By Charles Springer Homeless in Santa Monica
About 220,000 homeless now reside in Los Angeles County as of 2005, and 20 percent of those are children under the age of 18. And the victims of the hurricanes which ravaged the Gulf Coast have yet to fall through the cracks and/or wind up out here. This is a shame. This is something which should outrage the citizens of this country.
Meanwhile, real-estate developers like AIMCO evict tenants in a 700-plus low-income apartment complex to build luxury condos, and property owners here in Santa Monica purposely let low-income housing fall apart so they can rebuild and further delete the supply of lower income housing, and there are 220,000 homeless in LA county.
Most jobs which provided livable income have been either outsourced or in-sourced to illegal aliens, in order to provide higher profit margins and pay higher dividends on the stock market, and there are 220,000 homeless in LA County.
The federal government refuses to raise the minimum wage and is making huge slashes in the safety net which would most likely keep people off the streets. To fund this war and keep their no-bid contract Haliburton in the money, and there are 220,000 homeless in LA County. Some of you want to make it tough on the homeless by enacting more laws, well let’s make some laws to stop the creation of poverty and homelessness.
Let’s make it illegal to not keep up your affordable and rent controlled properties so they can dilapidate and you can demolish it and build luxury condos. Oh wait, I forgot that is illegal, it’s called being a slumlord.
Let’s make it illegal to hire any non citizen over an equally qualified citizen of this country. Oh wait, that’s illegal, too, under the federal immigration laws.
Let’s make it illegal to give your buddies no-bid contracts and start wars and lie to the citizens to keep the fervor for the war going. Oh wait, isn’t that like the Tammy Hall scandal under the Taft administration? That’s illegal too.
Let’s make it illegal to take away someone’s civil rights because we don’t want to see the negative aspects of the greed which has proliferated the housing and stock markets. Oh wait, that’s against the Constitution of the United States, but that’s OK because that’s going to change anyway. We are willing to take the rights from a few and expect it not to ripple through our little bubbles and affect us.
Years ago I wrote about this happening in my columns to this newspaper and you called me crazy and on drugs. Well who is crazy and on drugs now?
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 19, 2006. Read the original PDF.