, innovative—a bellwether, filled with pioneers and opinion-makers. It’s also unique for its constant battles against biblical catastrophes—earthquakes, droughts, landslides, and floods are all part of the state’s past as well as its present, as are raging wildfires that have left large tracts in ashes. Even secular humanists might be tempted to declare the state cursed.

Now California is home to a public-health crisis. This one is no act of God, though, but rather the inevitable result of tolerating unsanitary conditions. Diseases, some bringing to mind medieval times, have returned to urban streets. Typhus, carried by infected fleas and transmitted by rats and other animals, plagues Los Angeles. Hepatitis A, spread through fecal matter, has sickenedmore than 1,000 people in Southern California since 2017. A “trash and rodent nightmare” threatens downtown Los Angeles. There’s “a mountain of rotting, oozing, stinking trash” that stretches “a good 20 yards along a skid row alley,” where “rats popped their heads out of the debris like they were in a game of Whac-A-Mole.”
The garbage and disease outbreaks are closely linked. In late May, the local NBC affiliate reported that “piles of rotting garbage left uncollected by the city of Los Angeles, even after promises to clean it up, are fueling concerns about a new epidemic after last year’s record number of flea-borne typhus cases.” These garbage piles, along with human feces in San Francisco streets requiring apps for avoidance, contrast with California’s progressive past. Progressives once cared about clean streets and public health. Today, they value political correctness, protecting the interests of the homeless over pedestrians. Their policies have produced appalling conditions in urban neighborhoods.
 “This approach calls itself progressive but is the polar opposite of what progressives supported, which was sanitation and public health,” said Joel Kotkin, a City Journal contributing editor and a Chapman University fellow. “Sewer socialism, if you will, was a noble attempt to clean up what were often dirty dystopias. The new progressives want to create a new green dystopia, turning the modern city back into a place more like Dharavi in Mumbai than La Guardia’s New York.”
Henry Miller, a senior fellow for health studies at the Pacific Research Institute, believes that California is virtually unable to provide basic municipal services. The state “has become a victim of its own attractiveness, combined with political mismanagement” and “one-party rule.” Miller agrees with the downtown merchant who told a Los Angeles Times columnist that “once a pile takes shape, the appearance of lawlessness and neglect is a magnet for other dumpers.” The same, he noted, is “true of homeless encampments, panhandlers, the expansion of skid row neighborhoods, the increase in vandalism and other minor crimes, and so on.”
Under progressive governance, California appears to be regressing at an alarming pace. While the state can’t do much about some disasters, aside from cleaning up afterward, it can stop its self-inflicted march into the past.

Kerry Jackson is a fellow with the Center for California Reform at the Pacific Research Institute. 



Los Angeles Homelessness Surges 12 Percent: 59,000 Now on the Streets…. OF COURSE ,THEY REALLY HAVE NO IDEA HOW MANY HOMLESS OR ILLEGALS LIVE IN LOS ANGELES!



KYLE MORRIS
  4 Jun 20191,633

The number of homeless people in Los Angeles County jumped 12 percent over the last year to nearly 59,000 living on the streets, according to a report released Tuesday.

The newly released data revealed that nearly three-fourths of the homeless population, which includes 58,936 people, are sleeping in cars, tents, and other make-do shelters.
Released by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority to the Board of Supervisors, the data found that the majority of homeless people were residing in the city of Los Angeles, which saw an increase of 16 percent to 36,300.
Officials claim the data show economic stress placed on the thousands that are on the streets and said that they have worked to provide permanent housing for some 21,631 people over the year.
The report revealed more than 3,800 of the total homeless population are veterans, 2,866 of which are unsheltered and “not in family units.”
The total of unaccompanied minors who are “not included in family units” and are homeless totaled 66, with 45 of those without shelter.
In a tweet issued to his account last week, Democrat California Gov. Gavin Newsom boasted that “California’s what happens when rights are respected.”



California’s what happens when rights are respected. When work is rewarded. When nature’s protected. When diversity is celebrated and free markets are fair markets.

We are nothing less than the progressive answer to a transgressive President. #CADEM19





“California’s what happens when rights are respected,” Newsom stated. “When work is rewarded. When nature’s protected. When diversity is celebrated and free markets are fair markets.”
He added, “We are nothing less than the progressive answer to a transgressive President.”
Follow Kyle on Twitter @RealKyleMorris and Facebook.


