Holding Pens for the Homeless

Trump’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is reporting an increase in the homeless population of California of 16.4% over the course of the last year and alarm bells are ringing the corridors of power. The human misery of destitution has now reached such levels that the cash registers are being affected.

Source

Homelessness is spinning out of control in many places, not least right here in Toronto. However, in California, the situation is now generating an acute political crisis. So great is the problem of mass destitution in that state that whole urban areas are facing a threat to public health and a level of social dislocation that undermines public order and the basic level of social stability needed for capitalism to conduct business. Trump’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is reporting an increase in the homeless population of California of 16.4% over the course of the last year and alarm bells are ringing the corridors of power. The human misery of destitution has now reached such levels that the cash registers are being affected.

When a hard right champion of the austerity agenda like HUD Secretary Ben Carson says that he wants to ensure homeless people “go to the places that are designed to help them get out of that situation,” it is very necessary to anticipate what he might have in mind. The Trump Administration is “considering moving homeless people in California off the streets and into unused federal buildings.” This could be interpreted in several ways but the political character of those involved leads to a very strong suspicion that what is being contemplated is not a supply of social housing but, rather, a round up of those who have been thrown on the streets, so as to place them against their will in holding pens for homeless people.

The above mentioned Mr. Carson is not known for the depth of his social analysis. To him, broken and sinful misfits are getting in the way of profitable business dealings and need to be taken somewhere where no one will see them. His moral assumptions are quite impervious to any consideration of the actual factors driving this homeless crisis. If he were presented with an explanation of “the rising cost of housing, coupled with wage stagnation at the lower end of the income spectrum that has led to a housing affordability crisis across Southern California” the HUD Secretary’s eyes would simply glaze over.

The same factors, that have put 36,300 people onto the streets of Los Angeles, are playing out across North America and on the other side of the Atlantic. The British Medical Journal is clear that, “Austerity policies lie at heart of soaring homelessness and related health harms.” The US Coalition for the Homeless informs us that “an estimated one-third of homeless families in New York City are working but unable to afford market-rate rents” and that the number of shelter residents who are employed has shot up. The role of “soaring housing prices” in putting people onto the streets of Vancouver is abundantly clear. Escalating homelessness is, in fact, an inevitable effect of the convergence of the agenda of austerity, coupled with the extreme commodification of housing in what has come to be known as the “neoliberal city.”

Repression vs Concession

Margaret Thatcher’s infamous suggestion that there’s no such thing as society was the product of some highly selective reasoning on her part. She certainly was not signalling an intention to disband the police forces or military. Nor did she intend to fling open the doors of the prisons. What she actually meant was that the state’s secondary role in the area of social provision needed to be drastically reduced in line with the needs of the neoliberal agenda. The state has always ensured public order by way of some mix of meeting peoples’ needs and applying physical coercion. If the social infrastructure is to be weakened, the readiness and ability to resort to the billy club must be increased. The neoliberal decades have seen hugely increased rates of incarceration (most strikingly in the US) and the favouring of police budgets over social spending.

This increased use of the repressive power of the state has certainly been brought to bear on the homeless populations that the agenda of neoliberal austerity has produced. As destitution has assumed ever more serious proportions, governing authorities devoted to the neoliberal reordering of urban space, have predictably favoured the authoritarian option when it comes to trying to contain the problem. So, with Toronto’s homeless shelters bursting at the seams, and people forced to try and survive outside, City Hall has put a premium on raiding and dispersing homeless encampments. When a right-wing Tory government in Ontario introduced the Safe Streets Act in the 1990s, it was rightly regarded as a draconian attack on people forced to ask for spare change on the street. No one would have imagined, however, that this legislation would survive fifteen years of Liberal rule and be used far more extensively today than its original sponsors ever anticipated. Meanwhile, in British Columbia, the Mayor of Nanaimo publicly ruminates on the forced institutionalization of homeless people.

So it is that, in California, where the intensity of the homeless crisis runs ahead of the grim situation in other parts of North America, the neoliberal agenda’s ‘collateral damage’ creates a defining moment. It appears that the Trump Administration favours the razing of the extensive network of homeless camps and the placing of those driven from them in “temporary government facilities.” Some local politicians, however, are alarmed at the prospect of such rampant authoritarianism and favour a significant concession that would ensure a significant part of the homeless population are housed. The dilemma really comes down to the limitations of how far austerity and social abandonment can be taken within the framework of a liberal democracy.

