A bedraggled adult man sleeping underneath a slide on a playground. 

A soiled mattress and a jumbled pile of boxes and blankets alongside a community center in a park. 

Blue plastic tarps covering tents on the sidewalk, blocking children as they walk to and from school.

These are the horrific scenes of urban neglect captured by The California Post in recent reporting. 

And they would continue, or grow worse, if some members of the LA City Council had their way.

Four socialist members of the council — Ysabel Jurado, Eunisses Hernandez, Hugo Soto-Martínez, and mayoral candidate Nithya Raman — voted last week against a measure to allow the city to enforce anti-camping rules in public spaces in Venice.

It is a curious sort of socialism that allows public property to be defaced and destroyed, rather than enjoyed by working-class families.

LA’s municipal code is hopelessly complicated. It should be common sense to keep homeless people from camping — and abusing drugs, and defecating — in places where children play. 

But the council’s absurd rules require a specific vote for each specific case in which anti-camping laws are enforced in these spaces.

And council members like Hernandez are adamantly opposed to law enforcement.

That has allowed the “zombie apocalypse” to unfold at MacArthur Park — and for dangerous conditions to persist at Griffith Park, in Raman’s district.

Democratic socialists say they want to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor through spending on public amenities and programs.

Allowing vagrants to destroy those amenities defeats the entire purpose — and reinforces the idea, proven throughout history, that socialism never works.

Raman’s vote against cleaning up children’s spaces is particularly noteworthy. 

She is trying to hang onto her eroding radical base, after many of her supporters criticized her for trying to reform Measure ULA, the so-called “mansion tax.”

Raman acknowledged the reality that the 2022 tax on real estate above a certain value — which applies to apartment buildings and shops, not just “mansions” — was killing investment in new housing.

For that, she is being punished by radicals who simply find it gratifying to destroy other people’s wealth.

Raman also failed to win the support of the city’s major unions, who are sticking with troubled Mayor Karen Bass. 

But Raman could still win. She should — and will — face tough questions on the campaign trail from parents who work hard and just want to take their kids to the park.

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