I live in Seattle but I'm currently in LA. Here in Santa Monica its out of control. I just went to Starbucks and a homeless person was harassing everyone in the line, very threatening -- and the security won't do anything about it. We can't do anything about it or we'd be the one cracked down on.
I was in another coffee shop and a homeless was behind my chair with a lighter trying to light my hair on fire. My wife was harassed in the same coffee shop two days later.
I can't see how this isn't impacting tourism. Even when I went to Hawaii, Waikiki was filled with homeless taking over all the public benches.
> Wilson, who prosecutors say suffers from mental illness, had already been arrested three times since September 2018 for assaulting total strangers, all of those cases were handled by Seattle Municipal Court.
> The Seattle Municipal Court judge made the decision to dismiss all of the assault charges stemming from these recent arrests.
Why are these people not put in mental institutions (they would be here) instead of possibly jail? That is where they belong: jail and other punishment is not going to help anyone long term.
Strange you can lock people up in prisons but not give them help they need... I understand why it would be illegal but jails are far worse for people with mental illness and it won’t work as a deterrent for them either; they come out worse than going in if they survive. So that should be forbidden too then.
I'll happily give my views as a tourist. I've just come back from a CA road-trip and the homelessness I saw was absolutely devastating.
For some background, I'm from London. We have homeless here, but it's different. I've very very rarely ever seen someone who is homeless here that also has any immediately obvious mental health issues (of course, just my experience). I try to interact with them as much as I can, I live in central and I can't fathom how dehumanising of an experience it must be being ignored by thousands of people a day. So a quick chat and an offer to buy food and that's about it. All in all they are usually pleasant people and quite polite. Now London is also different in the states in that - at least in my peer group (16-25) - almost no-one carries cash. At all. Chip & Pin and contactless all the way.
But the states was something else. The first city I was in was San Fransisco. I had so many expectations of this city, but the sheer scale of homelessness and the sheer amount of people who didn't care because it wasn't their problem was absolutely mind bending. Something that is seared into my memories is that of a young man who must've been around my age who in the most polite way and with the most destroyed look on his face asked if I could "possibly spare any change." Just the tone he said it with and the look on his face genuinely gave me tears in my eyes as I walked with my girlfriend. I could only say I was sorry that I didn't carry cash on me, but he didn't even wait for a response as I assume he almost always gets ignored. We saw homeless tents all along the street our hotel was on (Eddy Street) and they were literally shooting up heroin, in view of everyone, a couple of steps away from the entrance.
Almost every other city we went to was the same. LA though was next level. I can't remember the exact areas but it was near union station/the jewellery district - but my goodness we literally walked down a different street and the difference was night and day. Needles on the floor, a geezer walking past throwing a bloody tube on the street, so many boarded up shops with signs that looked maybe a few years old. Absolutely insane! It was even more surreal seeing "luxury flats" overlooking those streets, it felt like some kind of jest.
The last time I'd seen poverty (not just homelessness, poverty) like that was when I was growing up in Tangiers. Honestly I feel so much for the homeless over there because I have no idea how you're supposed to get out of it. At least here we have some safety nets with social housing and benefits (although there are definite cracks where people slip through). I really hope things get better somehow - it was painful seeing how little passers by seemed to care (I assume they are desensitised and have struggles of their own). We spoke to so many Uber drivers about it and they would just blame the homeless - "It's all their own fault. They can get help if they want to."
To understand why people appear to not care you have to imagine seeing that grinding human despair twice a day, every day, on your way to and home from work. The only way to deal with it is to ignore it, because it's so horrible. Then you have to imagine occasionally (or regularly) being accosted or physically assaulted by some fraction of the homeless population, and you can see how people become hardened to it. The visible homeless problem, as it's described here, is almost entirely caused by mental illness and drug addiction; usually both. People ignore it because they literally can not do anything about it as an individual. The worst cases you see on the street have intractable problems no amount of money can solve. The only way to end the homelessness epidemic in coastal cities is to rebuild the mental health care system, and allow limited involuntary committal.
