Hello, welcome to your extra morning show. My name is Philip DeFranco, and today we're going to talk about the most visible sign of rising inequality in the United States.

Homelessness. Another month of strong number, seven and a half years now of job creation that is a record

stretch the unemployment rate dropped to 3.7% that's a number that we haven't seen

in nearly 50 years and the lowest overall unemployment in half a century is forcing companies to hire workers they may have overlooked in the past.

For months now, media figures have touted the strength of the U.S. economy, near record unemployment,

rising wages, increased consumer spending, but one statistic does not

fit that narrative and that is the homelessness rate. Despite the strengthening economy, America's

homeless population has continued to increase and while the surge is slight the trend is

concerning considering the 2018 is the second consecutive year of

rising numbers following six years of declining rates and perhaps nowhere is this

more apparent than Los Angeles County which saw a 42% increase in the

area's homeless population between 2010 and 2017.

That number coincides with rising rental rates as a 2017 report by the California Housing Partnership found that median rent in LA County

rose 32% since 2000 when adjusted for inflation.

Now while LA finally made strides this year by reducing the homeless rate by nearly 5%,

there are still about 50,000 homeless people living in

LA County and because of the great weather out here homelessness is even more visible in Los Angeles

than arguably any other city in the country. Nowhere is this truer than Skid Row, which is a 54 block area in downtown LA where 2,000 people spend

each night in tents or just on the sidewalks.

It's the largest concentration of uncelledered people anywhere in the country and it has a reputation for being a haven for drugs, crime, and prostitution,

but the reality of Skid Row is far more complex than any of the stereotypes.

So in order to understand the nuances of this crisis and the proposed solutions to LA's homelessness emergency being offered by grassroots

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