After Prop 47 debates and city council battles, Angelenos remain bitterly divided on whether encampments should be met with services and shelter or with police presence and clearances. Which approach actually moves the needle?
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Add your commentI used to be homeless. Echo Park, 2019. I want people in this thread to understand something — nobody is living in a tent on the 101 because they think it's a good time. I got into housing through a coordinated entry program and it changed my life. But I also watched people I knew get swept eight, nine, ten times and lose every document they had — ID, birth certificate, everything — which makes it nearly impossible to qualify for housing programs afterward. Sweeps without services don't solve anything. They just scatter the problem and punish people for being poor.
^ That's not accurate. Homelessness was rising sharply in LA well before Prop 47 passed in 2014, and multiple studies including ones from USC and RAND have found no statistically significant link between Prop 47 and unsheltered population growth. The actual drivers are chronic underbuilding, stagnant wages, mental health system collapse after Reagan-era deinstitutionalization, and the 2008 foreclosure crisis. I know 'Prop 47 did it' is a satisfying bumper sticker but it doesn't hold up.
Born and raised in Boyle Heights. My abuela used to walk to the mercado every morning. Now she's scared to leave the house because the encampment on Cesar Chavez has gotten completely out of hand. I'm not saying throw everyone in jail, I'm saying we've tried the 'compassionate' approach for 20 years and the numbers keep going UP. At what point do we admit that what we're doing isn't working? The city spent $837 million on homelessness last year. Where did it go? Nobody can answer that question straight.
Can we talk about the actual RESIDENTS who are suffering here? The families in Koreatown and Westlake who can't use the parks? The small business owners in Venice who've lost customers? Every conversation gets hijacked into ideology and the working class people dealing with the day-to-day reality get ignored. I support getting people into housing AND I support clearing encampments from playgrounds. These are not mutually exclusive positions. Stop making me pick a team.
I moved here from Chicago three years ago and honestly the scale of this shocked me. But I've also watched the Inside Safe operations and some of those hotel conversions seem to actually be working? My neighbor Deb volunteers with one of the PATH outreach teams and she says the people who get stable housing almost never return to the streets. The problem is the pipeline is way too slow and way too expensive. $700k per unit to build supportive housing is a separate scandal nobody wants to talk about.
ok so genuine question for the enforcement crowd: cleared to WHERE exactly? every time lapd sweeps an encampment those same people are back within two weeks because there is literally nowhere for them to go. this isnt a character flaw thing its a math problem. we dont have enough beds. you cant arrest your way out of a housing shortage
lol the city council members yelling about compassion all have giant walls around their houses in Los Feliz and have never spent one night worrying about where they're gonna sleep. easy to philosophize when you're comfortable. just saying
Serious challenge to anyone defending the status quo: name one major American city that has measurably reduced street homelessness using a pure housing-first model at scale, without any enforcement component whatsoever. Houston gets cited constantly but Houston uses a coordinated BOTH/AND approach with outreach AND accountability. I support wraparound services, I support mental health investment, I support harm reduction. But pretending enforcement plays zero role in moving people toward accepting help is just not honest.
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