A Los Angeles federal judge on Tuesday ordered the city and county to offer some form of shelter or housing to the entire homeless population of skid row by October, according to the LA Times.

https://www.zerohedge.com/poli...omeless-shelter-fall

The order by Judge David O. Carter - a preliminary injunction granted to plaintiffs in the case last week - also requires the city and county to offer single mothers and their children on skid row a place to stay within 90 days, help families within 120 days before the Oct. 18 deadline for the rest of the homeless population in the area. The city must also put $1 billion into an escrow account to fund the program.

It is unknown whether the city or county will challenge the order, which were found to have wrongly focused on permanent housing at the expense of more temporary shelter, "knowing that massive development delays were likely while people died in the streets," according to the report.

"Los Angeles has lost its parks, beaches, schools, sidewalks, and highway systems due to the inaction of city and county officials who have left our homeless citizens with no other place to turn," wrote Carter in his 110-page brief which was 'sprinkled with quotes from Abraham Lincoln and an extensive history of how skid row was first created.'

"All of the rhetoric, promises, plans, and budgeting cannot obscure the shameful reality of this crisis — that year after year, there are more homeless Angelenos, and year after year, more homeless Angelenos die on the streets," the briefing continues. According to the report, over 1,300 homeless people died in Los Angeles county last year.

In the last homeless count in January 2020, more than 4,600 unhoused people were found to be living on skid row — about 2,500 in large shelters and 2,093 on the streets. They account for only slightly more than 10% of the city’s overall homeless population, and it’s not clear what Carter’s order might mean for other parts of the city.

The judge wrote that “after adequate shelter is offered,” he would allow the city to enforce laws that keep streets and sidewalks clear of tents so long as they’re consistent with previous legal rulings that have limited the enforcement of such rules. That appears to only apply to skid row.

He also ordered the county to offer “support services to all homeless residents who accept the offer of housing” including placements in “appropriate emergency, interim, or permanent housing and treatment services.” The costs would be split by the city and county, he said. -LA Times

The county previously attempted to wiggle out of the case, arguing that it was solely a matter for the city to handle, and that the county had been 'aggressively responding to homelessness' already without any direction from the court. County attorneys argued that they had spent hundreds of millions of dollars through a sales tax and other measures.

Outside counsel for the county, Skip Miller, said that the push for an injunction "is an attempt by property owners and businesses to rid their neighborhood of homeless people," adding "There is no legal basis for an injunction because the county is spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on proven strategies."

The plaintiffs, the LA Alliance for Human Rights, are 'ecstatic' about the ruling, according to their attorney, Matthew Umhofer, who said that the judge's order was exactly what they were seeking when they filed the case.

"This is exactly the kind of aggressive emergency action that we think is necessary on the issue of homelessness in Los Angeles," said Umhofer.

Get ready for the big money shell game between Biden and his leftist cronies...

Great. That means we'll be doing it by August in Seattle. We don't want LA to out-liberal us on anything.

In fact, our Governor may try and show up Sir Gavin by making it a Statewide edict before Newsom can claim fame to it.

Plenty of floor space in Bel Air and the Hollywood Hills I’m sure.

quote:

The costs would be split by the city and county, he said.

Why can’t they be transparent and truthful? Spell it out for the idiots who vote the politicians and judges in. Costs would be paid for by tax payers.

I'll say start with the Judge.

He should have his house filled with the homeless.

Lead by example, set the standard.

Yeah, right, dream on.
.

Gee what a solution. Why didn’t they think of that sooner.

Notice “ ordered the city and county to offer some form of shelter or housing”
Recall one homeless person that pointed out he had a tent, sleeping bag etc. and most shelters won’t let him bring it with him. Once the shelter puts him out, his gear is gone.
Another problem is that you can “offer” but what happens when shelter and service are refused? Many homeless have mental and drug issues. They very often refuse the offers. There will always be a certain percentage that are comfortable right where they are. What then will the judge do? Order sweeps?

PODS.

How does a federal judge tell a city how to spend its money? It seems like a breach of federalism.

This isn't a liberal hack judge but instead Judge Carter is a former Marine who annually celebrates the Marine birthday every year in his chambers. Very dedicated Marine who invites a few people and guests each year

He started off based on suits filed in Orange County who there was a huge homeless problem on a large rivet trail that goes through multiple cities with each city having their own responses and other cities in the trail had many more people in their city limits than others.

Homeless advocates sued these cities and said that if arrest people for loitering, camping out, and taking their stuff you can't do that if your cleaning up these "crimes" by just moves to the next city limits where they set up camp again.

