Los Angeles County authorities have accused neighboring cities of taking homeless people to its streets, with City Council President Paul Krekorian telling NBC News that other jurisdictions "prefer to just push people into Los Angeles rather than addressing the problem themselves."
To illustrate the ongoing practice, he said that a man had been dropped off in front of his office last week, and that the person said he'd become homeless while living outside of Los Angeles. He did not provide further proof of continued actions of the kind but said his office is aware of similar cases involving the county's Sheriff's Department.
"We are building housing. We are building shelter. We are doing all the things that are necessary," he said. "Other cities seem to be doing nothing other than delivering people to our doorstep, washing their hands of them and letting them, letting, leaving them."
The latest case showed a shoeless man being dropped off and falling to his hands and knees before the police drove away. The local Fire Department took him to a hospital later, Krekorian said.
"It was unimaginable to me that these police officers could do that, and it was even more heart-wrenching to see him there, left alone, trying to crawl, trying to reach out to somebody to plead for help, and there was no one there at all who could possibly help," he added.
Homelessness continues to be a salient issue in Los Angeles. However, the latest budget proposal calls for $950 million to fund such programs, down from almost $1.3 billion approved for the current fiscal year.
About 181,000 people are currently homeless in California, with over one in four of all people in this situation living in the state, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. 71,000 of them live in Los Angeles County.
Across the country, another report showed that homelessness has more than tripled in Chicago over the past year as authorities struggled to manage the thousands of migrants who arrived to the city during the period. Concretely, the figure went from a little over 6,000 in January 2023 to nearly 19,000 a year later, according to an annual city survey.
The figure includes people who don't have stable housing and those living in shelters, according to the definition provided by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The bulk of the increase comes from the almost 14,000 migrants living in the city's shelter system on the night the survey was conducted, compared to 2,176 the year prior. Moreover, there were 212 migrants living unsheltered at that time, compared to 2023's 20.
According to the city's migrant-related dashboard, over 43,000 people have arrived in the city since August 2022. The latest figures from Friday show that the current amount of people in the system is now lower than 7,000 following more strict limits on shelter stays imposed by the city. A significant issue preventing migrants from leaving the system in a more permanent way, authorities say, is the systemic delay in giving migrants work permits.
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