The new survey comes after the recent arrest of a suspected serial killer in Los Angeles who targeted the homeless.
Separately, a California man attended court on Friday for manslaughter after allegedly filming himself shooting a sleeping homeless man.
The annual Point In Time survey, taken on a single January night each year, found that 653,104 people experiencing homelessness in the US. The Department of Housing and Urban Development report says that this is the highest number of people since the count began in 2007.
Nearly a quarter of the victims in Los Angeles homicide cases in 2022 were homeless, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. Unhoused people only account for 1.2% of the city’s population.
We really need to strengthen the ability to get folks civilly committed.
If you’re batshit crazy and, because of that, you’re on the streets causing problems for folks… Then we should be able to get your ass medicated.
Not saying we need to lock them up forever necessarily, but at some point I’m fine with ‘you get to take meds forever, sorry you had a bad roll of the genetic dice. Hey, it’s better than killing you?’