Editorial: A fact check on Rick Caruso’s magical thinking about L.A. homelessness
Editorial: A fact check on Rick Caruso’s magical thinking about L.A. homelessness
In response to editorials like this one, homeless encampments have been all over the country, in cities, suburbs, rural areas and among the suburbs. They’ve appeared in the Northeast and Midwest, in California’s coastal enclaves and in the mountains of Utah and Washington. They’ve been in the South, on the West Coast, even in Hawaii.
There’s something about encampments that has a way of making them seem magic – the way they suddenly appear in our midst and, like magic, disappear. And, no, it’s not an illusion of choice, or the result of government programs or community activism. It’s the power of encampments that makes us take them for granted, as if we’re the only ones who live in dangerous cities.
Our failure to see them as anything more than a nuisance makes us forget that they’re actually more than urban homelessness. They are a very real phenomenon, with far-reaching implications for our city and state – not only for their impact on our quality of life, but for how people understand and relate to the homeless community in our midst.
For one thing, they’re good for business.
In the past, homeless encampments served as a reminder that a city – the city that we think we’re in control of – is not a safe or even good place to live. That it is not our home, as we’re told we are, to visit and leave, and to return.
Homelessness has been made to seem so threatening by its prevalence, the public’s fear and loathing of it, that we’ve started to believe that it is “our” homeless problem, or perhaps even our city’s problem.
That’s why we don’t talk much about encampments, at least not
