Neil Gong on How Class Dynamics Shape Our Approach to the Mentally Ill on the Streets of Los Angeles

Blue City Blues · Jan 5, 2026 · 58m

The pervasiveness of untreated mental illness on the streets of blue cities – about 20 percent of the homeless population in the United States is severely mentally ill – is a glaring feature of the urban landscape. So we invited sociologist Neil Gong, the author of an eye-opening book, Sons, Daughters and Sidewalk Psychotics: Mental Illness and Homelessness in Los Angeles, to join us on this latest BCB episode to talk about his observations of how class dynamics drive radically different social expectations of how to address this problem.

Gong spent years observing public outreach and…