Golden City Recycled

6th November 2023

Dear Governor Newsom,

In my letter of October 31st 2023 I detailed my idea to build a homeless rehabilitation center in California City one hundred miles north of Los Angeles. I called this my Golden City Proposal and touched on the abundance of zoned land to use for this purpose.

Now I would like to make mention of the fact that there are more reasons that California city is ideal for this action. The primary employer in California city is a prison, it’s closer to the border with Nevada, and it’s still not too far from LA.

The “Not in My Backyard” people fight against the placement of homeless shelters and halfway homes in their neighborhoods. Well, a prison is another major thing they would rather not live near. Further, the prison makes California City useless for tourism but ideal for recycling, manufactory, and other businesses that may downgrade the local property.

Where I live we now have a garbage by rail system and it would be logical to concert this system with California City and bless it with the greater industry of eco friendly waste management. It’s close enough to LA, the ninth largest economy in the world, to receive its waste and recycling. No one wants to live next to a dump or recycling plant, but no one wants to live near a prison either.

The prison banishes the tourism dollar from this plot of land but welcomes in so many other forms of economic action. A good amount of what we Californians place in our blue bins just winds up in the trash and is never recycled. This is because we lack the infrastructure to recycle most of our waste.

Now, were we to install that infrastructure in California City we may be able to employ the prison population to do so. This would cut cost and give them valuable job skills. Further, anything that would give our felon population and opportunity to build the case for their parole or commute their sentence would have to be a good thing.

By improving the industry of California City, we would be bettering the lives of the people that live there and creating jobs in a place where there is ample housing. This would take stress off the housing market in LA. We would be hard pressed to create the jobs and housing units needed to resolve the homeless epidemic, but there would only be so many homeless who are willing to move out of LA anyway.

That in mind, many of our homeless are not native but bused in from other states and those busses pass through California City on their way to LA. Why not have them bused to California City where they could be cleaned up and their needs better met. We could then have a case manager work with them before they get to LA or any other place in California helping them secure housing and employment before they arrive.

I know this sounds like a big project and it is, but we are faced with a big problem that will require big solutions. The homeless problem will not go away on its own and it continues to choke the economy that will pay to resolve it. This is my best idea and I’d love to hear yours.

Best,



Richard Leland Neal

Golden City Proposal

31st October 2023

Dear Governor Newsom,

I turned on the news the other day to see another nightmare in this time of civil unrest. This was taking place in our home California and the question that comes to mind when I think of my beloved golden state is: what will we do about homelessness?

Yes, the story was about looting in Oakland, but my own home of Los Angeles is suffering from the problem as are many of the major cities of our great state. To compound the issue, the tourism dollar is what will most likely bring the Specter of prosperity back to us, and the large homeless population of inner-city LA is ward against this spirit.

There are places where we can’t walk in Los Angeles because of all the tents and garbage kept by the homeless. Looting and shoplifting is closing businesses and who would want to come and see a city plagued with trash and human suffering?

Further, not only do we receive the homeless of the rest of the country we also get refugees and all the tired poor masses yearning to breathe free from all the world. California has become a dumping ground for the world’s unwanted and we have no choice but to embrace these migrations. We, the Golden State, need to find a place for these unwanted masses, and I think I know where they may go.

A hundred miles north of the great metropolis of Los Angeles is California City. This is a place tooled to be as large as Los Angeles and with long forgotten unpaved roads where no development has kept the city plans alive.

The reason for the desolation of California City is a lack of an economic engine to drive construction. There is plenty of room for expansion and all the empty plots one would need to build the houses and amenities needed to support the homeless of Los Angeles.

I would call this the ‘Golden City Proposal’ and would mean the designation of part of California City as a rehabilitation center for the state's homeless. We can’t move the homeless encampments and Hoovervilles without a place for the homeless to go so why not build a place for them to go two hours outside of the largest city in the state.

We need a place for the homeless to go and moving them out of the city of L.A. should improve the economy, bring in more tax revenue, and bring more people out of homelessness.

Just a thought,



Richard Leland Neal

Show Me Something

15th October 2016

 

Dear Transitional Housing,

I have 18 years of experience in security and four of those with the homeless population of Los Angeles. In those four years with the homeless I specialized in working nights and de-escalation of violent clients. I dealt with juvenile offenders, gang members, and drug addicts with an attitude of mutual respect.

I’ve talked people down from suicide, worked with Police Officers, and done all kinds of things that would make most guards turn green. Further, I’ve given testimony in a Court of Law.

If you can honestly show me something I haven’t seen on duty my hat is off to you. I’m a well experienced Security Officer, and I figure your kind of work is just right for me.

Stay safe,

Richard Leland Neal