Each city had an approach and nothing was working and the county who owned the water (city owns the banks and county owns the riverbed) had slush funds for mitigation but like all government, it's wasted, solutions studied without results and all that. Judge Carter said he was going to make some rulings unless there was an agreement on solutions. It's mixed to a degree but there's notable work going forward.

LA is a cesspool and there are homeless everywhere. The sidewalks in DTLA are disgusting and need a pair shoes to walk there that you'll never take inside your house. Piss, shit, mental illness, substance abuse and it's all there, everywhere and getting worse. DTLA is best avoided in many areas.

LA has lots of money to work on this and money in accounts pending study results but nothing comes from besides speeches. LA tried building 1,000 or so low rent housing units (might be off on numbers a bit) and after three years of building, I think they had around 10 units at a cost of almost $750,000 each. Mayor Garcetti also pushed granny flat construction for existing homeowners with tax incentives but that went nowhere.

The city would screen them, pay their rent 6o live on your property and promised it would work. It ever got past his speech because home is your greatest asset and no one wanted have homeless people on their property with their friends while the homeowners were at work. There was no eviction process but if there had been, there's an eviction moratorium, plus your property values would decrease and that's less property tax revenue.

LA solves nothing, wastes money, gives great speeches of how they're trying, has blue ribbon panels and all that but in the meantime, the homeless population explodes. If we want we can take about how the plastic bag ban dramatically increased Hep A and E. coli problems for the homeless to the point the city had public restrooms. Don't ever use one.

Judge Carter was assigned a suit filed in LA similar to what was filed in Orange County. He's not going federalism on anyone. A lawsuit was filed and it's in his inventory.

quote:

Originally posted by sigcrazy7:
How does a federal judge tell a city how to spend its money? It seems like a breach of federalism.

Bingo. Who needs an elected council or mayor when these judges will rule on high like this. This is horse pucky on parade.

I think this is the key:

quote:

"Los Angeles has lost its parks, beaches, schools, sidewalks, and highway systems due to the inaction of city and county officials...

Homeless encampments and garbage piles continue to grow while, parks, paths, and other public spaces have disappeared while LA officials have dicked-around, kicking this can all around the neighborhood, blaming everyone and anyone but, they've yet to do ANYTHING to address the issue. This judge is forcing LA to do something; they have the financial wherewithal yet, nobody is putting any of it to use.

Just to clear up a few things:

The "homeless" people destroying our cities are actually drug addicts and/or hard-core alcoholics.
We don't owe them a damn thing.

Homeless encampments are actually drug dens. That's why there's needles, crime and filth all around them.

Tough love is the only thing that works with addicts. Even that is sketchy at best.

The solution?
Ask them if they want help to get clean and if they do, great. The city gov't can provide the help, but I would also make them work to help pay for it.

If they don't want help, run 'em out of town. But where will they go?, cry the dumb-ass leftists.
The answer? Who fucking cares. That's their problem.

The more these assholes are coddled and fed, the bigger the problem gets. Fucking tired of it.

quote:

Originally posted by corsair:
This judge is forcing LA to do something; they have the financial wherewithal yet, nobody is putting any of it to use.

Not his job in the way he went about it. He can 'force' LA county and city to have a solution in place by a date certain or pay ongoing penalties because they don't, but its not his job to dictate what if anything the solution should be. This moron is a judge, not a legislator or policy maker. That job falls to another branch of government whether his highness likes or agrees with it or not.

Many years ago someone in New York City government during the winter got the great idea to buy bus tickets for the homeless to go Florida.
They convinced the homeless it was the best thing to do because it was warm there in the winter.
It worked till they got caught when Florida city's started to see a huge influx of homeless people coming from New York.

Homelessness has been a big problem in this country for decades. Not everyone is a drug addict, not everyone has mental issues.
We have a large population of veterans who are homeless.
Some people just fall on hard times. It happens.

Most of the time it is people living pay check to pay check. All it takes is a job loss or illness and that is the ball game. A lot of it may be caused by domestic violence. I did fire protection work when I lived in New Jersey. Several customers were shelters that housed women and children who fled domestic violence situations. Most were run by non profits and they seamed to get the best results helping people.

I have a family member currently living in a motel for about a year now. It is him, his wife and their three children. By definition he and his family are homeless.
He works two jobs but the rest of his family do not. This happened to him because of poor money management. You cant spend more than you make.


Part of the problem is the government just keep throwing money at the problem. What is the old saying " the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result"

A good friend of mine moved to Florida back in the early 80s. He spent the first year living on the street. Eventually through hard work became a successful business owner.

