A conservative commentator has warned EV drivers in LA that the charging stations for their $60,000 cars are littered with homeless encampments.
Alexandra Datig shared a video of her drive downtown on Wednesday, using one of the local Blink EV charging stations, surrounded by trash and tents.
“If you live in Los Angeles better have a home charging station for that $60,000,” Datig wrote on Twitter.
“The closer you get to downtown, the more charging stations have homeless ‘companions’ who live on the same sidewalk as the stations.”
LA’s vagrant crisis continues for two weeks after newly elected Mayor Karen Bass declared a state of emergency over the situation as more than 69,000 homeless people currently live in the city.
A video shared on social media shows trash and homeless encampments around one of Blink’s local EV charging stations in downtown Los Angeles
Conservative commentator Alexandra Datig, who posted the video, said LA’s more than 62,000 EV owners felt safer charging their cars at home given the situation
Datig (above) condemned the state of the stations and urged city officials to step up crackdowns on homeless camps
Last year, Los Angeles had 62,851 registered electric vehicles, with city officials forecasting even more in 2022. California as a whole had 563,070 registered electric vehicles in 2021, more than 100,000 more than the year before.
The boom has enabled the emergence of charging stations across the city, according to PlugShare.com, with about 4,296 public stations installed to date.
And more is expected to emerge after the state approved a sales ban on new gasoline cars through 2035, demonstrating its commitment to electric vehicles.
Automakers must now reduce the number of gas guzzlers they sell to meet the first quota of the plan, which requires 35 percent of new cars, SUVs and small pickup trucks sold in California to be zero-emission vehicles by 2026.
The rate increases every two years, by 2028 it will be 51 percent, by 2030 68 percent and five years later 100 percent of all new vehicles sold will be battery-powered – 20 percent of which can be hybrid plug-ins.
But LA work could be undermined by the ongoing homelessness crisis, which is affecting public charging stations.
As of December 2022, a census estimated that more than 69,000 homeless people live in Los Angeles, while encampments are popping up across the city
Less than 24 hours into her role as mayor, Karen Bass issued an emergency call about the homelessness situation and promised to build new shelters for people
While surveying the condition of the roads near the expensive train stations, Dating said “the human suffering is insurmountable here” as thousands live on the city’s streets.
Less than 24 hours into her term, Mayor Bass vowed to combat rampant vagrancy in the city with plans to build 3,000 new homes, rent motel rooms and apartments, and issue taxpayer-funded housing vouchers.
Bass signed the declaration of emergency Dec. 12 at the city’s Emergency Operations Center in a room billed as the United Homelessness Response Center.
“We need to build homes faster, and we will. We need to coordinate accommodation and services, and we will,” Bass said. “I will not accept a homelessness crisis that affects more than 40,000 people and every one of us.”
The declaration, set to last six months, allows Bass to take more aggressive executive action to deal with the crisis, despite requiring the city council to sign it every 30 days.
Tents and camps have risen sharply in the city since the pandemic, and remain in place
In a flyer released during her tenure, Bass released the details of her plan to help the city through its homelessness crisis
In December 2022, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority counted 69,144 people affected by homelessness in LA.
The city estimates more than half are sleeping on the streets as current shelters fill up every night.
That shocking number is up 4.1 percent from 2020, according to data from LAHSA.
The city’s homeless population has grown in tandem with a rising crime rate and the same economic woes that the rest of the country is currently facing.
Los Angeles has seen a 7 percent increase in robberies this year compared to last year, according to law enforcement officials, with 8,913 cases reported so far in 2022.