Los Angeles Social Issues

Los Angeles There is a lot to marvel at when it comes to Los Angeles. Indeed, the Los Angeles metro is second only to New York in terms of size, is home to pop culture Meccas like Hollywood and Beverly Hills and it is truly one of the few global cities that the United States has. However, they also have a lot of problems on their hands and this has been true for some time.

Whether one is speaking about cost of living, poverty, crime and other things, Los Angeles is often a major epicenter of all of those in one form or another. They are also along one of the nastiest fault lines in the world. While there are a lot of good things to say about Los Angeles, they also are behind the proverbial eight ball in many ways.

Analysis One major issue in Los Angeles would be the overall cost of living, which is stratospheric as compared to the rest of the country. Indeed, buying a home in Los Angeles can cost half a million, a full million or more depending on where one wants to live.

Even "starter" homes are cost prohibitive and one has to choose between breaking the proverbial bank (assuming a bank will approve a loan to begin with) or living in an area of the city that is less than peaceful and/or scenic. A different major issue that is present in the Los Angeles area is surely realted and that would be the rampant amount of poverty in the Los Angeles area.

California as a state has a third of the entire nation's welfare recipients yet they only have about twelve percent of the nation's population. This is a disparity of about twenty percent and that is huge when considering that the population of the entire country is north of three hundred million. California's per capita spending on welfare is $179 per person (on welfare or not) and is third only to New York and one other state.

To put another fine point on this subject, California pays out as much as $638 per month to a single beneficiary family or person and this is the highest average max payout in the nation. These statistics persist even though California has applied cuts to the system on two separate occasions while other states keep doing nominal increases form year to account for inflation and the like (Gardner, 2012). Another issue that faces Los Angeles is overcrowding.

The aforementioned cost of living and poverty leads to people living in rather large clusters as compared to what would be seen in other cities. This leads to urban areas that are very densely populated and some would say that overcrowding is rampant. Throw in the sheer size and monstrosity that is the Los Angeles metropolitan area, and it would seem that the squalor, overcrowding and other maladies stretch on for miles and miles. The overcrowding and poverty can lead to access issues for water and food.

However, the problem is less about getting the access to food or water in general because plenty of both exist all over the place. Rather, the issue is that people have to be able to afford to pay a water bill and go to the grocery story to get the food they need. Welfare certainly helps but the overall economic and cost of living climate in California puts them in rarified air as compared to other areas with the same or similar problems.

Many assert that Los Angeles and Orange County (both in the Los Angeles area) are among the worst when it comes to overcrowding and this opinion has echoed for at least a generation (Reyes & Menezes, 1995). Conclusion On the whole, the city of Los Angeles is not evil or a scourge of the Earth. However, many to most of the maladies that can.