I think jobs with temporary transitional housing are a big part of the answer.

One solution may be better job training programs offered to the homeless. Teach life skills at the same time. How to manage money and pay your bills. Help house them while they are getting their job training. It gives them an address so they can have an ID to use for job applications.

In New jersey during the 80s the state closed the mental hospitals. That caused a major spike in homelessness, reopen the mental hospitals and treat their mental illness hopefully giving them the ability to be productive members of society if possible.

As far as drug addicts, unless the addict wants help it is a wast of money. I do not know how to help them if they do not want to help them self's.

My wife and I lost a good friend to suicide this year. She had been homeless off and on over the last teen years. She just could not shake her addiction. Her family sent her to rehab several times but she would relapse.

This is the one group that may never get help because most don't want to give up what makes them homeless.

I am not sure how the judges order will help. It is just throwing money at a very complicated problem that no one has ever had an answer to.

One thing I have been very curious about, why hasn't Covid swept the homeless camps causing massive illness and death?

quote:

Originally posted by ChuckWall:
One thing I have been very curious about, why hasn't Covid swept the homeless camps causing massive illness and death?

It most likely has. But, who's going to report it, or spend the money to do an autopsy to find out it was covid?

New York City put these homeless people in hotels, didn't work out too good.

Hell’s Kitchen residents fear summer of the ‘living dead’ as homeless multiply

https://nypost.com/2021/04/24/...s-homeless-multiply/

Hell’s Kitchen residents fear a summer of the “living dead” as thousands of vagrants the city dumped in the neighborhood over the last year emerge from their homeless hotels.

A “sewer” and a “cesspool” is how longtime Hell’s Kitchen activist Marisa Redanty described the neighborhood in recent weeks, as the return of warm weather produced a sudden upswing in the presence of drug-addled and deranged homeless people on the streets of Midtown.

“This summer will be the night of the living dead,” she predicted.

NYPD data shows the area’s homeless hotels have already become quality-of-life hellscapes.

Police, EMS and fire have responded to 233 calls already this year at Spring Hill Suites on West 36th Street, compared with just 22 calls at the same time last year when the city began moving shelter residents into hotels in April.

At the Four Points Sheraton on West 40th, the number of 911 calls has grown from 54 to 198.

At the now notorious Skyline Hotel on 10th Avenue, police have already responded to 392 calls in 2021 — nearly four per day — compared with 72 at the same time last year.

State records show that two Level 3 sex offenders — the most dangerous classification — are living at the Skyline, including one former member of New York state’s 100 most wanted fugitives list, just steps from three city high schools on 50th Street.

In one Hell’s Kitchen incident, 24-year-old mom Alyssa Owens was charged with killing her own 2-month old baby at the Candlewood Suites Hotel on West 39th Street in January.

The neighborhood’s homeless crisis gained nationwide attention last month when Vilma Kari, 65, was savagely attacked in broad daylight on West 43rd Street in an assault caught on viral video.

The alleged attacker, Brandon Elliott, 38, is a convicted killer who murdered his own mother in 2002 and had been living at the Four Points Sheraton on West 40th, raising concerns that other violent ex-cons are freely walking the streets of Hell’s Kitchen.

Neighbors cite a visibly ugly increase in trouble spilling out of the hotels and onto the sidewalks: theft, drug abuse, public defecation, open-air sex and random violence.

“It’s dangerous, very dangerous,” said Dan DePhamphilis, who manages Rudy’s Bar and has lived in the neighborhood for more than 30 years. The cameras outside his Ninth Avenue watering hole have captured everything from drug deals to gunfire over the past year, he said.

“Our leaders have destroyed the city and Hell’s Kitchen has been a focal point.”

Surveillance video recorded a couple smoking what appeared to be crack and having sex outside Rudy’s below-grade doorway, the daylight from Ninth Avenue shining down on them just steps away. The stairway entrance has since been boarded over.

Two weeks ago, across the street from Rudy’s, a belligerent customer at Five Napkin Burger at the corner of 45th Street punched the restaurant’s manager.

Mayor de Blasio rushed to move homeless-shelter residents into hotel rooms in the early days of the COVID outbreak, believing such spaces would be safer than congregate shelters. Hell’s Kitchen landed a hugely disproportionate number of those homeless residents.

The city turned 67 hotels across all five boroughs into shelters, according to the Department of Social Services – 10 of those landed in Hell’s Kitchen.

