Tag Archive for: Homeless Industrial Complex

Special Interests Prevent Solving Homelessness in California

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When deducting from the count those homeless individuals who at least have a roof over their heads, half of America’s so-called “unsheltered” homeless are living in California. It’s not hard to understand why. Along with the most hospitable weather on earth, California also is a welcoming place for drug addicts, petty thieves, and anyone else attracted to beachside living with free government food and not the slightest requirement to work.

Federal law doesn’t help. The disastrous “Housing First” rule, emanating from HUD during the Obama era, restricts use of federal funds to help the homeless to paying for housing to the exclusion of, for example, drug counseling and job training, until “supportive housing” is constructed for every homeless person – a moving target and an impossible goal.

If federal funds weren’t enough incentive to reject a more holistic approach to reducing homelessness, there are a series of 9th Circuit Court rulings, Martin vs Boise in particular, that prohibit enforcement of vagrancy laws unless sufficient shelter beds are available. And that ruling, instead of being challenged by beleaguered cities across California’s forgiving coast, has been parlayed by bureaucrats and “nonprofit” developers (with for-profit vendors and interlocking directorates) into the Homeless Industrial Complex, a vast parasitic empire where “permanent supportive housing” is constructed at an average cost well in excess of $500,000 per unit, at a rate that doesn’t begin to keep pace with the growth in the unsheltered population.

California’s state laws add fuel to the fire. There is Prop. 47, sold to voters in 2014 as somehow guaranteed to reduce crime merely by downgrading felony drug and property crimes to misdemeanors. On top of that came Prop. 57, approved by voters in 2016, abetted by AB 109, passed by the legislature in 2011, both of which released tens of thousands of “non-violent” criminals out of state prisons and county jails without the means to monitor and assist their transition back into society.

If all these enlightened steps successfully pushed by California’s policymakers and public influencers were designed to lower crime and restore order to chaotic streets, they have demonstrably had the opposite effect. From Arkansas to Atlanta and from New York City to Oklahoma, addicts and predators now follow the setting sun, to a land where anything goes.

It isn’t as if solutions to California’s homeless epidemic aren’t hiding in plain sight. Repeal Prop 47, Prop. 57 and AB 109, and watch tens of thousands of homeless suddenly find housing. Once vagrancy, drug use, and repetitive petty theft are once again made illegal and convictions carry consequences, it will no longer be possible to live on the Venice Beach boardwalk, perpetually high, scaring the straights and stealing whatever amenities aren’t provided for free by government “ambassadors.” Once the choice is “go to the shelter or go to jail,” the incentives will reverse, the number of remaining homeless will be magically reduced, and the remaining challenge will become more manageable.

As for California’s shelters, the new ones being built are grossly overpriced and sited in locations deliberately chosen to escalate costs based on the absurd premise that everyone deserves to live on the beach in Southern California regardless of their means. California might instead consider the example of how New York City has decided to handle their foreign refuge influx (thank you, Governor Abbot, for focusing the minds of NYC bureaucrats). In a rare display of cost-effective innovation, they have – virtually overnight – constructed an 84,000 square foot semi-permanent facility that can be expanded to house up to 1,000 refugees. The cost for this structure so far, already with a 500 person capacity is an astonishingly reasonable $325,000.

There is no reason the City of Los Angeles, as well as the County of Los Angeles, cannot erect similar shelters on less expensive real estate in the city or rural areas of the county. These shelters can be built on one of the county’s estimated 14,000 government owned properties, or if they cannot be located on land outside of residential neighborhoods, land can be purchased in areas with lower cost rural real estate. As for families with children, huge, beautiful all-weather tents cost under $1,000 each. Why aren’t solutions like this being tested?

There’s plenty of money. In fact, there is a stupefying amount of money, almost none of it being spent wisely. Last year the County of Los Angeles spent “over $1.0 billion” on homeless programs. The City of Los Angeles is planning to spend $1.3 billion this year on homeless programs. The other 87 cities in Los Angeles County are surely also allocating substantial funds for the homeless. It is reasonable to estimate over $3.0 billion will be spent this year, overall, by local governments in Los Angeles County to assist what at last count were 75,000 homeless, 55,000 of them unsheltered. That’s $40,000 per person. The cost for a structure like what NYC has come up with for their refugees? Less than $200 per person. That’s a lot of money left over for security, operations, food, health care, job training, and drug counseling.