The capitalist state has come a full circle from the days when the Elizabethan authorities, deciding they must stave off unrest and social dislocation, came up with the first model of social provision in 1601, in the form of a Poor Law. On the streets of California’s cities, the same stark choice is now placed before modern-day state officialdom. The homeless population there is vast and, with the global economy moving towards a slump, the even greater numbers of people precariously poised on the edge of destitution are at risk of losing their housing. Unless a significant concession is made that partly reverses the austerity agenda, the choice will be between tolerating destitution on a scale that threatens the social order or a sweep of the streets that takes on the features of selective martial law.

The authoritarian option can only be seen as a very real threat. In Hungary, the hard right regime of Viktor Orban has passed legislation making it illegal for people to be homeless. Trump’s political instincts are striking similar to the ‘illiberal’ Orban and, no doubt, there would be a base of support for a crackdown on California’s homeless. Once removed from the streets and out of sight, those swept up would find that their ‘temporary’ holding facilities became horribly permanent and a strict prohibition of camping outside, coupled with a complete lack of housing options, would turn these facilities into de facto prisons. It would be a return to the labour camp approach that was adopted by governments during the Great Depression and that was challenged by the unemployed movements of that period, including with the great On to Ottawa Trek of 1935.

As the economy sinks into global slump, and the already dreadful homeless crisis intensifies dramatically, it is very likely that the ‘solutions’ coming from the Trumps and Orbans will become the ‘policy options’ of the neoliberal centre. It will be more important than ever to bring the fight against homelessness into a broader struggle against austerity. We must stop the attempt to drive out homeless people and demand, instead, the social housing, living income and decent wages that can tackle the homeless crisis. Instead of a society that sweeps people from the streets when they have nowhere to go, we need one that considers housing a human right and that acts accordingly.

*

John Clarke is a writer and retired organizer for the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP). Follow his tweets at @JohnOCAP and blog at johnclarkeblog.com.

The Homelessness Crisis Deepens Across North America

The original source of this article is The Bullet

Copyright © John Clarke, The Bullet, 2019

CALIFORNIA’S HOMELESS CRISIS HAS REACHED “EPIC PROPORTIONS”

California’s Homeless Crisis Has Reached “Epic Proportions”

Socialist policies are not what caused this problem. Unfettered capitalism and obscene wealth inequality are the culprits but this is what right-wing Christians believe based on what they hear from the mainstream American media. Jesus was a socialist ye doofuses. 

“There are now nearly 60,000 homeless people living in Los Angeles County, a 12% increase from the previous year, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.”

SHTFplan.com

Mac Slavo
July 19th, 2019

The homeless crisis in the Democrat stronghold of California has reached epic proportions. Even after throwing billions of dollars at the problem, the state is unable to solve the epidemic they created.

And California’s plan to throw billions of dollars more at the issue won’t do much either. The problem isn’t a lack of money.  The problem is the socialist policies in place that make homelessness inevitable. There are now nearly 60,000 homeless people living in Los Angeles County, a 12% increase from the previous year, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

According to National Interest, Los Angeles is not the only county suffering under the weight of freedom-trampling socialist regulations that make it difficult for the average person to even get by, let alone afford a roof over their head. Other localities in California also saw substantial increases compared with 2017, when they last conducted a count, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. In San Francisco, the number [of homeless people] rose 17% while Alameda County, which includes Oakland, saw a 43% increase. Homelessness grew 42% in San Jose over the past two years and 31% in Santa Clara County, the heart of Silicon Valley.

Wealthy Elitists Freak Out As Hordes Of Homeless People Take Over Their Neighborhoods All Over The West Coast

“Even in the good old days, there was a Skid Row. Now the beggars, drug addicts, and lost souls are all over the city,” wrote San Francisco Chronicle columnist Carl Nolte.

The city is out of control. Traffic is a mess, but it’s rare to see a traffic control officer. Trucks are double-parked everywhere. The city is dirty—a friend just back from Mexico City was astounded to find the streets there far cleaner than the ones in her native city. There is so much human waste on the streets of San Francisco the city formed a ‘poop patrol’ where workers are paid $71,000 a year, about the same as the average school teacher. -Carl Nolte, San Francisco Chronicle

Nolte even nails the direct cause of the problem and it’s California’s government and the people who elect them.

