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Inside LA's struggle to address its unhoused crisis

FILE - People ride their bikes past a homeless encampment set up along the boardwalk in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles on June 29, 2021. California's governor proposed a plan on Thursday, March 3, 2022, to force homeless people with severe mental health and addiction disorders into treatment.   (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)
FILE - People ride their bikes past a homeless encampment set up along the boardwalk in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles on June 29, 2021. California's governor proposed a plan on Thursday, March 3, 2022, to force homeless people with severe mental health and addiction disorders into treatment. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

It’s estimated that more than 60,000 people live on the streets and in the parks of Los Angeles.

Or put another way – 20% of all unhoused Americans – are in LA.

“We have too many people becoming homeless. We have a system that is funded with not enough resources to serve everybody who needs to be served, and we don’t have enough housing to move them into.”

The unhoused are suffering, and their numbers are growing.

“My kids started understanding that it wasn’t just our problem, a lot of people were going through, this is, this is kind of the times right now.”

But solutions are not simple. And tempers are flaring.

Today, On Point: Can the city find a way to house everyone who calls LA home?

Guests

Heidi Marston, former executive director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. (@heidimarstonLA)

Rachel Estrada, director of peer advocacy at Haaven, a shared accommodation provider in Los Angeles.

Also Featured

Theo Henderson, an Angeleno who has experienced homelessness. Host of the We The Unhoused podcast. Activist-in-residence at the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA. (@TheoHen95302259)

Related Reading

Medium: “The Homelessness Crisis: A Monster of Our Own Making” — “Homelessness is a scar on the face of our nation. More than half a million Americans don’t have a home.”

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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