Mark wrote:I disagree and agree.
There are different types of homeless people. The types that are saturated and who you generally see on the streets are mentally ill, drug burn outs, and drug addicts. Most are there becasue they cannot hold a job. Many of these are just bad people Glad...thieves.
Let's proceed slowly now. Your LA Times article said there was a 23% increase in homelessness from 2016 - 2017 primarily driven by increased housing prices. This statement is not incompatible with your beliefs about the mental states or moral character of those 23%. For all we know, each of one of those 23% is a thief and a drug addict. In other words, it's perfectly possible that for the years leading up to 2017, these 23% were "bad people" who could yet somehow, still afford housing and therefore, they were not on the street. Prices go up, they can't keep up, and now they are on the street. Whatever the moral character of the 23% is, and i am happy to assume the worst based on your personal observations, prior to 2017, they had retained housing for themselves. And so if the development plans LA has in mind are realized, there is good reason to believe that once housing at pre 2016 prices is made available for them, they will take their broken lives back indoors.
You keep pressing EA to explain how social workers are going to follow them around and fix their problems. For the sake of getting them indoors, their problems don't need to be fixed beyond whatever level their problems were in 2016.
Your only option to maintain the consistency of your argument is to say that housing prices have nothing at all to do with the problem, and that these folks are simply bad or mentally ill people who can't afford any level of rent. And from there, you must explain how suddenly, within a year, mental illness and moral decline boomed for the LA area such that there are 23% more potheads and thieves than there were the previous year.
As soon as you allow for any compatibility at all between being morally or mentally compromised and yet still able to afford any amount of rent whatsoever, you open your king to check by discovery, and you lose the game, Markk. But if you reject outright that compromised people can or will live indoors for any amount of rent, then you must explain the mechanism by which there are suddenly 23% more thieves and immoral people than there were the year before.
So what's your explanation? Because apparently, you totally reject everything about the article you cited as evidence for your case, except for the % increase.