Tag Archives: homelessness

Los Angeles, failed city (part 2)

Posted on August 24, 2023 by | 2 comments

Hollywood, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, is another democrat-run area that is failing its citizens.

We all know that Los Angeles is a mess: Homelessness, increased crime and open-air drug use are the norms in that city. It flows into the city’s neighborhoods as well. Check out the streets of Hollywood:

The Daily Mail shared more  information about what is happening on the streets of Hollywood:

“As rampant homelessness continues to plague the streets and neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a new video sheds light on the issue as it impacts LA‘s iconic Hollywood Walk of Fame.

The video, taken earlier this summer, shows dozens and dozens of homeless people collapsed and prostrated on the streets of Hollywood, laying on public benches, and lining the streets with makeshift tents. 

‘Hidden between the glitz and glamour, homelessness has cast a shadow over the streets,’ says the video’s narrator, as he walks around the neighborhood.”

Read the whole story here.

These problems in Los Angeles (which hasn’t had a republican mayor since 2001) have plagued them for years. So what have the voters done about it? Last December they elected democrat Karen Bass, the first woman to serve as mayor and the second black person to serve in that capacity.

Less than eight months later, the citizens are booing the new mayor they elected:

Maybe that’s because despite allocating a $609.7 million budget for the Los Angeles County Homeless Initiative, there was a 9 percent rise in homelessness in Los Angeles County between 2022 and 2023.

Before the mayor was booed at the August meeting, she said this in June: Bass announced a lofty goal of ending street homelessness in LA by 2026.

Don’t. Hold. Your. Breath.

DCG

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Posted in Crime, Democrats, drugs, failed city, failed state, Hollywood, safety, The Left

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Portland, Oregon, failed city

Posted on August 21, 2023 by | 6 comments

Homelessness runs rampant in Portland, Oregon.

Democrat-run Portland (for over four decades), Oregon is a failed city. Since defunding the police, crime is up.

Open-air drug use and fentanyl is rampant, so much so that there are open-air fentanyl markets. Measure 110, approved by voters in 2020, was suppose to be the magic cure-all by decriminalizing drugs and establishing a drug addiction treatment and recovery program (funded in part by the state’s marijuana tax revenue and state prison savings). That isn’t working as in Multnomah County, fatal opioid-related overdoses saw a fivefold increase between 2018 and 2022,

This year the mayor’s budget calls for spending over $43 million to address homelessness.  Yet between the decriminalizing of drugs, drug addiction treatment services and millions dedicated to the homeless, those afflicated with drug addiction do not seem to want the taxpayer assistance. Case in point (from The Daily Mail):

“Portland’s first sanctioned homless ‘park’ has just NINE residents despite having room for 55 a month after it opened – as shocking images show drug-addled people taking over the sidewalks”

Unused Portland homeless shelters.

Details from the article:

“Portland‘s first sanctioned homeless ‘park’ is less than 20 percent full a month after opening as shocking new images show drug abuse and illegal campsites continue to plague its streets.

Oregon‘s largest city is in the midst of a devastating humanitarian crisis, with its homeless population up almost 50 percent since 2019 to more than 5,000.

The uber-woke local government is pinning its hopes of reversing the trend on a raft of costly new shelters. (Which cost $27 million for three official homeless shelters.)

But when DailyMail.com visited earlier this month, two of its flagship sites sat largely empty, with the majority of its drug-addled homeless population preferring to remain in unsanctioned campsites across the city.”

Read the whole story here.

I don’t claim to have the best solution(s) to end homelessness and open-air drug use. How about instead of decriminalizing drug use, maybe the City should arrest individuals and as part of their punishment they be mandated to attend drug addiction treatment as an alternative to fines/jail times?

I do know that decades of democrat solutions to end homelessness and drug addiction aren’t working. I also know that democrats are famous for their dedication to spending millions of taxpayer dollars that never achieve their stated goals. There’s a saying for that:

DCG

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Posted in Crime, Democrats, drugs, failed city, failed state, safety, Uncategorized

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Washington, D.C., failed city

Posted on May 23, 2023 by | 4 comments

This is the third in our series of posts on failed cities — all “blue” cities run by Democrats. See “San Francisco, failed city” and “Seattle, failed city“.

Steven Edginton writes for The (UK) Telegraph, May 10, 2023:

When thinking of Washington DC, grand monuments and museums might come to mind, however, in recent years, America’s capital has become more renowned for its growing homeless population and rising crime.

