Posted on 12/24/2023 5:30:39 AM PST by MtnClimber
December 23, 2023/ Francis Menton “Homelessness” is one of my favorite topics because it provides an endless supply of examples of clear, dramatic, and immediate failure of the government programs supposedly intended to assist the poor and vulnerable. All of the big progressive cities follow some version of the same policies, which in summary amount to spending more and more money to provide “housing first” as the obvious solution to homelessness. All of these cities have rapidly stepped up spending over the past decade on promises to the voters to solve the homelessness problem with more subsidized housing; and all of them have then seen homelessness rise relentlessly along with the spending. It’s almost impossible to believe that nobody can learn from this experience.
For today I’ll provide the latest update from Los Angeles, as well as look at how a very similar approach has worked out in the smaller (but equally progressive) city of Madison, Wisconsin.
In a post back in March, I went into considerable detail about the efforts over the past several years of the City and County of Los Angeles to solve homelessness by ramping up spending to build new housing units into which the homeless can be placed. In 2016 the voters passed a special bond issuance, called Proposition HHH, in the amount of $1.2 billion. An LA-based non-profit called Local Housing Solutions, which advocated for Proposition HHH, described the initiative as providing funding mostly for “permanent supportive housing units for people experiencing homelessness.”
And then, as recounted in my post, in the aftermath of the referendum and as the spending took place over the following several years, the number of homeless people counted in LA City and County proceeded to go from 44,359 in 2015 to 69,144 in 2022.
Next, in early 2022, the efforts in LA to solve homelessness by spending ever more public funds on supportive housing got another big jolt of funding, this time when the City agreed to add some $3 billion of spending as part of a settlement of a lawsuit. In my March 2023 post I promised to check back in another year or so to see if all the spending is starting to make any difference at all. Checking back today, I find that a big official survey of homelessness was conducted in LA back during the summer, with the results reported in the Los Angeles Times on June 29. The results will not surprise any reader here:
The homeless count for Los Angeles County is in, and officials say the numbers are discouraging. The annual point-in-time count released Thursday by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority found a 9% increase in Los Angeles County and a 10% increase in the city of Los Angeles.
The Times provides the following chart showing the inexorable rise of homelessness over the past nine years:
Does anyone think that if we just allow more time for the whole $3 billion to get spent that that will turn things around?
Well, all of that is taking place in the big, faceless, soulless City of Los Angeles, with its huge and unaccountable bureaucracy. Perhaps we should look to a much smaller and more intimate, if equally progressive, place.
So, consider the latest news out of Madison, Wisconsin (population about 270,000). Like Los Angeles, Madison has also adopted the official orthodox progressive “housing first” policy as its way of addressing homelessness. How is that going? The Wisconsin State Journal has the story on December 21 (h/t Ann Althouse):
2 biggest Madison homeless projects could close within months, leaving city scrambling . . . . The two biggest "Housing First" initiatives for the homeless in Madison don't have enough money to continue operating and could be closed and sold early next year. As a result, the city of Madison is chasing options to ensure that dozens of vulnerable people aren't put out on the street.
The Wisconsin State Journal piece contains some substantial history on the projects, including the adoption of the “housing first” orthodoxy and the oodles of public funds from many sources that got poured in:
At the time of their conception, Rethke Terrace and Tree Lane were seen as big, bold attempts to get the homeless off the streets or out of temporary shelter into new, four-story, modern buildings with units that provided privacy, bathrooms and kitchens. . . . The projects were largely financed by federal tax credits provided by the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority. . . . The two developments got financial assistance from the city, Dane County and the federal low-income housing tax credits. Also, the city and county housing authorities assigned project-based housing vouchers to 54 of the 60 studios at Rethke and 40 of the 45 units at Tree Lane.
With all that money available, how did it all go so wrong? The Wisconsin State Journal quotes Madison Community Development Director Jim O’Keefe:
"We didn’t get here overnight; the conditions at these properties developed as the result of years of neglect and inattention on the part of their property managers . . . and owners. . . .”
“Years of neglect”? Looking further in the article, we find that one of the projects (Rethke) opened in 2016, and the other (Tree Lane) in 2018. That makes five years in one case, and seven in the other, to go from brand new to uninhabitable. Both, moreover, had been subject to City “nuisance orders” as early as 2019, at which point the paint would have been barely dry.
So as of now, a receiver has been appointed, and he has asked the court to “immediately commence the process of winding down the projects,” including helping tenants to relocate.
Perhaps the model of building brand new housing, and then handing it out with no demands or expectation of responsible behavior (let alone rent) in return, has some kind of fundamental problem. But don’t expect the people currently administering these programs ever to figure that out. Their solution will always be more money and a bigger staff for their agency.
This is akin to putting out food for the three starving squirrels in your yard and wondering why there are eight squirrels out there the next morning.
Madison went from a wonderful place to live to the shit hole it has become, aided and abetted by the radicalization of the University of Wisconsin.
Madison was apparently the blueprint used for Dubuque, IA ("Madison on the Mississippi"), but DBQ opted for families with loads of Illinois drug dealers.
Part of my father’s family lived in Madison for many years.
My cousin, after a divorce, became a single mom with four young children. She received AFC money (American Families with Children) and other benefits. She also worked off the books and had a lower middle class lifestyle. In the 1960’s Wisconsin had some of the largest AFC payments in the country. People from Minnesota moved there.
Part of my father’s family lived in Madison for many years.
My cousin, after a divorce, became a single mom with four young children. She received AFC money (American Families with Children) and other benefits. She also worked off the books and had a lower middle class lifestyle. In the 1960’s Wisconsin had some of the largest AFC payments in the country. People from Minnesota moved there.
Send 40 million illegals home & there will be plenty of housing, now at affordable prices.
This..
It seems humane, to have the government care for the homeless.
Like a surgeon with filth on his fingers.
The answer is FDR-style CCC camps.
Arrest them for vagrancy, sentence them to 6 months in remote work camps, where they can be treated for addiction, kept away from pushers, will have basic medical care, and be kept off the streets.
A 2000 year old solution was to teach a man to fish.
A mouse has a machine in front of them.
When they press the black button they get an electric shock.
When they press the white button they get food.
The mouse then keeps pushing the white button.
That is racism.
Good point, but you left out the unions.
They have to give the homeless people an address so they can register and vote for more funding down the rat hole.
Once more, name anything the gooberment has done that makes things better or cost less. Just one. Anyone?
Homeless programs are nothing more than handouts to democrat politicians and their cronies. The programs are designed to fail and perpetuate the problem. Pro business capitalism followed with a support for Christianity is the cure for homelessness. But then bureaucrats would have to admit they are failures at everything they do so it will never happen.
Being homeless is not a cause it’s a symptom - mostly of drug abuse enabled, and even funded, by government.
It seems simple no tents no sleeping in parks or sidewalks no shitting in public. But rewarding bad behavior is the essence of being a dem
They need to quit housing them, they should be rounded up and put into treatment centers until they are cured. Rinse and repeat. For those who are healthy and lazy, put them in camps near apple orchards, or farms where they can work so they deserve to eat.
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