My Brother lived in Seattle and had severe psychosis for several years. Cutting holes in the walls to find the hidden cameras, refusing to eat because the food was poisoned, etc. The rest of the family lives out of state and no amount of begging the police and social workers would get him into a stable environment. I was told that there were only 80 beds available for in-patient mental health services in all of King County. Multiple episodes of self-harm and threatened suicide had no effect whatsoever on the treatment options available. He would go into a meeting with a case worker raving about gang stalking and CIA assassins, with words carved in his arms, and they would just tell him to come back in a week for a check in. A person in this state does not believe that there is anything wrong with them, and will not seek or accept help. The only way we were able to get him treatment was to physically fly out there and force him to leave for Illinois where some family members live. Now, imagine a person in that condition who has no one that is willing or able to intervene, and you can see how complicated this problem is.
I live in SF and though I can back-up your experiences I do want to point out that tourists often get an above average exposure to homelessness in this city for the following reasons:
1) The tourist hotspots of Downtown and Civic Center have a disproportionate amount of homeless due to their proximity to homeless services in the Tenderloin as well as begging opportunities around large corporate conferences. This is in contrast to North Beach, the Outter Sunset, Golden Gate Park, and many other areas (I'm not saying there are NO homeless in the latter areas just that IMO it is an entirely different experience). I wish tourists would get outside the basic areas more, but that is largely SF's fault because without a car it can be difficult.
2) Tourists usually choose below average accommodations in terms of cost, which usually takes them directly to the Tenderloin. This makes sense because hotel costs in Downtown are insane and geared towards corporate travelers.
3) European tourists are much more capable of taking public transit and as such spend more time around major transit hubs (like Bart at Civic Center) which is known as one of the worst stations in the Bay Area.
None of these points make what you experienced ok or acceptable. But it highlights IMO the most important issue that so many people are running around with only partial context and heavy biases towards the issues.
You care, but the sclerotic government(s) and their poltical power blocks that are an absolute time waste to deal with make you realize you can't do shit and you ignore it to keep your sanity.
You might say that all government is sclerotic, but the ones in california & SF are extra sclerotic compared to others around the world.
Look at prop 13, $500k 'environmental reviews' for a $5k mural on a wall, how an HSR project is super expensive compared to the rest of the world and will probably fail, how the sf city council denies anything that would make building housing better, a fucking buslane on geary can't get made or a 1.5 mile subway takes 20 years and on and on it goes. And california is an incredibly wealth economy on top of it that can easily afford this stuff compared to other countries.
Also there is a dynamic in places like LA or the bay area, where many newcomers are on visas or green cards, are a significant % of the population and can't vote on issues as a result, skewing the political power base.
Love to see numbers on this. At least in the Bay Area, you have long time residents leaving and being replaced by foreign workers. Combine that with natural population growth and I think it shows that the issue is complex. Yes, people are leaving California.
People leave every state. How is that news ? The long time propaganda and perception has been that California has had a net population loss. But that is a myth, because domestic folks are being replaced by higher paid foreign workers. Even domestically, the people going out have a median wage of 50k, and those coming in have a median wage of $100k
I remember visiting London in 2013 and the homeless problem in London then was much worse than LA. Things have switched now I think. One difference though is that homeless in london can't live outside through the winter, whereas winter in LA is quite pleasant.
Now what if you saw the same guy there, for 5+ years. Everyday he wants you to give him money with a different scheme/story. Everytime some gullible tourist gives him money you see him immediately walk into the nearest 7-11 to buy lottery tickets or alcohol. At this point you realize his job is actually to beg professionally. That is why it seems like nobody cares when you go to these cities with large 'visible homeless' because every local has seen these same people in the exact same spots for years running the same scams.
I lived in SM City for a few years and I'll echo this poster. The bums were pretty bad, last time I went back, they had gotten worse somehow. Maybe it's that the traffic has gotten worse too and that bleeds into the bums as well.
Though there are MANY good reasons that the homeless population is the way that it is, the fact remains that the bums on the street are horrific for everyone. It is very very hard to find compassion for the homeless after you get doused in pee, again, by the lunatics. For real.
I've had run ins with people like this. What worked for me in the past, was speaking sternly to them.
Once a place I worked, a homeless guy was running towards the building with a chair, ready to smash the window with it.
I stopped him, just by yelling "no, stop" and then when he asked if I wanted to fight him, I just said "no, but I'm going to call the police if you don't leave." he left.
The key is to establish dominance: you are telling them to stop, not asking.
I was in another coffee shop and a homeless was behind my chair with a lighter trying to light my hair on fire. My wife was harassed in the same coffee shop two days later.
I can't see how this isn't impacting tourism. Even when I went to Hawaii, Waikiki was filled with homeless taking over all the public benches.