Posted on 02/13/2020 8:49:38 AM PST by Kaslin
The large response to my recent article The Case for a Federal Government Takeover of America's Homeless Crisis merits further discussion about how such an approach might unfold. Most importantly, a federal intervention must be kept limited in scope and with a specific outcome in mind. As such, I'm proposing a bold new strategy called "Federal Leadership, Local Control."
The reality is that homelessness has always existed, and always will. But the current homeless crisis on our streets – a humanitarian, public health and environmental disaster – has not always existed. And it is resolvable with the right leadership and strategy. Unfortunately, it is painfully clear that our state and city leaders are unwilling and/or unable to solve the problem. If they could, they surely would have done so by now. Thus, we need to look for leadership elsewhere.
Setting aside the passionate spectrum of opinions about President Trump, one thing we can agree upon is that he is unconventional and willing to take risks. Most politicians are not, and this is a big reason that America's homeless crisis continues unabated. President Trump's unique persona could prove beneficial in this arena. He has repeatedly spoken out about California's homeless devastation, and he just appointed a new chair for the U.S. Interagency on Homelessness. He is itching for action.
With this in mind, here is the proposed plan:
1. President Trump declares a National Homeless Emergency across the homeless-hotbed states of California, Oregon, and Washington.
2. The federal government designates 12 separate sites of 200-plus acre plots of federal land on the outskirts of every homeless-epicenter city from San Diego to Seattle to be each region's Sunbreak Ranch. These will be location-solution centers designed to welcome all homeless persons, who can come and go as they please. Individuals can reside in a community tent or camp on their own in a series of designated (and protected) areas for families, single mothers, elderly, veterans, those with dogs, and so on.
There will be port-o-potties and port-o-showers aplenty, as well as mess halls, medical tents, storage facilities, and onsite service providers. These will include dedicated teams of mental health professionals, drug rehabilitation specialists, and vocational trainers. There will be a free daily shuttle-bus service going to and from the nearest metropolitan downtown. Each Sunbreak will have private security as well as a permanent 24/7 police outpost in order to provide safety and security to all residents. (Greg Gutfeld explains Sunbreak Ranch nationwide on Fox's Five)
Importantly, the point is not to park homeless people out of sight. Rather, the Sunbreak goal is to be the location-solution center focused on diagnosing each person’s unique situation, and then assisting every able person back to work and independent living. And for those unable, the goal is to get them the services that will best help them.
Some will argue that state and local jurisdictions should just do this on their own if they want. The reality is that it would be near-impossible for them to accomplish. Local jurisdictions attempting to designate a 200-acre site for a Sunbreak Ranch will be beset by political infighting, approval processes, permitting, NIMBY opposition, environmental protests, and endless red tape. In other words, it will never happen, and the homeless status quo will prevail. This is why the federal option is our 'silver bullet'. The federal government can indeed designate 12 Sunbreak sites of 200-acres each on federal land without any of the aforementioned red tape or headaches. (The U.S. Navy's new Naval Amphibious Training Base just built on the south side of Coronado on federal land is a perfect example – erected quickly without any input or red tape from the adjacent local jurisdictions.)
The first 12 Sunbreaks are targeted for San Diego, Orange County, Riverside/San Bernardino, Los Angeles south, Los Angeles north, Santa Barbara, San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento/Stockton, Portland, and Seattle. More will likely follow.
3. Once the exact Sunbreak locations are identified, the federal government will send FEMA and the U.S. Navy Seabees / Marines / Army to construct graveled roads and tent cities using surplus military equipment from Iraq and Afghanistan deployments. With our military's help (and unique expertise), these tent cities will rise within weeks and be able to house tens of thousands. (Congress will likely have to approve funding, but perhaps there is Executive leeway for such a humanitarian emergency. Either way, funding should be minimal for erecting tent cities with surplus military equipment.)
If President Trump decides to terminate the endless (and largely fruitless) Afghan War, he could re-deploy some of our military's tent cities in Afghanistan to the 12 Sunbreaks on our west coast. These resources would be far better used helping suffering Americans.
