Our National Disgrace

Homelessness in Los Angeles has burst its traditional borders. These days, downtown's Skid Row is only the ugly epicenter of a staggering problem that radiates outward for more than one hundred miles. Homelessness has spread to gloomy underpasses and dark side streets, to parks, libraries, and subway platforms, so that there are now more than 57,000 people who lack a regular place to sleep in Los Angeles County. From Long Beach to Hollywood to Beverly Hills to Lancaster, no Angeleno can credibly claim to be unaware of the squalid tent cities, the sprawling encampments, or the despair and misery displayed there. In March 2018, the Editorial Board of the Los Angeles Times published a powerful six-part series describing the problem in this city—one that is mirrored to one degree or another up and down the West Coast, from Portland to San Francisco to San Diego. The editorials explain who LA's homeless people really are and how they got there, call for changes in policy toward the mentally ill, and urge weak-kneed politicians to be leaders in the struggle to provide housing for the homeless. All six editorials have now been bound together into a single vital and disturbing book.