The tragedy of homelessness can never be long out of mind here in California, where tents line sidewalks and freeway underpasses and lost street-corner souls rant at God knows what.
We gawk in sadness and amazement. And we tell ourselves: It’s never been this bad.
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But it has. At least in relative numbers, it was once even worse.
California’s homeless population zoomed to 101,174 in 1933, at the height of the Great Depression — according to a census of 48 of the state’s 58 counties. That meant that 1.8% of the population of 5.7 million lived with no permanent roof overhead.
Contrast that with 2022, when a federal report put the number of California homeless at 171,521, or about 0.4% of the 39 million who now live here.
That’s one of many things I learned in a deep and probing investigation by The Times and reporters Mitchell Landsberg and Gale Holland into the roots of California’s homeless crisis.
Their thoroughly researched and nuanced story is a far cry from how The Times used to cover homelessness. Gen. Harrison Gray Otis, the bombastic publisher of the newspaper, had this to say about the homeless in an 1882 editorial: “Don’t feed the worthless chaps. It only encourages them in their idleness and viciousness.”
What got us out of it the last time?
The economic boom that came along with World War II, the subsequent GI Bill and low-cost veterans loans to help those returning from war move into their dream houses.
More than a half-million dwelling units were built in the L.A. metro area from 1940 to 1950, according to the U.S. census, most of them after the war. More than 850,000 more were built during the 1950s.
The city added nearly as many homes as there were Angelenos….