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After a trip across the United States that included a stop at Skid Row in Los Angeles, a United Nations official remarked that “contrasts between private wealth and public squalor abound.” Another U.N. official said after a visit, “You almost forget you are in Los Angeles.” The L.A. Times has called the explosion of homelessness in Los Angeles in recent years “a national disgrace,” and Mayor Eric Garcetti has said the issue is “the moral crisis of our time.”

To give readers a visual understanding of what that looks like across the city, as extreme wealth and poverty collide in public spaces, including libraries, parks and beaches, we went on a tour across the county, and published this piece.

In an age of growing economic inequality, the well-off have been able to seclude themselves away from the impoverished. But that has changed over the years in Los Angeles, as the growth in the homeless population has forced the rich and poor to interact more often.

Rigo Veloso, who had been homeless in Malibu before moving into an apartment on a resident’s ranch, said that many people he encountered while living on the streets were friendly and compassionate, but many others, he said, “would judge you, and not treat you like a human being.”