Anyone expecting to see California’s state and local governments do anything sensible, however, is ignoring the momentum of history and the magnitude of the corruption that grips the state with an implacable and irresistible tenacity evocative of a Burmese python squeezing the life out of a rabbit. Passed by the state legislator and on deck to be sold to voters in March 2024 is the proposed Amendment 2, which will take away the right for local governments anywhere in the state to reject welfare housing projects in their neighborhoods. Piling on, the state legislature is also offering California’s spring primary voters the proposed Amendment 10, championed by the smart money favorite to be U.S. president in another 18 months, Governor Newsom. Amendment 10 will declare all Californians to have an inalienable “right to housing.” Imagine the implementation of this beast.

Pigs already at the trough of the homeless industrial complex must be slavering in anticipation. But what about deregulating the most over-regulated housing market in America, the real reason housing is unaffordable in California? Not a chance. Better to tamper with the state constitution, so the government and their cronies can continue to handle California’s shortage of housing and surplus of homeless. They’ve done everything so well so far.

Not to be outdone, the City of Los Angeles, blessed with a city council so hard-left that they would make Nicolás Maduro blush, has come up with the “Responsible Hotel Ordinance,” a measure that would “require hotel operators to report to the city, every day, the number of vacant rooms at their establishments so the city can send homeless people over to the hotels to stay in the rooms that night.” The cost? Paid by the taxpayers. The impact on tourists and conventioneers? Tough. After all, these are mere “quality of life” inconveniences, the price of privilege.

One might argue that rounding up the unsheltered and herding them into tents is inhumane. They would be wrong. Spending obscene amounts of money on overbuilt, overpriced, inappropriately located “supportive housing,” while addicts are left on the street to die and predators terrorize cherished public venues; that is inhumane. Build the tents, move them in, and use the piles of suddenly available cash to help them recover their sobriety, their sanity, their skills, their dignity, and their lives.

An edited version of this article originally appeared in City Journal.

Newsom’s Homeless Policies Require Radical Revision

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California’s Homeless Industrial Complex was delivered a minor jolt last month, when Governor Newsom “issued a blanket rejection of local California governments’ plans to curb homelessness, putting on hold hundreds of millions of dollars in aid.”

The panic was short-lived, however, when in a November 18 conference in Sacramento the governor relented and released yet another billion dollars to California’s cities and counties after their representatives all pledged that “in the next round, they commit to more aggressive plans to reduce street homelessness.”

Oh please. “We’re going to plan to make more ‘aggressive’ plans. Ok? Now give us the money.”

This is theatre, but it doesn’t have to be. Newsom is one of the few individuals in California with the power to completely upend the corrupt, phony compassion-spewing army of opportunistic bureaucrats, nonprofits, and politically connected developers who have squandered billions in order to make California’s homeless crisis worse than ever.

Newsom was right to reject funding requests that, on balance, claimed they would only reduce homelessness in California by two percent. But he is wrong to expect that “more aggressive policies” will ever be effective unless the fundamental model to combat homelessness is completely scrapped and replaced.

Homeless policy in California rests on premises that guarantee ongoing failure. The so-called “Housing First” doctrine, which requires the homeless to be given free housing without any behavioral conditions before they can be treated for mental illness or substance addiction, much less trained to develop marketable skills, is a failure.

The decriminalization of sociopathic behavior including public use of hard drugs and repetitive petty theft, along with court rulings that prevent police from removing people from public places unless they can offer them free shelter, is a failure.

And the conflation of the obligation to provide “supportive housing” with the prevailing scam whereby a few thousand units of housing are built at a cost of a few billion dollars, is an abject, scandalous failure.

Finally, California’s neglected water, energy, and transportation infrastructure, its decimated timber industry, its offshoring of the sources for every necessary building material, its punitive policies of urban containment, its protracted, capricious, and extortionate process to obtain building permits, and its ridiculously overwrought building codes – all of this defined by fanatics and orchestrated by oligopolists – is the real reason housing is unaffordable.

If Governor Newsom wants to help the homeless, he will reject all of these premises. He will denounce the Housing First policy as unbalanced and ineffective, he will demand legislative and legal actions to reform laws that prevent police from arresting criminals and institutionalizing psychotics, and he will set a cap on how much a shelter bed will cost and challenge cities and counties to come up with solutions within that constraint.

