LA county's homeless vets problem and possible solutions, Netflix tries its hand at comic books, Google Earth's street-level pollution measuring initiative.
LA's 4,800 homeless vets need help. How can they get it?
More than 8,000 vets in Los Angeles have gotten the help they need to find a home since 2014.
But there are still 4,800 of them in L.A. County who are homeless – the highest anywhere in the country.
It's a profound problem for the region as it not only tries to fight homelessness, but also help those who stepped up to serve our country when America needed them.
Take Two looks at what's being done and how it could be better with a roundtable of experts.
Guests
- Keith Gren, a 13-year veteran with the U.S. Army who was also homeless for 9 years. He's currently a spokesman for New Directions, and lives at their housing complex in North Hills.
- Heidi Marston, Director of Community Engagement & Reintegration Services at the West L.A. Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
- Tod Lipka, CEO of the local non-profit Step Up, which offers supportive housing for veterans in L.A.
If you are a vet in need of help, or would like to know more of how to help others
- Call 211, a resource for L.A. County residents to connect them with services
- The V.A.'s hotline at 877-4-AID-VET, or visit www.va.gov/homeless
- Step Up, which offers supportive housing and services, based in Santa Monica (www.stepuponsecond.org and 310-394.6883)
- New Directions, which provides permanent supportive housing and more, located at the West L.A. Veterans Affairs campus (ndvets.org and 310.914.4045)
Interview highlights
Keith Gren, you have a physical disability from your service. That caused problems in your civilian job and you were eventually let go, which led to your homelessness. When you needed help, did the VA let you down?
Yes sir. The resources, they were there. I just didn't know how to advocate for myself to actually get in to it.
There's way too much red tape. I should be well on my way to figuring out a system, but it's too difficult.
Heidi Marston, you're from that system. You're with the V.A. Did you let him down?
It's exactly what you said, Keith, the system is huge. It's hard to navigate.
But there are a lot of changes that have been made in the past few years to try to help that.
So when people do come to us, we do have a "no wrong door" policy, and we have a way to not only engage you, but to make sure we stay engaged with you until you ultimately end up in housing.
When you a veteran such as Keith saying that the system let them down, do you get frustrated? Do you sometimes throw your hands up in the air and say, we're trying?
We use those examples to get better.
And, again, because of the complexities of the system, how large it is, there's always new things we're uncovering and new challenges.
So we want to hear those stories and those challenges so we can address them specifically.
Tod Lipka, Keith eventually got help through non-profits such as yours. Ideally, are you a stopgap? Because you seem to be more of a solution.
We don't really see ourselves as a "stopgap." We see ourselves in partnership with the V.A.
The V.A. has said to Step Up as well as New Directions, look, you have some expertise and some skills that we don't really have. So instead of trying to provide those, we want to contract with you.
So it's not really a stopgap; We're providing a complementary solution.
Find out more about the problems that vets like Keith Gren have had in trying to find housing help. Click on the blue audio player above.
As US tells Haitians to start packing, Central Americans fear they could be next
Meet Lisa Middleton, the first openly transgender City Council member in California
Voters turned out earlier this week for the first nationwide election day since Donald Trump won the presidency. In California, Lisa Middleton made history. She's the first transgender person elected to a non-judicial office in the state.
Other trans individuals also broke ground around the country. In Virginia, Danica Roem was voted in as the first openly transgender state representative in the U.S. And in Minneapolis, Minn., Andrea Jenkins became the first transgender black woman to be elected to public office.
Take Two sat down with Lisa Middleton, newly elected to the Palm Springs City Council, on her approach to local issues as well as national concerns.
Interview Highlights:
The increase of openly trans individuals in politics
Certain far-right groups and those who are opposed to the equality of LGBTQ groups have identified trans individuals as a preferred target. That fact has certainly encouraged many of us who are transgender to step up to provide the alternative example, and to demonstrate why a diverse population is the best way to move forward.
Local issues in Palm Springs
Issues in Palm Springs are local issues: fire services, road repairs, pensions, homelessness, renewable energy. We need a permanent housing solution. Right now, Palm Spring does not have any overnight housing for the homeless. I'm looking into working together with Coachella Valley to build a regional system to provide housing solutions.
Balance between visitors and residents
One question really encapsulates this balance. Is Palm Springs a small town of communities, or a world-class destination? The answer is both! This all comes down to keeping communities noise free and welcoming. We need to have our hospitality industry and our local neighborhoods talking with one another, and working with each other. Our residents enjoy the quality of life that is made possible by the fact that we have millions of visitors each year.
