Free Republic

Homelessness keeps rising, homeless taxes keep rising and the money disappears. In Los Angeles County, spring is in the air and so are higher taxes. Beyond the usual punishing ritual of April 15, county residents also now face some of the highest sales taxes in the country. Sales taxes in the area have shot up from 9.75% to as high as 11.25% to fund still more services for the ‘homeless’. The permanent sales tax increase is supposed to raise $1 billion a year to replace the stolen billions spent by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. Families will pay even...

Two teenage girls from Germany were detained, arrested, and deported at an airport in Hawaii after immigration officials said it was suspicious they had not booked a hotel room. Backpackers Charlotte Pohl, 19, and Maria Lepere, 18, arrived in Honolulu from Auckland while undergoing a round-the-world trip. The duo planned to spend five weeks in Hawaii before moving onto California and Costa Rica for the next legs of their journey. But despite having ESTA travel authorization, immigration officials accused them of attempting to enter the U.S. to work illegally, and they were placed in handcuffs and taken to a nearby...

A Southern California mayor is under fire for wanting to eliminate his city’s homeless population by giving them “all the fentanyl they want” — a shocking remark he reinforced by calling for a federal “purge.” Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris shared his controversial views during a Feb. 25 city council meeting when a resident took issue with the city’s attempt to address the homeless crisis by “enclosing” the unhoused at an abandoned golf course near a residential neighborhood. “What I want to do is give them free fentanyl,” Parris said as he interrupted the woman’s comments, according to footage of...

Officials at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) are facing scrutiny for refusing to release public records related to allegations of significant wrongdoing that led to $800,000 in taxpayer-funded settlements. LAist, a local news outlet, has been denied access to documents detailing wrongful termination and whistleblower retaliation claims filed by two former executives who departed the agency in 2024. The two executives are Kristina Dixon, former chief financial and administration officer, and Emily Vaughn Henry, former data and IT director. Their terminations occurred during Va Lecia Adams Kellum’s first year as LAHSA’s chief executive. LAist initiated its request for...

Afederal judge excoriated officials who were unable to account for $2.4 billion in taxpayer funds meant to go toward solving homelessness in Los Angeles.U.S. District Court Judge David Carter threatened to appoint a court-ordered receiver if officials didn't improve their efforts to account for the money spent, according to an LAist report. (snip) The judge gave them until May to fulfill their responsibilities or have a receiver take over the spending. While he acknowledged that they had inherited a "mess" from former officials, Carter demanded that they take accountibility.“I am your worst nightmare,” Carter told them. “I can make your...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — President Trump is vowing a new approach to getting homeless people off the streets by forcibly moving those living outside into large camps while mandating mental health and addiction treatment — an aggressive departure from the nation's leading homelessness policy, which for decades has prioritized housing as the most effective way to combat the crisis. "Our once-great cities have become unlivable, unsanitary nightmares," Mr. Trump said in a presidential campaign video. "For those who are severely mentally ill and deeply disturbed, we will bring them to mental institutions, where they belong, with the goal of reintegrating them...

FUBAR inflation, catering to migrants, and high taxes are impoverishing New Yorkers. Details in this 16 minute videoditorial and the attached transcript.

Sassy, Tuffy, Wiggles — do you recognize the names? Murrieta police are asking for the public’s help in identifying the owner of a pet headstone found during the cleanup of a homeless encampment on Friday, March 7. Riverside County’s homeless outreach team, City Net, found the headstone at a homeless encampment in a creek bed near Cherry Street and Adams Avenue in Murrieta, police Lt. Miguel Garcia said. The individual who resided there is known to local outreach personnel to bring various items to the site. “We have no proof that the individual did it,” Garcia said. “The encampment isn’t...

Homeless programs funded by the city of Los Angeles are essentially a black hole when it comes to oversight and the tracking of outcomes, a court-ordered, independent audit has found. The report, released on Thursday, was conducted by Alvarez & Marsal, a global consulting firm. It looked at four years of homeless services managed by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) from June 1, 2020, through June 30, 2024. A&M said it was stymied by information gaps and incomplete data that hindered its ability to gauge the results of approximately $2.3 billion in homeless spending over that time period....

America’s major cities are crumbling under Democrat leadership. From San Francisco to Chicago, urban centers have become showcases of dysfunction rather than beacons of prosperity. The pattern repeats itself with disturbing predictability. Beautiful, historic downtowns transformed into tent cities. Public spaces commandeered by the homeless. Tourist areas that visitors increasingly avoid. All while Democrat mayors talk about “compassion” and “equity” instead of actually solving problems. -------------- “In a Truth Social post on Wednesday, the president specifically referenced areas near the State Department and the White House that are populated with homeless encampments that need to be removed, adding that the...

