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How the Homeless Ended Up Being Blamed for Typhus “It is easy to blame folks who are unhoused,” one advocate says

February 12, 2019 by Jonathan Leave a Comment

By Samuel Braslow –  LosAngeles Magazine  

February 12, 2019

When Elizabeth Greenwood, a Los Angeles deputy city attorney, contracted typhus from a flea bite in her City Hall East office, two things happened. First, it breathed life back into the sensational coverage of fall’s outbreak, with media outlets declaring that a fatal, medieval disease had taken up residency on the streets of Los Angeles—worse yet, it had infected the seat of civic power. Right-wing media gleefully presented the situation as evidence of the failure of Los Angeles liberalism. 

Next, fingers began pointing at a possible culprit: the homelessness crisis. Councilman Joe Buscaino took the floor at a City Council meeting Friday, saying, “Rats are emblematic of how we lost control over the homeless trash and encampment issue.

 

“If we can’t protect the greatest symbol of our own democracy—our own City Hall, if we can’t protect our own staff from a medieval disease, then we should pack up and go home.”
But according to epidemiologists and advocates for the unhoused, this gets typhus wrong and risks further stigmatizing an already vulnerable group.
“One of the problems is that people may be confusing endemic and epidemic typhus,” says Dr. Tim Brewer, a professor of medicine and a member of the division of infectious diseases at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine.
Typhus is not a single disease, but rather a group of diseases caused by different strains of bacteria. Unlike typhoid fever, which is spread by person-to-person contact, typhus gets into the human bloodstream through fleas, ticks, or lice. Murine typhus, a rarely fatal strain spread by fleas, is endemic to Los Angeles—it was here long before us and will be here long after us. Epidemic typhus, which is spread by body lice, is exceedingly rare in the United States. It occurs most often in areas of extreme deprivation, such as South Sudan or 15th century Europe, and has a much higher likelihood of causing death.
“That’s not what’s going on in Los Angeles,” Brewer says. “The problem is not the presence of the homeless people that’s causing the murine typhus outbreaks. It’s the presence of the rat-infected fleas.”

Even then, when the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health declared an outbreak of typhus October 4, the city designated Skid Row a high-risk area for typhus. Almost immediately, Mayor Eric Garcetti allocated an extra $300,000 for cleanup and sanitation efforts.

 

Asked whether any of the 17 cases of typhus in downtown had been traced to Skid Row, a spokesperson for the health department didn’t answer, but in earlier statements to LAist.com, officials said that they had not confirmed any cases there. Officials did point out that in eight of the 17 cases, the people diagnosed had been homeless.

“It is easy to blame folks who are unhoused, who are living on the streets of Los Angeles, who are living in encampments,” says Shayla Myers, an attorney at the Legal Aid Foundation who focuses on issues related to housing and homelessness.

 

To Myers, there is a bitter irony in the hand-wringing over the latest outbreak of typhus, which infected 149 people last year. “Typhus sounds awful and I would not wish it on anyone,” she says, “but there’s 150 people [with typhus] and we have 23,000 people who are living on our sidewalks and outside every day. That constitutes a true and devastating public health emergency.”
Ten miles from downtown, Pasadena also experienced a sudden uptick in typhus, with 22 cases in 2018—more than three times what health officials expected. Nonetheless, the city did not declare an outbreak of typhus. “We did not call it an outbreak because we could not pinpoint the human cases to one single geographical area,” says Adrienne Kim, public information coordinator for the Pasadena Public Health Department.

Notably, Pasadena saw more cases of typhus even while the city’s homeless population pales in comparison to downtown L.A.’s—677 and 1,552, respectively, according to the latest homeless count. None of the cases in Pasadena involved homeless individuals.

 

As for why the county decided to focus on L.A.’s Skid Row, some advocates suspect ulterior motives. “It’s highly, highly suspicious,” said “General” Jeff Page, widely considered the unofficial mayor of Skid Row, in an interview with LAist. “I see it as a result of the business sector putting pressure on the mayor and the City Council to do something now about Skid Row’s conditions.”

