Homelessness in LA isn't driven by drug abuse. Visible homelessness in LA is clearly abuse-adjacent but the fundamental problem is the capacitance of Los Angeles for the unhoused.

It's expensive to live in LA. So a lot of people end up homeless. They are otherwise functional so they can park a van adjacent to Beverly Hills, move it twice a day and make it to their jobs. This means that the people with no jobs can't find anywhere to park their vans adjacent to Beverly Hills so they move out to Burbank because while it's not as safe as BH-adjacent, it's safer than Panorama City. So now the marginals in Burbank are in Panorama City, and the fails in Panorama City end up in Echo Park. Then the fails in Echo Park end up around a burning trash bin at 9th and Western.

You see guys in tents under overpasses because they have been outcompeted by guys in tents in the back corner of Elysian Park. The guys in the back corner of Elysian Park have been outcompeted by the guys in a nice corner of Descanso Gardens. etc etc etc. So the more full it gets at the top, the more full it gets at the bottom.

Los Angeles does this lovely thing where they bust up homeless encampments on the reg. Often because they've gotten unwieldy, have filled the place up with poop, are scaring the normies etc. but often because LA likes to crack skulls. This serves the purpose of making sure nobody can really get their footing and blend in - at the core of every unwieldy homeless encampment is a few people who are good at staying hidden and they all get swept, too.

When I started riding the LA river bike path there was a guy on one of the islands down in there who called himself "The River Punk." He'd been profiled in LA Weekly in 1998. When Orange County rousted Santa Ana, though, the LAPD took the opportunity of a distracted-press weekend to sweep the LA river, too. River Punk was gone after 20 years of squatting/homesteading - I mean, the dude had DirecTV at one point. And lo and behold, the guys who came in were hella worse.

When I started riding that path there were homeless folx who I waved to. We knew each other. By the time I left there were guys threatening me with tasers. I witnessed three roustings, two fires and personally stopped arson once. I passed a tent with a family of four gathered around a 40" LCD watching cable and I rode over an extension cord tied into a streetlamp running 150 feet down to an encampment in the middle of the river.

Drugs? Drugs definitely play a part. But what you're seeing, you're seeing because it's too crowded to hide anymore.

Seattle swept a couple homeless camps yesterday. Today? Three fresh crazy people on my walk, shouting at garbage. It's not like telling them to leave gives them anywhere else to go.