A few weeks ago President Donald Trump explained during an interview how sanctuary cities and the increased homelessness were destroying a whole way of life for people in major West Coast cities like Los Angeles.

The president told how sidewalks had become homes to piles of used needles, feces and refuse and how office workers had to walk through trash and filth to get into their buildings and how police officers were getting sick just walking their beat.

Not too many years ago, Third World scenes like this would not have been believed possible. Now, professional health officials are warning that the squalid conditions have set the stage for possible outbreaks of the plague.

Predictably, Democrats said the president’s dire report was motivated by politics, just as they did in calling the refugee crisis on our southern border “a manufactured crisis” earlier this year. But many experts are also sounding an alarm.

According to Jeffrey Klausner, a professor of medicine and public health at UCLA, explained that people living on the streets or in homeless shelters are vulnerable to disease outbreaks because of weakened immune systems that are worsened by stress, malnutrition, and sleep deprivation. He said multiple rodent-borne, flea-borne illnesses already exist and predicted a major infectious epidemic.

Dr. Drew Pinsky, a board-certified internist and addiction medicine specialist, agrees with that assessment, stating that the rat infestation is like nothing he’s ever seen in his life. In one interview, Pinsky said Los Angeles does not have a rodent control program, and that spells disaster since sanitation has broken down in the city. Rat fleas that spread the contamination can result in typhoid fever.

While L.A. city officials blame housing for the problem, Pinsky points right back at those same officials, calling them “disgustingly negligent.”

Ron Martinelli, a nationally renowned forensic criminologist and retired police detective with the San Jose Police Department, speaks with authority from a law enforcement perspective. He says California is rapidly becoming a two-tiered society of the very rich and the very poor, similar to a Third World country.

Democratic politicians favor open borders and a sanctuary state, allowing illegal aliens a right to vote in state and local elections. This strategy allows the party to maintain control of elections.

The California prison system is a mess, Martinelli said, and sanctuary cities ensure that illegal aliens charged with crimes will not be deported. State lawmakers approved Proposition 47, which has since freed tens of thousands of felons from state prisons and county jails back into communities. It’s created a system where police on the streets can’t even enforce outstanding felony and misdemeanor warrants. After being arrested, a person is out the same day with a promise to appear in court. Few do.

Under California’s new “Sanctuary State” status, Martinelli said police in cities like San Francisco, Oakland and Los Angeles are ordered not to assist ICE with border enforcement. He said the Kate Steinle fatal shooting case — where the shooter, a five-time convicted criminal and deported illegal alien, was acquitted — is an excellent example of how liberal politicians in California are willing to sacrifice the innocent while supporting violent illegal alien criminals.

During the Depression years of the 1930s, Shanty Towns, known as Hoovervilles, sprang up across the nation. They were built by unemployed impoverished Americans who had nowhere else to live. By 1932, between 1 million and 2 million were homeless and many lived in these shacks which lacked the basics such as adequate sanitation and clean drinking water.

Today, California, with its two-tiered society of very rich and very poor, is in need of answers, and fast. The blind mice Democratic politicians can just step out of their office suites onto the street to see firsthand the fruits of their failed policies and leadership.

By Jim Zbick | tneditor@tnonline.com