Return of the “Hoovervilles”

From History.com “During the Great Depression, which began in 1929 and lasted approximately a decade, shantytowns appeared across the U.S. as unemployed people were evicted from their homes. As the Depression worsened in the 1930s, causing severe hardships for millions of Americans, many looked to the federal government for assistance. When the government failed to provide relief, President Herbert Hoover (1874-1964) was blamed for the intolerable economic and social conditions, and the shantytowns that cropped up across the nation, primarily on the outskirts of major cities, became known as Hoovervilles.”

Now in 2020 thanks to Covid-19 millions of people have lost their jobs
and after on dose of help (the CARES Act) those people are about to lose their homes. Those without adequate savings to tide them over to a time when their jobs will recur may be facing the same fate as the homeless of the 1930s. The National Alliance to End Homelessness says that as of January 2019, well before the virus there were an estimated 567,000 homeless people in the United States. The largest numbers are in the West Coast states.

Hoovervilles are already occurring in Los Angeles as the tented homeless live along freeways, beneath freeway underpasses, and on major boulevards. Others with motorhomes have parked along boulevards in industrial areas hoping that the police will not tell them to move their rigs.

Articles about the homeless in the Los Angeles Times are numerous. Four of those articles in November alone.

Homelessness is up in Los Angeles County for the third time in four years, a result of an ever-growing number of people who cannot afford the region’s high housing costs. This year’s homeless count is 66,433 people. That’s up 12.7% from 2019.

Proposition HHH was sold to L.A. voters as a funding mechanism to get at least 10,000 Angelenos, and likely more, off the street and into permanent housing. That housing is supposed to come with accompanying services, like counseling, to help people stay housed — it’s called “supportive housing.”

Sadly many people have no sympathy and seem to believe that the homeless are all on drugs/alcoholics, are likely to harm their children, and they are all thieves. Consequently that supportive housing was never implemented.

Solutions are using the Los Angeles Convention Center and abandoned buildings far away from residential neighborhoods to house the homeless.

Wait a minute that solution is not the answer for those who refuse to live in the provided housing for a variety of reasons including mental illness, and fear their lives are in jeopardy from other homeless people.

Society’s solution for those refusing help is chasing them away from places we see from our cars.

“And that’s the way it is.”