(Interview has been edited for clarity)
For more on the short-term rental problems in Palm Springs, click on the blue media player above
The Ride: LA air pollution data gets hyperlocal thanks to Google Street View cars
Most people know about Google Street View, which gives Google Maps users panoramics of the world's roads. Maybe you've even seen some of Google's Street View vehicles roaming around L.A., with their huge cameras mounted high above the cars' roofs.
Well, some of them haven't only been mapping the city. They've been gathering hyper-local air pollution data - block by block by block - and some of that data became available for the first time Thursday.
For three months, two Google Street View cars equipped with air pollution sensors from the Bay Area company Aclima drove around L.A. Driving Monday through Friday, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., they measured concentrations of various pollutants, including diesel soot, within 500 meters of dozens of schools in five different LA neighborhoods, including Boyle Heights, North Long Beach, West L.A., Westchester and Wilmington.
Of the areas tested, Boyle Heights had the highest concentrations of black soot near schools, according to the research, and that's because it's surrounded by freeways on all sides and is also near a lot of industrial and manufacturing facilities, which subject it to a lot of diesel emissions from trucks. West L.A. had the lowest levels of diesel soot in the areas that were tested, not only because it's less industrial but because of coastal air blown in from the water, according to Aclima.
The study found that within neighborhoods, there's a huge amount of variability in air pollution from school to school and also from street to street - even from one end of a block to the other. And a lot of that has to do with wind, specifically how quickly wind blows through certain areas and in what direction, and some of that is influenced by the area's landscape, including the height and location of buildings, street designs, even plants.
"The power of the mobile platform is is that it allows us to have more granularity than we're getting from the established regulatory network," said Aclima chief scientist Melissa Lunden.
Are Netflix comics the beginning of a new cinematic universe?
A lot of Angelenos spend their weekends watching Netflix. But soon they could be reading it. The streaming company that got everyone addicted to binge watching is getting into comic book publishing.
Its first title, "The Magic Order," is by Mark Millar, best known for the "Kingsman" and "Kick-Ass" comics that were later turned into movies.
"I would not be surprised if this is the beginning of a cinematic universe," said Timothy J. Seppala. He wrote about the new Netflix comic book franchise for the tech site Engadget.com.
"With Disney and Marvel pulling its content off of Netflix," Seppala said, "it's cheaper for Netflix to test run a series of comic books than to jump straight into TV show production."
Click on the blue media play above to hear the full interview
For Morrissey Day and every day, Jose Maldonado is the Mexican Morrissey
Friday is officially Morrissey Day in Los Angeles, coinciding with the first of two Morrissey performances at the Hollywood Bowl this weekend.
Thx Moz fans for the love!
The City of L.A. has officially declared this Friday Morrissey Day |
— Monica Rodriguez (@LadyMRod)
Thx Moz fans for the love! #Moz #MorrisseyDay
— Monica Rodriguez (@LadyMRod) November 9, 2017
The City of L.A. has officially declared this Friday Morrissey Day | https://t.co/WcvEkyilXG
Morrissey has long had a huge fan base here in Los Angeles, and it's safe to say that one of his biggest fans is Jose Maldonado, lead singer of the Morrissey and Smiths cover band, the Sweet and Tender Hooligans.
Maldonado, who's also known as the Mexican Morrissey, not only sings Morrissey songs but also hosts a radio show devoted to the band. Here's a short documentary from Vice and the British magazine, i-D.
A lot has been written about Mexican American Morrissey fans, especially those from LA, so we asked Maldonado, who is Mexican American, for his take.
One of the first people to point that out to me was Morrissey himself, the very first time I met Morrissey, when he was signing my autograph and asking me who to make it out to. When I said make it out to Jose, he said, 'You know, I seem to meet a lot of people like Jose and Carlos and Juan in Los Angeles. I don't think my records sell very well in Spanish-speaking countries, what is it about Los Angeles?' ... The super sexy answer is that we as Latinos are passionate people, and Morrissey writes very passionate lyrics ... Another answer, perhaps, is his upbringing. Being the son of Irish immigrants in Northern England is not unlike the experience of Latinos in Southern California...
Jose Maldonado is the lead singer of the Morrissey cover band The Sweet and Tender Hooligans. If you don't see the actual Morrissey this weekend, check out Maldonado and his band January 5th at the Anaheim House of Blues.
(click on the blue arrow to hear the entire interview)