Tag Archive for: Homelessness

A Wasteland of Corpses, Living and Dead: A Devastating Inside Look at Phoenix’s Homeless Zone

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Estimated Reading Time: 11 minutes

Intense poverty, frequent crime, social instability, high mortality, poor living standards: these qualities describe third-world countries. They also describe “The Zone”: the sprawling encampment of over 1,000 homeless in downtown Phoenix just blocks from the state capitol and amidst what was once a thriving business district. It’s an area where law and order don’t seem to exist; so much so that locals have given the area another, much darker nickname: “The Thunderdome.”

The crisis reached a new high after the discovery of a premature baby’s remains several weeks before Thanksgiving last year, burned in the middle of the street. A month later, a similar grisly fate befell a homeless man.

“That child burned… that was the beginning of the end for me. I don’t know why that hit us so hard,” said Karl Freund, who was leasing a building in The Zone and is suing the city of Phoenix over their handling of the homeless crisis. “Someone set a child on fire, and then two weeks later somebody burned a body just a block away. Then you see the people that are so mentally ill that you can’t place them in society. We walked out a year ago to see a girl masturbating 20 feet away from my car in the parking lot.”

Death and depravity are a common occurrence in The Zone.

Last month, Phoenix police shot and killed a Spanish-speaking homeless man who lunged at them with scissors. Attempts to incapacitate the man with stun guns were unsuccessful. Police had responded to a 911 call from a woman reporting the man approaching her aggressively while attempting to trespass her property.

Drug deals, addicts using, defecation and urination, assaults, sexual acts, and rapes are also done out in the open with increasing impunity. Gangs run the streets of The Zone, making the homeless pay for their tent space and beating them up at will. Registered sex offenders roam the streets, having been dropped off in The Zone. Businesses close but must continue paying rent.

The Zone sprung up outside Central Arizona Shelter Services (CASS) Human Services Campus, an organization that provides food, shelter, and more to the homeless. It’s located in a dense and diverse business district that includes a near-historic sub shop, appliance manufacturer, cabinet manufacturer, steel manufacturer, millworker, textile company, metal supplier, door supplier, ironwork company, glass and mirror shops, counter supply store, air conditioning supply store, funeral supply store, motorcycle shop, RV shop, auto repair store, electrical supply store, art museum, custom printer, waste services, paper company, several recycling services, several automotive stores, and several transportation companies. Business owners neighboring The Zone have seen the homeless population — and attendant crime — grow over the last two years and four months.

Angie Ojile, a commercial designer and realtor in The Zone for over 20 years, said that she sees this and more every day. She said she watched four people taken out of the area in body bags in a one-day period. The level of danger is so prevalent that Ojile says that other businesses refuse to come there: pizza shops won’t deliver, and plumbers won’t service the buildings. Limitations on those services pale in comparison to her other, more pressing problem: retaining employees. Ojile told AZ Free News that one young woman she hired was initially excited to work for her, but left out of fear for her safety after several days navigating The Zone.

Ojile says the city is to blame for these troubles.

“Everything they do defies logic. It’s hurting people — not helping people,” said Ojile.

The homeless relentlessly bombard Ojile’s property with human waste, fires, garbage, drug use, assaults, and gang activity. Ojile estimates that she spends more on cleanups around her property than some pay for mortgages.

“The ground is so saturated with feces and urine, I can’t even breathe. We’ve got walls that are so full of feces, it’s disgusting. You can’t even look in that direction,” said Ojile. “We had dreams when we bought this property, and now we’re paying for it.”

Property assessments estimate Ojile’s property to be worth well over $2 million — but only if The Zone didn’t exist. A realtor told Ojile that her property was essentially worth nothing due to The Zone, and that he couldn’t sell the property in good faith due to that. Anyone who bought Ojile’s property — if buyers could be found — would find themselves in the same predicament as Ojile: unable to run her business properly, causing her to fall behind on property taxes.

Ojile said that nobody from the city bothered to return her calls for help. The supervisor representing that district, Steve Gallardo, has never returned her calls. Even an ombudsman wasn’t able to get information for her in a timely manner, something which the ombudsman allegedly remarked was unusual.

“I went to the city immediately for help, but no one would ever get back to me,” said Ojile.

This crisis hasn’t just taken a financial toll on Ojile; it has imposed a great emotional and physical toll. Ojile’s dog has gone missing three times, at least. The homeless have cut her fence to take the dog; she’s had to track down her dog in homeless tents and even an animal shelter.

Last week, Ojile became severely ill while working inside her business — a sickness unlike she’d experienced before. The room she was working in wasn’t completely insulated from the outside: she had to board over one of the windows, since the homeless would break it every time she fixed it and the city would fine her for blight over the broken window. Ojile suspected that she’d been exposed to someone smoking fentanyl.

Help from law enforcement isn’t always an option for Ojile in situations like that. According to Ojile, officers told her that they wouldn’t enforce the law equally in The Zone for fear of losing their jobs.

Phoenix Police Department (PPD) reported 278 incidents in 2020 and 206 incidents in 2021. There were around 200 incidents last year. There have been well over 4,000 calls from 2019 through last year, with over 1,200 calls for fire department assistance alone last year.

For Freund, the growth of crime in the area has reached a tipping point. He’d hoped to open a real estate office in the building he’d leased, but the state of the area hasn’t made that possible. Freund said that the PPD has not only stopped responding but stopped answering their calls.

“The day-to-day down there is unlivable for anybody and I can’t believe we subject humans to this environment,” said Freund. “Why would you subject humans to that kind of living condition? There’s prostitution, murder, physical beatings.”

Freund fought to open his business in that building, spending hundreds of thousands on property taxes, renovations, and fixing damages caused by the homeless. According to Freund, they’ve attempted to set his building on fire multiple times and stolen all of the copper wiring and pipe. He gave up hope on the property after 20 months; he managed to find another to sublet the property. The thousands he spent in property taxes and beautification wasn’t enough to spur the city to action — just as is the case for so many others in The Zone.

Although these business owners have languished for years, several weeks’ worth of sports fans visiting the city were spared the crisis. Ahead of the lucrative NFL Super Bowl and PGA Waste Management Open that were held in the Phoenix area in February, the city committed to cleanup efforts of homeless encampments. However, these cleanup efforts aren’t permanent. The homeless are free to return to the areas after cleanup ends; they already have. Only 33 of the homeless accepted services during Phase One of the city’s December cleanup, according to the deputy director for the Office of Homeless Solutions, Scott Hall.