To cope with these problems, the citizens have continued to elect weak city governments, all built on compromise and deals with competing pressure groups. At City Hall, everybody is responsible for everything and nobody is responsible for anything.

To make a complex problem worse, the city has so many rules and regulations that it has become nearly impossible to build anything. And the city desperately needs new housing. San Francisco has the highest building costs in the country. Architects and builders say it costs an average of $650,000 to build an ordinary San Francisco home these days. Even affordable housing is not affordable. Carl Nolte, San Francisco Chronicle

To those who continue to warn of the destruction of socialist policies, this is obvious. To those who want everything handed to them after it’s first stolen from someone else, it looks like a utopia.  But that’s because it’s easier to vote for politicians to “steal from the rich” than it is to beat the politicians own rules and become rich. Humans have lost their sense of individuality and their freedom in the process of taking the easy road.

California’s government also seems to have more pressing matters to attend to anyway, like banning plastic straws, plastic bags, and paper receipts. They’ve also begun providing free health care coverage to illegal immigrants while their homeless population burgeons.  California maintains a generous welfare regime, and it’s temperate and generally pleasant weather make it a natural haven for homeless people.

But the best way for the state to help the people is by doing the one thing the state won’t do: get the hell out of their way.

The Shaking Won’t Stop: There Have Been More Than 10,000 Earthquakes In California And Nevada In The Last 7 Days

http://endoftheamericandream.com//archives/the-shaking-wont-stop-there-have-been-more-than-10000-earthquakes-in-california-in-the-last-7-days

endoftheamericandream.com

by Michael Snyder

July 10, 2019

The ground is constantly shaking in southern California right now, and this has many concerned that another large earthquake may be coming.  I have been keeping my eye on Cal Tech’s recent earthquake map, and as I write this article it says that there have been 10,053 earthquakes in California and Nevada over the past 7 days.  I have never seen that number so high, and southern California is being hit by yet another new earthquake every few moments.  Most of the earthquakes are happening out in the Ridgecrest area where we witnessed the magnitude 6.4 earthquake that hit on July 4th and the magnitude 7.1 earthquake that hit on July 5th.  But as you can see from Cal Tech’s map, there has been a tremendous amount of seismic activity along the San Andreas fault as well.  As I discussed the other day, the San Andreas fault is “locked and loaded” and it is way overdue for “the Big One”.  Could it be possible that all of this earthquake activity is leading up to something really big?

And it isn’t just earthquakes that we need to be concerned about.  According to Fox News, “geologists are nervously eyeing eight nearby volcanoes”…

California’s uncanny “earthquake pause” is over. It should have already had several “big ones” by now. All that pressure has to go somewhere. Now geologists are nervously eyeing eight nearby volcanoes. And why has Yellowstone supervolcano been acting so weird?

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has warned Southern California to expect more big earthquakes to come. Some, they say, may even be more powerful than those experienced in the past few days.

“(These quakes do) not make (the Big One) less likely,” local seismologist Lucy Jones told The Los Angeles Times. “There is about a one in 20 chance that this location will be having an even bigger earthquake in the next few days, that we have not yet seen the biggest earthquake of the sequence.”

Could you imagine the chaos that would ensue if a volcano suddenly erupted in California?

For the record, I am personally far more concerned about Mt. Rainier and the other volcanoes in the Northwest.  But that is a topic for another article.

One angle that hasn’t really been talked about much is what would happen to California’s nuclear reactors if “the Big One” suddenly hit the San Andreas fault.

According to Natural News, there are currently five nuclear reactors right along the San Andreas fault and another one that is located directly along the coast…

A Natural News investigation into the geolocation of nuclear power facilities in California reveals that five nuclear facilities were built in close proximity to the San Andreas fault line, with some constructed right in the middle of earthquake zones that have up to a 50% chance of a severe earthquake every 30 years.

One nuclear power plant – the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant which produces 2,160 megawatts — was constructed on the coast, making it extremely vulnerable to the very same kind of ocean water surge that destroyed the Fukushima-Daiichi facility which suffered a 2011 meltdown in Japan.

Who was the genius that decided to build those reactors near the San Andreas fault?

