In fact, LA has only 16 mobile toilet stations for its 36,000 homeless people. To make matters worse, the city hauls away the mobile toilets at night, leaving the homeless no choice but to go on the streets.

As you might imagine, COVID made things worse.

My adventures in Los Angeles started in the late '90s. The Soylent Green atmosphere was striking even back then; Los Angeles basically allows the homeless to accumulate cruft and detritus for two or three months, then comes through and sweeps out all their shit unannounced. It's part of their public custodial approach. It's very much the way Los Angeles handles all its civic sanitation: move your car twice a week or we'll ticket it $80 because of "street sweeping." Will the street sweeper actually come through? Yeah maybe once every couple of months. Will the cops come through to ticket? without fail.

One word describes Los Angeles' relationship with the homeless: adversarial. I have never spent time in a city that hates its homeless as much as LA. I'm very happy to report I have no first-hand experience here but I'll bet the added stress of the pandemic has not improved that relationship.

Seattle's gotten pretty bad. We put spikes where the homeless sleep, blast pink noise where they congregate. Our homeless have gotten salty as a consequence. But I mean, we'll let it get pretty bad before we do anything. Los Angeles? LA cracks skulls because it's fun.

"Place of intolerability" has been Los Angeles for as long as I can remember. The city is openly hostile towards its unhoused, and the unhoused are openly hostile in response. It surprises me not a lick that things have gotten awful during the pandemic.

In one act caught on camera, a homeless man is seen waking up on South Hope Street. He unbuckles his belt, walks over to the front door of a business, pulls down his pants, and defecates right on the door mat in broad daylight.