The Starbucks thing

... by Jack Handey.​

 

Well, there's also the boneheads doing all the pondering.

 

During my 6-minute walk to work in my SoCal beach city, I encounter about a dozen vagrants every day, and almost all of them have no idea me or anyone else exists outside the voices in their heads. I don't buy that they're there because housing prices have skyrocketed...they are there because they made terrible decisions in life that resulted in drug use, or they are helpless with mental illness. The latter need our community and country's help, while the former need to be in jail or lock-down treatment facilities.

 

Here is the offramp of the Harbor Fwy and Imperial Hwy. This is where I saw the giant rat last week.

I can't imagine this is healthy for anyone.

 

Or perhaps a median median?

 

I suppose you're also skeptical of the argument that their homelessness resulted from weaker organized labor protections. You monster!

 

Interesting, but what might work in Salt Lake City is not going to work in SoCal beach cities. There won't be any newly built low-cost housing. If they build such places in Apple Valley or Adelanto or Hesperia, they will still wind up in the beach cities.

 

https://www.usnews.com/news/healthi...nia-a-haven-for-the-homeless-seeks-to-do-more

Last year, county voters approved a quarter-cent sales tax to raise $355 million a year over a decade to help with services such as homeless outreach, shelters and housing. In 2016, Los Angeles city voters endorsed $1.2 billion in bond funding for 10,000 units of housing.

 

Yes, very noble, but this passage in the linked story is the reality of the situation:

Homelessness has long been a factor here, tied in part to the community's mild climate. But with the number of homeless people surging by a whopping 26 percent between point-in-time counts in 2016 and 2017 – roughly the same year-over-year rise seen overall in Los Angeles County, which counted nearly 58,000 homeless last year – the city is experiencing a crisis on its streets and in its at-capacity shelters. A 2018 count showed homelessness had increased by another 4 percent in Santa Monica, with 957 individuals tallied.

In the midst of this dilemma, the library is a magnet for folks needing a respite from the streets. Its stacks are so crowded that people have taken to Yelp to complain.

Go talk to the citizens -- my former neighbors -- and you will be told overwhelmingly that traffic and homelessness are the top problems in this city and there is no solution.

 

There are a number of solutions, some partial, some better than others, some likely to fail.

The problem here is not that there's "no solution," but that the beach towns historically are unwilling to enact any of them.

 

Wonder why ...