The potential for an unprecedented nightmare is definitely there.  If a magnitude 9.0 earthquake were to hit the San Andreas fault, it would be 707 times more powerful than the magnitude 7.1 earthquake that we just witnessed.

And we live at a time when our planet just continues to become even more unstable.  According to NBC News, the number of “great” earthquakes between 2004 and 2014 was 265 percent higher than during the preceding ten year period…

The annual number of “great” earthquakes nearly tripled over the last decade, providing a reminder to Americans that unruptured faults like those in the northwest United States might be due for a Big One.

Between 2004 and 2014, 18 earthquakes with magnitudes of 8.0 or more rattled subduction zones around the globe. That’s an increase of 265 percent over the average rate of the previous century, which saw 71 great quakes, according to a report to the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America this week in Vancouver, British Columbia.

But despite all of the unusual shaking that we have witnessed so far this century, the state of California hasn’t seen anything remotely close to the shaking that we have witnessed over the last 7 days.

Of course seismic activity is just one element of “the perfect storm” that is starting to unfold.  According to the NOAA, the 12 month period ending in June was the wettest 12 month period in all of U.S. history.  In fact, for three months in a row “the past 12-month precipitation record has hit an all-time high”.  We just keep setting record after record, and the flooding in the middle of the country seems like it will never end.  Millions of acres of prime farmland will not be used at all this year, and tens of millions of acres of crops are in extremely poor condition right now.

Meanwhile, a monster storm is heading directly for New Orleans, and on Wednesday it dumped “7 inches of rain within a three-hour period” on the city…

Lines of thunderstorms associated with a weather system that is predicted to develop into a hurricane by Friday struck New Orleans with as much as 7 inches of rain within a three-hour period Wednesday morning, forecasters said.

The city was engulfed with water, leaving residents to contend with swampy streets, overturned garbage cans and flooded vehicles. Some even paddled their way down the street in kayaks.

But the worst is still yet to come.  The storm may become a hurricane before it makes landfall, and it is going to push the Mississippi River to one of the highest levels ever…

The deluge may have just been a preview of more serious flooding situation from Tropical Storm or Hurricane Barry, which could affect the area into the weekend.

On Saturday, the Mississippi River is projected to see one of its highest crests on record in New Orleans, or the highest in seven decades.

A state of emergency has already been declared in Louisiana, and this could turn out to be the biggest disaster for the state since Hurricane Katrina.

Why is disaster after disaster suddenly pummeling the United States?

And could it be possible that this is just the beginning of our problems?

A time of great change is now upon us, and I have a feeling that what we have experienced so far is just the tip of the iceberg.

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The Endand Living A Life That Really Matters. His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News. From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites. If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so. The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.

“Medieval” Diseases Flare as Unsanitary Living Conditions Proliferate

Typhus and other infectious illnesses hit homeless communities

“The diseases have flared as the nation’s homeless population has grown in the past two years: About 553,000 people were homeless at the end of 2018, and nearly one-quarter of homeless people live in California.”

Source: “Medieval” Diseases Flare as Unsanitary Living Conditions Proliferate – Scientific American

Source link

http://www.scientificamerican.com

By Anna Gorman, Kaiser Health News

March 15, 2019

Typhus and other infectious illnesses hit homeless communities

Credit: Frederic J. Brown Getty Images

 

Jennifer Millar keeps trash bags and hand sanitizer near her tent, and she regularly pours water mixed with hydrogen peroxide on the sidewalk nearby. Keeping herself and the patch of concrete she calls home clean is a top priority.

But this homeless encampment off a Hollywood freeway ramp is often littered with needles and trash, and soaked in urine. Rats occasionally scamper through, and Millar fears the consequences.

“I worry about all those diseases,” said Millar, 43, who said she has been homeless most of her life.

Infectious diseases—some that ravaged populations in the Middle Ages—are resurging in California and around the country, and are hitting homeless populations especially hard.

Los Angeles recently experienced an outbreak of typhus—a disease spread by infected fleas on rats and other animals—in downtown streets. Officials briefly closed part of City Hall after reporting that rodents had invaded the building.

People in Washington state have been infected with Shigella bacteria, which is spread through feces and causes the diarrheal disease shigellosis, as well as Bartonella quintana, which spreads through body lice and causes trench fever.

