A new report by Human Rights Watch has accused the city of Los Angeles of implementing a “cruel, expensive, and ineffective policy” of criminalizing unhoused people. The report says the city’s systematic “sweeps” on the dwellings of unhoused people only serve to remove them from public view and focus on punishment and quick fixes rather than addressing the dire housing and care needs they face. This is Michelle, one of the unhoused people featured in Human Rights Watch’s video accompanying their report.

Michelle: “They woke us up this morning telling us that they’re going to do a clean sweep and that to grab what we can and to get out, because they were taking everything else. They take our food. They took all my underclothes. They took all my shoes. They leave us with no resources. So we’re stuck here until we can manage to get something to eat or clean water or whatever it is, because they don’t care.”

As a result of Los Angeles’s policies, death rates of unhoused people have skyrocketed with an average of more than six unhoused people dying in L.A. County every day. A Black person is six times more likely to be unhoused in L.A. than a white person. The situation is likely to get even worse as California Governor Gavin Newsom recently ordered local authorities to remove encampments following a Supreme Court ruling which criminalized sleeping in public places.