 

AMERICA: ONE PAYCHECK AND ONE HUNDRED ILLEGALS AWAY FROM HOMELESSNESS!

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/12/rick-moran-los-angeles-mexicos-second.html

 


A dashcam video of downtown Los Angeles on Christmas day reveals a stunning sight: hundreds of tents and lean-tos on the sidewalks that serve as shelter for the homeless. The scene is reminiscent of a third-world country. RICK MORAN / AMERICANTHINKER com

HOMELESS CRISIS IN LOS ANGELES, MEXICO’S SECOND LARGEST

 

CITY WORSENS BY THE DAY….

 

Approximates the great depression

 

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/11/homeless-crisis-in-mexicos-second.html



HOMELESS AMERICA’S HOUSING CRISIS as 40 million illegals have climbed U.S. open borders.

 

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/12/homeless-in-america-hundreds-of.html

 

EVERY AMERICAN (Legal) only one paycheck and one hundred illegals away from living in their cars.


 




Nolte: Punk Legend Johnny Rotten Sounds Alarm over L.A. Homeless Epidemic



Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival
JOHN NOLTE
 29 Apr 2019422
3:13

Sex Pistols frontman Johnny Rotten isn’t afraid to buck the establishment and sound the alarm over L.A.’s homeless epidemic, which has literally landed at his front door.

The 63-year-old lives in Venice Beach where there has been a surge of homeless vagrants that have vandalized his multi-million dollar home and spoiled the beaches with “poo” and “needles.”
“A couple of weeks ago I had a problem,” he said. “They came over the gate and put their tent inside, right in front of the front door. It’s like . . . the audacity. And if you complain, what are you? Oh, one of the establishment elite? No, I’m a bloke that’s worked hard for his money and I expect to be able to use my own front door.”
He added that his wife Nora, who suffers from Alzheimer’s, isn’t able to cope with bums trying to “steal the iron bars off the windows” for the scrap metal and bricks coming through his windows.
“My wife’s ill and she can’t cope with this. But at 2 a.m. last week, a brick whizzed through the top floor window, the bedroom. Sorry, Mr. Policeman. I need your help.”
“The vagrants moved in en masse . . . [in] tent cities. They’re all young; they’re all like 24,” he said, adding that, “They’re aggressive, and because there’s an awful lot of them together they’re gang-y.”
They have also spoiled beach life: “And the heroin spikes . . . You can’t take anyone to the beach because there’s jabs just waiting for young kids to put their feet in — and poo all over the sand.”
This might sound like hypocrisy coming from a punk rocker, but it’s really not. The whole ethos of ’70s and ’80s punk rock is live and let live. No rules … at least until you interfere with me living the life I want to live, which is exactly what is happening to Rotten.
If you want to know what an actual punk rock sellout looks like, I give you Henry Rollins, the Vandals legend who endorsed … Obamacare.
In fact, Rotten (whose real name is John Lydon) is bucking an establishment that treats these vagrants as sacred cows while at the same time pretending they do not exist because their rising numbers reflect badly on the Democrat-run strongholds that cannot manage the growing problem.
The media and the left-wing political establishment want us to see the homeless as victims of a cruel American capitalism that allows good people to fall through society’s cracks. Naturally, the only solution to this problem is big government socialism.
But the truth is that American capitalism licked poverty decades ago. The so-called “poor” in this country now have cable TV, central heat, air conditioning, videogames, microwave ovens, iPhones, and struggle with over eating. The homeless are an altogether different problem.
Certainly, good people slip through the cracks temporarily. No question. But there are all kinds of avenues to help those who are sincere about getting back on their feet. The homeless epidemic is actually an epidemic of mental illness, addiction, and tolerance.
City’s that tolerate poopy beaches and sidewalks, hypodermic needles, and aggressive panhandling only end up attracting even bigger problems and making the lives of their normal citizens miserable.
Johnny Rotten complaining about one of the most sacred of sacred cows is as punk as it gets, and so is his support of Trump and Brexit.
 Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNCFollow his Facebook Page here.


