A thread (rant) about what’s been going on in LA.

The City of LA went into a state of emergency in the middle of March. It required people to be INside to make sure the spread of COVID was limited. For context, 40K people sleep & 50K+ people work OUTside. 1/

It’s been 6 months since then, and this state of emergency is still in place. Last week, some of the largest fires across CA broke out. These fires have been detrimental both to those who live near them, but also anyone OUTside in the broader Southern California region. 2/

Over the last 6 months, there have been meager protections for those who live and work outside. Project Roomkey, embarrassingly behind on its goals of 15K hotel rooms contracted and occupied, and an effective ban on street vendors have both been implemented. 3/ https://twitter.com/RoomkeyTracker/status/1304640364335177729

A blanket eviction moratorium has NOT been put in place, but efforts to restrict evictions of people who have been affected by COVID 19 have. Like with any policy, people fall through the cracks and people are still falling into homelessness. 4/

This means that the number of people living outside is growing, economic hardship is becoming more prevalent, all while the air quality continues to dwindle. We are still very early in the fire season.

Just last weekend, there was a record breaking heat waves. 5/

Recap, we have 90K + people living and working outside during record breaking heat, a pandemic, and worsening air conditions. Many working outside are undocumented, and nearly 34% of those living outside are Black. 59% of newly unhoused were due to economic burden. 6/

This count was done prior to the pandemic. So these numbers will, without a doubt, increase.

Due to the inaction of the government, an estimated 120K HOUSEHOLDS (not people) will fall into houselessness in the near future. 7/
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2gz6c8cv

And climate conditions will continue to get worse.

So what are our elected officials doing about it? 8/

This means as our climate gets worse and more people are out in the street due to the pandemic and abysmal lack of affordable housing & tenant protections - in the coming years, heat, air pollution, & fires will kill more people than this year, & even more the year after that. 9/

The decisions our elected officials make now will affect people for YEARS to come - and the inaction is speaking volumes. *Of course* the people most harmed by all of these (lack of) decisions will be Black and Brown folks. So housing and climate justice IS racial justice. 10/

As decisions are made, they absolutely must be made with a critical racial lens, anything less is negligence. Not siding with those who are most vulnerable is siding with the affluent, and most likely to benefit from the pandemic. 11/

In the years to come, as more people die from heat, fires, and the burden of having to live outside to survive - it will be the direct effect of the lack of decisions being made today. And what’s more, they will be chalked up to over simplified answers like “heat.” 12/

This smooths over the structural violence that happened to get here, wiping away the actual blood of our neighbors from the hands of lawmakers today. We know this all could have been prevented but was actively chosen against. 13/

Commandeer hotels, cancel rent, support small businesses, and protect all tenants.

/end.