A stunning new survey published by the Los Angeles Times this week shows more than half of California residents have considered leaving the state; citing high taxes, mounting housing costs, and the region’s escalating homeless issue.
“Just over half of California’s registered voters have considered leaving the state, with soaring housing costs cited as the most common reason for wanting to move, according to a new poll,” reports the Los Angeles Times. “Young voters were especially likely to cite unaffordable housing as a reason for leaving, according to the latest latest UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll conducted for the Los Angeles Times. But a different group, conservatives, also frequently suggested they wanted to leave — and for a very different reason: They feel alienated from the state’s political culture.”
“Republicans and conservative voters were nearly three times as likely to have seriously considered moving as their Democratic or liberal counterparts — 40% compared with 14%, the poll found. The conservative voters mentioned taxes and California’s political climate as a reason for leaving more frequently than they cited housing,” adds the LA Times.
“If the people who are giving serious consideration for leaving are indeed going to follow through, the state will continue to get bluer and bluer,” said the director behind the survey.
Read the full report at the Los Angeles Times.
'BREAKDOWN OF CIVILIZATION': LA Times SLAMS City Officials over Homeless Crisis, Rat Invasion, Garbage Piles
A columnist with the Los Angeles Times unloaded on city officials this week over the region’s escalating homeless crisis, ongoing invasion of rodents, and “sky-high” garbage piles taking over the streets.
“Los Angeles looks as if it’s digging out from a hurricane, with hordes on the streets, tents everywhere and armies of rodents on the march, inciting fears of disease.,” Steve Lopez wrote in his column, which appeared online Saturday night.
“I could give you a hundred breakdowns of what happened and what it all means, but it comes down to this: We’re in troubled waters on a ship without a captain, and though there might be a few pretenders on the bridge, nobody trusts them,” adds Lopez.
“We found out on Tuesday that although the city and county spent $600 million last year to chip away at the number of homeless people, the total increased by 16% to nearly 60,000,” adds the author.
“I naively invited readers last week to email me photos of trash heaps and encampments in their neighborhoods, and my inbox is about to explode,” he wrote. “I’ve got photos of half-clothed people passed out on pavement, sidewalks blocked by tents, bulky items, piles of poop and enough trash to fill the Grand Canyon.”
The current rat invasion sweeping across Los Angeles extended into an unlikely place last week: City Hall. Experts are now blaming the infestation on “homeless camps” circling the public property.
“When faced with complaints earlier this year from city workers about rats infesting L.A. City Hall, most city officials said little about whether the problem was connected to several homeless camps right outside,” reports the Los Angeles Times.
“But a newly uncovered report from a pest control company hired by the city has raised fresh questions about whether officials wrongly downplayed that possibility during discussions at City Council meetings,” adds the newspaper.
According to the pest control company hired to clear city hall, workers found “poor sanitary conditions” including human waste, food, and needles throughout the property.
“The homeless are using the grated areas above the pits as their bathroom and relieving themselves,” wrote David Costa, building construction and maintenance superintendent. “This is also attracting the rats. Custodial will need to do some hazmat cleaning of the grates and the pits. There are even hypodermic needles being tossed in the pits along with human waste and other garbage.”
The invasion comes after two LAPD officers were diagnosed with Typhus and other serious diseases related to the city’s rat population.
Read the full story at Fox News.
'THIRD WORLD NATION’: San Francisco Resident Flee City, Homeless Stats Worse Than Thought, Up 30%
San Francisco residents continued to flee the region in droves in recent months; citing rampant homelessness, widespread drug use, and out-of-control housing costs in one of America’s most expensive cities.
“It has more billionaires per capita than anywhere else in the world, but it also has a homeless problem so severe that it rivals some third-world nations. On any given day you can see souped-up Lamborghinis and blinged-out trophy wives in one part of the city, then walk over a few blocks and see piles of human feces, puddles of urine and vomit caked on the sidewalks. The misery of homelessness, mental illness and drug addiction hits deep in San Francisco and has turned parts of a beautiful city into a public toilet,” reports Fox News.
“As the problem grows, residents are finding themselves at a crossroads. The compassion for those struggling is constantly being challenged by a fear for their own safety and quality of life. It never had to get this bad, say critics, who are appalled that it’s getting worse every day,” adds Fox.
“I won’t visit my son who lives out there again,” Amelia Cartwright told Fox News. “It’s disgusting. I went there a few months ago for the first time and this guy who looked homeless and really beat up spit on me. Can you imagine? He spit on me!”
California’s two-largest cities -San Francisco and Los Angeles- are currently experiencing a “Defecation Crisis,” with both regions struggling to crack-down on rampant homelessness and public drug use.
“The majority of the nation’s homeless people now live in California. There are myriad causes at work, no doubt. But there was no “defecation crisis”—a term usually associated with rural India—in the 1930s, even with unemployment at 25%, vagabonds roaming the country, and shantytowns and “Hoovervilles” springing up everywhere. Today’s homeless and the hobos of the Great Depression are different in many ways. The triple scourges of drug abuse, mental illness and family breakdown have produced anomie and derangements far deeper than those seen in the 1930s, when the widely shared nature of the economic and psychological distress provided its own grim comfort,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
“In California at least, one is struck by the contrast between the fastidious attention paid to the social duty of scooping up and disposing of dog feces, and the rather more paralyzed and guilty reaction to the plague of human feces. The former is treated as a moral imperative among the enlightened—and the thin plastic bags used as the means to this moral end have so far escaped the fate of plastic straws, well on their way to being outlawed as an environmental outrage. Even social-justice warriors don’t consider it their personal duty, however, to tidy up after their fellow human beings on the streets,” adds the article.
San Francisco’s escalating homeless crisis continues to impact thousands of residents across the Bay Area, with officials confirming they’ve responded to nearly 6,700 reports of “human waste” in the first quarter of 2019 alone.
Read the full report at Fox News.
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