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LA’s expensive charging stations surrounded by homelessness and filth, drivers too afraid to use them: report

December 30, 2022 | | Print Article

When “woke” and “broke” collide, it is rarely the woke who stand their ground — especially when the safety of their $60,000 electric vehicles is at stake.

More than 69,000 homeless people are currently living on the streets of Los Angeles, and their presence is making it challenging for people to juice up their vehicles at the city’s local Blink EV charging stations, many of which are nestled among pitched tents and piles of trash.

Conservative political commentator Alexandra Datig has documented the difficulties on Twitter in a series of shocking tweets.

“When you live in Los Angeles, it’s better to have a charging station at home for that $60,000 EV,” she stated on Wednesday. “The closer you get to downtown, the charging stations have homeless ‘attendants’ who live on the same sidewalk as the stations.”

The following day, Datig continued her tour.

“I’m just now driving down the street passing the charging station that is five minutes from my house on the outskirts of downtown LA,” she wrote. “Would you be comfortable charging your $60,000 EV here?”

While pretty much anyone who is familiar with the City of Angels could have predicted exactly this disturbing scenario, the obvious has apparently eluded Governor Gavin Newsom, who, in 2020, made headlines when he declared the state would ban new gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035 but failed to provide a safe environment for people who can afford the electric alternative to plug in.

Under his plan, automakers must now ensure that 35 percent of new cars, SUVs and small pickups sold in the Golden State be zero-emission vehicles by 2026.

That percentage goes up every two years. By 2028, the quota rises to 51 percent.

As the Daily Mail reports, “Last year, Los Angeles had 62,851 registered electric vehicles, with city officials projecting even more in 2022.”

“California as a whole had 563,070 registered EVs in 2021, more than 100,000 more compared to the year before,” the outlet added.

As a result, there are now roughly 4,296 pricey public charging stations located throughout Los Angeles, with more expected.

But they will do little good if folks are too afraid to use them.

“This is at Pico and Vermont right now,” Datig tweeted on Thursday. “Taking a closer look at the graffiti, I wonder what gang affiliation you need to have to be able to charge your $60,000 EV here?”

The homeless crisis hasn’t escaped the attention of Mayor Karen Bass, who declared a state of emergency on December 12 at the city’s Emergency Operations Center.

“We must build housing faster, and we will. We must coordinate shelter and services and we will,” Bass vowed. “I will not accept a homelessness crisis that afflicts more than 40,000 individuals and affects every one of us.”

The declaration is scheduled to remain in effect for six months and will require the City Council to sign off on it every 30 days.

In the meantime, Datig’s frustrations at the third-world scenes she encounters are unmistakable.

“Probably pretty easy to get a squeegee job with your charge though,” one Twitter user replied to her video. “So there’s that.”

“That’s true,” Datig conceded. “Might even be able to buy some dope and a ghost gun from the encampment across the street.”

When another follower praised her courage for lingering in the area to shoot the video, Datig responded, “when you’re in Rome…you try to get to Milan as fast as you can.”

 

Melissa Fine
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