L.A. City Council Committee Approves Mike Bonin Proposal to Study Homeless Shelters at Beaches
The Los Angeles City Council’s Homeless and Poverty Committee voted 4-1 Thursday to authorize a study for a controversial proposal by Councilmember Mike Bonin to build temporary shelters for the homeless at local beaches, among other sites.
As Breitbart News reported last month:
Los Angeles City Council member Mike Bonin has proposed sheltering the city’s growing homeless populations in facilities at local beaches on the Pacific Ocean, provoking the ire of local residents who rely on the beaches for recreation.
Touting what he calls an “everything in” approach to homelessness, Bonin posted his plan last week, which includes a motion to study a “temporary site for single-occupancy tiny homes or safe camping at the county-owned parking lot at Will Rogers State Beach” in Pacific Palisades; similar sites at Dockweiler Beach in Playa Del Rey and Fisheran’s Village in Marina Del Rey; and a “temporary site specifically for RV safe parking at the county-owned parking lot” at Dockweiler.
Bonin includes suggestions for several additional sites on the west side of Los Angeles. His motion does not address the environmental impact of homeless encampments on public beaches, including sewage, drug use, crime, or other problems.
The county’s beaches have been one of the few refuges for local residents during the coronavirus pandemic, when other recreation sites were closed or restricted. The city council used public recreation centers as temporary homeless shelters.
Many local residents were furious.
The Venice Current reported Thursday:
More than 19,000 opponents of the motion have signed a change.org petition against the creation of camping sites and tiny home sites in westside beaches and parks.
…
In a message to constituents on Wednesday, Bonin defended his motion. “These are not encampments. They are an emergency response — an alternative — to encampments, and they are temporary solutions meant to get people off the streets and into homes,” Bonin wrote in an email to constituents with the subject line “The Truth.”
The same promises were made to Venice and Brentwood when Bonin and Mayor Eric Garcetti presented the bridge home concept to the communities. Before moving forward with the projects Bonin told residents: “The promise of ABH Bridge housing is a model of temporary housing that offers service-enriched programs aimed at quickly bringing the homeless off the streets and helping them rebuild their lives.”
Neighbors that surround the [temporary] shelters say they have seen anything but. Violent crime outside the Venice Bridge Home increased 88 percent since opening its doors. The number of encampments outside both ABH facilities have increased significantly. In Venice, 154 residents are housed in the ABH on Sunset Avenue and Main Street, while more than 200 people are now camping on adjacent sidewalks. Some of those encampments are former ABH residents who have been kicked out or left.
Earlier this week, the Los Angeles Times reported that fires at homeless encampments are becoming a “growing crisis,” noting: “In the first quarter of 2021, they occurred at a rate of 24 a day, making up 54% of all fires the [local] department responded to.”
Bonin’s attempt to defend his proposal as a way to restore local access to parks and beaches in the long run can be found here.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new e-book, We Told You So!: The First 100 Days of Joe Biden’s Radical Presidency. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
Soaring prices push US households to the edge
Surging prices for necessities like used cars, phones, and housing have caused the biggest jump in “core” consumer prices in nearly four decades, according to new figures released Wednesday by the US Department of Labor (DOL).
Rising prices for food, heating oil, gas, and other necessities are eating into workers’ incomes both in the United States and internationally.
Workers are finding it increasingly impossible to make ends meet, even if they are employed full-time. The minimum wage in the United States remains at $7.25 per hour, and US President Joe Biden has reneged on his campaign promise to raise it.
Workers’ real average hourly earnings have plunged, falling 3.4 percent over the past year, according to the latest jobs report from the DOL, as companies used the pandemic as a pretext to slash wages over the past year.
Overall consumer prices increased 4.2 percent from a year earlier, the fastest pace since 2008, and significantly above economists’ expectations.
But “core” consumer prices, which exclude food and energy prices, rose 0.9 percent between April and March in the largest monthly increase since 1982.
The surge was extremely broad-based, driven by prices for used cars, air travel, housing, furniture and other consumer goods.
The biggest driver of rising overall consumer prices was rising costs for used cars, which increased by 10 percent over the past month and are up 18 percent for the year. The surge—the highest on record—is driven by the shutdown of auto assembly plants due to a shortage of raw materials, primarily microchips.
