The 337-page report, “‘You Have to Move!’ The Cruel and Ineffective Criminalization of Unhoused People in Los Angeles,” documents the experiences of people living on the streets and in vehicles, temporary shelters, and parks in Los Angeles, as they struggle to survive while facing criminalization and governmental failures to prioritize eviction prevention or access to permanent housing. Law enforcement and sanitation “sweeps” force unhoused people out of public view, often wasting resources on temporary shelter and punishments that do not address the underlying needs. Tens of thousands of people are living in the streets of Los Angeles; death rates among the unhoused have skyrocketed.
What’s sad to me is how much effort, time, and research we have to put in to prove this to people.
I could tell this was inhuman when I was a child, and all through my youth, I was given all kinds of excuses for it, usually amounting to “because capitalism.” Well I’m old enough to know all that bullshit was lies and I didn’t need a 337-page fucking report to figure it out.
This isn’t meant to say anything negative about the people who would make such a report: they made the report because they give a damn. Good on them for putting the work in.
It’s an indictment on the rest of humanity that we need to go to these lengths to prove to them that this isn’t just hurtful, it’s also backward, unnecessary, and causes great social harm that reverberates far beyond the homeless themselves.
What’s sad to me is how much effort, time, and research we have to put in to prove this to people.
I could tell this was inhuman when I was a child, and all through my youth, I was given all kinds of excuses for it, usually amounting to “because capitalism.” Well I’m old enough to know all that bullshit was lies and I didn’t need a 337-page fucking report to figure it out.
This isn’t meant to say anything negative about the people who would make such a report: they made the report because they give a damn. Good on them for putting the work in.
It’s an indictment on the rest of humanity that we need to go to these lengths to prove to them that this isn’t just hurtful, it’s also backward, unnecessary, and causes great social harm that reverberates far beyond the homeless themselves.