Authored by Beige Luciano-Adams via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

In the scrubby Mojave desert north of Los Angeles, a sprawling encampment of decrepit RVs sits just off a dirt road separating the city of Lancaster from Los Angeles County’s unincorporated expanse.

In every direction, garbage spreads out like an algae super bloom—beyond that, endless sand and brush, baking in the summer sun.

“Keep your head on a swivel for dogs,” a member of the city’s public safety and emergency response unit tells us. Through the haze, we see two pit bulls and a German Shepherd under a tarp, but they are tethered, too hot to move.

Freddy, a resident, seems only moderately bothered by the 110 degree temperature. “I don’t have a car anymore, so I can’t get my own water,” he says, when asked how he survives out here. 

“Someone brings me water every two weeks,” he said, referring to a nonprofit. 

Pointing down at his legs, scaly and engorged beneath black shorts, he adds, “And I’m sick, too. They bring me medicine.”

There is no grid here, no power or water. RV residents dump their raw sewage in the desert, either right outside their vehicles, or sometimes with a hose that carries it a little farther out.

Such encampments, which are also a magnet for illegal construction dumping, appear as clusters on satellite maps, dotting the rugged terrain just past the county line. Officials say they stretch out as far as 10 miles into the desert, but most stay closer to town.

Freddy is one of thousands without housing in the northern part of the county, according to data released last month by the Los Angeles Homelessness Services Authority (LAHSA). 

On any given night, an estimated 6,672 people are homeless in the Antelope Valley—a 42 percent increase over the year prior. But only 1,057 of the region’s homeless people live in its two main cities, Lancaster and Palmdale, leaving the remaining 5,615 in smaller towns and the region’s rural unincorporated areas.

It’s surprising that so many people could be living in tents, under tarps, inside of old RVs, out in the middle of the high desert with no water or infrastructure.

But those familiar with the situation say the population was already high, and the dramatic jump simply represents a more thorough count this year.

“The count went up this year because the count was done wrong in previous years,” said a city official, who asked not to be identified by name. “This year we utilized a drone, and our teams went out to remote areas and did the count,” he said, estimating the actual increase over last year might be closer to 25 percent.

L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, whose 5th District includes the Antelope Valley, also suggested the increase may not be as straightforward as it looks.

“The Point In Time Count is not a perfect science and it’s rightfully evolving,” she said in an email to The Epoch Times, expressing uncertainty over whether the number reflects an increase or a better count. 

“Regardless, we will use those results to draw down more federal and state funding so that we can deliver more local housing and shelter options. The need in the region is real.”

Either way, the uptick is an outlier in 2024, when the county overall and most city homeless populations are either remaining stable or shrinking slightly.

The City of Lancaster’s overall homeless count went down in 2024, to 520 people from 590 the year prior, with fewer unsheltered homeless and more sheltered homeless individuals. Palmdale’s, meanwhile, rose from 177 to 537.

Inquiries to Palmdale city officials, including the mayor and city councilmembers, were not returned.

LAHSA also did not respond to a request for comment on the increase in the homeless population in Antelope Valley.

While many municipalities across the West stopped clearing homeless encampments after a series of Ninth Circuit Court decisions determined anti-camping laws violated the Eighth Amendment, Lancaster bypassed those restrictions with procedural caveats, by offering shelter before moving people. 

Since the Supreme Court reversed the lower court rulings earlier this month, officials say, enforcement is easier.

Critics of such enforcement, such as the ACLU, have long argued Lancaster is pushing people who have nowhere to go into dangerous, extreme conditions. But officials say there are beds available, and enforcement is attended by offers of services and shelter.

So why are thousands of people homeless in the desert?

End of the Line

Lancaster Mayor Rex Parris, an outspoken critic of what he says is the county’s neglect of the region, allows there are various factors that might contribute to an increase in homelessness—former inmates at California State Prison, in Lancaster, who end up in the community without services, along with a small percentage of people losing housing or falling on hard times.

Lancaster has always been a far more affordable bedroom community, but median rent is currently $2,595 a month—only about $200 cheaper than Los Angeles, according to real estate website Zillow.

But the main reason, Mr. Parris told The Epoch Times, is L.A.’s systematic tendency—not a conspiracy, exactly, more like a default setting—to send its problems north.

“I think it’s tied to the L.A. area pushing them up here,” he said of the homeless count increase. “They tend to push all of their problems up here, if they can. And now you’ve got the World Cup, and you’ve got the Olympics coming, and they’re in a mad rush to get rid of their homeless, and so they encourage them to come here.”