Another line they cut into: Illegals get free public housing as impoverished Americans wait



Want some perspective on why so many blue sanctuary cities have so many homeless encampments hovering around?
Try the reality that illegal immigrants are routinely given free public housing by the U.S., based on the fact that they are uneducated, unskilled, and largely unemployable. Those are the criteria, and now importing poverty has never been easier. Shockingly, this comes as millions of poor Americans are out in the cold awaiting that housing that the original law was intended to help.
Thus, the tent cities, and by coincidence, the worst of these emerging shantytowns are in blue sanctuary cities loaded with illegal immigrants - Orange County, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, New York...Is there a connection? At a minimum, it's worth looking at.
The Trump administration's Department of Housing and Urban Development is finally trying to put a stop to it as 1.5 million illegals prepare to enter the U.S. this year, and one can only wonder why they didn't do it yesterday.
According to a report in the Washington Times:
The plan would scrap Clinton-era regulations that allowed illegal immigrants to sign up for assistance without having to disclose their status.
Under the new Trump rules, not only would the leaseholder using public housing have to be an eligible U.S. person, but the government would verify all applicants through the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, a federal system that’s used to weed illegal immigrants out of other welfare programs.
Those already getting HUD assistance would have to go through a new verification, though it would be over a period of time and wouldn’t all come at once.
“We’ve got our own people to house and need to take care of our citizens,” an administration official told The Washington Times. “Because of past loopholes in HUD guidance, illegal aliens were able to live in free public housing desperately needed by so many of our own citizens. As illegal aliens attempt to swarm our borders, we’re sending the message that you can’t live off of American welfare on the taxpayers’ dime.”
The Times notes that the rules are confusingly contradictary, and some illegal immigrant families are getting full rides based on just one member being born in the U.S. The pregnant caravaner who calculatingly slipped across the U.S. in San Diego late last year, only to have her baby the next day, now, along with her entire family, gets that free ride on government housing. Plus lots of cheesy news coverage about how heartwarming it all is. That's a lot cheaper than any housing she's going to find back in Tegucigalpa.
Migrants would be almost fools not to take the offering.
The problem of course is that Americans who paid into these programs, and the subset who find themselves in dire circumstances, are in fact being shut out.
The fill-the-pews Catholic archbishops may love to tout the virtues of illegal immigrants and wave signs about getting 'justice" for them, but the hard fact here is that these foreign nationals are stealing from others as they take this housing benefit under legal technicalities. That's not a good thing under anyone's theological law. But hypocrisy is comfortable ground for the entire open borders lobby as they shamelessly celebrate lawbreaking at the border, leaving the impoverished of the U.S. out cold.
The Trump administration is trying to have this outrage fixed by summer. But don't imagine it won't be without the open-borders lawsuits, the media sob stories, the leftist judges, and the scolding clerics.

 

The Trump Administration Is Cracking Down On Illegal Aliens' Housing

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/bethbaumann/2019/04/17/the-trump-administration-is-cracking-down-on-illegal-aliens-housing-n2544966

Source: AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) plans to crack down on illegal aliens who are taking advantage of public house assistance programs, The Daily Caller reported. As it currently stands, illegal aliens are now allowed to receive financial housing assistance. They often skirt this rule by living with family members who are U.S. citizens and receive their assistance from HUD.
The new rule would prevent illegal aliens from living in homes that receive HUD funding, even if they're not the ones actually receiving the assistance. Those who are caught with illegal aliens living in their homes will have to comply with the new rule or move to a different non-HUD location.
To determine whether or not a household is complying with the program, families will be screened through the "SAVE" program, which stands for Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements.
HUD estimates that there are tens of thousands of illegal aliens who are skirting the requirement process by living in these "mixed families." As of now, millions of Americans are on the HUD waitlist because there isn't enough money to assist everyone. 
“This proposal gets to the whole point Cher was making in her tweet that the President retweeted. We’ve got our own people to house and we need to take care of our citizens,” a HUD official told The Daily Caller. “Because of past loopholes in HUD guidance, illegal aliens were able to live in free public housing desperately needed by so many of our own citizens. As illegal aliens attempt to swarm our borders, we’re sending the message that you can’t live off of American welfare on the taxpayers’ dime.”

Sanctuary Cities Welcome Illegal Aliens with ‘Open Arms’ While 38K American Veterans Remain Homeless


JOHN BINDER

Sanctuary cities across the United States are responding to President Donald Trump’s threat to bus border crossers and illegal aliens to their jurisdictions, saying they plan to welcome all illegal immigration with “open arms” despite soaring homelessness problems.