Apart from cleanups, the city has directed their millions in funding on a “housing first” or “permanent supportive housing” model, sometimes called “affordable housing.” The theory behind this model is that the homeless will choose to seek employment, become financially responsible, and receive mental health care and/or substance abuse treatment if food and housing are provided. The theory also posits that enabling the homeless to choose their housing and support services will make them more likely to remain in that housing and stick with self-improvement initiatives.

The city has poured millions of funding to create housing; yet available housing hasn’t kept pace with the number of homeless, the retention rates of the homeless in their housing and program participation remains poor, and the crisis is progressively spreading to surrounding areas. Even so, the city allocated another $12 million last October, another $8 million last November, and another $25 million in January to prove the housing first theory correct.

The city recently unveiled their latest attempt at free housing for the homeless on Feb. 8: five shipping containers repurposed for “sustainable” housing. These living structures’ purported sustainability comes at the cost of $200,000 for one-bedroom, one-bathroom’s worth of solar panels providing power, an incinerator toilet, LED lighting, and economical heating and cooling. The Arizona Department of Housing issued a $1.2 million grant for the five units.

Then there was the 24/7, single-stall, $200,000 toilet for the homeless launched in January.

Other city initiatives providing the homeless with more resources also appear to have failed to make a noticeable impact on the crisis.

In December, the city launched an employment program that pays the homeless $65 to work five-hour shifts. However, those directly impacted by or handling the crisis say that these kinds of approaches haven’t led to lasting change.

Ojile said that the homeless she’s known for many years don’t feel like they’re getting help. Some of the homeless she knows in the area have been there for decades. They’re trapped alongside Ojile.

“We can’t get out. They’re crashing our property values,” said Ojile. “There’s people that are homeless that don’t want to be near this.”

A broker estimated the value of Ojile’s property at around $2.4 million. However, the broker informed Ojile that her property is unmarketable due to the state of The Zone.

“[The] values are based ‘as if’ the property was not associated or in proximity to the situation currently occurring adjacent to the Property (i.e. homeless, mental health, drugs, gangs, etc.). Unfortunately, the property is deemed unmarketable at any realistic value at this date due to these issues along with safety concerns that would be perceived by any prospective buyer, tenant or investor that would normally have invested in the property. Further, at this date, the city of Phoenix who is trying to manage a difficult problem, has ‘kicked the can down the road’ and now that ‘can’ is on and surrounding your property. Additionally, since you have disclosed various items to me (break-ins, been threatened, witnessed drug purchases, individuals urinating/defecating on the property, etc.) as a licensed real estate agent held to ADRE Rules and Statutes, I am required to notify all potential buyers, tenants, investors of such. Therefore, as referenced above, post touring the property, which they will see the issues firsthand and my disclosure of all facts I am aware of associated with this property, I again state that the property is unfortunately ‘unmarketable’ at this time.’” (emphasis added)

Angie’s property and others are regularly bombarded with human waste, fires, garbage, and drug use.

Judge Glock, a senior fellow with a Texas-based nonpartisan policy group called the Cicero Institute, said that leaders are gravely mistaken to believe that a housing-first approach works.

“They’re convinced by a very small group that nothing can be done, that anything that moves people off the sidewalk is cruel, and the only option is a house for every single person that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars per person,” said Glock. “It’s an unfortunate mindset, but that’s what a small group of activists have convinced them.”

Jeff Taylor, chairman of the board for the Salvation Army’s western territory, said that residential behavioral health treatment needs to occur before any kind of housing efforts. Taylor shared with AZ Free News just one of many initiatives to house the homeless that failed.

“They took 20 of their star people from the shelter, they got them apartments and they went to Target and got furniture, went to Walmart, got their closets filled with clothes, moved all 20 into apartments and they had employment. Within a week they’d sold everything, and they were running drug dens out of the housing,” recounted Taylor. “The problem isn’t getting someone clean; it’s keeping someone clean. Recovery is measured in years.”

Taylor said that the homeless with mental health or drug addictions were only as good as their treatment programs. What’s more, Taylor expressed concern that the crisis would only worsen due to the newest drug to hit the streets: fentanyl. The potency equivalent of other, more costly hard drugs, such as crack cocaine and heroin, only costs $1 for fentanyl.

“This is a humanitarian crisis that will only get worse,” said Taylor. “Fentanyl is a whole other ballgame.”

Sam Stone, a Phoenix City Council candidate, said that permanent supportive housing wouldn’t incentivize the homeless to get their lives on track. Stone doesn’t live in The Zone, but he’s spent much time there over the years attempting to solve the crisis.

“We have to start from the perspective that chronic street homelessness is not an acceptable lifestyle choice,” said Stone. “What they’re talking about is just warehousing addicts and mentally ill people until they die. Without treatment for their issues, they’re never going to get better. All they ever do is demand we spend more and more money. None of that does anything to change what’s going on. You have to lead with services. You have to switch things around. You have to make it tough to live on the street and easy to get into treatment.”

Stone and others we spoke to referenced Austin, Texas, as a poster child for mitigating homelessness. Austin voters reinstated a public camping ban in May 2021, after the city council ended a similar ban that had been in place for 23 years. Encampments quickly flooded the city, and the homeless were underfoot everywhere. That reality no longer exists: the homeless are few and far between throughout the city, and shelters are operated on a closed-campus basis, meaning that the homeless have to be referred in order to receive services.

Viewing The Zone and Phoenix’s homeless crisis isn’t a partisan issue. Catherine Miranda, a newly elected Democratic state senator representing the district containing The Zone, published a lengthy article last December criticizing the city’s approach to addressing their homeless.

Miranda declared that Phoenix’s housing first dreams had failed her homeless constituents. The freshman lawmaker urged the enforcement of existing street camping bans, prioritization of short-term rather than permanent housing, and treatment of mental health and addiction problems first.

“Phoenix wants to give the homeless permanent homes without addressing the root causes of their homelessness. No wonder it’s been a disaster,” wrote Miranda. “The state and city should refocus on a ‘Treatment First’ philosophy. While the failed ‘Housing First’ model does not require treatment for drug addiction or mental health problems, programs like recovery housing tie to sobriety or mental health checkups.”

Miranda also noted that building houses takes years, resulting in the homeless continuing to live a dangerous, unhealthy lifestyle on the streets.

“While we wait years or decades for these thousands of homes to be built, they want to keep allowing our most vulnerable neighbors, who are struggling with drug addiction and severe mental illness, to live and die on our streets,” stated Miranda.

The Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG) annual point-in-time (PIT) homeless counts over the past few years reflect a historic high in the homeless population, the likes of which haven’t been experienced in well over a decade. Last year’s MAG counted nearly 3,100 unsheltered homeless. That’s a 131 percent increase from 2013, when there were just over 1,300 unsheltered homeless.

The 2022 PIT also reported that 44 percent of homeless were in emergency shelters, transitional housing, or safe haven programs, while 56 percent weren’t. 2020 was the first time in recent years that there were more unsheltered homeless individuals: 49 percent were sheltered homeless individuals, while 51 percent weren’t. However, this decline preceded efforts to mitigate COVID-19 spread, such as reducing shelter capacity.

In 2019, 52 percent were sheltered, while 48 percent weren’t. Even those 2019 numbers reflected a significant decline in the number of homeless seeking sheltered services: the number of unsheltered homeless increased by 22 percent from 2018 to 2019, while the number of sheltered declined by seven percent.

According to the latest Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Housing Inventory Count, Maricopa County and Phoenix had over 12,300 beds available for homeless housing last year. Nearly 8,100 of these were permanent housing, while just over 4,200 were emergency, safe haven, and transitional housing.

Homeless deaths have also been increasing at a significant rate. The Maricopa County Medical Examiner’s Office reported that homeless deaths more than doubled from over 250 in 2019 to nearly 600 in 2020, with a slight decline to just over 500 in 2021 before skyrocketing to over 700 last year.

Though crimes and deaths have increased in the area, emergency services haven’t been able to keep up. Emails obtained by AZ Free News revealed that the Phoenix Fire Department won’t respond to calls without PPD assistance and assurance that the scene of the incident is secure, due to how dangerous The Zone has become.

Even then, police claims of an incident scene being secure aren’t always accepted by first responders. Emails revealed that the scene could span multiple city blocks and contain crowds likely to assault the emergency responders.

The emails also revealed that first responders considered the Black Lives Matter (BLM) riots of 2020 to pale in comparison to the everyday dangers of The Zone. The first responders noted that they lacked adequate protection and resources to respond in that area.

“At no point during the protests did I feel like our folks were in the potential danger that they face every day responding to the area surrounding CASS,” stated the email.

Freund says he noticed a shift in the city’s handling of the homeless around November 2020. He said that the numbers of homeless in The Zone began to increase greatly around that time, and that the homeless became more resistant to residents’ requests to move. Freund said that law enforcement activity began to slow down around that time as well.

Now, Freund and leaders like Stone are warning that this problem is spreading.

“You walk into The Zone, it’s like you’re walking out of America. It’s a nightmare hellscape that shouldn’t exist anywhere in this country, but it’s also what a lot of our major cities are coming to look like,” said Stone. “Unless we start looking to get our homeless population into treatment or off the streets, The Zone isn’t going to stay in The Zone.”

*****
This article was published by Goldwater Institute and is reproduced with permission.

The Left Wants To Take Your Truck Because It’s Big And Scary

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Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

The left’s latest attack on pickup trucks is because they’re large and scary and allegedly bad for the environment.

Unlike with the right to bear arms, there is no constitutional amendment protecting our right to own vehicles — other than a generally recognized right to move about freely (Crandall v. Nevada, 1867) — and, with almost all roads owned by the government, this could become a problem.

With that, the ongoing campaign against “Big Truck” — or, as we call them in Texas, simply “my truck” — is bound to lead to additional restrictions to “save the planet” and “save the children.”

The latest push against large pickup trucks takes two basic forms: They’re large and scary and hurt people, and they’re bad for the environment, especially with people not really needing them for anything practical.

The large and dangerous argument goes like this: Americans only drive big trucks because Americans are vain, and big pickup trucks have become a status symbol, with mostly suburban owners citing their truck’s “ruggedness” and “power.” As further proof, detractors claim most of these large rides don’t even have a trailer hitch.

Of course, one thing many Americans don’t much take a liking to is other people telling them what they must do with their purchases and lifestyle. I don’t own a large pickup truck — yet — but if these pearl-clutching busybodies don’t mind their business, I’m sorely tempted to go out and buy one.

Child vs. Adult Deaths

As a result, after making some comments on Twitter and having an Ivy League liberal claim that large pickups are “behind the uptick in pedestrian deaths, especially little kids, and are obviously worse for the environment (both air quality affecting our health now and global warming affecting life more broadly)…so it hurts a lot of other people for no practical gain,” I decided to look into a key contention — that more “little kids” have been getting killed by big pickup trucks.

I opened the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention database on the unintentional deaths of pedestrians by motor vehicles via its WISQARS™ (Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System) database and ran two series. One was pedestrian deaths, ages 0-14 from 2000 to 2020, and the other was pedestrian deaths from ages 18 to 85+ over the same period.

What followed is very interesting. Contrary to the claims of some, pedestrian deaths among “little kids” have been steadily dropping since 2000. This might be due to a few factors. First, the use of alcohol while driving has been dropping. Second, as the CDC helpfully notes, alcohol was a factor in 46 percent of crashes resulting in a pedestrian death in 2019, but only about 30 percent of these involved the driver while 70 percent were due to a drunk pedestrian. The CDC went on to note, “Most pedestrian deaths occur in urban areas, on roadway locations away from intersections (where higher speeds might occur), and at night.”

In other words, conditions that are far less likely to involve a child and far more likely to involve alcohol- or drug-impaired adults.

The graph I created from the CDC data does show a drop in adult deaths through the Great Recession when driver miles dropped after years of slowing growth, likely connected to increased internet usage among young would-be drivers. Then, as people got back in their cars, pedestrian deaths climbed.

But oddly enough, during the Covid-19 lockdowns, vehicle miles plunged by almost 13 percent at one point in 2020. Yet despite the reduced miles driven, the number of pedestrians ages 18 to 85+ unintentionally killed by vehicles rose from 6,359 in 2019 to 6,682 in 2020 for a rate of 2.6 per 100,000. In fact, 2020 saw the highest number and rate of adult pedestrian deaths in the 20-year period measured.

Thankfully, the number of child fatalities ages 0 to 14 saw no meaningful statistical change in 2020 compared to 2019, with 235 dying for a rate of 0.39 per 100,000 vs. 228 in 2019. Compared to 2000, the rate of adults being killed by vehicles increased by 39 percent while the rate of children ages 0 to 14 being killed fell by 56 percent. This is odd, for if an increasing share of large pickup trucks on the road were responsible for increased carnage, you’d expect to see it among children and adults alike.