In April, the average price for a used car exceeded $25,000 for the first time in history, according to J.D. Power.
The CPI figures significantly underestimate the real price of housing, since they only take into account rent, not the price of owning or renovating a home. Over the past year, home values have shot up more than 10 percent nationwide, and in many of the zip codes, the increases are far higher.
The Wall Street Journal noted that “The median sales price for existing single-family homes was higher in the quarter compared with a year earlier for 182 of the 183 metro areas tracked by the National Association of Realtors, the group said Tuesday. In 89% of those metro areas, median prices rose by more than 10% from a year earlier.”
The increase in home values is affecting those least able to afford them. The value of homes priced under $100,000 have grown the most out of any price point over the past three years, according to an analysis by the Journal .
Lumber prices have more than doubled since the start of the year, making it impossible for many households to carry out much-needed repairs on their homes, and vastly increasing prices for new construction.
The run-up in food prices is driven by surging prices for staples like soybeans and corn, which have increased by more than 50 percent over the past year.
The Los Angeles Times noted that “last month, about 36% of small businesses surveyed by the National Federation of Independent Business indicated that they had raised selling prices, the highest share in 40 years.”
“Any animal that you eat is eating grains, and it’s eating corn, soybeans, or soybean meal, and perhaps even some wheat,” Sal Gilbertie, the CEO and president of Teucrium Funds, told Yahoo Finance Live. “We see the prices of these grains go as high as they’ve been literally since 2012, 2013,” he said.
Dana Peterson, the Conference Board chief economist, told Yahoo Finance Live, “While some of these price increases may fade with the pandemic, some may not.” He said the high grain prices will remain “at least a year, maybe two years.”
Periods of high inflation have previously corresponded with an intensification of the class struggle, with workers demanding higher pay to keep up with rising prices. The sensitivity of the US political establishment to these wage demands was expressed by the decision of the Democratic governor of Connecticut, Ned Lamont, to call up the National Guard to help suppress a strike by 3,400 nursing home workers set to begin Friday morning.
Poll: Majority of Swing Voters Oppose Biden’s Surge of Refugees to U.S.
The majority of swing voters oppose President Joe Biden’s increase of refugee resettlement to the United States, a Morning Consult/Politico poll shows.
After the refugee lobby and Democrats denounced Biden’s original plan to keep the Trump-set refugee cap of 15,000 admissions for Fiscal Year 2021, the administration reversed course and announced they would boost the cap to 62,500 admissions.
The cap is merely a numerical limit and not a goal for the State Department to reach. Already, in the month of April, Biden has increased refugee resettlement by 904 percent compared to the same time last year.
The poll reveals that 52 percent of swing voters, those who identify as Independents, said they opposed Biden’s increasing refugee resettlement while less than 3-in-10 swing voters said they supported the move.
Among Trump supporters, expansive refugee resettlement to the U.S. is opposed by a wide majority. Overall, 84 percent of voters who supported Trump in the 2020 presidential election said they opposed an increase in refugee resettlement — 73 percent of which said they “strongly oppose.”
Only seven percent of Trump supporters said they supported increasing refugee resettlement.
Similarly, nearly 8-in-10 registered Republican voters said they oppose increasing refugee resettlement and just 10 percent said they support increasing the annual cap.
Across all registered voters, a plurality of 47 percent said they oppose Biden’s increasing refugee resettlement while 37 percent said they support the move.
Refugee resettlement to the U.S. is a boon for nine federal contractors who have a vested interest in ensuring as many refugees are resettled as possible because their annual federally-funded budgets are contingent on the number of refugees they resettle.
Those contractors include:
Church World Service (CWS), Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC), Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM), Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), International Rescue Committee (IRC), U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI), Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS), U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), and World Relief Corporation (WR).
Over the last 20 years, nearly one million refugees have been resettled in the country. This is a number more than double that of residents living in Miami, Florida, and would be the equivalent of annually adding the population of Pensacola, Florida, to the country.
Refugee resettlement costs American taxpayers nearly $9 billion every five years, according to research, and each refugee costs taxpayers about $133,000 over the course of their lifetime. Within five years, an estimated 16 percent of all refugees admitted will need housing assistance paid for by taxpayers.
The poll was conducted from May 7 to 9 and included 1,994 registered voters. The margin of error of +/- 2 percentage points.
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