In January 2018, the Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count counted an estimated 31,516 people experiencing homelessness on any given night in the city of Los Angeles. Those numbers are down slightly from the year before, but it’s still a daunting statistic for a city that is home to the largest unsheltered population in the country. Thanks to the passage of Measures H and HHH, the city has …
Causes And Solutions To Homelessness
CAUSES….WHY ARE SO MANY PEOPLE HOMELESS? The causes can vary widely, but often homelessness and poverty are inextricably linked. People who are poor are frequently unable to pay for necessities such as housing, food, childcare, health care, and education. Being poor can mean a person is one illness, one accident, or one paycheck away from living on the streets. A recent …
The Homeless Are Dying In Record Numbers On The Streets of L.A.
A record number of homeless people — 918 last year alone — are dying across Los Angeles County, on bus benches, hillsides, railroad tracks and sidewalks. Deaths have jumped 76% in the past five years, outpacing the growth of the homeless population, according to a KHN analysis of the coroner’s data. Health officials and experts have not pinpointed a single …
Why should we care about housing and homelessness?
Policy briefings, lobbyist meetings, and picket lines…this is the typical landscape we see and hear in the headlines of Washington. They all seem to be actions from a distant planet with unknown implications on our day-to-day lives. This blog series is designed to make federal housing and homelessness policy less alien and more accessible, and to explain what effect these …
Why should we care about America’s homeless problem?
There are some 700,00 homeless in America, many of them children. Maybe 50,000 are veterans. So what? For the homeless, life can be short and ugly. In general, people without a roof over their head die 40 years earlier, on a par with certain impoverished, war-ridden African nations. More than 50 percent are mentally ill. Huge numbers suffer from alcohol …
12 Reasons to Help the Homeless
I know, everyone is always asking for your help. You feel like you can never get anything done because your friends and family always need something. Maybe it’s a ride somewhere or running an errand or taking care of someone when they’re sick or sad. We’re always willing to help those we care about when they need an extra hand. And …
9 ways you can help the homeless
If you are one of the lucky ones, the world of a homeless person is completely foreign from your own. But without the support of friends and family, how many of us could survive something such as the loss of a spouse, a debilitating physical illness, or the loss of employment? Many of the people living on the streets today …
7 Myths About Homelessness In Los Angeles
By nearly every metric, Los Angeles has the worst homelessness crisis of any city in America. According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, there are more people suffering from chronic homelessness in L.A. than anywhere in the country, and their number is growing at a faster clip than those in New York City. Earlier this month, voters overwhelmingly passed …
Why a US homelessness crisis drags on
In Los Angeles, the more the politicians push to solve the city’s festering homelessness crisis, the worse it seems to get. The city leadership has taken one bold step after another: restructuring the budget to free more than $100m a year in homelessness funding, sponsoring one voter-approved initiative to raise more than $1bn for housing and backing another regional proposal to raise the sales tax …
How to help the homeless in LA County
Los Angeles County has an array of organizations that offer services to the homeless, and ways people can help the thousands of people on the streets on any given night. You can help them reach the people they serve with donations of clothing, food and money or by volunteering your time. Here are some options: • Downtown Women’s Center: The …