Diane Muldanado, 58, who has been homeless for 16 years, tries to stay warm in downtown Santa Monica in January.(Genaro Molina, Los Angeles Times / January 31, 2013)
On June 29, 2013, Gale Holland and Emily Alpert write in the Los Angeles Times that homelessness has dramatically expanded over the last two years, a lingering result of the recession and now rising rents.
“These numbers are troubling,” said Mayor-elect Eric Garcetti, who pledged during his campaign to end homelessness. “The recovery has been more jobless than we would have liked.”
It could get worse. More than $80 million in federal stimulus funds for emergency housing dried up in August, said Michael Arnold, executive director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, the joint city and county agency that conducted the count in January. Federal sequestration has frozen emergency housing vouchers in the city of Los Angeles, the housing department said.
Gov. Jerry Brown’s realignment program diverted more than 15,000 low-level felons to Los Angeles County jails and probation programs, the Los Angeles County Probation Department reported. Arnold said that led to more people being released from jail without adequate services or housing.
“The environment has conspired to make it look bad for Los Angeles,” Arnold said. “We really need the economy to recover at a faster pace.”
The biggest jumps in the homeless numbers were among single men and people who have been without permanent shelter for a year or more, the study found. More white people are becoming homeless; the number was up 12 percent from 2011.
At the same time, the rising economy has pulled up housing costs. In 2009, the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the Los Angeles-Long Beach area was $1,361. In 2013, that jumped to $1,421, according to a study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
The number of emergency shelters has dropped by 8 percent, also because of the downturn, the study found.
We continue to ONLY see earning an income to support one’s and his or her family’s livelihood through a JOB, when the reality is that jobs are being destroyed and devalued by tectonic shifts in the technologies of production. The role of physical productive capital is to do ever more of the work, which produces income. Full employment is not an objective of businesses. Companies strive to keep labor input and other costs at a minimum. Private sector job creation in numbers that match the pool of people willing and able to work is constantly being eroded by physical productive capital’s ever increasing role.
Until we understand this reality and redirect our polices from JOB CREATION and welfare dependency to OWNERSHIP CREATION, our nation will continue to experience growing homelessness and poverty.
Sadly, the Great Recession or Depression continues and the reality is that millions and millions more are destined for poverty subsistence.
We need, going forth, to recognize that tectonic shifts in the technologies of production will increasingly replace human labor with non-human means of production, and without extending equal opportunities to own (not equal results but equal opportunity for capital credit) more millions and millions of Americans will be displaced from their jobs and not be able to find a job, especially a job with decent wage or salary earnings to support a family. Then what? The hoggist greed of narrow minded, money-focused own-at-all-cost hoarders, needs to be confronted and opportunities for FUTURE private, individual ownership of FUTURE economic growth dramatically expanded to enable EVERY American to become a capital share owner in the assets of the major corporations that produce the bulk of our products and services, all financed using insured capital credit loans that will pay for themselves.
See my article “The Path To Eradicating Poverty In America” at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-reber/the-path-to-eradicating-p_b_3017072.html and “The Path To Sustainable Economic Growth” at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-reber/sustainable-economic-growth_b_3141721.html, and the article entitled “The Solution To America’s Economic Decline” at http://www.nationofchange.org/solution-america-s-economic-decline-1367588690
Support the Capital Homestead Act at http://www.cesj.org/homestead/index.htm and http://www.cesj.org/homestead/summary-cha.htm
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-homeless-count-20130629,0,7596476.story
