It's Torture

It's no secret that there are homeless people in Hollywood.  I just saw an interesting story on the late news.  A charity has been running a food truck for the homeless. (And the housed hungry)  Okay, I get it.  Some of the local home owners are unhappy that the poor are getting fed, near where they live.  But sometimes, you just see a guy who is such a jackass that it requires comment.  There he was, the local resident saying that he was literally being tortured by the presence of the homeless.  I guess he's a bit unsure of the whole torture thing.  I can't imagine that  hungry people being fed a couple of blocks from his home is the equivalent of water boarding.  I have no sympathy for those who demonize the poor for entering their precious personal space.  He suggested that they should head downtown where the homeless belong.  Hmmm, if he doesn't want the destitute in his neighborhood, isn't that also true of housed people in a poor, downscale neighborhood?  Those poor people, they just don't know their place.  Like I said, a jackass.

Crazy In L.A. An Update

On June 17 of this year, I wrote a brief piece about a homeless woman in my neighborhood.  I wondered if she had started off sane but was going crazy from being separated from the greater community.  Yesterday, she was arrested by the LAPD.  I don't know why.  Yes, she had become a bit of a shouter, but from what I've seen of her behavior, she wasn't dangerous, just irritating.  Yet another example of dealing with social problems with a term in jail?  Probably.

Crazy In Los Angeles

We all know that mental illness can cause homelessness,  but can homelessness cause mental illness?  There is a woman who wanders the streets of my neighborhood.  I first saw her about a year ago.  She was well dressed, clean and dragging around one of those wheeled suit cases.  A few days latter, I saw her again.  This time she was getting thrown out of a store.  She was yelling that it wasn't her fault that her boyfriend had thrown her out and she had no place to go.

As the year has passed, she's gotten dirtier,  shabbier, and crazier.   This afternoon, I saw her at her usual spot, yelling at no one in particular, in what sounded like Italian.   As a homeless person, she is isolated.  She may see hundreds, perhaps even thousands of people every day, but she has little or no contact with any of them.  She just sits there, alone, surrounded by people.  I've read that prisoners held in isolation for long periods of time go slowly, irreversibly nuts.  I doubt this woman has had a real conversation with another person for the year she's been wandering around the streets.  For all I know, even though things seemed normal, she had emotional problems when her boyfriend gave her the boot.  But there's no doubt, that things have gotten far worse in the last twelve months.  At what point will her descent into madness be irreversible?

America's Ongoing War On the Poor

The city of Costa Mesa, California has banned bicycle parking on public property except at city provided bike racks.  As an example of just how few city owned bike racks there are, drum roll please, there are a grand total of 38 legal, approved spots in the city's 30 public parks.   As a cyclist, my first reaction on hearing this bit of insane news was that some bike hating city councilman was having his own against an imaginary spandex clad, two wheeled communist threat.  But, it's a bit more than that.  The ordinance has come out of Costa Mesa's Homeless Task Force.  It seems that many of the homeless have traded their shopping carts for old bikes; loaded down with all their possessions, more often pushed than ridden.  Why deal with poverty and homelessness when it's so much easier to harass the down and out.  With any luck, they'll head over the city line and become another town's  problem.