Last week, Trump threatened to bus border crossers and illegal aliens into sanctuary cities and states, like California and New York City, if the country’s asylum laws were not changed. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Sunday confirmed that the White House is considering the plan.
“The USA has the absolute legal right to have apprehended illegal immigrants transferred to Sanctuary Cities,” Trump posted on Twitter over the weekend. “We hereby demand that they be taken care of at the highest level, especially by the State of California, which is well known or it’s poor management & high taxes!”



Just out: The USA has the absolute legal right to have apprehended illegal immigrants transferred to Sanctuary Cities. We hereby demand that they be taken care of at the highest level, especially by the State of California, which is well known or its poor management & high taxes!




Sanctuary city mayors like Oakland, California, Mayor Libby Schaaf have responded to Trump’s threat by saying they plan to welcome any and all illegal aliens to their cities — even those cities that are struggling with rising homelessness. Currently, there are nearly 38,000 homeless American veterans across the country.
“Oakland welcomes all, no matter where you came from or how you got here,” Schaaf wrote on Twitter.
As of 2017, there were more than 2,700 Oakland residents who were homeless — an increase of 25 percent when compared to two years before. In all of Alameda County, there are about 5,630 homeless residents. In all of California, there are nearly 130,000 homeless residents, including nearly 11,000 homeless American Veterans.
Sanctuary city New York City’s Mayor Bill de Blasio originally blasted Trump for the plan, claiming the president was using illegal aliens as “chess pieces,” but he then advocated for giving illegal aliens driver’s licenses in order to attract more illegal aliens to the state.
“Undocumented immigrants are our neighbors and part of the backbone of our economy,” de Blasio wrote online. “It’s mind-boggling that they aren’t allowed to have driver’s licenses in New York State.”
New York City homelessness has reached the highest levels since the 1930s when the country struggled through the Great Depression. Today, there are nearly 64,000 homeless residents in New York City, including more than 15,000 homeless families with almost 23,000 homeless children. This is the largest metro area homeless population in the country. There are more than 1,200 homeless American veterans living in New York state.
In interviews with the Daily Beast, sanctuary city mayors from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Chicago, Illinois; and Cambridge, Massachusetts, said their jurisdictions would be happy to welcome all illegal aliens.
Philadelphia, Chicago, and Cambridge have a combined homeless population of at least 12,000 residents. In the state of Massachusetts, alone, there are now more than 20,000homeless residents, including almost 1,000 homeless American veterans.
“The city would be prepared to welcome these immigrants just as we have embraced our immigrant communities for decades,” Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said.
“As a welcoming city, we would welcome these migrants with open arms, just as we welcomed Syrian refugees, just as we welcomed Puerto Ricans displaced by Hurricane Maria and just as we welcome Rohingya refugees fleeing genocide in Myanmar,” Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said.
Burlington, Vermont, Mayor Miro Weinberger said in a statement that illegal aliens were vital to making his city “more prosperous” and “more diverse.”
“We know from decades of experience that newcomers to Burlington will make us more prosperous, more diverse and stronger, just as generations of past immigrants have driven our past growth and success,” Weinberger said.
In total, there are more than 550,000 American residents who are homeless nationwide. Meanwhile, the U.S. admits more than 1.5 million illegal and legal immigrants every year — the overwhelming majority of which are low skilled workers who compete for jobs against America’s poor, working, and middle class. The Washington, DC-imposed mass immigration policy drives housing costs up for Americans, economists have found.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.


Cher: Los Angeles ‘Can’t Take Care of Its Own, How Can It Take Care of’ More Immigrants
JOHN BINDER

Pop icon Cher said Sunday that Los Angeles, California, “can’t take care of its own” residents, much less newly arrived illegal and legal immigrants.

Cher said she failed to understand how the city of Los Angeles in the sanctuary state of California could afford to admit and take care of any more immigrants when city officials have failed to care for homeless, veterans, and poverty-stricken Americans.

“I Understand Helping struggling Immigrants,but MY CITY (Los Angeles) ISNT TAKING CARE OF ITS OWN.WHAT ABOUT THE 50,000+Citizens WHO LIVE ON THE STREETS.PPL WHO LIVE BELOW POVERTY LINE,& HUNGRY? If My State Can’t Take Care of Its Own(Many Are VETS)How Can it Take Care Of More,” Cher said.