Critics of large pickup trucks say, among other things, that the trucks are so large that drivers can’t see pedestrians just in front of them (assuming that their modern collision avoidance warning system isn’t working). Yet were that the cause of an increase in accidents, we would also expect to see an increasing death toll among young children, but we don’t. So, what else might be driving these fatalities? What might adults be doing that’s killing them on the roads?

Homeless Problem

Returning to the CDC, it noted that in 2019, almost half of pedestrian fatalities involved alcohol, and of those, 70 percent involved an impaired pedestrian.

In the city of Austin, Texas, the left-wing city council reversed a longstanding policy in July 2019 regarding where the homeless could sit or lie down or “camp” on public spaces such as sidewalks, rights-of-way, and city parks. Overnight, Austin became one large homeless encampment. It got so bad that a majority of Democrat voters voted for a ballot initiative to overturn the ordinance in May 2021.

Not coincidentally, the Austin Police Department started to report pedestrian deaths involving homeless people in 2019, finding that 19 of 36 pedestrians killed that year were homeless. Pedestrian fatalities rose in 2020. In 2021, 45 pedestrians died in Austin, rising to 50 in 2022.

But with the city council cracking down on wrongspeak, the Austin Police Department grew quiet on reporting homeless traffic deaths. Instead, we see government officials emphasizing the erection of a pedestrian crossing barrier on I-35, Austin’s main north-south freeway, with the barrier reducing crashes with pedestrians by 89 percent.

Last month, a member of Austin’s “Vision Zero” team — so named for the intent to reduce traffic deaths to zero, a statistical impossibility without also eliminating vehicles — dutifully pointed out, “We have large vehicles that are engaging with other vehicles or are engaging with other people outside of vehicles, so the speed matters tremendously and mass of the vehicle matters as well.” He went on to note, “People (are) wanting to walk around and bike around, and there aren’t as many safe crossings of our major freeways and frontage roads that are needed for people to get around safely.”

He might have added, “For people to get around safely while blasted out of their minds screaming at unseen forces.” In October, the same crew, injecting race into traffic deaths, claimed that crashes disproportionately affect Austin’s communities of color. Morning commutes in downtown Austin often feature random homeless people crossing between intersections and weaving through busy traffic.

The New York Times ran an article last February about the increase in pedestrian fatalities during the pandemic. The piece cited Harold Medina, the police chief of Albuquerque, New Mexico, who mentioned three factors: more aggressive driving, more drunk driving, and a growing homeless population.

Thus, it’s possible that changes in behavior caused by Covid-19 lockdowns, such as an increase in alcohol abuse, as well as increasing homelessness (up 15 percent from 2016 to 2020), might be the main driver behind the 10 percent increase in adult pedestrian deaths over that same time.

Thus, general societal dysfunction, some of which is downstream from government policies, once again serves as a justification for activists to demand that government come for something the taxpaying citizenry use. Will the left soon demand a “certificate of need” be issued before anyone buys trucks of a certain size?

The replacement for all those big, gas-guzzling trucks and cars will be even heavier electric vehicles that will cause even greater injuries to pedestrians while doing unprecedented amounts of damage to the roads — Ford’s F-150 pickup truck weighs in at 4,021 to 5,025 pounds — well exceeded by the Tesla X Long Range sedan at a hefty 5,185 pounds.

*****
This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

Bidenvilles: America’s New Emblem of Decay

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Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

In French, a “bidonville” is a shantytown. A “bidon” is a large container, like the giant yellow vegetable oil bottles used to carry drinking water in developing countries.

I’ve seen plenty of shantytowns in cities from India to Togo; they are an unfortunate consequence of rapid urbanization.

What surprised me when I came home to Washington, D.C., a few months ago was seeing shantytowns both outside the State Department, where my old office was, and Union Station, near my new office.

In America under President Joe Biden, the word “Bidenville” is beginning to gain traction as a term for a waste-filled, insalubrious tent city inhabited by what the left calls “people experiencing homelessness,” who often suffer from an unfortunate combination of drug addiction and mental illness.

Shantytowns aren’t new to America. During the Great Depression, they were ironically called Hoovervilles after President Herbert Hoover.

However, at that time, Hoovervilles comprised able-bodied people who were out of work due to the worst economic crisis and highest unemployment in U.S. history. Now, unemployment is low and entry-level jobs go begging. The Bidenvilles of today are filled more by ideology and incompetence than economic duress.

The District of Columbia now has 97 “encampment sites” scattered across the city. Maybe that’s one reason why Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., is calling the District a “disgrace for our country” and opposes the “home rule” enjoyed by the nation’s capital since 1973.

Neglect in Name of Tolerance

While politicians bicker about whether to call inhabitants of the camps “people experiencing homelessness,” “unhoused persons,” or “persons without shelter,” they fail to make the hard choices required to help.

To her credit, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, has attempted to clear at least some sites despite the opposition of activists whose sole aim seems to be to entrench their clients in misery in the name of freedom.

For the most part, however, mayors in cities such as San Francisco and the District pour money into supporting the outdoor lifestyle of thousands of seriously unwell people, including by facilitating their consumption of drugs.

This not only creates a hostile environment for the locals whose taxes fund the chaos, it fails to treat the root cause of affliction so that the homeless can escape the cycle that brings them to the streets in the first place.

Michael Shellenberger argues in his book “San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities” that what homeless addicts need is a choice between mandatory drug treatment or prosecution for misdemeanors such as public defecation and littering. But what they get is continued neglect in the name of tolerance.

The reason why tent slums subsist even in the richest parts of the richest cities in America, Shellenberger writes, is not a lack of money but misplaced compassion and policy failure.

Border Crisis Hits Home

Now, the impact of the crisis at our southern border is colliding with the homelessness problem and spreading into the progressives’ backyards, and they aren’t happy.

Alejandro Mayorkas’ Department of Homeland Security let 79,652 illegal immigrants into the United States last June alone after its agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, briefly arrested and “processed” them. So far since Biden’s inauguration in January 2021, Customs and Border Protection has caught and released over 1.3 million illegal immigrants.

Illegal immigrants gradually have been arriving in the Washington area since the Biden administration neutered border enforcement. But with illegal crossings topping 200,000 a month, and half or more of these migrants being released and moved into the interior, the numbers of newly arrived and needy illegal aliens are rising all over the country. Some end up on the streets, compounding already dire problems of homelessness.

