08/07/2026
Los Angeles has spent enormous sums trying to address homelessness. And still, most residents see the same thing every day: people living on sidewalks, under overpasses, in encampments that don't seem to shrink no matter how much money goes in. The gap between the spending and what's actually visible on the street has gotten hard to ignore.
This week on California Insider, two people who work this problem up close sit down to talk about what they've really seen.
Kenneth Schrupp, an investigative reporter with City Journal, interviewed more than 200 homeless people across LA and went inside a Skid Row service campus to see how it all works from the ground. Zach Southall, founder of Charity on Wheels, has spent fifteen years working directly with people on Orange County's streets, running an all-volunteer effort on a fraction of what the big system spends.
Their conversation gets at the harder question underneath the headlines: what does it actually take to help someone leave the street for good, and why has that become so much harder than it used to be?
