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AN ANGRY ANGELENO - TOLDJA!
That was the catchphrase of the late Nikki Finke, a famous entertainment industry journalist and the founder of Deadline Hollywood. She would tell you what would happen and when she was proven to be right, she would start her next column with TOLDJA! (kind of like “Told Ya !” or “Told You !”)
My last column on Thursday August 1, entitled “LA Mayor Karen Bass Rolls Out the Red Carpet to the Nation's Homeless”: That column a mere 4 days ago ended with (technically it was the penultimate sentence) “All the OTHER cities will give their homeless one-way bus tickets (or flights) to LA, telling them that LA wants you.” [emphasis added]
I also discussed the 2017 The Guardian (UK publication) 18 month long investigative article “Bussed Out: How America Moves Its Homeless” which described San Francisco's massive one-way bus program to get rid of homeless people, while also mentioning other cities using one-way bus programs and even flights to get rid of their homeless people.
Well, my last column was ridiculously timely. Frankly, scary timely. On roughly the exact same day of my column, San Francisco, taking a green light from the US Supreme Court and Governor Gavin Newsom (former Mayor of San Francisco), started to aggressively sweep away homeless encampments using police, with little notice. Of course, San Francisco does not have sufficient housing for all those folks, so unlike Mayor Karen Bass and LA County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, who are stubbornly sticking to their very expensive and very slow Housing First approach, San Francisco is using a Bussing First approach, offering the homeless people that they're clearing one-way bus tickets out of town.
San Francisco is even offering one-way flights out of town, if the homeless person has family at the destination. Do you think they're even gonna verify if they have family there? It would be better to self-affirm or just take their word for it. Let's say they actually verify, do you think San Francisco is gonna ensure that their family will take them in? We are talking, in many cases, about mentally ill people, fentanyl druggies, felons, etc, etc.
So, while Mayor Bass is doing photo opps at the Paris Olympics, San Francisco's Mayor is doing what San Francisco was known for doing in the past. It's deja vu. But this time, it's a Bussing Program on Steroids, a race to push homeless people out of town and make them somebody else's problem, some other city's problem. And we're the idiots that raised our hands and loudly said that we don't agree with the Supreme Court and our Governor and will instead lead with (misguided and naive) compassion.
San Francisco is racing because inevitably there will be pushback and litigation and shaming...and Angelenos will catch a clue. So, the faster the better. Oh, how cheap it is to pay for a one-way bus ticket or even a flight compared to building expensive apartments for the homeless and feeding, providing health care, etc for maybe the rest of a young homeless person's life...never mind the fraud that is already likely occurring in the LA Homeless Industrial Complex.
Don't believe me? Believe the headlines:
The best article to read is (one that came out on the Exact Same Day as my last column) by The San Francisco Standard entitled “[SF] Mayor Issues Homeless Order: Bus Tickets Before Anything Else as Shelters Near Full” Interesting justification used by San Francisco's mayor, one that I have written MANY columns about. That homeless people are coming to San Francisco (and Los Angeles) from other parts of California and the OTHER 49 States. “[San Francisco Mayor] Breed said the number of homeless people moving to San Francisco from other states and California counties increased from 28% in 2019 to 40% of the total homeless population this year, according to data...The data were collected from the city's point-in-time count...” Why doesn't LA collect this kind of data during our yearly Homeless Count (which is actually a guesstimate, not an actual count)? Because LA Progressive Politicians and the LA Times don't want us to have that conversation...it would upend their Agenda to keep growing the Billion Dollar Homeless Industrial Complex.
Another good read is July 30 “Aggresive Homeless Camp Sweeps Begin in San Francisco” by The SF Standard.
Back to the headlines about the New Bussing First on Steroids Approach taken by San Francisco:
Bloomberg newswire : that means it's reprinted all over the country and on so many news websites and seen by SO MANY people, which means that OTHER cities will be more likely to take (copy) this approach: “San Francisco Pushes Homeless People to Leave Town as Crackdown Begins: Mayor Orders City Workers to Offer Travel Help Before Shelter”.
The Real Deal (developer friendly real estate website): “SF Mayor Adopts Bus Ticket First Strategy for Homelessness: London Breed Cites Data Showing People “are coming from elsewhere” Into the City”
Axios (national political website with lots of eyeballs to be influenced): “San Francisco to Prioritize Relocation Over Shelter for Homeless People”
KQED: “Breed Orders SF Homeless Outreach Workers to Offer Relocation Out of City Before Shelter”
KRON4: “Influx of Non-San Franciscans Living on SF Streets, Data Shows” [that one is interesting because LA progressive politicians annoyingly refer to all LA homeless people as your fellow Angelenos]
KTVU: “Breed Moves to Get Non-San Francisco Homeless Population to Leave City”
Independent Journal Review: “Send Them Back: San Francisco Plans On Busing Homeless People Out of the City”
National Review: “San Francisco Mayor Orders Nonprofits to Offer Homeless Bus Tickets Out of Town”
Contra Costa News: “SF Mayor London Breed Directs Staff to Offer Homeless Bus Tickets Before Services”
This is a really interesting headline (from ABC 7 News): “SF Begins Ticketing RVs on Public Street; Resident Says City Offered PLANE TICKET to Leave” [emphasis added] From that article: “The city worker who came here said that if I have a family somewhere else in another state, that the city would pay for us to fly there and leave,” said Angela.....”
SO, the Los Angeles Hellscape, with its shoplifting fentanyl zombies, arsonists, unprovoked attacks, robberies/burglaries, and LA Metro stabbings and killings, will continue to descend into the abyss. We're the idiots. We will be dumped on even more so than we have been. Wanna bet that San Francisco and other cities will suggest LA as the destination, not that they have to...Mayor Bass and LA County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath have publicly announced our largesse, our generosity, our Clueless Compassion. And you'll be paying for that huge financial undertaking.
Interestingly, the Times weekly LA City Hall newsletter, “LA on the Record” always ends with “Quick Hits: Where Is Inside Safe?” and usually has two locations in the MASSIVE City of LA where we're spending money removing an encampment during each week. This is Mayor Bass' signature program. So, while San Francisco's Mayor is out there on a daily basis power washing her city's streets with cops along for the ride, while handing out one-way bus tickets like candy, what has LA's Mayor been up to during the last week? David Zahniser tells us “The Mayor's program to combat homelessness did not launch any new operations this week.” Zero, zilch, nada. Guess she figures that we're all busy watching the Olympics and the Presidential process, so they can take a vacay on LA's Homelessness Emergency. If the press isn't bashing her, why bother? Not very proactive. Quite a contrast between San Francisco's Mayor and LA's Mayor. Paging Rick Caruso STAT!
(“The Angry Angeleno” is the nom de plume of Yuval Kremer. Yuval is a Registered Democrat; a Cali-Camp, Harvard-Westlake (pre-merger), USC, and Loyola Law School Alum; and a former ballot candidate for Mayor of LA (failing to prevent Mayor Garcetti's reelection) and LA County Supervisor (ran against Sheila Kuehl, Katy Yaroslavsky's former boss). The opinions expressed by Yuval are his and his alone (not those of CityWatchLA), but will likely be yours soon!)