Bowser may agree with the Biden administration’s open borders agenda, but she seems to have a hard time when the reality hits home in the District. Bowser has complained that too many migrants are being bused from the southern border and filling up D.C. homeless shelters

“We think they’re largely asylum-seekers who are going to final destinations that are not Washington, D.C.,” the mayor said, evidently hoping they’ll become someone else’s problem.

“Local taxpayers are not picking up the tab and should not pick up the tab,” Bowser said. “We really need a coordinated federal response.”

The ‘Swamp’ Solution

Americans couldn’t agree more. Unfortunately, where border and immigration enforcement are concerned, the federal government is absent while on duty.

Using the Migrant Protection Protocols, Title 42, and other existing authorities, U.S. Customs and Border Protection could stop the chaotic flow in short order. Instead, its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, is abusing parole authority and recklessly relying on the promises of illegal immigrants to show up for immigration hearings. This compounds negligence with wishful thinking.

According to a recent report in the Washington Free Beacon, DHS has lost track of thousands of illegal migrants. And of those officials released and tracked, at least one-third failed to comply with the terms of their release.

DHS data shows that only around 1 in 10 asylum-seekers who pass “credible fear” interviews at the border ever go on to be granted asylum—mostly because they fail to apply at all or don’t bother to go through with the whole process.

The “swamp” solution, of course, is to federalize and give more taxpayer money to the problem of homeless migrants.

D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat, introduced an emergency appropriations bill July 19 that would provide additional funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Emergency Food and Shelter Program. Funding would be designated for humanitarian assistance to migrants, whether arriving by FEMA-funded air, bus, and rail travel or being bused in by the states of Texas and Arizona.

If Norton’s measure passes, taxpayers not only would be on the hook for illegal immigrants’ shelter, food, and medical care after crossing the border, followed by transportation to their favored U.S. destination. Taxpayers also would be shelling out for housing and feeding the migrants once they arrived. This would be the ultimate (socialist) red carpet.

Norton, whose vote as a delegate in the House doesn’t count, claims that “the governors of Texas and Arizona are exploiting and harming vulnerable people fleeing desperate and dangerous situations in their home countries for political gain.”

Start Enforcing the Law

But the truth is that these two border states have been crying ”help” for months, with no response from Washington. Now that the problem is in their backyard, Democrats are willing to act, if only to throw more money at it or kick it elsewhere.

However, despite spending an estimated $106,000 per homeless person, San Francisco still has around 8,000 on the streets.

Under Bowser, the District of Columbia has raised tens of millions more in taxes in an effort to end homelessness in fiscal year 2022. However, from what we D.C. workers and residents all can see outside, that hasn’t happened here yet either.

Domestic homelessness is a thorny issue with no simple solution.

Meanwhile, the way to avoid more taxpayer-funded sheltering of homeless foreigners who are here illegally is simple: Start enforcing the law, using the Migrant Protection Protocols, Title 42, and other existing measures to shelter them securely out of the country until their cases may be considered properly.

Absent that commitment, more Bidenvilles are coming to a city near you.

*****

This article was published by The Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

 

Maricopa ‘threshold’ Program Offers Rent for Homeless

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Estimated Reading Time: < 1 minute

Maricopa County officials say efforts to help the homeless have fallen short at a critical step in their process of getting off the streets, and a new program aims to help.

The county announced Tuesday the approval to spend $5 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds to help formerly-homeless residents afford their first rental. Named “Threshold,” the program is a collaboration between property owners and managers, the county’s Human Services Department, and the local nonprofit HOM, Inc.

“Reducing homelessness requires an ‘all hands on deck’ approach—from emergency shelter services at times of crisis to permanent housing and resources that lead to self-sufficiency,” said Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates, District 3. “This partnership ensures people working to end their homelessness have a path into the rental market.”

Through Threshold, the county will give property owners rent, financial incentives, and other supports in exchange for housing someone as they begin the transition out of homelessness and get on firm financial footing.

“We believe individuals, families, and communities are safer, healthier, and stronger when everyone has a home,” said Mike Shore, President, and CEO of HOM, Inc. “The Threshold network recognizes that engaged property owners and managers are instrumental to helping people exit homelessness and seeks to make them collaborative partners in solving the housing crisis.”

Threshold is the latest in a $77 million effort to get many of the county’s thousands of homeless off the streets. As of Jan. 24, the Maricopa Association of Governments estimated 9,026 homeless people in the county.

*****

This article was published by The Center Square and is reproduced with permission.

The Homeless Election Battle

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Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

Editors’ Note: Although the following comments relate to Los Angeles, major cities in Arizona have similar issues, although not to the same extreme. The questions he raises are questions to be asked of our mayors and city councilmen. Here are some additional questions: If drug abuse is fundamentally the cause of “homelessness”, what is the plan? If people are free to pursue their own “lifestyle”, should they have the right to do it on the public’s dime and trash the lifestyle of the non-addicted? If people are free to pursue drug use as part of their lifestyle, how do you get these people into treatment? Are there really effective treatments, and if so, how do you require said treatment without violating the “rights” of the homeless? Does legalizing drugs encourage or discourage the use of harder drugs?

 

When I had the opportunity to engage one of the major candidates for Mayor of Los Angeles, I stated there are only two issues in the race.  The first being proper funding and use of the police and the second being the Homeless.  The candidate agreed with me and the issues for the June 7th election were defined.

Karen Bass announced her candidacy soon thereafter and took the lead in the polls. She released with great fanfare her own detailed policy on Homelessness.  The policy is linked here https://karenbass.com/policies/homelessness/.  I contacted her campaign to query them on what they had proposed, but they were fearful of answering legitimate questions from journalists who were not from sycophantic press outlets.

Their proposed plan left open significant items, to which I asked the following questions:

  1. The city, county, and state have been spending extensively on this issue. How specifically does your plan differ from what has been done in the last few years?
  2. Mayor Garcetti committed close to a billion dollars for the current fiscal year. Can you tell us how much has been spent by the city on the homeless issue during the last four years of the Garcetti administration?
  3. Most if not all of us would like to know who Ms. Bass has in mind as the Homeless Chief since this is a critical issue to Los Angeles, so who would that be?
  4. The plan calls for ending street encampments in the first year of her term. How exactly are you planning to clear all the encampments which appear more like MASH units moving from property to property?
  5. I am working on a homeless issue that involves city, county, and state land. I am getting the runaround about who is responsible to do what.  Specifically, how do you plan to remedy this as residents do not care whose land it is within the city’s confines?  What is your response?
  6. You state that 50% of homeless are either mentally ill or on drugs. How did you derive that figure?
  7. You cite that 59% of homelessness is because of economic issues. Where did you get that figure?
  8. Are you saying that these people are gainfully employed or employable and just cannot afford housing? If so, how many homeless are currently employed as a percentage?  How many go to work each day?
  9. I have had discussions with people on the front lines of the homeless issue and have been told a significant percentage of people who are homeless in the Los Angeles area are transplants. In other words, they moved here because of the weather and particularly the government benefits provided.  Your plan did not address this issue. Did the studies you cited address this issue? Why should the residents of Los Angeles pay for the costs of extensive housing, medical and other benefits to homeless people who relocate from other urban areas?