I Understand Helping struggling Immigrants,but MY CITY (Los Angeles) ISNT TAKING CARE OF ITS OWN.WHAT ABOUT THE 50,000+ Citizens WHO LIVE ON THE STREETS.PPL WHO LIVE BELOW POVERTY LINE,& HUNGRY? If My State Can’t Take Care of Its Own(Many Are VETS)How Can it Take Care Of More



The post came after President Trump threatened to bus border crossers and illegal aliens into sanctuary cities and states, like California, if the country’s asylum laws were not changed. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed that the White House is considering the plan.
In response, Democrat mayors across the country — like New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Oakland, California Mayor Libby Schaaf — have welcomed bringing illegal aliens and border crossers to their cities.
While left-wing mayors say they will continue to admit any and all illegal and legal immigrants, Los Angeles is home to the second largest homeless population in the country, second to only New York City. About 50,000 residents of Los Angeles are homeless and about 7.5 percent of California’s American Veteran population is homeless.
As the city remains crippled by homelessness and skyrocketing housing costs, Los Angeles metro area is also home to the second largest illegal alien population — with nearly a million illegal aliens living in the region, according to Pew Research Center.
Last year, economists at Deakin University found that immigration — both illegal and legal — drives up housing prices on average, with the researchers writing “we find no evidence that house prices sink as a result of immigration.”

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder

MEXICO WILL DOUBLE U.S. POPULATION
MAP OF THE LA RAZA OCCUPATION:
IMMIGRANT SHARE OF ADULTS QUADRUPLED IN 232 COUNTIES

"La Voz de Aztlan has produced a video in honor of the millions of babies that have been born as US citizens to Mexican undocumented parents. These babies are destined to transform America. The nativist CNN reporter Lou Dobbs estimates that there are over 200,000 (dated) "Anchor Babies" born every year whereas George Putnam, a radio reporter, says the figure is closer to 300,000 (dated). La Voz de Aztlan believes that the number is approximately 500,000 (dated) "Anchor Babies" born every year."

 

HOUSING CRISIS? HERE ARE THE NEW NUMBERS:

“Currently, the U.S. admits more than 1.5 million legal and illegal immigrants every year, with more than 70 percent coming to the country through the process known as “chain migration” whereby newly naturalized citizens can bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the U.S. In the next 20 years, the current U.S. legal immigration system is on track to import roughly 15 million new

 

 

LA City Council May Operate Tent Encampments for 34,000 Homeless… THEY DON’T ASK ILLEGALS TO LIVE IN TENTS!!!


Jae C. Hong / Associated Press
by CHRISS W. STREET25 Mar 2018Newport Beach, CA99

The Los Angeles City Council voted last week to develop an “emergency” plan that could operate trailer and tent encampments to house 34,000-homeless — similar to the plan developed by Orange County.

The Los Angeles City Council on March 23 declared a homeless crisis by requesting the Los Angeles County Homeless Services Authority implement an Emergency Response to Homelessness Plan that would provide an alternative to encampments for 100 percent of the Los Angeles homeless population by December 31, 2018.
The Los Angeles Housing Authority recently reported that of the 34,189 homeless identified in the 2017 federally mandated count, 25,237 or 76 percent, were unsheltered and living on sidewalks, cars, tents, or mobile homes.
The report was released 16 months after homeless advocates convinced city voters they could permanently solve homeless by passing Measure HHH ballot initiative, which raised property taxes by $9.64 per $100,000 of assessed valuation to fund a $1.2 billion bond.
Los Angeles County then convinced voters in March 2017 to pass Measure H to provide $350 million per year worth of homeless mental health and addiction services through a ¼ percent increased sales tax up to 10 percent in a number of L.A. County cities.
Both measures only achieved the 2/3 majority required to pass because of a miraculous surge from absentee voters in central and south LA districts that supported higher taxes.
LA City Council members also recently voted to build 222 units of permanent supportive homeless housing in each of the 15 LA City Council districts by 2020. The first 122 of the 3,330 approved homeless units broke ground in East Hollywood in November.
But the federal 2017 City of Los Angeles homeless count found the population had spiked by 5,698, or about 20 percent, since 2016. That means despite raising $1.2 billion in taxes, the net number of homeless after the new construction has already increased by 2,368.
Last month, the city council voted unanimously to start housing 60 homeless people in trailers on a city-owned downtown lot. But despite the city paying $2 million for trailers equipped with bathrooms and showers, and funding allocating another $1 million a year to operate the downtown trailer park, CBS News reported that local restaurant owners say transients already hurt their business, and the trailers will make the situation worse.
The City of Los Angeles told voters it could solve the homeless problem with the HHH tax increase and $1.2 billion. But it cost Orange County $780,000 per month temporarily to house 700 homeless evicted from the Santa Ana River in 400 motel rooms. Given the enormous scale of L.A.’s homeless problem, that would cost the city about $49.2 million a month.
Orange County Supervisors voted on March 19 to set up tent cities on county parcels next to public parks in Irvine, Huntington, and Laguna Niguel. All 3 cities are threatening to file lawsuits to prevent the Orange County from dumping its problem on local communities.
None of the 15 Los Angeles Districts wants the risk exposure to infectious diseases that come with a homeless encampment. Breitbart News reported that a hepatitis A outbreak began among San Diego’s homeless population and has spread statewide. The latest California Public Health report found 703 new cases, 460 hospitalizations, and 21 deaths.

