Blogging Social Difference in L.A.: Week 5

This weeks blog post is a comment on another students blog. Her blog post was about the social difference in Downtown Los Angeles, in particular the Garment District and Skid Row:

Hi Sara,
I really enjoyed this blog post. I have been to Downtown LA many times but have forgotten about the Garment District. Your post made me want to go back to this area again. I have been here a few times to shop and it actually is a great place to find some great deals on new fashion items. Many times some of these shop owners make clothes for major clothing companies and know the new designs for the season, and will make similar clothing based on what is in for the season.
For Skid Row, I remember when my mother first drove me down around here when I was about 8 years old. I remember being really frightened and couldn't believe that this was how some people were living. At the time I could not understand how people would get to this point. Now that I am older and understand real life situations now, I now know that many of the homeless either have a drug addiction or actually have some sort of mental illness, like schizophrenia.
You mentioned that there were many public service buildings in the area like shelters and what not. In William Julius Wilson's writings in "The Truly Disadvantaged," he says "....Indeed, Losing Ground (a book written by Charles Murray) not only attributes increasing poverty to programs such as those of the Great Society, it also explains increasing rates of joblessness, crime, out-of-wedlock births, female-headed families, and welfare dependency, especially among the ghetto underclass, in terms of such programs as well. Murray argues that recent changes in social policy have effectively changed the rewards and penalties that govern human behavior..." This quote makes me wonder if these public services make a difference or not. I do believe that public services are important but it makes me think what and how would be the best way to run these programs and decrease these rates of homelessness and poverty.
About your last comment of the lady yelling at you, that is crazy! Must have been a little intimidating and I am not sure how I would have responded to that. 

Here is a link to her blog post that I had commented on.