The number of homeless in Los Angeles continues to grow: shocking numbers

Skid Row is an area of ​​Los Angeles that is unlike any other urban area in America. We can say that this is a city within a city. The Skid Row neighborhood of poor and homeless people is located in the center of Los Angeles, a city that is currently on the rise, offering a wide range of social services and fighting for fair wages.

Фото: Depositphotos

However, the problem of homelessness in one of the most famous cities in the United States is only getting worse. According to a new study, over the past year, the number of homeless people in Los Angeles increased by 16%, writes Big Think.

Los Angeles County currently has almost 59 000 homeless people, which is 12% more than last year. In the city itself, there are more than 36 000 homeless, which is 16% more than the 2018 of the year. According to city officials, 75% of homeless people, approximately 44 000 people, live simply on the streets, not in shelters.

On the subject: As a homeless pupil from New York received a full scholarship at Harvard

This problem is not only Los Angeles. Orange County in California faced an increase in 42% homelessness over the year. In the neighboring Alameda district, the number of homeless people increased by 43%; in Kern County - by 50%. And the homeless population of San Francisco grew by 17%.

This problem is particularly acute in downtown Los Angeles, where the housing shortage has led to a sharp rise in prices for the purchase and rental of residential real estate. California currently ranks seventh among the US states for the high cost of renting a studio and a one-bedroom apartment; at the price of renting a two-bedroom apartment, California was in eighth place among the most expensive regions. Los Angeles was ranked third on the list of the most expensive cities in the world in 2019. And this is a global ranking.

Of course, the gap between the rich and the poor, living within the same city, is not new. Silicon Valley has been struggling with this problem for a long time.

In 2015, the Los Angeles City Council declared homelessness an emergency, allocating millions of dollars to 100 for housing and education for citizens. Part of this money came from a local sales tax increase, which 355 adds millions of dollars each year to fighting homelessness. However, the number of homeless people in the region is growing.

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Officials cite the housing crisis as the main cause of this problem, noting that in order to afford to rent an apartment in Los Angeles at an average price, a resident must earn 47,52 dollars per hour. The average family income in Los Angeles County is 69 300 dollars per year. But in order to be able to cover the average rent in this region, the family needs to earn about 100 000 dollars per year. This difference in the actual and necessary for a comfortable life incomes led to the fact that Forbes called Los Angeles the worst city for rental housing, noting that its residents pay an average 41% of their salary for rent.

And you can forget about buying a house here. Shocking 92% of homes in Los Angeles are not affordable for the average person in the region.

Some organizations are trying to find solutions to the problem on their own, for example, by converting old hotels into housing for the poor and shelters for the homeless. However, such transformations are not fast enough and widespread to have a noticeable effect on the increase in the number of homeless people.

One of the groups most affected by the growth of homelessness in the city is people between the ages of 18 and 24, the number of homeless among them has increased by 24% over the past year. "Chronic homeless" - people with mental or physical disabilities who have been homeless for more than a year - have increased by 17% over the year.

According to homelessness organizations, Los Angeles County needs to add additional units of affordable housing to meet demand. This number seems impossible in the city, where in recent years almost every new building is focused on luxury.

Read also on ForumDaily:

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