Hepatitis A, also spread primarily through feces, infected more than 1,000 people in Southern California in the past two years. The disease also has erupted in New Mexico, Ohio and Kentucky, primarily among people who are homeless or use drugs.

Public health officials and politicians are using terms like “disaster” and “public health crisis” to describe the outbreaks, and they warn that these diseases can easily jump beyond the homeless population.

“Our homeless crisis is increasingly becoming a public health crisis,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in his State of the State speech in February, citing outbreaks of hepatitis A in San Diego County, syphilis in Sonoma County and typhus in Los Angeles County.

“Typhus,” he said. “A medieval disease. In California. In 2019.”

The diseases have flared as the nation’s homeless population has grown in the past two years: About 553,000 people were homeless at the end of 2018, and nearly one-quarter of homeless people live in California.

The diseases spread quickly and widely among people living outside or in shelters, fueled by sidewalks contaminated with human feces, crowded living conditions, weakened immune systems and limited access to health care.

“The hygiene situation is just horrendous” for people living on the streets, said Dr. Glenn Lopez, a physician with St. John’s Well Child & Family Center, who treats homeless patients in Los Angeles County. “It becomes just like a Third World environment where their human feces contaminate the areas where they are eating and sleeping.”

Those infectious diseases are not limited to homeless populations, Lopez warned. “Even someone who believes they are protected from these infections are not.”

At least one Los Angeles city staffer said she contracted typhus in City Hall last fall. And San Diego County officials warned in 2017 that diners at a well-known restaurant were at risk of hepatitis A.

There were 167 cases of typhus from Jan. 1, 2018, through Feb. 1 of this year, up from 125 in 2013 and 13 in 2008, according to the California Public Health Department.

Typhus is a bacterial infection that can cause a high fever, stomach pain and chills but can be treated with antibiotics. Outbreaks are more common in overcrowded and trash-filled areas that attract rats.

The recent typhus outbreak began last fall, when health officials reported clusters of the flea-borne disease in downtown Los Angeles and Compton. They also have occurred in Pasadena, where the problems are likely due to people feeding stray cats carrying fleas.

Last month, the county announced another outbreak in downtown Los Angeles that infected nine people, six of whom were homeless. After city workers said they saw rodent droppings in City Hall, Los Angeles City Council President Herb Wesson briefly shut down his office to rip up the rugs, and he also called for an investigation and more cleaning.

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20% Of California Community College Student Are Homeless, Study Finds

Source: 20% Of California Community College Student Are Homeless, Study Finds | Zero Hedge

http://www.zerohedge.com

by Tyler Durden

Mon, 03/11/2019

Sadly, we can’t say we’re surprised.

Driven by the high costs of higher education and the absurdly high cost of living in California, a recent survey revealed a stunning figure: Nearly 20% of Community College students in America’s most populous state are homeless.

Whether they’re sleeping in their cars, or crashing on couches, or are among the growing number of California’s “unsheltered” homeless, some 19% responded to a survey of community college students saying they either didn’t have a place to live, or were simply crashing or living in their vehicles.

What’s worse, instead of seeking out shelter in one of California’s many homeless shelters (which we’ve heard are fantastic environments for fostering academic curiosity), many students are simply “too proud” to do this.

Here’s more on that study from 24/7 Wall Street:

Community colleges are two-year education institutions meant to provide affordable degrees for people who have usually graduated high school but have not enrolled in schools which can give them a four-year college degree. They are often known as junior colleges. In one state, nearly 20% of the students enrolled in these schools are homeless.

There are 1,167 community colleges in the U.S. according to the American Association of Community Colleges. The enrollment in these institutions is more than 12.4 million students. Almost half of all undergraduate students in the United States attend community colleges. Homelessness among students at these institutions is prevalent.

In California, the number is extraordinarily large. Nineteen percent of attendees in the largest state by population are homeless. California is among the states with the most unshelterd homeless.  It also has several four-year colleges where applications are on the rise.

A study by the Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice at Temple University’s College of Education in Philadelphia, polled almost 20,000 students at 57 colleges in California. The data was collected during the fall semesters of 2016 and 2018. The report’s lead author Sara Goldrick-Rab told the Mercury News if the information is projected across all of California, it yields the 19% number. She added, “Only 6 percent of students said they were homeless,. The other 13 percent indicated their homelessness by saying where they stayed.”

