John Raphling

🚨 @hrw urges US to end efforts to arrest & deport int'l students & scholars over political views & activism on #Palestine. @JRaphling: “The #Trump administration’s actions are an attack on free speech and threaten the very foundations of a free society.” hrw.org/news/2025/04/0…

Take a peek at @pplwillbefree’s written and video pieces! Most recently, @LexStepp and @JRaphling break down homelessness in #LosScandelous, the city of broken dreams, brought to ruin by corrupt elected officials. 🔥 …lpeopleshealthcollective.substack.com

To be without a home is to be criminalized

Harassing, ticketing, and arresting the unhoused is essentially a cottage industry for police and the court system.

More from part 2 of our housing dialogue with the great @JRaphling about his incredible report on housing in L.A.

That's led to a situation where we have plenty of, perhaps even too much housing at the high end of the market, and then for regular working people, there's a huge shortage. @JRaphling from @hrw. What's next? Listen to think it through.

@JRaphling with @hrw and @LexStepp from @LACANetwork break it down youtube.com/watch?v=X94F9D…

Victims of the recent fires will be subject to the criminalization policies that do nothing to solve the crisis of homelessness. @JRaphling #LosAngeles #wildfires progressive.org/op-eds/los-ang…

I know its really scary for people to face the truth: A lot of the people on the street didn't make "bad" choices. Normal life things happened to them: Layoffs, death of a loved one, illness. That's all it takes and you're on the street.

Housing in LA is musical chairs. 1 in 2 people struggle to sit down. 50% of households cannot afford their housing costs. 500,000 people lack access to affordable housing. People are left out.

Sweeps of unhoused encampments are harmful and bad policy. @GavinNewsom should know better. End criminalization; support a right to housing. @hrw, @LACANetwork, @withouthousing Destroying Encampments Isn’t a Solution to Houselessness - Progressive.org

cant get enough 🔥🔥 @JRaphling hrw.org/sites/default/… The criminalization of houselessness means treating people who live on the streets as criminals and directing resources towards arresting and citing them, institutionalizing them, removing them from visible public spaces, denying them basic services and sanitation, confiscating and destroying their property, and pressuring them into substandard shelter situations that share some characteristics with jails. Criminalization is expensive, but temporarily removes signs of houselessness and extreme poverty from the view of the housed public. Criminalization is ineffective because it punishes people for living in poverty while ignoring and even reaffirming the causes of that poverty embedded in the economic system and the incentives that drive housing development and underdevelopment. Criminalization is cruel.

"Rising seas are a crisis entirely of humanity’s making," warns @antonioguterres. Our responsibility now is to ensure equitable responses, including centering disability rights in planned relocation. hrw.org/news/2024/09/0…

The @HRW report recommends investing in permanent housing, ending criminalization, shelter those with greatest immediate need and provide services for encampments to help people survive.

Permanent housing, with supportive services if needed, (not temporary shelter) solves houselessness. Great examples exist. As California Clears Homeless Camps, Two Projects Point a Way Forward - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

The rooms alone cost $115-125 per night per person ($3450-3750/mo). There isn’t enough permanent housing, so most people are either stuck in the rooms or return to the streets.

The results of the program continue along at about the same rate: 17.8% get “permanent housing”; 24% return to the streets; most of the rest stay in the hotel rooms. 40 have died. The average stay is 238 days. (Permanent housing may just mean a longer temporary subsidy)

The @HRW report looked at the IS sweep of Venice ABH (by Rose Avenue) in early January 2023. By May 2024, of 106 people moved, 24 had “permanent housing,” 47 back to the streets, 26 still in the hotels, 5 dead

Now we have an LA Chief Legislative Analyst Report with Inside Safe data through May 3, 2024 clkrep.lacity.org/onlinedocs/202…

The new report by @HRW on criminalization of unhoused people provides analysis of @MayorOfLA Inside Safe program looking at data through March 2024 hrw.org/report/2024/08…