Mr. Parris says his teams are “constantly interviewing people who were given a ticket and told, “go to Lancaster, we’ll feed and take care of them,” but did not specify by whom. 

“It’s at the end of the Metro line, literally. This is not unusual.”

The county’s transit system, plagued by violence in recent months, has its own problems. Used as a de facto shelter by thousands during the day, its buses and trains are emptied for cleaning each night, which some end-of-line cities say has resulted in sharp increases in their transient homeless populations.

Lancaster, 60 miles north of Los Angeles and at the very end of the Metro transit system, is far more remote than other such cities.

Lt. William Kitchin, who oversees the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department’s (LASD) homeless outreach team for the entire county, said he has not personally seen evidence to support the idea that people are being directed to the region, but has observed migration to end-of-line cities.

However they end up there, once in Lancaster, civil rights groups say, authorities have routinely pushed homeless people out into the desert.

In a study based on interviews with 53 unhoused people in and around Lancaster from February 2019 to October 2020, the ACLU claimed the LASD “banished” people to remote county areas, combining the threat of criminal and civil sanctions with “suggestions” to leave town.

Such claims, the lieutenant said, are easily disproved by body cameras that record deputies’ interactions when enforcing local ordinances.

Lt. Kitchin’s team works with LAHSA to resolve encampments of more than five people, and he said such operations are always done with advance notice and offers of services and housing.??

“We can’t dictate or tell people where to go. We just say you can’t be here. We prefer you take the services that were provided, so you can go inside and get your life started on the right track, but we can’t force them into it,” he said.

Starting on July 22, his team plans to clear desert encampments in an area north of Lancaster and place an estimated 40 people in hotels as part of the county’s “Pathway Home” program.

“Prior to the pandemic,” the lieutenant said, “what we used to see is that people who were homeless in that area either grew up there or had roots there, parents or family. Now we’re seeing more people from out of state.”

Officials who asked not to be identified by name said they see a constant influx of new faces in Lancaster and the surrounding area. “We know everyone here and everyday we’re seeing new people. It’s not people losing their homes, there’s some of that, but mostly it’s not. They came from somewhere else, they moved here,” one said.

The city’s team has access to five beds for immediate shelter. After two weeks, they move people to Kensington, Lancaster’s sprawling homeless housing campus—so those five beds always stay open for people who might need them, officials said.

Mayor Parris told The Epoch Times that beds remain open at Kensington throughout the year, except when extreme weather drives occupancy up.

Opened in 2019, the campus has 153 interim beds and 150 permanent supportive housing beds, and receives more referrals than it has availability, a representative for A People Concern, the organization that operates the campus, told The Epoch Times in an email.

The representative said they are currently “nearing capacity,” with a “fluctuating occupancy as individuals may choose to transition between programs.”

Mr. Parris draws a hard line between what he characterizes as a minority of the homeless population in his city, who have fallen on hard times or been pushed out of housing—and an overwhelming majority, who refuse housing and choose the streets and drug abuse as a lifestyle.

“I was a drug addict, and I have been homeless. And I have been in jail,” Mr. Parris, a lawyer, said. “So none of this is foreign to me. You know, I think I probably have a better understanding of it than most. But I know the difference between a looter and someone who needs help—and wants help.”

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Authored by James Hickman via SchiffSovereign.com,

The year was 1994.

Former NFL superstar OJ Simpson has just fled from police in the infamous low speed chase in his white Ford Bronco. Pulp Fiction was playing in the cinemas.

And 29 year old Kamala Harris began dating one of the most powerful politicians in the State of California— Willie Brown.

Brown had been in politics for decades at that point and has risen to become the Speaker of California State Assembly, then Mayor of San Francisco.

(And despite having spent his entire adult life in politics, Brown somehow managed to amass a collection of $6,000 suits and expensive sports cars.)

Willie Brown was also at 60 years of age back in 1994 (he’s 90 now), three decades older than his girlfriend Kamala.

Obviously she was in it for love. I’m sure that’s the case.

But it just so happened that, barely a few months into their steamy relationship, Speaker Willie Brown appointed Kamala to multiple, senior-level positions in the state, including a seat on the California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and the Medical Assistance Commission.

I’m also sure that Brown appointed his girlfriend due entirely to her competence, and absolutely no other reason whatsoever.

