You Get What You Vote For: Zombies!
Democrat cities have allowed hundreds of homeless encampments to pop up along the West Coast.
Homelessness isn’t new to places like San Francisco, L.A., Seattle, Sacramento, and so on. I was in Portland 12 years ago for a comedy gig. The park in front of the club looked like a scene from Michael Jackson’s Thriller video. Today it looks like the Walking Dead.
Homeless camps are popping up all over the West Coast and bringing violence, drugs, weapons, and defecation with them. When I was a kid, camping meant fishing and catching toads, not getting shot and stepping in people poop.
Los Angeles has seen a 50% increase in homelessness over the last five years. LA’s Venice Beach homeless encampment recently had an explosion and a shooting. The question city officials are asking: where did they find the ammo?
A local barbershop owner was attacked by a homeless man and his pit bull. The victim, Kevin Buttress, was knocked unconscious by a skateboard. Before you know it we will see a swarm of recalcitrant, shaggy-bearded homeless dudes riding Segues through crowds on the boardwalk. The skateboard-swinging attacker was arrested but was returned to the Venice Beach boardwalk within days because of jailhouse Covid restrictions. Buttress said shootings, stabbings, and violent crime are now common on the boardwalk of one of Los Angele’s most famous beaches. The Venice boardwalk is known for restaurants, shops, street performers, and now 200+ tents of “mostly peaceful” bomb-tossing bums.
Shop keepers used to clear a tent or two away from their businesses every morning pre-Covid. Now the homeless have had a year to multiply and barnacle themselves in place. There are hundreds of homeless people and they ain’t going anywhere.
Crime stats provided by the LAPD to the city council indicate a 177% rise in violent crime and a 162% climb in assault with a deadly weapon by a homeless person. With what they spend on guns, skateboards, and dog food you’d think they could get an apartment. There were at least two major fires from the encampment. One spread from a tent and destroyed an entire building. A dog named Togo was burned to death when a homeless person threw an accelerant into Togo’s home.
An L.A. gang known as La Mirada Locos (The Crazy Look) set up what many thought was a homeless encampment but is actually a drug bazaar. The city bought the ruse and actually installed a porta-potty for the gangsters which is cleaned every day by the city. L.A. also replaced a tarp set up by a gang member with one that would allow sidewalk access and be compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act.
Venice’s Democrat councilman, Mike Bonin, has been representing the neighborhood since 2013 and things have only gotten worse. Yet he got re-elected. He believes the answer to the Venice homeless debacle is to ask L.A. for more shelters and to get the LAFD to work with the homeless and ask them to please stop burning buildings and dogs. He also wants to defund the police.
A father in Seattle appeared on Fox News to complain about a homeless camp near his 5-year-old kid’s school. He walked through the camp taking video. He found a Katana sword and a hatchet. Those swords will run you about $130. He bemoaned the fact that his kindergarten son can see homeless people not only fight and use drugs, but also drop trou and pinch one out. Apparently the vagrants have chosen a site near the school fence and turned it into a dung heap.
San Francisco has a plan to help the “unhoused,” which is the new, PC way to say “homeless.” They built six encampments, referred to as “safe sleeping villages.” The city provides 24-hour security, three meals a day, a canopy-shaded corner for the homeless to charge their phones (say what?), and restrooms, (thank GOD). A lot of people don’t like the plan because it costs $61,000 per tent, per year, which is 2.5 times the price of an average apartment in San Francisco.
Violent homeless camps are sprouting across the West Coast like pimples in time for prom night. California’s population decreased for the first time in history. Antifa and BLM are out of control, yet Democrats still, somehow, magically convince people to vote for them.
Ben Franklin’s words come to mind: “I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion about the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. ”
Maybe that $61,000, all-inclusive campsite wasn’t such a great idea after all.
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