Just a Few Facts!

According to the Los Angeles Times:

In the Last year, Los Angeles recordeda 25% increase in requests from families for emergency shelter.

Los Angeles County has approximately 34,000 homeless family members at any given time---a population roughly the same size as the total population in Beverly Hills.

In Los Angeles County, more than half of families seeking emergency shelter are turned away, a study by the US Conference of Mayors concluded, and families oftne must be split up to be housed.

For families that suddenly find themselves without a home, the county has 975 emergency shelter beds and has been hardpressed by limited funs and high real estate costs to add more. A proposed $4.5 million , 30-bed emergency family shelter slated for South Los Angeles has been stalled for nearly a year. Official haveing $2.5 million for the project and have asked the county to pony up the balnace, but so far have received no comitment.

Los Angeles spends about $58 million annually on homeless service and the county spends about $285 Million, including healthcare, welfare and othe social services.

2/3 of the county's 88 cities don't provide homeless expenditures at all.

In Comparision, New York City (not even the entire county) plans to spend $708 million for homelss services an recently announce a $30 million project to rebuild a 20 year old agency that processes families applying for emergency shelter.

--In September, LA Family Housing closed an East Los Angeles shelter.....there was not enough funding to absorb the shelter's $600,000 operating cost.

In general, Other large urban centers, especially those in colder cliemates where homeless people risk weather-related injuries or deaths- typically spend more per capita that Los Angeles County does and consolidate their services.


This is merely food for thought....

It's had me thinking about a lot of things including this:

What continues to amaze me is how a city larger (NYC) than LA and has a higher rate of homelessness, has mangaged to do a better job meeting the needs of the homeless.

And sadly, it is hard for me to hear that Los Angeles has the same amount of extremely rich people as they do extremely poor people. And yet we continue to have insufficient funding to help the poor.