These appointments, along with Sugar Daddy’s public support and endorsement, were integral in Harris’s later campaign to become San Francisco District Attorney, then Attorney General of California in 2010.

Willie Brown also endorsed her for Senate when she declared her candidacy in 2016, and was instrumental in securing her top endorsements, including from Joe Biden and Barack Obama.

Again, all of this success was clearly due exclusively to Kamala’s tremendous competence and nothing more.

Now, a lot of people have been remarking lately that Kamala is a DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) hire.

But that’s completely unfair.

Talk about a low blow. I mean, Kamala’s critics have completely missed the point that this woman— who claims to embody female empowerment— got her start by having sex with a powerful California politician 30 years her senior.

So let’s give credit where credit is due: she slept her way to the top well before she became a DEI hire.

In fact it wasn’t until she was picked to be Joe Biden’s running mate that she started benefiting from the DEI obsession.

Curiously, it is now considered racist to even bring this up. CNN has decided that calling Vice President Kamala Harris a “DEI Candidate” is a “pseudonym for the N-word” and “racist dog whistle”.

That’s absurd. Joe Biden’s entire presidency has been about promoting DEI candidates, and he admitted this himself recently when he said:

“To me the values of Diversity, Equality, Inclusion are literally— and that’s not kidding— the core strengths of America. That’s why I’m proud to have the most diverse administration in history that taps into the full talents of our country. It starts at the top with the Vice President.”

Biden also made it perfectly clear in 2020 that he wanted to select a woman of color as his running mate.

So why exactly is it controversial to assert that Kamala was a DEI hire? Is it also controversial that the sky is blue, or that Michael Jordan was an exceptional basketball player?

But these people in charge have a way of acting offended about even the most basic and obvious truths. It’s quite a talent.

Speaking of talent, Kamala has none.

Whenever she opens her mouth, she is as incompressible as Joe Biden yet without the excuse of age and dementia. Like this gem:

“So I think it’s very important… for us, at every moment in time, and certainly this one, to see the moment in time in which we exist and are present, and to be able to contextualize it, to understand where we exist in the history and in the moment as it relates not only to the past, but the future.”

This is also the person that was put in charge of the border security, which has been a total disaster. But in her televised explanation, she justified having not been to the border by saying she hadn’t been to Europe either.

Wow, really racking up those foreign policy credentials!

And on the topic of foreign policy, check out this inspiring quote as Kamala showcased her encyclopedic understanding of European affairs:

“Ukraine is a country in Europe. It exists next to another country called Russia. Russia is a bigger country. Russia is a powerful country. Russia decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine, so, basically, that’s wrong.”

Note that this wasn’t an interview on Nickelodeon or some event with elementary school kids. This was an actual response in a real interview about the war in Ukraine.

One of my favorite Kamala stories, though, is when she visited Puerto Rico earlier this year.

Protesters were in the streets of San Juan, singing in Spanish. Kamala merrily clapped along, until an aide quietly whispered that the song was protesting her visit as a representation of the federal government’s “colonization” of Puerto Rico.

Her track record as a prosecutor is also far from impressive.

As the Attorney General of California, she prosecuted and incarcerated cannabis users. But in 2019, asked if she herself had ever smoked weed, she cackled and said, “I have. And I inhaled.”

In 2014, Kamala’s office argued to keep non-violent inmates (including from minor drug convictions) locked up so that the state would have free prison labor to fight wildfires.

But Kamala would prefer that her Black Lives Matters voters forget about all that.

The Big Lie they are now force-feeding us is that the party of democracy is energized and united around Kamala Harris.

Personally I think they are terrified and desperate. Deep down they know this woman is an incompetent buffoon. And more importantly, they are still incredibly fractured.

Just look what the radical left has been doing this very week.

Their Marxist foot soldiers have been busy burning American flags, defacing public monuments, and hoisting Hamas flags, while chanting “Allahu Akbar!” in the streets. Curiously most of them are white atheist 20-somethings from upper-middle class upbringings.

And some of the Left’s most prominent politicians boycotted a speech given by the Prime Minister of Israel— one of America’s strongest allies during its time of war.

This continues to look like a group that is completely out of touch, but insists that they have everything under control… which is pretty much par for the course given the last few years under Biden.

Having said all that, it would be foolish to think they won’t pull out all the stops— continue to create all the propaganda, tell whatever lie, manufacture whatever hoax, and suppress whatever truth is necessary to win.