The declaration of an outbreak came one day after a highly contentious meeting at City Hall, where a group of 60 downtown residents and business owners voiced frustrations over the conditions in homeless encampments. Ten days before the declaration, the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, a law firm that represents low-income clients, sent a letter to Garcetti raising concerns about the legality of increased cleanups that allow for the “seizure and destruction of individuals’ belongings without affording them any legal protections.”

 

Currently, the city must abide by a federal injunction that blocks police and sanitation workers from seizing property from people living on Skid Row. The order allows for a handful of exceptions—if, for instance, the property “poses an immediate threat to the health and safety of the public,” another court case details.

“At face value, it appears to me that there’s a hidden agenda,” Page said.

 

A spokesperson for the county health department says that she was not aware of the October 3 City Hall meeting. The department would not respond to repeated questions about why Skid Row was designated high risk.
More broadly, this tension comes as the city plans to ramp up development in downtown. The proposal, titled DTLA 2040, would rezone Skid Row for market-rate housing, and include social service agencies and permanent supportive housing. But groups who advocate on behalf of Skid Row’s homeless community say that the plan will “connect upscale development that is already occurring on opposite sides of Skid Row, placing thousands of residents in the middle at risk of displacement”—in effect, gentrifying Skid Row.

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Part 12... Infractions and Due Process Rights Ant Part 12...
Infractions and Due Process Rights 
Anti-homeless laws and ordinances and their application have, in fact, created a loophole that allows for the circumvention of a homeless person’s right to due process under law. The process by which homeless people face repeated incarceration generally follows this scenario: A homeless man is sleeping on the sidewalk. A local ordinance makes it illegal to do so. The man gets a ticket and is later arrested for not paying the ticket. He spends a couple of days in jail, and is just as homeless now as he was before, only now he has a criminal record. This was the case for many of the individuals interviewed by RWHP. One man relayed the familiar scenario, “I was sleeping in a tent in a hidden spot near the freeway. They gave me a ticket for trespassing. I don’t have money to pay it. I’ve never been in jail before. I keep to myself, but now they’re going to make me a convict just for sleeping.”
SHERIFFS DEPARTMENT TALKING DOWN THE PEOPLES TOWMH SHERIFFS DEPARTMENT TALKING DOWN THE PEOPLES TOWMHOMES ENCAMPMENT https://www.instagram.com/tv/ChAT9N5jNTY/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

This morning @phillysheriff ‘s came and evicted our protest encampment to Save the UC Townhomes. When asked why they were doing it, Rochelle Bilal responded that she “felt compassion for the townhomes residents but was just doing my job”

Even if the tents are gone WE AINT GOIN NOWHERE‼️
Saturday AUGUST 27 — 9 am to 4pm Sunday AUGUST 2 Saturday AUGUST 27 — 9 am to 4pm
Sunday AUGUST 28 — 12:30pm to 4pm

Westminster Presbyterian Church
1300 N Street, Sacramento

https://wraphome.org/2022/08/02/sacramento-ca-advocates-community-summit-on-homelessness-august-27-28th/
California. (S)Care Court Hearing Tomorrow 8/3 Las California. (S)Care Court Hearing Tomorrow 8/3 Last Hearing before floor Vote
https://conta.cc/3vzRoWo
Part 11 ... California’s “anti-Okie” laws of Part 11 ...
California’s “anti-Okie” laws of the 1930s and the South’s Jim Crow laws in effect from the late 1800s to the 1950s are examples of the kinds of local laws overturned in previous generations. Yet, modern “quality of life” legislation and enforcement targeting homeless people can be found in communities across the nation.
The City Council postponed their vote on the 41.18 The City Council postponed their vote on the 41.18 expansion to August 2nd. If passed, this motion will add approximately 1,900 additional sites–a 376% increase in exclusionary zones across the city. 41.18 would then cover at least 88 sq miles (that’s 20% of the entire city).

Services Not Sweeps is urging EVERYONE to come to City Hall at 9:00am on August 2 and tell City Council that 41.18 is BAD POLICY and should be repealed.

When we fight, we win. 
But this fight isn’t over.