 

Rising Homelessness Among Working Californians… a state that employs millions using stolen social security numbers and hands out tens of BILLIONS in social services and welfare!

 

BE HONEST! WHEN HAVE YOU EVER HEARD EVEN ONE OF THESE PRO-AMNESTY AND OPEN BORDERS POLITICIANS EVEN MENTION THE TRAGEDY OF AMERICA’S MILLION HOMELESS LEGALS???


In California, the rising number of homeless people are not who you may think they are. The Los Angeles Times editorial board recently drove home that point by personalizing what it means to be homeless in the United States' second-most populous city in 2018.

Many people think of homelessness as a problem of substance abusers and mentally ill people, of chronic skid row street-dwellers pushing shopping carts. But increasingly, the crisis in Los Angeles today is about a less visible (but more numerous) group of “economically homeless” people. These are people who have been driven onto the streets or into shelters by hard times, bad luck and California’s irresponsible failure to address its own housing needs.
Consider Nadia, whose story has become typical. When she decided she had to end her abusive marriage, she knew it would be hard to find an affordable place to live with her three young children. With her husband, she had paid $2,000 a month for a three-bedroom condo in the San Fernando Valley, but prices were rising rapidly, and now two-bedroom apartments in the area were going for $2,400 — an impossible rent for a single parent who worked part time at Magic Mountain.
Nadia and her children are among the economically homeless — men, women and, often enough, families, who find themselves without a place to live because of some kind of setback or immediate crisis: a divorce, a short-term illness, a loss of a job, an eviction. In many cities across the nation, these are not necessarily problems that would plunge a person into homelessness. But here they can. Why? Because of the shockingly high cost of housing in Los Angeles.
Perhaps the most important thing that anyone should take away from Times' editors' take on Nadia's situation is that she is functional adult who is more than capable of improving her lot. Later in the editorial, the LA Times' editors disclose that she was able to get her family into a homeless shelter and that she has been able to secure a full time job doing data entry at an insurance company, where only a few of her co-workers know of her homeless status.
Nadia is far from alone in Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, north of Los Angeles, Santa Barbara is one of the wealthiest cities in California. There, the New Beginnings counseling center has made arrangements to allow up to 150 Californians who are either living in their cars or in recreational vehiclesto be able to park them overnight in the otherwise empty parking lots of local churches and government offices.
The clients can park after 7 p.m., but have to clear out as early as 6 a.m. The benefit is that the vehicles are no longer parked on city streets, which riles some residents and merchants. And because the lots are monitored by New Beginnings, the clients, who all go through a screening process, can at least feel safe while they sleep.
Santiago Geronimo works in the kitchen of a high-end Santa Barbara restaurant and until recently, he, his girlfriend and her son Luis lived in a two-bedroom apartment shared by four adults and three kids. But the girlfriend, Luisa Ramirez, lost her retail clerk job because of a back injury, and they've lived in a Ford Explorer since September. Their new home is a church parking lot on the Goleta border.
There is a common element among many of California's employed homeless, in that many were living in apartments or houses until one of their household's members experienced a job loss. Beyond that, many were employed with relatively good incomes until they lost their jobs, where they soon found that their available employment options were limited to low-paying jobs that weren't enough to pay their rents or mortgages.
Then the evictions came, and they became homeless. All across the state.

