twistedlibrarian writes “Hoping to keep homeless encampments from forming outside the city’s public libraries, the Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to restrict the hours that the public may sit or sleep on library property.
On a 10-0 vote, the council called for an ordinance prohibiting the public from loitering outside libraries between 9 p.m. and 9 a.m. — part of a larger effort to address the homeless at branch libraries in San Pedro, Wilmington, Venice and other locations.
Nonsense
That does not address the homeless problem it simply moves it somewhere else.
Until we provide adequate care for the mentally ill who want it, provide adequate short term housing and job training for those who want it, and re-open the psychiatric facilities for those who simply cannot live without intensive psyhc care (and long term care facilities for the medically disabled homeless)we will have the ‘homeless problem’.
I’m no expert but the vast majority of homeless persons I’ve encountered -especially in my decade+ of working an a big city ER- are drunks and drug users. So unless we sober them up, cure them or repeatedly jail for every transgression of the law they commit until they move elsewhere we will continue to have a homeless problem at the library. No law can truly move them along, the desire to sit around in a stupor is stronger than the desire not to be run in by the cops.
Some people would rather sit around in crap filled clothing drinking Aqua Velva than anything else, and nothing is going to stop them, certainly not some city council resolution.
Its probably going to be fought by the same people who sued to close the asylums where these people could have 3 hots and a cot without a criminal record.