All Newsom has to do to ensure cities and counties adhere to these new and radical revisions to homeless policy in California is withhold the money. All of it. It’s a lot of money. According to the LAO, last year the State of California “provided $10.7 billion to 50 housing and homelessness-related programs across 15 state entities.”

That probably isn’t all the money being spent. Deciphering state budget allocations, taking into account the many ways “housing” and “homeless” are categorized, perusing the general fund, capital accounts, bond financings, federal pass-throughs, special funds, and who knows what else, is a fool’s errand. There are infinite routes through the labyrinth, all of them yielding different results. Expect $10.7 billion to be the low number. That’s a pretty big Minotaur, but that’s only the state’s share.

Then there is the money California’s cities and counties are also pouring into the maw of the Homeless Industrial Complex. Earlier this year, the City of Los Angeles agreed to commit another $3 billion to house “some” of its homeless. In this current fiscal year, Los Angeles County has budgeted $532 million to “fight homelessness.” These totals don’t include additional spending on low income housing and rent subsidies. They don’t include spending on homeless and housing programs by the other 87 incorporated cities in Los Angeles County. They don’t include the rest of California’s cities and counties.

It isn’t necessary to wade through over 500 local budgets to know tens of billions of dollars have been squandered, because of political choices that created the homeless crisis, the housing shortage, and then made the problem worse instead of better.

Consider the KTLA report from February 2022, exposing a homeless housing project where each unit under development was going to cost $837,000 per unit. Consider what outraged residents in LA’s Venice neighborhood have dubbed the Monster on the Median, projected to cost over $100 million to construct, on land that’s worth at least another $50 million, in order to offer 140 units of subsidized housing.

This is blatant, deplorable corruption. It’s everywhere. And it’s all perfectly legal. Newsom, it’s time to go beyond words. Take this to the next level. End this. Now.

Estimates of California’s homeless population range in excess of 150,000 individuals. How much would it cost in an honest, functional society to get them off the streets? First, one must understand – and this is based on evidence gathered from people with extensive and direct experience working with the homeless – if California’s laws were revised to make laws against vagrancy, intoxication and theft enforceable again, half of the homeless (or more) would vanish overnight. They would return to domiciles they had previously spurned in favor of the freedom and unaccountability of the street.

The homeless that remained after changing the legal environment could be managed by reserving existing shelter space and supportive housing for those unsheltered homeless who can remain sober and accept counseling and job training. There is already enough capacity built to handle those homeless who are willing and able to work towards regaining their independence.

The rest – and this would be most of them – could be sorted according to their afflictions into cohorts of criminals, addicts, and psychotics. The addicts and the criminals could be removed to regional camps set up in inexpensive parts of the California’s urban counties. These camps could be set up for millions of dollars, not billions, using expertise on loan from U.N. personnel who have done similar work, overnight and on a budget, in conflict zones all over the world. To help earn their keep, they could participate in conservation projects and other character building work, and recover their sobriety, their dignity, and eventually their freedom. The truly mentally ill would have to be placed, involuntarily, in psychiatric hospitals.

Taking this approach to the homeless crisis would not be cheap. Expanding the capacity of psychiatric hospitals, in particular, will cost hundreds of millions. But overall, this approach would work, and it would cost far less than what is being spent today to execute policies that have merely turned California into a magnet for the indigent of the nation. Incremental shifts in homeless policy in California will never solve the problem. And Gavin Newsom knows it.

Do more, governor.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

Exposing the Homeless Industrial Complex

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Earlier this month a guest column in San Jose Spotlight defended efforts by homeless nonprofits to end homelessness in Santa Clara County. The author, Ray Bramson, is Chief Impact Officer at the nonprofit “Destination Home,” a tax exempt organization that collected over $62 million in contributions and grants in 2020. The CEO of this organization made a reported $335,404 in that year, and one of the directors made a whopping $754,871, of which a hefty $693,186 was “base compensation.”

Let’s suppose these salaries are justifiable, since it isn’t unusual for an organization with revenue of $62 million to have executives who make that much. The problem is that this organization is the product of perverse incentives. The management of public space has been taken over by what has now become a homeless industrial complex. Organizations like Destination Home will not flourish if homelessness is eliminated. Instead, like many other prosperous nonprofits and heavily funded government programs, the more they fail, the bigger they get.