4. Once built, each Sunbreak will be handed over to a local consortium (with a dynamic proven leader) that includes representatives from the county, local cities, police, fire, homeless service providers, charities, churches, service clubs, et al. Homelessness at its core is a local issue. Thus, each Sunbreak will need to be managed and operated by locals who best understand that community's unique situation. The Sunbreak modus operandi is designed to be 'local control' without federal red tape. That being said, there will be a federal mandate for 24/7 local police outposts on every Sunbreak Ranch to maintain peace, law and order, as well as environmental protection.
Furthermore, every major city has dozens of organizations that are dedicated to providing services to help the homeless. As such, all qualified homeless service providers will be given rent-free space at Sunbreak Ranch in order to help them facilitate their outreach and services. The size of the area given will depend on each provider's capacity to serve.
5. In exchange for providing the Sunbreaks, President Trump and the federal government will require the three west coast states to return to rule of law. With a safe Sunbreak housing option now available to all homeless persons in need, public loitering, camping, littering, defecating, urinating, illicit drug use and petty theft on the streets, canyons and river basins will no longer be permitted. If a jurisdiction refuses to return to rule of law, President Trump will need to spur corrective action by using the bully pulpit and leverage over the $562 billion of annual federal funding going to these three states. The fed-up (and desperate) west coast population centers will likely jump to demand implementation of a viable homeless solution such as Sunbreak if so offered. (A recent L.A. Times poll found that 95% of voters say homelessness is L.A.’s biggest problem.)
The essential (and indispensable) component of a civil society is rule of law. Without it, we have anarchy. Many people believe our courts will no longer allow for rule of law with respect to homeless street camping – but they are misunderstanding what the court is actually saying. The New York Times sums up the pertinent Martin v. City of Boise (2018) court decision: "A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled for the plaintiffs and struck down the laws, saying the Constitution does not allow prosecuting people for sleeping outdoors if there is no shelter available.” With 12 operational Sunbreaks, shelter will now be available. Thus, the three west coast states will have met the court's conditions and can return to enforcing the rule of law on their streets and canyons.
Most significantly, 12 operational Sunbreaks will provide nearly every homeless person on the west coast with the attention and services they need, as well as enable the clean-up of our feces-laden cities and natural environments.
San Diego is the best positioned west coast city to host Sunbreak #1 and become the national proof of concept. It has the nation's finest year-round weather and ample adjacent federal lands, making it the perfect test site. If Sunbreak proves successful in San Diego, the "Federal Leadership, Local Control" homeless strategy can be quickly replicated up the west coast, and then across the nation.
As long as trusted Trump advisors control the Fed spending
No more Puerto Ricos, please
Right off the bat....the nutcase crowd can be split off and we can avoid wasting time or resources on them...just send them onto a desert compound with high fences, and offer up three meals a day and a cot.
Seriously dumb idea - it just institutionalizes the homeless lifestyle by making giant bum encampments. To get rid of bums, you have to make it HARDER for them to live in hovels, not easier. Roust them out of their piles of filth. Jail them for public urination and defecation.
FettGub has no business in homelessness. Unless it is in DC
This is all well and good except we have to remember that the federal government fu**s up everything they touch. So no.
Wouldn’t it be more efficient to just start handing out all the Fentanyl Siezed by the Police to the Homeless every Friday Night? After a few months the 2-3 dozen that don’t OD and Die, the ones that really need help, will be easy to deal with
Other than the land and early roads, NO federal spending. The benefits accrue to locals, so the Benefits Received Principle of Taxation says they should pay for it. Losing the sanctuary city tag might lower costs to local tax payers and, perhaps, they will see the error of their ways. If the spending comes from Federal coffers, that will never happen.
That would only be about 96% of them.
Or is my estimate too low?
I think this is unworkable, not because the effort is bad, but the direction it needs to go in is false.
I now have a homeless ministry in Greenville, SC.
I go downtown and hand out tracts daily and also make special work witnessing to the homeless, bringing them water and the gospel and fruit for munchies.
I cant afford to feed them and there are many food kitchens for them to go to downtown.
When witnessing to them, I also tell them that I will drive them, right now, to any dry out clinic they choose to get them off drugs or alcohol.
Almost 99.99% refuse to go.
While it is true that there are mentally ill people who are homeless, that is an extreme few.
As for veterans homeless, I have yet to meet one who also is not an alcoholic or drug addict. And by the way, out of 500 or so that I met, I only met 2 vets who are homeless.
