There are a lot of reasons to complain about L.A., but acting like Hollywood and L.A. are equivalents and Hollywood isn’t just a really shitty part of L.A. with a lot of tourists (so of course a lot of panhandlers will be there) is like acting like all of Las Vegas is just The Strip.

Most of L.A. is not Hollywood. I lived in the Valley and you didn’t see what you’re seeing in that photo. The places you will see a huge number of homeless in L.A. are Hollywood, for the reason I already stated, Downtown because Skid Row is long-established and hospitals actually dump people there when they discharge them (when I lived in L.A., they dumped someone’s grandmother with advanced dementia there in a hospital gown) and Santa Monica and Venice on the beach because of both the tourists and the fact that sleeping on sand is a hell of a lot more comfortable than sleeping on concrete.

Like I said, L.A. has a lot of problems, but calling L.A. a miserable dump based just on Hollywood is silly. Don’t base your opinion on a city on where the tourists go, it’s always going to be one of the worst parts of town.

I lived most of my time in L.A. in North Hollywood. It has nothing to do with Hollywood proper. It’s in the Valley and there’s a mountain range between it and Hollywood. It was never like that when I lived there as it was gentrifying, and now it’s a hip arts district that you would have no real reason to see if you were a tourist.