In this February 12th, 2020 news report, the L.A. County Supervisors are looking to rethink, and possibly restructure the organization developed to deal with homelessness. The agency, LAHSA, over sees $400 million a year, was created in 1993, and yet homelessness continues to increase.
In today's world, homelessness is a major demographic problem, huge numbers of people in our society gets into situations where they can no longer afford to live a "normal life." Once you're in any type of homeless situation, and there are many different levels of homelessness, it's hard to get back on track. I know, I've struggled with it for years.
Homeless shelters themselves are an idea from 80-90 years ago, when only a tiny percentage of people became homeless, and largely for personal issues. In today's world, it's a completely different situation, our society is getting harder and harder to survive in for people working low or medium wage jobs. There are a whole series of large scale, long term trends involved. Traditional homeless shelters aren't not a serious way to really address today's huge number of people struggling financially. The underlying issue is how to help tens of thousands of people make some kind of decent living again, so they can afford housing, or how to care for the huge number of older people with serious health issues, who can't work anymore. Homeless shelters don't really address either of these underlying issues.
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