Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti blamed the country’s loss of 160,000 residents on high housing costs, seemingly ignoring the city’s crime surge and homeless mental health crisis.
“You don’t have to be indigent, you don’t have to be homeless to feel that it costs a lot. If you ask me the question, what are the top three issues facing Los Angeles or California, I’d say in this order: housing, housing and housing,” Garcetti told reporters during an interview Friday, according to Bloomberg. The cost of housing has risen 84% since Garcetti took office nine years ago, Bloomberg reported.
Garcetti says housing is to blame for Los Angeles’ mass outward migration.
What about crime, cost of living, and tyrannical mandates? pic.twitter.com/MTeia8QLCI
— California Rebel Base (@CARebelBase) March 28, 2022
Los Angeles, like other Democrat-run cities, is seeing a major uptick in crime, prompting many residents to move to safer pastures. Crime in the neighborhood of West Hollywood rose 137% between 2021 and 2022, according to KTLA. Rape, robbery, aggravated assault, and property crimes have risen steadily over the same time period throughout the city, according to official reports. (RELATED: Crime Spikes And LAPD Tells Los Angelenos, ‘Just Be A Victim’)
Homelessness is another key issue plaguing Angelenos, according to Sky News and reports from USA Today. Reports from government officials have claimed that the homeless crisis was caused by limited or expensive housing, but data from formerly-homeless people and on-the-ground researchers found a direct tie between illegal drugs, mental illness, and the city’s rapidly growing homeless crisis, according to the San Diego Tribune.
“We’ve been seeing a lot of these tent encampments, not just in Los Angeles. Of course, you’ve got them in the ‘Mass. and Cass’ area of Boston. None of this used to happen with the meth that the Mexicans used to make back 10 or so years ago. There was not this rapid onset of schizophrenia, rapid onset of hallucinations,” author Sam Quinones told WBUR.
“Part of the problem in LA is too many people want to be here,” Garcetti commented, according to Bloomberg, “This isn’t Detroit or Pittburgh in the ’80s.” Garcetti is leaving his position as Mayor later this year once the Senate approves him as President Joe Biden’s U.S. Ambassador to India, Bloomberg noted.