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Is California homelessness actually getting better?

I write this flat on my back. Looking up past my phone, I can see one backyard redwood and a tiny patch of Arcata sky. A strange vantage point from which to address my latest revelation:

Independent of what I said in that playlist for Honeysuckle Mag—Celeb Stoner’s “Publication of the Year”—I do aim to live in Los Angeles again. And soon. Mostly, LA’s on the menu because that’s where my children are, but what’s felt to me like a lessening unhoused crisis is a part of it, too.

Photo by Scott Vick

Earlier this month I felt it in the streets of beautiful, dangerous downtown Los Angeles and on the A-train to Long Beach. A bit of the unnecessary edge is coming off.

When I left my Arts District digs in February, national homelessness was at its worst, having spiked by 12 percent when Covid support ended. Twenty out of 10,000 people are houseless in 2023 America.

Something tangibly different is happening though in LA that numbers can’t fully reveal. Yes, Mayor Karen Bass has taken nearly 2,000 people out of encampments through her Inside Safe initiative, but in October Bass also approved 9,000 units of affordable housing. As someone who sees heavy pedestrian action in that town, I can tell you that what the promise of housing does to a city cannot be quantified.

After Arcata I’m bound for Oregon and Washington, for personal and work stuff. Not sure what to expect from their urban street scenes.

Here are the stories that I’ve been digging on:

10 Reed College secrets revealed

Photo by Jaredd Craig / Unsplash

The shiny little liberal-arts college has immortal alumni names like Steve Jobs and Barbara Ehrenreich and an endowment bigger than University of Portland, Lewis & Clark College, Linfield University, Pacific University and Willamette University combined.

The school also has an invisible wall of secrecy about it and a shrouded history that includes two ill-timed student heroin overdoses, 15 years ago. The school’s then-PR lead has written a novel set in that time.
Willamette Week

• Joel T. Meyers’ Need Blind Ambition contains numerous thinly-veiled allusions to the Reed scandal. At the time of those drug casualties, Reed had told media there was nothing to write about.

Lil Hits

• As with most of America, dabbing among kids in Washington State has reached concerning levels of popularity.

  Seattle Times

• Perhaps the rooftop scene in May December is actually the year’s best smoking scene, but is Cocaine Bear really the best stoner film? You decide.
  Celeb Stoner

9 Draymond went full heel many moons ago

He’s had one of the century’s most fascinating sports careers because basketball allows him to play the usually disparate roles of offensive facilitator and terrifying defender. There’s never been a team sports player like him.

After last week’s inexplicable attack on Jusef Nurkic, Draymond Green’s historic versatility has been relegated to second-line status in any retrospective look at Green’s career.
The Lowe Post /Sactown Sports