Homelessness! Homelessness, there’s an uptick in homelessness in ATL and then on the west coast, you’re starting to see a larger proliferation and well-to-do neighborhoods of people that ultimately shouldn’t be in these neighborhoods but they’re the unhoused and they’re living in their cars. Check it out. Plan out the number of people experiencing homelessness. Whoa, hold on. Hold on. Wait a minute. Let me put some body in it. I see you green. Hold on. Who built this lady? This lady is body-ody-ody out here in these streets. You know a chick’s body is banging when they got the stretching part and it goes up sequentially as they get up to the abs.

This lady be in the gym. She couldn’t wait to stand in front of the camera and I ain’t mad at her. Baby girl, you looking good in that green. All I see is Monday. Hold on. Hold on. I’m just saying. I want to give props what props do. You know we always want to acknowledge the people that’s putting in effort and just as much as we hold people accountable we want to give credit. So Imma just tell you. Imma just tell you. She killing it. She’s smoking and I got to give props what props do.

Let me give her a round of applause. She look good. Body look good. Let’s get to it. Is up 7% according to a newly released count from back in January. But tonight news reporter Rob Darienzo has learned that number is likely much higher. Rob is live tonight with the story. Why is that number higher likely Rob? Hey there Christine. Good evening to you. All these numbers show that the homeless crisis here in Atlanta is heading in the wrong direction. I spoke with one council member who herself experienced her own housing crisis.

She says the city is a step up to the plate. When I was 18 years old I experienced housing instability. I stayed in and out of my car. I stayed on sofas. That’s why council member Liliana Bactiari was especially upset to see an uptick in Atlanta’s houseless population. Atlanta got uh yeah they do. I ain’t even gonna cap. I was walking around Atlanta. I went to I walked downtown. I walked in a lot of different places in Atlanta. Atlanta definitely got a homelessness problem. A certain person in downtown Atlanta that just smell like it smell horrid.

I said what is happening and I looked and it was a bunch of tent cities. The whole parks is taking over by homeless people. If you walked out listen on one street they were shooting a movie. You went one block over and it was basically having a community gathering of homeless people and it was a bunch of needles that was all everywhere and I had to be careful where I was stepping because I didn’t want to get caught up in no stuff. Atlanta is crazy. It’s crazy when it comes to DC too.

DC just blocks away from the White House. You got a lot of these tent cities. It’s crazy bro. That’s according to the 2024 count from the non-profit Partners for Home. That’s the organization that leads the city’s homeless strategy. We are seeing people who are living at the lowest end of the income spectrum increasingly fall into our system. Executive director Catherine Vassal says at its core the problem is the housing market. They counted 2900 people in shelters and on the streets in late January. A seven percent jump from last year. We have incomplete data.

Council member Bakhtiari says while this count is helpful it doesn’t tell the whole story because people tend to be less visible in the winter months. We need additional information especially during hotter months when chances of health issues or heat related deaths can occur. It’s not a perfect number by any means. Vassal says the federal government requires the official count of people battling homelessness to take place in January at least once every two years but they do it yearly. Bakhtiari is now exploring legislation to make it twice a year. I don’t know how much of a greater impact it would have to do multiple counts per year.

It is logistically a very big endeavor that we put off with you know over 300 volunteers. Vassal says it costs about $20,000 to do a citywide point in time count but the council member thinks the insight from that data will be worth every penny. I have lost count of the number of women I have met on the street who have either been sexually assaulted or ended up passing away. And I did ask council member Bakhtiari if there was anything else that council or the city could do to help quell this crisis.

She said two big things. One is hire more localized case managers and the other is build more permanent supportive. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. That is not the case. I do not agree with building permanent supportive housing like they’re doing over there to LA because basically you subsidize in people’s taxpayer monies in order to be able to create a socialism environment. I do not agree with it. I do not. I don’t know how you saw for it but I absolutely do not agree with it. Over in the Bay Area on the west coast some of the same things has happened and except for people is basically building whole encampments on the streets.