Steve Lopez, a LA Times columnist, asked a good question about why California's working population doesn't move to where housing is cheaper:
You might ask why people of lesser means don't head to less expensive areas than Santa Barbara — it's a fair question, and I've written about people who eventually did make such a move. In Santa Barbara, the answers I got were the same ones I've heard elsewhere in coastal California. People hold open the option of leaving, but many are connected to specific places by history, family and employment connections, and they're not quite ready to give up on a turnaround, move to a place they don't know, and start over from scratch.
Besides that, local economies rely on those of lesser means, so where are they supposed to live?
"You know," said Phil, "there's a huge Hispanic population that does all the damn work around here. Every restaurant you go into, you can watch them slaving away. And they're taking care of people's gardens and everything else, and they wind up with eight or 10 people living in a one-bedroom place."
Until that doesn't work, as Santiago Geronimo found out.
The truth is that many Californians have tried to move to greener pastures, as many have from California's economically-distressed Central Valley, where that region's oil industry has yet to recover from the decline of oil prices from July 2014 through February 2016. According to Moody's, for every job lost in the oil and gas industry, an additional 3.43 jobs may be lost in other sectors, creating a negative deficit that other, more strongly growing sectors of the economy must be in overdrive to overcome, just to get to the point where any positive economic growth may be recorded. California's Central Valley lost thousands of oil and gas industry jobs during the downturn, where some of the impact of those losses are also being felt in other communities throughout the state's interior.
In Bakersfield, in Kern County, where many of the state's oil and gas industry jobs are centered, the city's homeless shelters were forced to turn away Californians seeking shelter earlier this year because they ran out of space to accommodate them during a short cold snap, when having to sleep outdoors became too intolerable.
Some of the economically displaced from California's Central Valley have migrated to where jobs are available in the state's thriving metropolises, such as San Francisco and Los Angeles, where they've run into the same situation of excessively high rents. Consequently, they've joined the ranks of the employed homeless.
Others are fleeing the state altogether, paradoxically seeking to escape the "prosperity" of the state's coastal cities, with the housing shortage-driven soaring rents and declining quality of life in those cities becoming a primary motivation for their flight.
All these things together would appear to have set California on a very different course than the rest of the United States. At the very least, where the trends for homelessness are concerned.
For his part, the state's governor, Jerry Brown, refused to declare the state's homelessness crisis to be an emergency in 2016, which denied the state's counties and cities any additional resources to combat homelessness. The state's data for homeless in 2017 shows the results of that decision, where at the national level, if not for California, the trend for homelessness in the U.S. would have improved.



Activist Group Plans $3 Billion City to Solve California’s Homeless Problem

FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images
FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images
2:04

An activist group is planning a $3 billion city that includes dorm-style accommodations, communal televisions, and underground tunnels to house California’s homeless.
Daune Nason, the founder of the activist group Citizens Again, announced Thursday his proposal for a city with an estimated $3 billion price tag decked out with amenities and services to serve 150,000 of California’s homeless.
In 2018, California’s homeless population reached nearly 130,000— about one-fourth of the national total, CBS Los Angeles reported.
According to a press release, the city would include dormitory-style sleeping quarters along with communal bathrooms and private showers.
“Qualified citizens”— those who meet as-yet undisclosed criteria— will be allowed to live in the city and are free to leave whenever they wish, says Nason, who adds, “Some might want to stay forever.”
Residents of this planned city would be provided wristbands to gain access to their dorms, as well as perform tasks such as job check-ins, medicine consumption, and buying items with credits.
The city would be divided into four neighborhoods, and each neighborhood would be equipped with its own cafeteria and kitchen with multiple scheduled eating times to accommodate an 150,000-person population.
The project will also involve building underground tunnels so deliveries can be made and city workers can commute to their jobs to “minimize disruption of citizen life,” according to Nason.
“It will be a city they’ll want to live in, a community they’ll want to be part of, and for those that desire, an opportunity to gain life skills to integrate back into society,” according to the Citizens Again website.
A GoFundMe page with a goal of $50,000 for the proposed city raised just $820 as of Sunday afternoon.