Carol Sobel is an attorney for the homeless based in Santa Monica. She says the City of Los Angeles has failed to adequately help the homeless for more than a decade.
“Since we filed the Jones case in 2003, the number of homeless individuals who are unsheltered in the city has doubled. Okay? That is because of the city’s neglect.”
In Jones vs. the City of Los Angeles, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Sobel with the National Lawyers Guild and the ACLU to end the criminalization of sleeping on the streets.
She says the biggest contributing factor driving up the homeless population is the “wealth gap.”
“People cannot afford to rent an apartment in Los Angeles. So you’ve got a lot of working poor, families living in vehicles, people who were middle class workers – maybe they lost their job in 2008 – and the job they got back after that didn’t pay them as much. You need to earn over $30 an hour to be able to even afford a small apartment in a not-so-great neighborhood in both Los Angeles and Orange County.”
She says once people lose their home or apartment and are severed from their community of neighbors and friends, their mental and physical health is jeopardized.
Carol Sobel was a guest on McIntyre in the Morning.
By Sandy Wells
KABC News