The candidates talk about how they are going to cure the homeless problem, but rarely speak of the ongoing costs. They certainly do not delve into how many of these people are not Los Angeles residents which brings to question why the people of Los Angeles are bearing the cost. People do not realize that the current combined budget for Los Angeles City and County is about $1.5 billion. That is a stunning figure which is enlarged by the amount the State of California is pouring into the problem.

The question the Bass Campaign does not want to answer is why they believe these figures — that 59% of homelessness is due to economic issues and not drugs or mental illness. Multiple workers have told me most of the people they relocate off properties where the Homeless are squatting want to stay where they are. In the case I dealt with in Studio City, some moved elsewhere while others just relocated to adjacent sites where their removal from the area was delayed for another few months.

Then Rick Caruso jumped in with his tough-guy campaign claiming he can solve the problem https://carusocan.com/issues/homelessness/.  His plan does not answer the same questions — again how much he is spending of our money housing people who are not even from this area. Building housing units without curing these people of their drug use and properly medicating them for mental health challenges is a waste. At least Caruso’s campaign consultant who drafted his plan does not perpetuate the lie that these people are homeless due to economic issues, but even their figure of how many are on the streets because of economic issues is far too high.

One highly placed source tried to help me access where this money is being spent in the city of Los Angeles. We found it was impossible to obtain the details even for highly placed city officials.

Candidates like Joe Buscaino, Kevin de Leon, and Mike Feuer need to tell us what their plans are and whether they are going to continue draining the wallets of local residents as elected officials have in the recent past with negative results.

We need answers unless you want the crime, harassment, squalor, and other despicable effects of this homeless issue to go on for another decade or more.

 

 

 

 

 

The Homeless Election Battle

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Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

When I had the opportunity to engage one of the major candidates for Mayor of Los Angeles, I stated there are only two issues in the race.  The first being proper funding and use of the police and the second being the Homeless.  The candidate agreed with me and the issues for the June 7th election were defined.

Karen Bass announced her candidacy soon thereafter and took the lead in the polls.  She released with great fanfare her own detailed policy on Homelessness.  The policy is linked here https://karenbass.com/policies/homelessness/.  I contacted her campaign to query them on what they had proposed, but they were fearful of answering legitimate questions from journalists who were not from sycophantic press outlets.

Their proposed plan left open significant items, to which I asked the following questions:

  1. The city, county, and state have been spending extensively on this issue. How specifically does your plan differ from what has been done in the last few years?
  2. Mayor Garcetti committed close to a billion dollars for the current fiscal year. Can you tell us how much has been spent by the city on the homeless issue during the last four years of the Garcetti administration?
  3. Most if not all of us would like to know who Ms. Bass has in mind as the Homeless Chief since this is a critical issue in Los Angeles, so who would that be?
  4. The plan calls for ending street encampments in the first year of her term. How exactly are you planning to clear all the encampments which appear more like MASH units moving from property to property?
  5. I am working on a homeless issue that involves city, county, and state land. I am getting the runaround about who is responsible to do what.  Specifically, how do you plan to remedy this as residents do not care whose land it is within the city’s confines?  What is your response?
  6. You state that 50% of the homeless are either mentally ill or on drugs. How did you derive that figure?
  7. You cite that 59% of homelessness is because of economic issues. Where did you get that figure?
  8. Are you saying that these people are gainfully employed or employable and just cannot afford housing? If so, how many homeless are currently employed as a percentage?  How many go to work each day?
  9. I have had discussions with people on the front lines of the homeless issue and have been told a significant percentage of people who are homeless in the Los Angeles area are transplants. In other words, they moved here because of the weather and particularly the government benefits provided.  Your plan did not address this issue.  Did the studies you cited address this issue? Why should the residents of Los Angeles pay for the costs of extensive housing, medical and other benefits to homeless people who relocate from other urban areas?

The candidates talk about how they are going to cure the homeless problem, but rarely speak of the ongoing costs.  They certainly do not delve into how many of these people are not Los Angeles residents which brings to question why the people of Los Angeles are bearing the cost.  People do not realize that the current combined budget for Los Angeles City and County is about $1.5 billion.  That is a stunning figure which is enlarged by the amount the State of California is pouring into the problem.

The question the Bass Campaign does not want to answer is why they believe these figures — that 59% of homelessness is due to economic issues and not drugs or mental illness.  Multiple workers have told me most of the people they relocate off properties where the Homeless are squatting want to stay where they are.  In the case I dealt with in Studio City, some moved elsewhere while others just relocated to adjacent sites where their removal from the area was delayed for another few months.

Then Rick Caruso jumped in with his tough-guy campaign claiming he can solve the problem: https://carusocan.com/issues/homelessness/.  His plan does not answer the same questions — again how much he is spending of our money housing people who are not even from this area.  Building housing units without curing these people of their drug use and properly medicating them for mental health challenges is a waste.  At least Caruso’s campaign consultant who drafted his plan does not perpetuate the lie that these people are homeless due to economic issues, but even their figure of how many are on the streets because of economic issues is far too high.

One highly placed source tried to help me access where this money is being spent in the city of Los Angeles.  We found it was impossible to obtain the details even for highly placed city officials.

Candidates like Joe Buscaino, Kevin de Leon, and Mike Feuer need to tell us what their plans are and whether they are going to continue draining the wallets of local residents as elected officials have in the recent past with negative results.

We need answers unless you want the crime, harassment, squalor, and other despicable effects of this homeless issue to go on for another decade or more.

******

This article was published by FlashReport and is reproduced with permission from the author.

 

 

 

 

 

Faced With The Horrific Results Of Their Ideas, Leftists Are Backpedaling With All Their Might

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It would appear that leftists don’t actually like a lot of the radical policies they have been advocating for since the beginning of the lockdowns and the death of George Floyd in spring 2020. From homelessness to crime to Covid policies, the left is backtracking on much of its platform in the face of disastrous results and frustration from rank-and-file liberals. Recent developments in our nation’s capital provide some of the most dramatic examples.

