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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 9, 2023

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That kind of temporary accommodation is paid for by local councils/homelessness services and is generally because the shelters and other places are full to the brim and can't take any new entrants. It's for families and is meant to be short-term emergency accommodation, not rough sleepers and "people with complex needs". Councils don't like having to fall back on it because it costs money and isn't a permanent solution, but if you don't have beds or spaces and you have, say, a woman with three kids who otherwise is going to be on the street - well, there's not much choice.

A lot of hotels also took on refugee/asylum seekers in Direct Provision. Usual sort of complaints about this, from the people in that accommodation to the locals; general perception (unfair or not) is that the hoteliers were making profit at the expense of the community.

I don't know if the Californian proposal does mean the rough sleepers etc., it sounds like it (because if they're going to discriminate amongst the homeless based on 'are they normal or not?' I can imagine seventeen different lawsuits from seventeen different NGOs and activist groups about that).

Report for July 2023 here, it seems to be a mess to download but that's the government websites for ya!

In relation to the terms used in the report for the accommodation types see explanation below: PEA - Private Emergency Accommodation: this may include hotels, B&Bs and other residential facilities that are used on an emergency basis. Supports are provided to services users on a visiting supports basis. STA - Supported Temporary Accommodation: accommodation, including family hubs, hostels, with onsite professional support. TEA - Temporary Emergency Accommodation: emergency accommodation with no (or minimal) support.

Irish homeless numbers are way smaller than California; the latest data is as follows:

The number of people accessing State-funded emergency accommodation as of August 2023 is 12,691, according to figures published by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage.

This figure does not include people sleeping rough, people couch surfing, homeless people in hospitals and prisons, those in Direct provision centres, and homeless households in Domestic Violence refugees. These people are not included in the regular monthly homeless figures as they are not accessing emergency homeless accommodation funded through Section 10 of the Housing Act.

By comparison, the numbers for Los Angeles (where this bill is proposed) alone, for June 2023:

The 2023 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count results were released today, showing a 9% rise in homelessness on any given night in Los Angeles County to an estimated 75,518 people and a 10% rise in the City of Los Angeles to an estimated 46,260 people.