City of Angels Has Lost Its Wings

On living amid the homeless rather than opining from afar

I feel like the canary in the coal mine.

Decided to walk five blocks through my overpriced neighborhood in West Los Angeles to a medical appointment (how very un-L.A.). Passed a massive tent at the end of my street, replete with taped off sitting area and small barbecue. A few feet away, someone -- not the tenant because I know him -- slept it off on the sidewalk.

Then I started counting: 21 tents in all. More than a dozen (stolen) bicycles. Strangely, a ton of office chairs, too.

Maybe it's so awful for me because I'm such an empath (I know, I know, what an L.A. thing to say) -- or maybe I'm just awful. The people who know me know how involved I've been in homeless issues (or issues of the unhoused, in the current vernacular). But I don't want to step over syringes anymore, or around piles of human excrement, or worry every time my daughter walks out the door with the dog. (Don’t get me going on the unhelpful advice we got from police after a homeless man twice her age and weight started stalking her from block to block and all the way home.)

The other night I found a homeless man with a blow torch disassembling two of those motorized rental bikes against my back gate. Huge flame. Huge fire hazard. I asked him -- OK, told him -- to knock it off. He was apologetic, but for the first time I wasn't having it. I was simultaneously sad and livid, and far more of the latter.

I've made a million sandwiches to leave outside tents, organized at least 1,000 free haircuts and shaves, left coats hung on fences in parks around town with notes saying, "Yours. Stay safe and warm." I've made sure there were Thanksgiving meals and books for kids in shelters, and picked up and delivered prescription medications to encampments. Once I got a call from animal control saying they had my dog; at the time I didn't have a dog, and had forgotten I'd let several of the folks living on nearby streets use my telephone number on their dogs' tags. I drove to get the pup.

None of this is to say I’m a saint. So far from it. It is to say I’m kind of done, and I'm kind of horrified by the realization. And if I feel this way, what magnitude of upset and outrage are my less involved neighbors feeling?

(I haven’t even mentioned the homeless man with the largest penis I’ve ever seen — and seen again and again and again — who can’t keep his pants up, or on. Nowadays I’m mostly just relieved to see he isn’t relieving himself, which says something about how crazy and commonplace his behavior has become.)

By the way, you're free to berate me for these opinions if you also live in an area overrun with the unhoused, or work with the unhoused, or are fighting to bring low-income housing or homeless shelters to your own neighborhood. I don’t have a single progressive left or liberal friend who is doing that, to be honest. No, they want to protect the value of their nice suburban homes while happily insisting a lower quality of life is OK for me and mine. I’m almost as sick of their luxury beliefs, feigned concern, and high-handed admonitions to be kind as I am of the actual problem.

I’m especially irked by Mayor Karen Bass’s posts about all the progress she is making. Sorry, mayor, but this ceased being a one-person-at-a-time problem a while ago. When you boast about clearing 100 tents and getting their occupants into temporary housing, I think, “Great, only 45,000-plus to go.” You aren’t making a dent.

All I’ve got for California Gov. Gavin Newsom is: How the hell do you think this is going to play on a national stage? You can’t even clean up your own state — or my street.

I have no answers, or solutions, and neither it seems do the government officials and non-profits charged with finding them. We’ve spent billions of dollars to build … an infrastructure and entire employment subset that not just depend but thrive on the existence of homeless people and drug addicts sleeping on our streets (and in our parks and alleys and on public transportation). If all the tents and motor homes go, they go. I think this defines conundrum.

I do know we can't wait to build the incredibly expensive (to the taxpayers) housing that's allegedly coming sometime down the line. We can't wait until everything is just so, and all factions are satisfied. We need tiny homes, large storage containers, unused parking lots with solid tents and portable toilets, whatever can be put up and put to use on the quick and cheap.

In the meantime, it would seem I’m being rousted, too. The city has essentially told me to pack my things and get moving - or shut up and live surrounded by squalor. I’m taking suggestions for affordable cities with decent weather and a manageable quality of life metric.

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Photos of today's 15-minute walk.