Fundraiser for "T."
When I left Los Angeles for the mountains a few weeks ago, I was conflicted. The place I called home the past eleven years had changed before my eyes. Like the proverbial frog in the boiling water, the changes were imperceptible at first until they no longer were.
Homelessness has gotten beyond out of control. There is no plan to solve it, no plan to get unhoused into affordable housing, no plan to. build affordable housing, no plan to get treatment for those with medical issues, mental issues, addiction issues or a combination there of, and above all, no plan except to line the pockets of bureaucrats whose job it is to "study," the problem for years and then. demand more money to "fix the problem," when that money runs out.
3 people die on the streets of Los Angeles every day. That's 1,000 people a year. Because Los Angeles refuses to get tougher on prosecuting people who commit actual crimes, the number of people arriving from out of state to live on the streets has increased. This has been true for the past decade and got exponentially worse during year one of the pandemic.
I couldn't justify paying the rent I did knowing that I was enabling the death of so many people due to a corrupt local government, let alone the crime that comes along with it. And make no mistake, I'm not talking about the crime of sleeping on the streets but the violence, robberies, kidnapping and rapes that happen daily, and that the local leaders refuse to acknowledge because they didn't see it with their own eyes.
There have been a spate of homeless tents being caught on fire. This has been misattributed to frustrated citizens when it fact it is obvious that this is aa turn war.
A few years ago, a homeless person set fire (accidentally or deliberately is unknown) to the Venice pier on Washington which had to be shut down for a time.
A few weeks ago a homeless person through a molotov cocktail into a house, burning it down and burning a dog alive.
This week, a friend was stabbed by a homeless addict who was most likely on meth, and had to be taken to the emergency room. If anyone is familiar with Venice, they probably know "T." A local fixture, and security guard at Arbor Skate Shop, he greets everyone with a smile and his hulking size belies his kindness. He kept a watch on everyone including my daughter as she'd stop in between skate runs in the Venice skate park. More importantly he did his best to keep the actually criminal element away from the store, a Herculean effort judging by the number of times Arbor's window was smashed.
This problem and the total failure of local leaders to do anything meaningful o address the problem after more than ten years has always hit home for me. But now that someone I know has been impacted, my frustration has turned to outright anger.
Rather than stay negative, I decided to bring some light to the darkness and start a GoFundMe to help "T." I'm sure his medical expenses will be high. I'm amazed at how quickly the donations have rolled in. But despite the flipped condos for Airbandb'ers and Silicon Beach Tech Bros who drove a lot of locals out when the prices skyrocketed, Venice is still, thankfully, a tight-knit community.
Please donate if you can.
Evan Brown is organizing this fundraiser.
For more info on it or to sty in touch, follow me on Twitter.