Meanwhile, the Republican-controlled Congress, particularly the House, cruelly slashed federal funds for the subsidies that help pay for housing for the poor.
In 2007, the Great Recession put many women and men on the streets as it wiped out jobs and savings. In a social context, it took on greater resonance during the Great Depression. in the 19th century, first as a timber-industry reference. The hobo is a familiar figure in American history and culture, and so is the term “skid row,” which came into common use in the U.S. From there, the next move is downward to the streets and the parks, a process that would drive anyone to the edge of sanity. When moving in with friends and relatives doesn’t work out, he said, parents and kids may end up living in their cars, with Mom or Dad always on the lookout for welfare workers who might take the children away. Gross, who leads Union Station Homeless Services - an organization that serves a wide area of Los Angeles County reaching into the San Gabriel Valley suburbs - was referring to victims of an economy that is brutal to the poor. “Most of the people we work with are born into poverty.” “We have single mothers with limited job skills, couldn’t pay their rent, were evicted,” Rabbi Marvin Gross told me. A more common story goes like this: A single parent loses a job, can’t pay the rent and moves in with friends or family. While the popular idea is that most of the homeless are addicted or mentally ill, experts say the reality is much more complicated. “Los Angeles is known as the meanest big city in America,” he said. She told me that Los Angeles is “a city of abundance, but the abundance is not shared.” Steve Clare, the executive director of Venice Community Housing Corp., which also helps people find housing, shared a similar view. Mollie Lowery, a consultant at Housing Works - which finds housing and care for the homeless - has worked with the homeless on Skid Row for decades. African-Americans are the hardest-hit, composing 47 percent of the homeless population, although only about 9 percent of Los Angeles residents are black. There are 25,686 homeless in the city of Los Angeles, the largest city in Los Angeles County, where the homeless number 44,359, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. But they reflect the depth of the problem. These figures “are far from exact,” because they come from several different sources, each with their own way of counting the homeless. An additional 7.4 million, the center says, are living with relatives or friends after having lost their own homes.
The National Center on Homelessness & Poverty estimates that in the United States, 2.5 million to 3.5 million people sleep in shelters, in temporary transitional housing, on sidewalks, in parks, underneath freeways and on buses and trains. Today, the problem of homelessness is immense. The people in the homeless encampments have now inherited this unfortunate status. What those oppressed groups all had in common was being treated as an under class by the governing majority. An alien land law banned Asians from owning farmland, and in the state’s early days, invading Anglos and their heirs persecuted Mexicans and Native Americans. Japanese-Americans were imprisoned in camps during World War II. Decades ago, immigrants who had moved westward-the Okies, Arkies and others-were pushed into farm labor camps or were blocked at the California border. The down and out, as well as many other types of outsiders, have always had a rough time in this lush land. Skid Row is a very “California” scene-one from the underside of the mythic state of sunshine and dreams of wealth. He patted me on the back and told me to be careful. I was so intent on observing the scene that at one point I stumbled and almost fell. So packed were the sidewalks with people, tents and possessions that sometimes I had to walk in the street. Others were standing or sitting on the sidewalk, with their backs against the buildings. Some residents sat in tents or under tarps in stifling conditions.