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Friday, May 25, 2007

"You let people live like abandoned animals on the street?"

Los Angeles has one of the biggest homeless populations in the US. We know this because it had the first accurate homeless census done in 2005 (82,291 homeless people in 2005)

(Photo from Wikipedia)

LA's financial district is merely a few blocks away from the urine-soaked, tent-strewn streets of Skid Row, shown in these photos.



(Photos from Down and Out in Downtown LA: The Story of a Homeless Couple)



(Photo by Stephen Shames)




(Film stills from TIES ON A FENCE - Women in Downtown Los Angeles Speak Out )






(Photos by mattlogelin)

Notice any pattern to the faces seen here? African Americans make up 38.7% of LA's homeless population (they are only 9.5% of the general population of LA)

Listen to Jennifer Westaway's award-winning portrait of Skid Row (highly recommended), or check out this LA Times article

3 comments:

TomCat said...

RJ, Portland, OR is not much different. My walk to work is about 18 blocks. When I go in early oe go home late, there a are typicaly 15-20 people sleeping in doorways along the route. In 2000, before the Bush Reich assumed power, this was not so.

Anonymous said...

Good post Red Jenny,

If only half as many resources were allocated to overcoming "homeless and it's root causes" as for war?

There is NO excuse for this.

Red Jenny said...

Why is there no War on Homelessness? Homelessness and related poverty harms more people than terrorism does.