Cities across the country are taking a more aggressive stance on homeless encampments in response to residents’ complaints, including Washington, D.C. An early February poll conducted by The Washington Post found that three-fourths of Washingtonians support the district’s plan to clear the camps of homeless persons that now proliferate across the city.

That the American Civil Liberties Union and even some D.C. Council members oppose Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s cleanups have not stopped their enforcement. Bowser has quite a mandate for this: the number of city residents who want these camps cleared does not substantially change based on respondents’ race, and is above 70 percent for white, black, Hispanic, and Asian residents.

That the district is pursuing this policy with substantial local support is a bit ironic, given that so many prominent leftist organizations, local leftist leaders, and Democratic politicians have been trying for more than a year to protect these encampments. This included Ann Marie Staudenmaier, wife of Maryland gubernatorial candidate Tom Perez, who last year advocated for homeless camps in the district to be permitted and protected. “Don’t evict them from the only place that they have to call home,” she urged.

Perhaps it has something to do with how large numbers of homeless persons affect the cleanliness, security, and attraction of neighborhoods. A separate recent WaPo article cited residents who noted homeless persons in the camp have harassed them. One D.C. resident said downtown is “not pleasant” and that the ubiquity of the encampments threatens the security of local residents.

Although many on the left would likely grimace to say it, national trends on curbing these camps indicate a significant percentage of the rest of America feels the same way.

Refunding the Police

Mayors of America’s largest cities, once responsive to calls to defund the police, have done a dramatic reversal in response to local frustration with higher crime rates. Now “refund the police” has become the cry of many liberal residents.

In D.C., residents’ opinions on crime and police have experienced this shift, given increased crime and murder rates in the city since 2020. According to a recent WaPo poll, a sizable majority (59 percent) now agree that increasing the number of police officers patrolling communities would reduce the amount of violent crime in D.C.

“The share of Washingtonians who say they are not safe from crime has risen to 30 percent this year from 22 percent in November 2019 and is the highest in more than two decades of Post polls,” reports the WaPo.

This is quite a change from the “defund the police” initiatives city residents — and various activist groups — so loudly endorsed after the death of George Floyd. The D.C. government in 2020 supported measures in June 2022 to cut $15 million from the police department budget. At the time, the police chief warned this could lead to the loss of hundreds of officers and that underfunding training and equipment might result in officers using more excessive force.

Thankfully, D.C. is not alone in wanting to refund the police. As NBC reported in February, Democratic politicians are calling the “defund the police” movement “dead” and mayors in San Francisco, New York, and Chicago are “moving to increase police budgets and end ‘the reign of criminals.’”

Surrendering to Pandemic Fatigue

Democratic states are also ending many Covid restrictions in the face of rising complaints from their constituents. Consider D.C. Mayor Bowser’s mid-February announcement that she would lift the city’s vaccine requirement for businesses and “dial back” the city’s indoor mask rules. This announcement followed a number of states — including many governed by Democrats — that have also eased their restrictions as polls come back showing their rising unpopularity. Now D.C.’s party scene is “returning to normal,” reports the WaPo, even though coronavirus case counts in and around Washington remain “high.”

This is a remarkable and speedy shift, especially considering D.C. had some of the most strict Covid restrictions in the country. Perhaps the District’s dramatic about-face has something to do with widespread annoyance with pandemic restrictions, even among liberal voters. Perhaps it results from the rising tide of Democratic politicians listening to their constituencies despite “public health guidance” claiming the country is moving too fast in loosening the rules.

Perhaps all of these changes also relate to the fact that the District of Columbia is no longer experiencing the population boom and gentrification that have defined the last couple of decades. The capital’s population declined by 2.9 percent from 2020 to 2021, according to the Census Bureau. Living in an increasingly dangerous, filthy nanny-city is apparently not that appealing, even to the District’s majority leftist population. This has been part of a broader national trend as people across the nation in 2021 left Democratic-run states.

Mugged by Reality

To borrow a phrase from the late Irving Kristol, D.C. residents (and liberals across the country) have been mugged by reality — and in some cases actually mugged. Perhaps living in a lefty utopia where the homeless camp wherever they like, undisturbed by a defunded police force, with fickle and irrational health-related restrictions isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.

Democrat D.C. residents, like the rest of Americans, don’t actually like their public spaces overrun by homeless persons, their neighborhoods suffering increased violent crime rates, or their cities stuck in a cycle of never-ending draconian public safety regulations.

What this all means is that, thankfully, certain activist narratives that threatened all Americans have lost considerable steam. It also means these policies are likely political liabilities in upcoming elections. Perhaps it also shows there are certain things that all Americans can still agree on.

*****

This article was published in The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

Can Government Fix Their Messes?

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There are two overriding issues in Los Angeles as there are in most cities – 1) crime and 2) people living on our streets under the misnomer “Homeless.” You may recall I have worked on clearing an encampment in Studio City, CA, as laid out in my column, The Homeless Are More Important Than We Are. The saga continued and unfortunately remains an issue complicated by layers of government.

The county supervisor’s office became aware that when you look up the words “junkyard dog” in the dictionary, a picture of me adjoins the definition. I kept driving the issue to rid the area of these dangerous squatters. In the interim, a criminal had jumped my neighbor’s high, spiked fence and started roaming their yard. When the police arrived, I had a wonderful discussion with them where they told me a series of break-ins had occurred and were tied to the squatters that the county government had condoned.

On another visit to the site, county personnel were there. I had a discussion with a couple of them that was quite illuminating. These were people who worked with squatters who are homeless all over the county. They knew this issue firsthand. They informed me the site was being cleared the following week. They also confirmed the rat infestation – something that naturally accompanies trash piles and people relieving themselves without proper facilities. They told me the LAPD statement about the burglaries was accurate.

Then they confirmed something I had suspected since digging into this issue many years ago. They stated that most of these people were neither local residents nor even state residents. They came to Los Angeles for two reasons. The first being the obvious one – the weather. The other one is because of all the free things they receive in the area. The city, county, and state are spending billions on resolving the Homelessness issue when what it is really doing is attracting more people through its services. 

I have said for a while there is a simple answer as to why this problem exists in our communities – tolerance. Our elected officials and their handpicked government wonks have a policy of tolerating this behavior, and we suffer the consequences. 