A Detroit mother of four children, two of whom died from possible exposure to the cold this month while the family was living in a van, has been given a new home days after her son and daughter were laid to rest. A video posted by the city of Detroit and Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries this week showed Tateona Williams receiving the keys to her home. "We had to fix it, prep it, furnish it and then give them a good start so they don’t have to go one day with no food or being outside anymore," the organization's CEO...

The Seattle homeless population is the tragic result of failed policies. But it’s not just a problem — it’s a manufactured disaster, enabled and exacerbated by left-wing policies that have done nothing but invite more homelessness while refusing to address its root causes. A new study from the Discovery Institute’s Fix Homelessness explains how dire the situation truly is in Seattle. The study lays out in devastating detail how Seattle’s approach has not only failed but made everything worse. The city’s leaders, obsessed with progressive ideology over practical solutions, have created a system that draws homeless individuals from outside the...

SNIPThe Westside Current reported:SNIPAnother question raised by this event is why LAHSA, with an annual budget of $857 million, needed FEMA’s assistance to offer services to 45 individuals. SNIPWhile FEMA aid has been going to LAHSA, victims of the fire who need FEMA aid are having trouble accessing it in many cases, thanks in part to rampant fraud.SNIPIn addition, as the Westside Current notes, homeless services are supposed to have hundreds of millions of their own dollars, thanks to the passage of Measure A last year, which raised sales taxes half a cent in L.A. County for homeless relief.

State conflict of interest laws ban public officials from any involvement in contracts in which they have a financial interest, including agreements that financially benefit their spouse or groups that pay their spouse. Los Angeles’ top homeless services executive told LAist in December that she stuck to those rules, saying she had been walled off and “completely recused” from business relating to her husband’s employer. Through a public records request, LAist later discovered records that contradict her assertion. The documents show that Va Lecia Adams Kellum, chief executive of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), signed a $2.1 million...

The mainstream media desperately wants the Los Angeles wildfire story to have a very specific villain: Climate Change.The theory they’re pushing goes like this: Climate Change is real — only a stupid “science denier” would argue otherwise. And because it’s real, weather patterns are far more extreme. From famines, fires, and droughts to hurricanes, snowstorms, and floodings, Climate Change is the answer to all your questions. So, YES, Climate Change is responsible for the L.A. wildfires!Hence, the deluge of climate-centric news stories:Time Magazine: L.A. Fires Show the Reality of Living in a World with 1.5˚C of WarmingNew York Times: ‘We’re...

Governor Kathy Hochul announced that construction is underway at Town and Country Apartments, a 256-unit affordable housing complex in Binghamton. The $94 million rehabilitation project will modernize the 22-building garden-style development, fully electrify its infrastructure, and improve energy efficiency by 20%. The project is part of Hochul’s five-year, $25 billion Housing Plan, which aims to create or preserve 100,000 affordable homes across New York State, including 10,000 with support services for vulnerable populations. The initiative complements efforts by New York State Homes and Community Renewal (HCR), which has financed over 1,260 affordable housing units in Broome County in the past...

At least 75 fire trucks languished in a city repair facility in downtown Los Angeles as wildfires decimated Altadena, Pacific Palisades and Malibu, pictures taken by The Post show. The essential firefighting vehicles were still sitting in the Los Angeles Fire Department’s Bureau Of Supply and Maintenance lot in an industrial area Wednesday, waiting to be repaired. Controversy over the rows of idle trucks has intensified after revelations about the LAFD budget being cut by $17 million by Mayor Karen Bass. “We have over 100 fire apparatus out of service,” Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley admitted to CNN when...

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass claims that her $17.5 million cut to the LA Fire Department budget did not impact the department’s ability to prevent or fight fires. But the LA Fire Chief told CNN that “the $17 million budget cut… did absolutely negatively impact” the Department’s ability to respond to the fires...

California’s governor Gavin Newsom was confronted while being probed at a press conference over the state’s spending of $24 billion to tackle homelessness. Mr Newson led a conference on Friday announcing that California’s budget deficit is at least $45 billion and proposed various spending cuts to state worker jobs, education programs and health services. He also proposed reducing funding for homelessness and housing initiatives by nearly $1.2 billion, including $474 million from an anti-foreclosure program to preserve existing affordable housing. Despite the big budget announcements and slashes on spending, one reporter at the conference did not allow the governor to...

The woman killed after being set ablaze by an illegal alien on a New York City subway has finally been identified. The burn victim was identified as 61-year-old Debrina Kawam. Kawam was linked to an address in Toms River, New Jersey, but she was described as homeless. It took investigators more than a week to identify the victim using fingerprints because her burns were so severe. The New York Post reported: Cops have identified the woman who was lit on fire as she slept and then burned to death on a Brooklyn subway train while terrified straphangers watched in horror,...