Neighbors don’t want them there so the city cleared them out but some unhoused in San Jose say they don’t know where else to go so they keep coming back. Neighbors took their concerns to NBC Bay Area and we took those concerns to the mayor. NBC Bay Area’s David Trujillo is on Rose Avenue in East San Jose looking for solutions. Neighbors tell me they’re beyond frustrated. They tell me they’ve been complaining to the city for months and feel that hey my man is in the back sweeping up like he being productive. Complaints have fallen on deaf ears.

This was a scene on Rose Avenue a week ago. Crews were clearing out a line of cars occupied by the unhoused. This is Rose Avenue today. It’s the same car. Hold on let me back up for a minute. That’s literally the exact same car. That’s the same car. It’s the same color. It’s the same. It’s in the same place. Everything. It’s the same car. Cars occupy. It ain’t even got a license plate on it. Where where in the world listen I know in Michigan if you leave a car on the side of the freeway or a car on the side of the road in Michigan in particular they’re gonna slap that orange sticker on there or it’s either gonna be orange or it’s green.

I can’t even park in certain areas. My daughter pulled up to our building and she parked it outside. She didn’t go into the underground park and she parked it outside in order to run in for one second and came out and it already had a sticker on it. She walked in for less than five minutes and already had a sticker on it. You can’t park no car without no license plate on the side of the road and that just be the end of the conversation especially on the main road. Now you might be able to get away with it in a residential area but I have never seen in my entire life people just being able to park on the main road put bikes out there, grills, rakes, trash on top of the cars and that’s the end of it.

Man that’s great man. Where are we living at bro? And then they built the tent on top of it. Jesus Christ. No that’s a grill. It’s a grill back there. Oh that’s that same Acura. It’s a grill in the back of the Acura. In the back of the Ac. They’re back. They kicked you out and you came back. See, Rito Flores says he has nowhere else to go after his family left him but his return along with the other unhoused people as angered and frustrated neighbors. They say children are afraid to walk on the sidewalk.

Some families don’t even want their kids playing on their own front yard. This mom didn’t want to show her face for a fear of retaliation but says some of these vehicles are outright dangerous. It’s just scary you know because like one of the people over there they got pulled over and they pull out hammers out of the backpack and drugs. And they arrested them. Today we took their concerns to the mayor. I’m very concerned about it. The church in the neighborhood has a preschool attached to it. The neighbors are dealing with encampments that we abate and they come back.

The mayor says abatement isn’t the cure-all and the city needs to do more in providing decent shelter and services for those living on the streets. A man got a grill. But he adds that the unhoused have to do their part as well by going into those shelters or treatment facilities if other beds aren’t available. That’s a Ford expedition out there. That’s an expedition. Should not be a choice or an option to simply go camp wherever you like in the city. Some in the neighborhood say street sweeping days are also a big issue. Very unfair.

We get a $60 ticket me and my neighbor if we don’t move our cars but then these cars have been sitting there for almost a year and nothing. Our policy in DOT is to treat all vehicles equally whether they are lived in or not. So parking violations need to be cited. We need to hold people accountable. After we spoke with the mayor, a city inspector showed up to document the neighborhood concerns as everyone hunts for new solutions will continue to follow the story. What is America becoming, man? No, I ain’t worried about it, man.

Listen, I’m about to invest in tents. What’s a tent company that I can invest in? Dick’s Sporting Goods. Where y’all getting these tents from? I just need to know where y’all getting this stuff from so that I can invest in tents. I need to invest in tents. I need to invest in grills. Rakes. Whatever. Needles. Whatever it is that we need to invest in in order to make sure that we continue to support the unhoused. This can’t be this bad. It can’t be like this. I’m just, I have to think that we can do better than this.

Is this what this has come to? To where y’all basically building a double decker from cars. And my man said his whole family left him and then he came back to it. You had a family and they be having sex and kids and stuff like that. Come on, man. Come on, bro. Y’all got a lot of homelessness, Ari. How is it in Texas? Do y’all have a lot of homeless people down there in Texas? It’s harder here in these streets. Listen, one thing is for showing two things is for certain. I can’t go homeless.

I just can’t. And under no circumstance is homeless a permanent, a permanent being unhoused, a permanent solution. So anyways. [tr:trw].

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