After the clearing of the site, I wrote Sheila Kuehl’s Local Director with a couple of questions:

  1. Are we fumigating for rats?  They were pervasive there.
  2. There appear to be some squatters just to the east of the lot. Are they being addressed?

This was the response I received:

“Thank you for your message. The County lot was completely cleaned and the people experiencing homelessness (PEH) on the lot housed as of Friday, December 17th. The adjacent property is the jurisdiction of the state. Our office has reported the condition of the site to Caltrans already. You are also welcome to connect with your state office to follow-up. In addition, if the PEH you are referring to are on the street, please contact your City of LA Councilmember. Please also note that due to LA County redistricting, Supervisor Sheila Kuehl no longer oversees the community of Studio City. I’ve cc’d people with the office of Supervisor Katherine Barger (Studio City County Supervisor). Please connect with them moving forward regarding the site and any other County matters.”

My response to this nonsense:

“If we don’t move those people they will move back onto the lot. Those people need to be moved off and they were caused by the county allowing the Park and Ride lot to become a host site. Telling me I must chase after other governmental entities is exactly why people do not get involved. It is a Freddie Prinze situation – “not my job.” Not an acceptable answer.The County caused this;the County needs to resolve this.”

The good part of this is Supervisor Barger is someone I worked with prior to her role as chief of staff for Mike Antonovich (in office for 36 years). The initial response of personnel in Barger’s office was less than loving so I sent a “Dear Mike” email to Antonovich, and he made a phone call for me. Instant response after that.

The director of the local office has personally visited the site. I had no confidence anyone from Kuehl’s office ever did. Unfortunately, they must coordinate matters with the state and local City Council office, but they are on the job.

Results are what we are looking for. A new encampment has moved just off to a side street. The two lots and the land in between look like a modified garbage dump. See for yourself with the accompanying photos recently taken.

It is unfortunate we must experience this. It is bad political leadership, but we put these people in office.  We are the ones that can force a change.

The Homeless are More Important Than We Are

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A simple situation of trying to attend a concert at the Hollywood Bowl turned into a series of lies and deceit by the Los Angeles County government. All of this was in an apparent attempt to hide that the County has chosen to sacrifice its residents’ needs to a group of people they have neglected for years.

We have a Park-n-Ride near our home that has been in place for over 30 years to transit people to the Hollywood Bowl. The Bowl has a seating capacity of about 17,500 with parking for a fraction of that. The system of busing people has compensated for the lack of parking for many years and works extremely well. While attending a recent Van Morrison concert it appeared our local lot was shut down — a lot that is always filled to maximum capacity for any event at the Bowl.

When I called the Bowl to find out why the lot was not open, I was told that the Traffic and Safety Dept. of LA County had not renewed the contract. They offered me two lots as a replacement, both of which are out of the way. I obtained the telephone number of the person responsible at the Traffic division for the lot. When I told him what the people at the Bowl stated to me, he told me it was the Bowl that canceled the contract. After a bit of a heated conversation,  he said, she said finger-pointing, it became clear the people at the Bowl were not truthful and there was a budget fight between two LA County departments (the Bowl is owned by the County).

I returned my inquiries to the Bowl with a request to find out who had made the decision to close the lot. If you look up the word “obfuscate” in the dictionary, you will see pictures of both Bowl and LA County employees. Getting a straight answer was not in the cards. Neither party took responsibility.

The head of community relations at the Bowl contacted me and tried to shovel garbage onto the pile of lies I had been told. She finally capitulated and had the local director for Board of Supervisor Sheila Kuehl’s office contact me (yes, the same villain from a prior column).

After a brief discussion, all the lies about who and why the decision was made faded away. The County cut the lot off for transit because there were homeless encampments on the lot. She then cited a CDC recommendation (we have heard this story before) that the homeless should not be relocated to mitigate the further spread of COVID.

First, I thought why was the CDC opining on the homeless? Why are they expanding their domain when they are struggling to cover the area for which they are responsible? I went on the CDC website and read the expansive commentary and could not find any prohibition against moving any homeless people. The woman from Kuehl’s office sent me a paragraph stating the people on the lot should not be dispersed because of the possible spread of COVID.

That brought up lots of thoughts. Homeless have been known to carry any of six other communicable diseases including Hepatitis A, Tuberculosis and Hepatitis C. The County moved homeless before COVID, and those diseases do not have easy cures. Then I made a logical, simple suggestion – quarantine the people on the lot, vaccinate them and then move them. Issue solved. No response to that one. I suggested that since you are requiring Sheriff Deputies to get a vaccination or be fired, why can’t you require the same for these people? Then I told her that a group of homeless had been moved from a site very close to the Studio City lot. Her answer was that site is in the City of Los Angeles, but the lot is in the County. A discussion ensued on that point (to state the obvious).

Then I went to the site, and this is what I wrote to Kuehl’s office director. “I was at the site yesterday morning to which it appears no one is tending. When did it become a motor home park because there are four on-site? No toilets: these people are ‘going’ somewhere but not in facilities. That is creating a dangerous situation for everyone. I saw piles of trash and I did see syringes in the trash pile I drove by. There must be rats running around all that. And do you think the county is treating this humanely by leaving them there? Quarantine them, get them COVID shots and move them. Do your jobs and stop telling me who you are working with because their efforts are worthless. ”

She informed me of the efforts she and an alphabet soup of agencies and NGOs were making to “rehouse” these people. Isn’t it nice how governmental wonks produce new nomenclature to cover situations? I instructed her that to rehouse them they would have had to be in houses in the first place. They have been living in tents.

Before anyone jumps to the conclusion I am insensitive to the needs of these people, let me tell you what I tell everyone. When you walk by one of these people you should think “there but for the grace of God go I.” Having read extensively about this situation we should stop referring to them as “homeless.” Virtually every person on the street has a drug problem, a mental illness problem, or both. Putting them in a $500,000 unit (yes, that is what they are building in LA) will solve nothing. They need proper drug counseling and medical care. Once that is achieved there is some hope of rehabilitation and getting them back to a normal life. It has been achieved by many people.

Playing namby-pamby with them is doing us and them no good. The population does not seem to go down. They are a danger to themselves and often to us. There are regular reports in my community of attacks on residents and intrusions into homes. Living on a County lot without proper facilities and a means to obtain daily nutrition is inhumane.

Using the excuse of COVID for allowing them to remain on county property is not confronting the situation at hand. Kuehl and the other Supervisors are just kicking the can down the road.

*****

This article was published on November 7, 2021, in FlashReport and is reproduced with permission from the author.