“Crime here has exploded, people do not feel safe,” Isaac Smith, an Emergency Medical Technician in DC, told The Telegraph for a documentary film about the capital.

“I have a bullet hole through my living room,” Mr Smith continued.

“I hear gunshots frequently and I live right next to an elementary school. There’s a bullet hole in one of the [school’s] windows.”

Violent crime in DC has risen by 10 per cent since 2022, which includes a 15 per cent increase in homicides.

Mr Smith blames the Democrats, who have dominated the city’s local politics for decades, for the rise in violence….

Washington DC has also experienced a 12 per cent increase in homelessness in the last year.

Homeless encampments have appeared across the city, including at some of DC’s most famous landmarks such as Union Station and near the Washington Monument.

The rise in homelessness and crime has led some to leave the city.

Boris Ryvkin, a former resident of DC and a Republican advisor, says he moved due to poor local government services.

“I left DC because of taxes, crime, terrible public services and just terrible government,” Mr Ryvkin told this newspaper.

“The city council and the mayor have completely failed and I joined the exodus of hundreds of thousands of people literally just across the river to Virginia and Maryland,” he continued….

“What’s happening in Washington DC and in other American cities in terms of homelessness is basically the same thing that’s happened in Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, Vancouver, other progressive West Coast cities,” Michael Shellenberger, an independent journalist who has written about San Francisco’s recent drug epidemic, told The Telegraph.

He continued: “You have very progressive members of the city councils, of the governing bodies of those cities, that have decided that certain laws should not be enforced against people deemed to be victims.”

“So you’ve seen city council members in Washington DC have demanded that people be allowed to camp illegally on the sidewalks, [and] not be required to come inside to shelters.”

“That’s even though we know that you’re three times more likely to die as a homeless person if you’re living outside, unsheltered, than if you’re inside.”

“So when you see this increase of tents around places like the train station, around subway stops, it’s almost always because there’s some political momentum behind not enforcing basic laws.”

~E

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Seattle, failed city

Posted on May 14, 2023 by | 8 comments

I recently returned from a trip to Seattle – my first since 2019 due to their strict Wuhan virus restrictions implemented in 2020.

What I saw was just so depressing. A demorat-run city that is in ruins. Recent pictures I had seen on social media of the homelessness that runs rampant in Seattle:

I saw homeless camps along the freeway that I had never seen before when I previously lived there for decades.

Driving along the I-5 through Seattle was just ugly. So much “tagging” (graffiti) on the concrete walls and traffic signs. A friend told me that much of the tagging has been cleaned up since the 2020 riots. He also told me that the Seattle Police to this day will not stop anyone from tagging. An example of what the tagging looked like in 2020. It’s better today yet was still all along the I-5 corridor.

Along with the endless homelessness situation, crime, tagging and fentanyl crisis in demorat-run Seattle, residents in a certain zip code must now pick up their mail due to vandalism and theft.

From MyNorthwest.com:

“Some south Seattle residents are claiming a significant ‘mail fail’ is occurring as the United States Postal Service (USPS) has halted mail delivery due to a rise in recent vandalism and theft.

A sign at a nearby U.S. Postal Service office in Columbia City is telling residents in the “98118” zip code to pick up their mail in person at an annex office, located at 5920 Martin Luther King Jr Way South. The zip code covers around 49,000 people — but it’s unclear how many of them are not getting their mail delivered.

A visit to that annex office Thursday afternoon revealed a line of more than a dozen people waiting for their mail. A single employee was seen helping them.

One woman named Jenny told KIRO Newsradio that she had no official communication with USPS, but that her local postal carrier told her, “this was going to take a long while to fix and we had to come [to the annex office] to get our mail.”

Seward Park resident Barbara Myers said her postal carrier told her the issue was caused by a recent theft. “They haven’t been delivering mail for four days because a master key that operates all the boxes in Seward Park has been stolen,” Myers said.

When questioned about any thefts of mailbox master keys in that area, USPS Inspection Service spokesperson John Wiegand said there are active investigations, but declined to provide details.

“Property crime has been on the rise in the Seattle area, in the Northwest, and kind of across the country — and mail theft is unfortunately one of those areas that have been targeted significantly with that uptick in crime,” Wiegand said.”

Read the whole story here.

Ain’t demorat-run Seattle grand!

DCG

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