As Los Angeles grapples with a huge homelessness problem, El Nino weather patterns are likely to bring torrential downpours in coming months and add to the misery of the thousands of people who sleep on the city’s streets.
“It is a crisis in LA, and I don’t think people realize the magnitude of it,” said John Kump, an outreach program manager at the charity People Assisting the Homeless.
Los Angeles’ homeless population is estimated at about 44,000, with many of them concentrated in a bleak and chaotic square-mile patch of downtown known as Skid Row.
The number of makeshift tents and vehicles used by the homeless has shot up by 85 percent in just the last two years to 9,535, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, an independent agency set up by the city and the county.
Mayor Eric Garcetti proposed in September spending $100 million to combat the problem. But he stopped short of declaring a state of emergency that would lift barriers to housing people, or calling on the governor and federal government for funding.
‘Very difficult’
The last two El Ninos, in the winters of 1982-83 and 1997-98, each walloped Los Angeles with more than 30 inches (76 cm) of rain - double the amount that the city normally receives each year - according to William Patzert, a climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Pasadena.
Even as American cities grapple with a chronic shortage of affordable housing, as well as budget constraints on social programs, many municipalities across the United States have also been clamping down on homeless encampments.
Retired trucker Samuel Cole, 85, has lived in a camper for the past two years after his landlord raised the rent by $100. Vandals broke his generator, so he no longer has electricity.
Like so many others, he said that a lack of running water is one of his biggest problems.
“I just have to wash off best I can,” Cole said. “Very difficult.”