The community flooded City Hall inside and out on Wednesday to protest the expansion of 41.18 but the fight is not over. It’s clear that President Nury Martinez and friends weren’t prepared for our numbers and realized they were unable to rally their (few but loud) 41.18 supporters. Council delayed the vote to Tuesday August 2nd in an attempt to erode our momentum and stifle our voices. 
 
We won’t let that happen. The fight now is to keep the pressure on and show up next week!! See you next Tuesday 9am. Bring a friend.
 
WHO: You and your friends!
WHERE: City Hall, 200 N Spring St 
WHEN: Tuesday August 2nd at 9:00am
HOW: Read more details on our toolkit.
AGENDA ITEM 14 https://lacity.primegov.com/Portal/Meeting?meetingTemplateId=102513
Part 10... In fact, however, enforcement is very m Part 10...
In fact, however, enforcement is very much impacted by both skin color and appearance. Local governments cannot legally discriminate against people strictly because they do not have housing. Federal protections prohibit local and state governments from removing people from their communities due to the color of their skin or economic/employment status.
Part 9... This nationwide pattern has escaped Civi Part 9... This nationwide pattern has escaped Civil Rights protections because on their face, these programs are not clearly discriminatory. Local laws are often drafted in such a way as to appear to apply equally to all people in a community.
Part 8... While certain communities highlight diff Part 8...
While certain communities highlight different controls at different times, often depending upon the outcome of local elections and legislative and court efforts, all have one primary common goal: to remove the presence and resulting impact of people without housing from local communities. As the Mayor of Las Vegas stated when she outlawed feeding people in city parks: “If we stop feeding them, they will leave.”
Part 7... This type of ticket is not uncommon. The Part 7...
This type of ticket is not uncommon. The most common public space and activity restrictions are those aimed at camping, sitting, lying, or trespassing on either public or private land, panhandling, sleeping, blocking the sidewalk and possessing “stolen property,” such as shopping carts and milk crates—to name just a few. Furthermore, these restrictions are often implemented in conjunction with the closure of public parks and the outlawing of free food and clothing distribution.
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Join us and our friends Anti Police-Terror Project to say NO to C.A.R.E Court next Thursday, August 18th for a teach-in followed by feeding the people, and a march!

RSVP here: fb.me/e/1CFrMznNP

#CARECourt takes money away from housing the unhoused and mental health resources. It gives money to the court bureaucracy. Let’s spend more on housing and less on the carceral state.
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2 days ago
Join us and our friends Anti Police-Terror Project to say NO to C.A.R.E Court next Thursday, August 18th for a teach-in followed by feeding the people, and a march!
RSVP here: https://fb.me/e/1CFrMznNP
#CARECourt takes money away from housing the unhoused and mental health resources. It gives money to the court bureaucracy. Let’s spend more on housing and less on the carceral state.
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Join us and our friends @APTPaction to say NO to C.A.R.E Court next Thursday, August 18th for a teach-in followed by feeding the people, and a march!

RSVP on Facebook here: https://fb.me/e/1CFrMznNP

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San Francisco, CA. Say NO to CARE Court!- Teach In & Action next Thursday at 11am! - WRAP https://wraphome.org/2022/08/12/san-francisco-ca-say-no-to-care-court-teach-in-action-next-thursday-at-11am/

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Part 12...
Infractions and Due Process Rights
Anti-homeless laws and ordinances and their application have, in fact, created a loophole that allows for the circumvention of a homeless person’s right to due process under law.

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SHERIFFS DEPARTMENT TALKING DOWN THE PEOPLES TOWMHOMES ENCAMPMENT
“felt compassion for the townhomes residents but was just doing my job”
Even if the tents are gone WE AINT GOIN NOWHERE‼️

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Press Release: Beyond the Virginia Key Bantustan, reject any tiny homes plan that excludes homeless input - WRAP

Press Release: Beyond the Virginia Key Bantustan, reject any tiny homes plan that excludes homeless input - WRAP

October 22nd Alliance to End Homelessness Press Release August 8, 2022 Beyond the Virginia Key Bantustan, reject any...

wraphome.org

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