Down And Out In Los Angeles

A British perspective on homelessness in Los Angeles:

Nobody much talks about the homeless in Los Angeles. My hunch is that there's a kind of collective denial: in this, the most illimitable – and yet curiously individuated – of megalopolises, the homeowners tend to assume that being without one can't be that bad; after all, the weather's always good – there's benches, and 70-odd miles of white sand beach.

The homeless – they can just hang out, then stroll the boulevards; while those who're saddled with the upkeep of mile after mile of Tudor revival, Spanish Mission, and Art Deco have to feel the acid burning through their duodenums, while the oil price hikes, and they sit, marooned, for hour after hour on the Harbour Freeway.

But it ain't true – this is floor covering for a city, rolled out across a desert, and at night, the temperature plummets. You see the results of this in the skin of the homeless, which is annealed by day then chilled by night, until their faces are as tanned as hides. In the darkness they huddle beneath the freeway overpasses, then when the sun rises, like lizards, they emerge to sop up the heat.

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