Community college is inexpensive in most cases compared with four-year institutions. However, that does not mean it is affordable for everyone. According to the Community College Review, among public community colleges, the annual tuition for in-state students is $4,835 per year. For out of state students, the figure rises to $8,594. The data from the study cover 2018 and 2019.

Among the reasons that students do not turn to shelters which are available is that people who consider themselves relatively well educated sometimes have problems admitting to others they are homeless. Goldrick-Rab commented, “And many students don’t go to shelters because these are well-educated people who don’t want to be stigmatized.”

Proposed solutions, at least in California, are for more state support of these students. They also might be supported, financially and in terms of food and housing, by local communities. In the meantime, a number of nearly 20% is high enough that finding a solution for most of these people will take a very long time.

* * *

Of course, maybe if California’s stringent energy-efficiency laws didn’t make building homes in the state roughly 3x more expensive than the national median, there wouldn’t be a housing-shortage crisis, and valuations for existing homes wouldn’t be so high.

California’s Wildfires Are Exposing the Rotten Core of Capitalism

It’s going to get weirder from here.

http://www.vice.com

by Lauren Lee White

Nov 16 2018

Left Image: Kanye West and Kim Kardashian. (Photo by Chesnot/WireImage) Right Image: Megan and Matthew Saxton (photo courtesy the Saxton family)

Around 2 AM last Friday, a neighbor knocked on Megan and Matthew Saxton’s door. It was time to go.

The previous day, the Woolsey fire had begun charting a path of destruction along the Pacific coast of southern California. In Malibu and nearby affluent enclaves, the fire has so far devoured more than 98,000 acres and over 600 structures, killing at least three. Some residents, most infamously Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, were able to call in a private army of firefighters to save their properties. Many others were lucky to escape the state’s latest bout of flames with their lives—the Camp fire, simultaneously raging in northern California’s Butte County, is the deadliest in state history with over 60 fatalities to date and well over 10,000 structures eviscerated.

The Saxtons, both 31, lived with their three sons at the Seminole Springs mobile home park in an unincorporated piece of LA county land off Mulholland Highway. They recalled buying their mobile home and a lot in the park for a combined $420,000 in 2016—not the cheapest spot in town, but a far cry from the neighboring Malibu mansions that go for millions.

There were no official evacuation orders when they were woken in the middle of the night, but the air was getting smoky and they decided better safe than sorry. After grabbing some photo albums and the kids, the Saxtons drove north to stay with Megan’s brother in Thousand Oaks, figuring they’d be home soon to inspect the damage.

They soon found out through the NextDoor app that more than half of the mobile home park had burned. A few days later, Matthew went to the park to see the damage for himself and their worst fears were confirmed: Their home was gone.

The Saxtons were lucky enough to have an insurance policy—it was required as part of their mortgage, they explained. But the policy won’t cover the full cost of rebuilding, they noted, and the soonest they expected to rebuild was a year from now. “We were a middle-class neighborhood in the middle of the canyon, an affordable gem in the middle of all these really expensive homes,” Matthew said.

Natural disasters typically have the most devastating effects on those with the fewest resources. A 2016 UN report on the nexus of wealth inequality and climate change found that the two were locked in a vicious and increasingly terrifying cycle: “…the disadvantaged groups suffer disproportionate loss of income and assets (physical, financial, human and social) when these hazards actually hit them. Consequently, inequality worsens, and the cycle perpetuates with greater force.”

“No matter what the kind of natural disaster, whether it’s flooding or wind damage or fire, the biggest burden of the longest duration falls on the already-poor,” David Lodge, director of Cornell University’s Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future, told me.

In addition to the immediate threats to life and limb that come with any severe natural disaster, there may be a temporary period of homelessness or unemployment that can send someone on the brink of poverty over the edge. Without adequate insurance, savings to rebuild, or a reliable social safety net in place, what Lodge has called “the human face of policy-induced suffering” is revealed.

And with the current trajectory of increasing weather disasters, that suffering is likely to grow. In addition to the spectacular events of the last few years—the current spate of fires in California, January’s wildfire-related mudslides in Montecito, the 2017 hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria—at least 99.7 percent of all US counties have incurred significant property damage from natural hazards since 2000. Between the 1960s and the 2000s, the yearly average of financial loss attributable to disasters (per capita) in the US soared from about $25 to about $80, adjusting for inflation.

