Posted on 10/29/2018 3:36:31 PM PDT by Kaslin
San Francisco’s homeless problem has become legendary in recent years, with residents complaining and worries over the impact it has on tourism. This applies to other cities and communities in the region, including the city of San Jose. Various proposals have been offered, ranging from sending out the police to round them up, constructing more affordable housing and, most recently, some cities have considered imposing a new tax on their residents just to pay for solutions. San Jose could probably use some of that money because their next plan involves going around and paying the homeless $15 per hour to clean up the mess that they created.(San Francisco Gate)
San Jose is launching a new program to clean up the streets while also helping get people off them.
The initiative will employ 25 homeless residents to pick up trash at 40 “litter hotspots” around the city. The employees will be paid $15 per hour and work four to five hours per day.
The pilot program was announced by Mayor Sam Liccardo Thursday in partnership with Goodwill and Downtown Streets Team. Participants will start picking up trash in November.
Granted, a 25 person workforce isn’t all that large in terms of getting the homeless off the streets, but this phase of the project is only a pilot program and it could be expanded later. A couple of challenges the plan faces come to mind immediately, however. First of all, how are you going to pay them? In cash? Most of the homeless probably don’t have bank accounts or the ability to cash a check without going to one of those short-term loan outfits and being charged outrageous fees. Will they have taxes withheld?
Beyond that, there’s the basic question of motivation. As the Gate article notes, the places they want to pay the homeless to pick up trash are the same spots where the homeless congregate and create the trash problem to begin with. Once word gets around that the city is handing out cash to clean up trash, well… isn’t that sort of like paying someone to pick up dead birds in the park and waiting to see if they don’t start shooting a bunch of birds? It just seems like you’re going to create an incentive for people to create more garbage.
Then there’s the issue of the working class poor of the city who somehow manage to scrape by in one of the most expensive places to live in America. If you have residents working at real jobs for minimum wage ($13.50 per hour), how are they going to respond to the city handing out taxpayer dollars at an even higher wage for make-work jobs like this? It doesn’t strike me as something that’s going to be terribly popular in the long-run when residents are already taxed at outrageous rates.
Long-term solutions to the problem of homelessness are obviously hard to come by and few cities have really cracked the code. But they need to be focusing on dealing with mental health challenges, massively high rents and questions of where you can establish long-term housing coupled with job training programs that can get people out of the safety net and back into functional positions in society.
Pooper scoopers?
...hand out litter boxes...
Sh^*t is finally worth something. I doubt it solves the problem
There is one solution which is relatively inexpensive. If someone were to scatter plastic straws around, the California government would lock the homeless up.
The problem will not be solved until those cities discover that paying people that are homeless only attracts more homeless.
Rub their noses in it
It’s tiring to see journalists attack *every* proposed solution to a problem.
I guess their mommies didn’t teach them to clean up after themselves.
I can’t describe the desecration they have imparted on the heart of Silicon Valley. (They being the homeless ,gimmegrant class, and assistance programs) This in my opinion is one now one of the dirties cities in America. The highways are only now being cleaned after years but it’s like spitting in the wind. Of course we pay the highest taxes in the nation but no matter the coffers a bare.
Pretend to work, get $60 bucks for booze and drugs.
25 hard workers= 25 injured backs= 25 lifetime tax free pensions.
Who cleans up the putrid mess sitting on the seats of the San Jose city council?!?
Good point. I wondered about that. If they are employees getting paid, what about workman’s comp? If injured on the job then they get those benefits.
Bulldoze and burn all of the camps.
Build asylums and round-up the “homeless/mentally-ill”, commit them all to institutions, as we did back in the 40s and 50s. America didn’t have this problem when the nutbags weren’t on the streets, destroying cities and committing crimes. Screw the libtard-controlled courts. Throw the judges into the same facilities.
This breaks my heart.
I was born in Silicon Valley as the son of an IBM executive.
We dug into the east foothills and grew up and made a life.
My town is nothing like it was.
There are ‘homesteaders’ everywhere.
The city has begun uprooting decorative vegetation along the freeways to keep the homeless out.
Think of that.....killing trees you planted years ago to make the freeways less attractive to the vagrants.
Furious.
Here is the solution: http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3700827/posts
Who elected them?
This time, the litter was as though trash trucks were emptying along the roadway. And freeway overpasses were like landfill sites.
Now, when I absolutely HAVE to visit Cali (to visit rels), it is always such a relief to see it disappear behind my aircraft window.
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