Posted on 02/22/2014 2:01:54 PM PST by ProtectOurFreedom
Facing a growing homeless population, San Jose is ready to try a new strategy to get people off the streets: pay to put some of them up in local hotels and motels, potentially for years.
...housing prices continue to climb and landlords become pickier about renters...100 homeless people roaming San Jose streets have publicly funded vouchers for subsidized housing but cannot find a place that will accept them.
"It's just a tough place to live because of how expensive it is," said Leslye Corsiglia, the city's housing director, who called it an opportunity for homeless people "to get themselves settled and together so they can move into other housing."
While the exact number of people who would receive rooms is dependent on available funding and willing motel and hotel owners, only a fraction of the city's 4,770 homeless would be helped. Officials haven't decided whether the chronically or the newly homeless would get priority.
The city figures it would cost $1 million a year to house 60 people, including initial costs to spruce up the rooms. San Jose has $3 million to spend on homeless services this year, while Santa Clara County, which would help fund the program, has more than $8 million available.
For some down-on-their-luck motel owners, the proposal would result in welcome business. They would lease as much as 49 percent of their rooms to a yet-to-be-determined nonprofit that would rent the rooms to homeless people who would pay using federal Section 8 housing vouchers or city "coupons."
"I love this idea, I have no objection to that at all," said Sanjay Patel, who owns the 40-room City Center Motel on the southern edge of downtown and has been struggling to find customers. "I'd rather have full than empty."
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
Based on my triage interviewer experience at a local food/clothing bank, many homeless people do not want to be helped. They are “happy” the way they are.
Of course many of these folks are schizophrenic or bipolar and don’t takes meds for their condition.
In years past they would have been committed to a mental hospital.
I have a shveet lil' single-wide over by the 7-Eleven.
“Facing a growing homeless population...”
Anything you punish, you get less of.
The growing “homeless” (we used to call them bums) problem is combining fair weather with lack laws, and plenty of freebies.
There are not enough motel and hotel rooms available for all the “homeless” that will make their way to San Jose.
On a side point, when I was young there used to be in every major cities cheap hotels (referred to as flop houses). At 50 cents a night, we are not talking the Ritz. They did meet minimum housing needs of a underground population.
The do gooders thought it was not fair that some lived in nice homes and some live in flop houses. So they either regulated or zoned the cheap hotels out of business thus creating the first generation of “homeless”
The government is in fact the problem, not the solution.
Take away the incentive to work (by providing the necessities of life)there will be some that will quit working.
And even if someone was willing and able to work, by mandating a minimum wage and employment rules, employers are not going to hire a street person.
The good news, socialism does not and indeed can not work. The system will collapse under the weight of central control.
The bad news is that all of people will be hurt when this occurs, and it will take years to restore what we once had but let slip away.
The Economy is so bad no one visits this forsaken area and the City now has to bail out the Motels and provide for the jobless! Add another dollar to that tax deduction on your paycheck working America! Of I’m sorry Money really does grow on trees!
No thanks. My state has one of the cheapest rates of living, but the last thing we need is more tax leeches from elsewhere, we have enough of our own.
Maybe we could send them to Guantanamo then ?
100% certain.
“What to do with the homeless?” — article cracks me up because it says San Jose and Silicon Valley have become too expensive to be homeless! Well, gee whiz. Anybody else with common sense would pick up stakes and MOVE. How about OUT of California?
They are going to provide rooms for 60 bums. Guess they’ll really be the winners of “Life’s Lottery.” It just bugs me to no end the left excoriates successful people as winners of “Life’s Lottery.” We all worked hard, kept our noses clean, didn’t do drugs, didn’t have kids out of wedlock, sacrificed, saved, and pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps. We didn’t win no stinkin’ lottery. The lucky few bums who win a five year gift room in a motel are truly winning the lottery. Just like the luck few who score subsidized “below market rate” housing in Peninsula and Silicon Valley cities and towns.
Absolutely right. Who wants disease, filth, drugs, needles, filthy bed clothes, and crazies screaming at all hours next door?
Motel Owner Sanjay Patel featured in the article is a real ignoramus. He thinks he’s going to get free cash for his rooms. He’ll get his property thoroughly destroyed. He’ll be like all the Dem morons now complaining about Obamacare ”but, but, but it was all supposed to be roses and unicorn free health care for all what happened?”
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