Junia Howell and James R. Elliott, sociologists who study social inequality, try to look away from the spectacle and find out what happens after the reporters leave Malibu, or Houston, or New Orleans. Their longitudinal study of how natural hazards impact wealth inequality in the US was motivated by the reality that “these events keep happening,” as Elliott explained to me. “This is not a California problem, this is not a Texas problem, this is not a Florida problem. It’s an American problem.”

It’s obviously also a global problem. Still, understanding the specifics even within American states can help show the bigger picture. So how might this worsening of economic inequality play out in the Los Angeles and Ventura county regions where the Woolsey fire continued to rage Friday?

Lodge suggested thinking of the archetypal Malibu mansion as a small business that employed a staff of service workers.

“While their homes are perhaps not harmed by the fire, their place of employment is destroyed,” he pointed out. “The consequences for them may be almost as severe as if their own homes were destroyed if they’re living on the edge, as many service workers are already, even without a disaster.”

Elliott offered a broader view, pointing to the ways disaster damage to property can affect inequality over time. “If you’re a low-income resident in Los Angeles, even if your property wasn’t directly affected, there can be these indirect knock-on effects for lower-income and middle-income people either because of supply potential going down in housing, or disruptions in work just giving you general precarity,” he said. For California residents, one of these indirect effects might prove to be astronomical utility bills, as Pacific Gas and Electric Company has struggled to stay afloat in the wake of unprecedented wildfire damage.

Of course, like the Saxtons, not everyone directly affected or displaced by the Woolsey fire is a Malibu millionaire. For those in the humbler neighborhoods affected, or for those who bought decades ago before the local real estate market became too hot for most to handle, rebuilding may not be an option. One measure of the fallout will be gauged by following how many of these residents end up having to put more geographical and social distance between themselves and their elite former neighbors.

Elliott predicted that number would be high. “The more costly the event, the more inequality in wealth is going to emerge over time,” he told me. “Given the amount of property damage there, that would be our expectation for Southern California.”

To some extent, good policies can mitigate effects of the disaster-inequality crises. Local government can carefully consider where people are allowed to build or rebuild, for example, keeping in mind whether it’s fair for taxpayers to subsidize homes and businesses in areas that are frequently flooded or burned, as Lodge suggested. Or they could earmark funds for affordable housing or rental assistance for those whose homes weren’t directly impacted by a disaster, but who have suffered economically from the fallout, as Elliott offered.

Or we could yield to the increasingly popular oligarch model of billionaire-owned newsrooms and individuals with more wealth than the bottom half of the US, and directly ask some of the better-off Malibu residents to spread some wealth to less-visible casualties of the Woolsey fire.

For the Saxtons, the future seemed shaky. Their property now “looks like the landscape of the moon,” Matthew said, and they expected its value to plummet. They figured they’d need to rebuild and stay there for four or five years just to break even on their original investment, and that they’d have to find a way to cover the difference between the cost of their new mobile home and what their insurance would pay them. Matthew worked at an office in Malibu, and when we spoke earlier this week, he was waiting to find out once the evacuation orders were lifted whether the building* remained.

Against a broader backdrop of accelerating political chaos and routine mass shootings—including one that left 13 dead in Thousand Oaks, where the Saxtons took refuge, just hours before the Woolsey fire forced residents to evacuate—an increasingly dystopian reality loomed. Though the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department said there has been no looting in Malibu, singer Pink’s husband Carey Hart posted a photo to Instagram on Tuesday of a group of gun-toting, masked men bearing a sign that read “LOOTERS WILL BE SHOT ON SITE!” Another Instagram feed with the handle @prayformalibu posted a photo of a similar sign: “Welcome 2 Point Dume Looters get bullets Fireman get hugs.”

At a moment when asking what really stands between Americans and civil war is not entirely unreasonable, addressing “wealth inequality is an issue not only of fairness,” as Lodge noted, but also critical to maintaining social stability.

*Correction 11/16/2018: A previous version of this story suggested Matthew Saxton was concerned about his job, when in fact he was worried solely about the office building in which he worked. We regret the error.

Apocalypse Now: California Fires 2018