Los Angeles and the Fail of Reaganomics

[Thalassa]

I am not sure I have ever been so keenly aware of the failure of Ronald Reagan to understand...most things...as I have in Los Angeles. I have bitched for fifteen years about "trickle down theory"...but the people he hurt most were the mentally ill. Reagan shut down the institutions. Of course the up side is less abuse of people with mental illness who live relatively normal lives now in out patient treatment, some are extremely successful and you'd never know unless they told you.

But there's always those people so sick or damaged they actually need to be put somewhere. I mean really, and not for three days at the emergency center down town. I mean how do I live in a state some people call socialist, and see this many homeless. California is clearly not "socialist" and the policies of, most ironically, a man probably in the early stages of final mental decline himself, are still making people who can barely function into street persons.

I don't know what to do. What can I do?

 

[Thalassa]

Los Angeles and its homeless problem is a hot mess even when it doesn't involve the severely mentally ill. There's no such thing as a free government shelter here. There's something called General Relief, and if you receive General Relief due to job loss or poverty, and you can't stay with friends or family, you are almost nearly fucked, because it never exceeds 221 a month, and you can't get a place to live in LA for less than about 650, unless you share a bedroom with someone - I don't mean having a roommate, I mean actually sleeping in the same bedroom - so then those people pay pretty much all of their GR to stay in the shelter. They have maybe twenty bucks left for bus fare or gas, to try to find a job. It's the most hysterical thing I've ever seen, and they're set to address it now, with some new program, and they're going to put homeless vets in the old VA hospital (finally)...it's just insane because some of the wealthiest people in the entire world live in this county. Los Angeles is very conservative though compared to other parts of the state, note that. I just wonder, like, what is the deal with the laws here though about giving certain mentally ill individuals a place to stay permanently, like an old fashioned ward of the state.

 

[Thalassa]

It's weird too because these places that are supposedly "poor"...like in West Virginia. ..nobody is homeless. Like there's one homeless person or something. And there are still mental institutions in the South, even in really red states like NC, even though they closed down Dix, which is so sad.

No I'm not saying every person who runs away to Los Angeles should be given free semi-permanent housing, that's impractical because of population constraints, but to be in such a liberal state and see such disgusting inequality really bothers me. I mean housing people too ill to care for themselves isn't hand outs, it's human. Even creepy 19th century people housed their "mentally feeble."

 

[Thalassa]

A couple of years ago there was this guy near my office and he probably had dementia. I got him a tarp one day to try to help, but he would use the bathroom on himself. He would sit in the same spot, though sometimes he'd try to get arrested so he could be inside a building for a night. This is what I'm talking about, though I see crazy shit all the time, like someone laying on a mat in the middle of the side walk with a white sheet over their head at noon, like a dead body in a morgue. And I've witnessed terrible cruelty, like an arrogant man in a suit insulting a homeless and obviously ill person. There should be just like, a van, to pick the worst cases up, that just rides around town. The short bus to the shelter. Then last year I was in Venice Beach the day after some young guy got shot by the police, he was homeless.

I need to get our of LA maybe, but I'd like to change some thing too. But clearly multiple people have likely had the same thought and only came up with feeding, giving blankets, etc...it's got to be laws, not lack of people wanting to change something.

 

[Thalassa]

Well I found out it is a blatant repeat of Reagan. He did it in the 80s, but very recently Los Angeles County actually had some sort of...ultimatum? To either displace the elderly or the mentally ill, and they chose the mentally ill.

It staggers me sometimes that any one thinks my views on neoconservatives are "extreme" or that I should be more moderate. Like fucking hell I will. Yeah sorry I don't like living in a nation ran by sexist, white supremacist, ablist, old men who apparently have not attempted to update their politics since the Civil War.

I'll praise paleo-conservatives, or independents who lean moderately right, but to ask me to praise neocons, is like asking me to congratulate slave owners and rapists.