I can count on one hand the number of people who are not drug users or alcoholics and are homeless because of other factors such as one woman who had a heart attack, lost her job, home, raised the kids in a car for a year or two, then lost everything and has now been homeless for 8 years.
I was able to get her into SS for an initial interview 2 weeks ago and we are waiting for a followup.
The reason these people are homeless in a nutshell is they do not want to stop doing drugs or alcohol.
I am openly told they wont go back to certain shelters because they were thrown out previously for drug use or alcohol.
They also dont like the rules otherwise or the curfew times.
.
When I talk with them, I always give them a gospel tract, share the salvation message with them as I can, sometimes buy shoes or coats for those who are alone and refuse to go into shelters, and only on the rarest occasions buy full meals because too many have abused this when I started doing so 3 years ago.
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They are like everyone else, they need to get saved first, and that is what I concentrate on.
I give out Bibles, too, about 150 in the last year and a half.
I wonder just how many homeless people some of these experts actually speak to.
here is a phone interview I did on a radio station several weeks ago discussing this:
This is me at the 10 minute mark
https://1063word.radio.com/media/audio-channel/the-tara-show-1-9-20-hour-4
1/3 of Californias budget already comes from federal money
And every year they ask for more federal aid to deal with crumbling infrastructure...including social infrastructure where families are dissipated
How much worse do you want life to get for our fellow Americans ( many of them veterans with mental issues ) suffering from incompetent State officials? Plus in terms of public health and safety, what goes on in California will not stay in California.
Time to stop throwing money at the Gavin Newsomes and put Trump managed feds in control of these clean ups.
this guy is dreaming if he thinks the homeless are going to go there voluntarily en mass.
the homeless are homeless primarily because they want to be.
And if they arent allowed to drink or do drugs in these shelters, they wont go.
I work with these people every day.
Just way too many are homeless because they dont want to live normal.
All this will do is create a self contained group of people who all want to collect on the government dole.
the only cohort in this that might work is families, and they are the fewest that are on the street.
Thank you for what you are doing.
The blame goes to local and state officials.
When you pass crap like rent control laws, strict building codes, and then you have Section 8 distorting prices, landlords aren’t going to develop.
Hell. To. The. NO. The liberal leadership in these places incubated this problem. Let them face up to reality and do the hard work to make their cities habitable again. The Feds can provide a blueprint to follow, but I don’t want a bunch of taxpayer resources going to fix what the Dims messed up.
I lived in the Arlington-DC area for 3.5 years, and had a chance to see the homeless crowd there. I would take a guess that around 80-percent fall into uncontrollable paranoid schizophrenic types, serious brain damage from cocaine use in the 1980s/1990s, or alcoholics with zero interest in rehab. You could bring a hundred into a study situation for three days, and split off the 80-percent group...they just need to be farmed out to some permanent controlled facility (judges order).
The other 20-percent are mostly people who fell into serious debt, got kicked out of apartments, and lost their jobs. With some coaching (a full-year of that help), and cheapo studio apartments...this group might be able to cope and return to some productive life.
But out in SF and LA, you have to cope with heroin and meth usage. Maybe just shipping them off to an island in the Pacific would be the best way of handling them.
Singapore does exactly this with druggies who fail rehab the third time. Once or twice a month a cargo boat backs up and unloads fresh produce and canned goods.
At this point, they have two options left: get clean or die.
I had a business associate in Singapore tell me that before they went draconian by hanging dealers and exiling three strike addicts, one out of every ten Singaporeans was addicted to drugs. Today, one in ten is a millionaire.
We could do that too if we had the political will.
I spent a number of days in Singapore, and will state for the record....there is no place on the island that I would consider ‘unsafe’.
That seems to be the first plan and even that failed.
Trump should put Kanye West in charge, appoint him Federal Homelessness-Eradication Czar.
Kanye’s vision is essentially affordably-built Tiny House communities, featuring both privacy AND tribal/ communal areas. The minimalist, weird looking Star Wars domes would actually attract a lot of homeless who traditionally have been averse to living indoors— because they’re cool!
And unlike government subsidized “affordable” housing typically costing $400K-600K PER UNIT, the domes would cost around $10K-20K each. The homeless tenants could opt to buy & live in them permanently.
Initial building & administrative costs should be financed by tax-deductible donations from millionaire rappers & entertainers like Kanye, instead of general tax revenues.
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