This article was originally published by Chris Venn and General Dogon from the People’s Tribune on December 8, 2023.
Los Angeles CA — Last week in Los Angeles three homeless people were shot on the streets. This happened in the middle of the night as each person was alone.
In her first year in office, Mayor Karen Bass had $250 million to spend on housing. This is the one-year anniversary of her “Inside Safe” program. As part of this program, only 200 people have been housed.
“A lot of this is coming from failed politicians. People are tired of seeing all this money spent. Here it is one year and there are 46,000 unhoused people living on the street” says General Dogon of the LACAN Human and Civil Rights Committee.
There was a 24-hour news cycle covering of these killings. What about the consistent violence of six people a day dying in Los Angeles from being unhoused?
When Karen Bass became mayor of Los Angeles, she stated there was a homeless crisis.
The mayor claims 20,000 people have been housed, but this is just “shelter shuffle.” $3,200 a month is being spent by the city on hotel rooms, lining hotel owner’s pockets. This is way too much for a hotel when you have condos renting for $1,500 in downtown Los Angeles.
This is the same thing as Triple H in 2016 where $1.2 billion in bonds was raised, with the support of 77% of the voters, to build housing. In September 2020, estimated building costs rose to $531,000 per unit.
“This is why we see the killers. It is because city hall is breeding them,” said General Dogon.
When decent people see this, it is pissing them off. Everyone doesn’t have the same understanding. City council policies grow those kinds of attacks because as they continue to fail to provide actual housing, people grow more and more frustrated, and they end up targeting the vulnerable.
“All this money with barely any results is going to be a lot of trouble unless we make a serious change to the cost.” —General Dogon
