Los Angeles is a showcase of progressive failure — once a proud American city, now caked in filth, tents, and burned-out neighborhoods where hardworking families are paying the price. Angelenos live with overflowing trash, raw sewage and abandoned encampments because city leaders refuse to provide basic sanitation or enforce common-sense public order. The smell of cheap narcotics and the sight of discarded needles on sidewalks have become ordinary sights in once-respectable neighborhoods.
The statistics don’t let the mayor’s talking points hide the truth: homelessness remains stubbornly high and encampments have spread into suburbs and under freeways, even if officials tout small gains. An audit and reporting show that tens of thousands still lack stable housing, and the system meant to manage funds and services has been criticized for reckless spending and poor results. Ordinary people see the tents and the trash — and they rightly ask why policy experiments failed while street life deteriorated.
Safety has followed the squalor. Fire departments and community leaders report a dramatic rise in rubbish fires and dangerous behavior around encampments, while residents tell horrifying stories about masked men with high-powered weapons and brazen illegal dumping that makes daily life a hazard. These are not isolated complaints — they are the lived realities in South and Central L.A., where citizens are pleading for basic law and order rather than more empty promises. This is what happens when soft-on-crime politics meets zero-accountability governance.
Angelenos are fed up, and the backlash is real: petitions demanding the mayor’s resignation gathered six-figure signatures and voter anger is boiling over after a string of missteps during crises. When voters see taxpayer dollars misallocated and city leaders unable to marshal resources during fires and floods, trust evaporates quickly. People who still work and pay taxes in this city are done being lectured by elites while their neighborhoods crumble.
Meanwhile, the cost of living in Los Angeles remains a punishment for average Americans — sky-high rents, exploding property values, and displacement that makes staying in the city impossible for many middle-class families. Home and rent prices have outpaced wage growth for years, squeezing the very voters who built the place into submission or exile. The liberal playbook of regulation and NIMBY politics has wrecked housing affordability while pretending to care about the poor.
On drugs, the official spin about so-called progress masks a bitter truth: government programs can help, but when Washington and city halls flip-flop between enabling addiction and pretending harm reduction is a panacea, the public pays the cost. Los Angeles County did report declines in overdose deaths after pouring money into prevention and treatment, yet debates over funding and federal priorities show how fragile those gains are when leadership is inconsistent. We should support real treatment and enforcement, not policies that coddle dealers or tolerate open-air drug markets.
Enough talk — Angelenos deserve clean streets, secure neighborhoods and affordable housing, not more bureaucratic experiments or virtue-signaling photo-ops. It’s time for leaders who will put neighborhoods first: enforce the law, restore sanitation, prioritize rebuilding after disasters and stop rewarding failure with more money and excuses. If city officials won’t do the job, voters must, by holding them accountable and demanding leadership that respects the rule of law and the dignity of working families.
