A pedestrian walks past a man sleeping on a sidewalk in Los Angeles on May 30, 2019.
Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images
- Los Angeles County claims nearly 59,000 homeless, a 12 percent increase, while the city itself is up 16 percent.
- It's not only LA: Orange County is up 42 percent; Alameda County, 43 percent; Kern County, 50 percent; and San Francisco, 17 percent.
- Angelenos need to make $47.52 an hour to afford the median rent price in the city.
Skid Row is unlike any other sight you'll witness in America. The city within the city — in a downtown, it should be noted, that is currently booming — represents a failure of social services, pay equity, and simple opportunity in every regard. And the problem is getting worse. Sixteen percent worse, according to new research.
Los Angeles County now boasts nearly 59,000 homeless, a 12 percent increase from last year. In the city itself, there are over 36,000 homeless, representing a 16 percent increase. The city estimates that 75 percent of this number, roughly 44,000 citizens, live outdoors.
It's not only Los Angeles. Orange County has noted a 42 percent uptick in homeless residents, mostly due to new, more comprehensive counting measures. In nearby Alameda County, the number of homeless is up 43 percent; in Kern County, a whopping 50 percent. Further upstate, San Francisco's homeless population has seen a 17 percent increase.
This issue has been especially problematic in downtown Los Angeles, where a housing shortage has led to skyrocketing prices of homes and rentals. California currently boasts seven of the top ten spots for studio and one-bedroom rentals in the nation; for two-bedroom rentals, it holds eight of the top ten slots. Los Angeles is tied for third in the 2019 "Most Expensive Cities To Live In" list. That is a global list.
Homeless Population Growing On LA's Westside
The dichotomy between wealth and poverty living in close proximity is nothing new, of course. Silicon Valley is dealing with a serious RV problem as longtime residents are priced out of the cities wedged on the sliver of land between the San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean.
While local officials are kicking RV dwellers out, Los Angeles officials are throwing their hands up in confusion. In 2015, the city council declared the homeless problem to be a state of emergency, allocating $100 million to housing and training citizens. Part of this money came from a local sales tax increase, Measure H, that is adding $355 million each year to combat homelessness. Still, the number of homeless rises.
Officials cite the housing crisis as the main driver of this problem, noting that to afford the average median rent here, Angelenos need to make $47.52 an hour. The countywide median family income is $69,300. You need to be pulling in roughly $100,000 to meet the median rent, causing Forbes to list LA as the worst city to rent in, given that residents pay an average 41 percent of their salary on rent.
And forget about buying a home. A stunning 92 percent of homes in Los Angeles are out of reach to the average citizen.
A man walks past a homeless encampment beneath an overpass in Los Angeles, California. The homeless population count in Los Angeles County leaped 12 percent in the past year to almost 59,000, according to officials.
Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images
Some organizations have taken measures into their own hands, such as by converting old hotels into low-income housing and homeless shelters. Yet the conversions aren't quick or widespread enough to make an impact in the rising numbers of homeless. Combating homelessness in LA is often more sentimental than practical as neighborhoods battle the construction of low-cost housing and shelters when they are proposed.
Sadly, one of the groups most affected by this surge in homelessness is 18-24 year olds, increasing 24 percent over the past year. The "chronically homeless" — citizens with mental or physical impairments that have been homeless for over a year — jumped 17 percent.
According to one organization, Los Angles County needs to add 517,000 additional units of affordable housing to meet the demand. That number seems impossible in a city where every new building advertises luxury. In my Palms neighborhood, new one-bedroom rentals rarely list for under $3,000 a month.
Something is amiss. Unemployment rates are supposedly at record lows, yet hundred of thousands of Californians are living on the streets. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that U.S. job openings outnumber the number of unemployed by the widest gap ever. Many jobs available plus many homeless should be easy math. The numbers aren't adding up — especially on the streets of Los Angeles.
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Image source: sdecoret on Shutterstock/ESA/Big Think
Surprising Science
- There is no sound in space, but if there was, this is what it might sound like passing by Earth.
- A spacecraft bound for Mercury recorded data while swinging around our planet, and that data was converted into sound.
- Yes, in space no one can hear you scream, but this is still some chill stuff.
First off, let's be clear what we mean by "hear" here. (Here, here!)
Sound, as we know it, requires air. What our ears capture is actually oscillating waves of fluctuating air pressure. Cilia, fibers in our ears, respond to these fluctuations by firing off corresponding clusters of tones at different pitches to our brains. This is what we perceive as sound.
All of which is to say, sound requires air, and space is notoriously void of that. So, in terms of human-perceivable sound, it's silent out there. Nonetheless, there can be cyclical events in space — such as oscillating values in streams of captured data — that can be mapped to pitches, and thus made audible.
BepiColombo
Image source: European Space Agency
The European Space Agency's BepiColombo spacecraft took off from Kourou, French Guyana on October 20, 2019, on its way to Mercury. To reduce its speed for the proper trajectory to Mercury, BepiColombo executed a "gravity-assist flyby," slinging itself around the Earth before leaving home. Over the course of its 34-minute flyby, its two data recorders captured five data sets that Italy's National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) enhanced and converted into sound waves.
Into and out of Earth's shadow
In April, BepiColombo began its closest approach to Earth, ranging from 256,393 kilometers (159,315 miles) to 129,488 kilometers (80,460 miles) away. The audio above starts as BepiColombo begins to sneak into the Earth's shadow facing away from the sun.
The data was captured by BepiColombo's Italian Spring Accelerometer (ISA) instrument. Says Carmelo Magnafico of the ISA team, "When the spacecraft enters the shadow and the force of the Sun disappears, we can hear a slight vibration. The solar panels, previously flexed by the Sun, then find a new balance. Upon exiting the shadow, we can hear the effect again."
In addition to making for some cool sounds, the phenomenon allowed the ISA team to confirm just how sensitive their instrument is. "This is an extraordinary situation," says Carmelo. "Since we started the cruise, we have only been in direct sunshine, so we did not have the possibility to check effectively whether our instrument is measuring the variations of the force of the sunlight."
When the craft arrives at Mercury, the ISA will be tasked with studying the planets gravity.
Magentosphere melody
The second clip is derived from data captured by BepiColombo's MPO-MAG magnetometer, AKA MERMAG, as the craft traveled through Earth's magnetosphere, the area surrounding the planet that's determined by the its magnetic field.
BepiColombo eventually entered the hellish mangentosheath, the region battered by cosmic plasma from the sun before the craft passed into the relatively peaceful magentopause that marks the transition between the magnetosphere and Earth's own magnetic field.
MERMAG will map Mercury's magnetosphere, as well as the magnetic state of the planet's interior. As a secondary objective, it will assess the interaction of the solar wind, Mercury's magnetic field, and the planet, analyzing the dynamics of the magnetosphere and its interaction with Mercury.
Recording session over, BepiColombo is now slipping through space silently with its arrival at Mercury planned for 2025.
