Alpern at Large: The Southland's Transient Population

Transients in LA's Central City East district
© Wikimedia/Moreau36 CC-BY-SA

By: Ken Alpern, Chair
Alpern@MarVista.org

It's not hard to conclude that--as a society--we like to talk about, and politically exploit, the homeless problem but we're not willing to actually fix it.  Perhaps it's because some of us like partisan politics (and that goes both ways, doesn't it?), and perhaps it's because we're intolerant (and tolerance also goes both ways, doesn't it?), but it's also not hard to conclude that a lot of us really, REALLY want this problem solved.

As I stated in my last CityWatch article on the thorny issue of transportation, money is an issue...but the real issue here is of political will to fix this thorny problem.  And our homeless problem IS one that's going to derive some rather unsavory answers if it's not confronted in a realistic manner.

Read more and comment at CityWatch.

Ken Alpern chairs The Transit Coalition and is a LA Westside Village Zone Director and Boardmember of the Mar Vista Community Council. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.