leehawkins

People like stories. Artists usually get famous because of their story, not just their work. I agree it's dumb, but it is the way people are wired. When they connect with the artist, they connect with the work. When that happens, people start opening their wallets much more.

That's more for felonies, and anything they're charging the homeless for would mostly be mere misdemeanors, which carry about the weight of a traffic ticket.

That's a complicated question to answer, because it's not the same everywhere. For the most part I'm sure these cops are just doing what they're told to do by the politicians who call the shots. A lot of policing done in suburbs and rural areas does seem to be about revenue an awful lot of the time (I'm from Ohio, which is notorious for raising revenues based on traffic fines...look up the dissolved village of New Rome and the tiny Cleveland suburb of Linndale.), but that's not always the case in bigger cities. Sometimes it's just pure politics, sometimes it's just police doing what they've always done and thanks to economics now they're doing a lot more of it...and sometimes it's because nobody even realizes that this is happening at a systemic level...I mean these big cities are ginormous bureaucracies and policing the streets and parks is just one among zillions of things the police do. The media can make it sound pretty sinister and deliberate...but sometimes it totally is just a result of bad decisions compounded over time. Considering the homeless tend not to have much money in the first place, I highly doubt that policing is done with them for the purpose of revenue.

As far as monetary benefits...that varies widely between states and cities all over the country. I have no idea what the situation is in California, but I do know that homelessness is a problem all across the country...but it seems to be more common in milder climates like the West Coast or the South.

I'd imagine that lots of people pay great attention to having shelters for the homeless in more consistently cold climates like the North, but probably think of it only a few days of the year somewhere like Los Angeles. It's no excuse to ignore the problem though...