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer noted in a September 2020 letter to Department of Social Services Commissioner Steven Banks obtained by The Post that more than 2,100 homeless were relocated to Manhattan Community District 4, which includes both Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen.

“The density of the transfer,” wrote Brewer, “has strained the ability of the community to absorb it.”

Hizzoner pledged to move the city’s homeless out of hotels and back to shelters – but offered no timeframe.

“We absolutely are planning to, first of all, ensure that folks who have been in hotels go back into shelter settings, because shelter settings are where people can get the proper mental health support,” de Blasio said during an April 6 press conference.

He made the same promise last summer.

The Department of Homeless Services “is keeping [the timeline] very close to the vest,” Brewer told The Post.

The city announced Tuesday it will soon deploy 80 cops to Midtown to combat vagrancy and safety issues — but that has done little to assuage neighborhood concerns.

“Overnight the streets were loaded with sh-t. People sh-tting in the streets,” said Steve Olsen, the owner of West Bank Cafe on West 42nd Street

“The cops can’t hurt. But they are in a helpless, thankless position, especially with catch-and-release laws.”

In addition to the 10 homeless hotels are six local, long-standing facilities dedicated to homeless and addiction services, according to a map provided by the Garment District Alliance, in conjunction the Hell’s Kitchen Neighborhood Alliance and Community Boards 4 and 5.

Most of these 16 facilities are clustered around the Port Authority Bus Terminal, offering a hellish, high-capacity gateway for criminals from other neighborhoods.

“Many of the problems are not necessarily caused by the residents of those hotels, but from friends, associates, and others such as drug dealers, pimps and others who prey upon those residents,” said Jerry Scupp of the Garment District Alliance.

Redanty said some local eateries have become hubs for outside gangs and dealers to sell drugs to the neighborhood’s large population of willing customers.

The Midtown South precinct, which includes the bus terminal, reports robberies, felony assaults and burglaries more than doubled in the the first quarter of 2021 from the same period last year, even though far fewer people are out now compared to the first three pre-pandemic months of 2020.

DePhamphilis of Rudy’s Bar said “every small business” on Ninth Avenue has been robbed over the past year.

“All day long I watch it out the windows,” said Paul Fable, whose family has operated Poseidon Bakery on Ninth Avenue for 98 years. “The drug deals, people walking by stealing food off the tables at the restaurant across the street. DHS needs more protocols on what’s allowed. There’s gotta be some consequences. There’s gotta be some law and order.”

Fable now protects his business with a baseball bat.

Politics has made it nearly impossible for police to enforce that law and order, said NYPD officer Ed Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association.

“There is a direct correlation between public policy and rising crime,” said Mullins, citing among other issues legislation passed just last month making New York City the first municipality in America to end qualified immunity for police officers, while catch-and-release bail reform mean criminals are swiftly back out on the streets.

“De Blasio has been the worst mayor in New York City as long as I can remember,” said Mullins, “coupled with a City Council that passes legislation they know is wrong.”

Another persistent problem is that the partnership of public money and private non-profits used to run the city’s homeless shelters is riddled with corruption, as The Post reported last month. Victor Rivera, founder of the Bronx Parent Housing Network, was recently charged by the Feds in a bribery and kickback scheme. Hotel-shelter operator Childrens Community Services was charged last year with bilking millions from taxpayers.

Hell’s Kitchen resident Sal Salomon has spent time in both prison and the city’s homeless shelter system, including its hotels, before finding his own place in recent months. He said hotels are ill-equipped to cope with homelessness issues, ranging from food to safety to access to mental healthcare.

“Everything that goes on in prison goes on in the shelters, but they keep it out of the media,” he said. “The fighting. The drugs. The shelters are worse than prison. At least in prison you know you’re in prison. Even the food in prison is better.”

Residents of the city’s hotel shelters are fed microwaved box meals, Salomon said. “In prison they cook for you.”

Matt Fox, the owner of Fine and Dandy, a boutique on West 49th Street near the Skyline Hotel, said the worst is yet to come for local businesses if the city doesn’t solve the Hell’s Kitchen homeless crisis soon.

“We need our tourists back and to get them we need our hotels back. The city has taken too long to sort out the problem,” said Fox. “There’s a narrative that small businesses that have made it this far have made it. But we might see more businesses close in the next couple months than we have in the past year if something doesn’t change soon.”

sked Fable of Poseidon Bakery: “How long does this go on? How long does our neighborhood have to suffer?”

Good. And it's only going to get worse- much worse. I'm glad about that, because these clueless leftists bureaucrats are reaping what they've sown. I love it.