In his column, Bramson attacks his critics. He writes, “The rhetoric machine likes to foment discord with the general public. It’s either that nothing is being done or it’s being done the wrong way. We need to criminalize, blame the individual for their shortcomings, complain about costs, or find a way to protect the community first, which almost always means putting the needs of the most vulnerable people last.”

Well, in deference to Bramson, plenty is being done. But it’s being done the wrong way. Earlier this year, Santa Clara County announced a plan to spend $75 million to build 758 apartments for the homeless. That’s 100,000 per unit, which, believe it or not, is considerably less than many other counties and cities in California are spending. Then again, it isn’t clear what matching funds may not be included in that total. But when the response to homelessness is to spend millions, or billions, to build subsidized housing, these homeless advocates are missing a more fundamental point: The doctrine of “housing first,” is flawed.

“Housing First” is defined as “an approach to quickly and successfully connect individuals and families experiencing homelessness to permanent housing without preconditions and barriers to entry, such as sobriety, treatment or service participation requirements” (italics added).

It is difficult to imagine an approach that is more naïve, more corruptible, or more counterproductive. When it comes to giving people free housing with no conditions, the more you build, the more people will come. Free housing is not only a magnet for the indigent, it breeds indigence. And yet Housing First has been the governing principle in homeless policy for nearly twenty years – precisely the period in which rates of homelessness have exploded.

California’s homeless industrial complex is not populated by idiots. They ought know that if you don’t put behavioral conditions on subsidized or free housing, you will never stop attracting people to avail themselves of your service. In some cases the offer of free housing will even corrupt the character of individuals who are teetering between becoming unproductive and letting the system take care of them, or trying harder to maintain sobriety and personal independence.

When Bramson accuses critics of the homeless industrial complex of being a “rhetoric machine” that likes to “foment discord,” he’s being more than a bit hypocritical. Whenever public meetings are held over where to site subsidized apartment buildings in peaceful neighborhoods, objections from the local residents are overwhelmed by well organized and belligerent homeless activists who don’t live there, who shout them down, calling them privileged, racists and YIMBYs. The comments that followed Bramson’s column, overwhelmingly skeptical, offer an authentic perspective from the community:

“How about actually treating severe mental illness and substance abuse as opposed to putting chronically homeless people in the wrong programs with the wrong interventions while not addressing root causes? This is the Housing First model defined – and people like you aimlessly support it, while never questioning why the issue has gotten worse, a lot worse, over the last 10-years.”

Or,

“The homeless around my home have dehumanized themselves by defecating in my yard and bushes, burning down tree after tree, stealing water and power from my porch, creating and leaving piles of putrefying waste everywhere, screaming and yelling constantly, parading around without pants, etc. I’d be more than happy to pay taxes to reopen the state’s mental health system, but no politician is trying to do so. The theory that more housing will reduce homelessness is laughable when one actually comes into contact with the homeless people currently occupying all the encampments. These people don’t want housing, they want to just be left alone to do as they please.”

These comments are evidence of a failed scheme. Housing First costs too much, takes too long, creates its own inexhaustible demand, corrupts individuals who might otherwise get their life in order, cannibalizes funding for mental hospitals and shelters, and it has created a monster – the Homeless Industrial Complex – a coalition of organizations in California that have already collected and spent tens of billions of dollars to execute a scheme that has only made the problem of homelessness worse.

It is an opportunistic lie for defenders of Housing First to claim that critics of the Homeless Industrial Complex don’t care about the less fortunate, or that these critics haven’t done their homework. In speaking with people running homeless shelters from San Diego to Sacramento, and asking them what has to be done, every one of them ultimately gave the same answer: At least two thirds of the homeless are either alcoholics, drug addicts, or mentally ill, and they must be treated, and the only way to treat them is to incarcerate them.

Michael Shellenberger, a progressive activist that has done extensive research into the homeless crisis in California, has made this clear in countless articles as well as in his book, “San Fransicko.” As he wrote in May of this year, “Three times more homeless die under ‘Housing First’ than ‘Shelter First’ policies. Shellenberger is right. For their own sake, homeless people need to be moved off the streets, sorted according to their afflictions, and placed in shelters. These shelters can be located on less expensive real estate, and the money saved can be used to treat them.

There is nothing compassionate about letting substance abusers and psychotics live on the street. Housing first, a policy cooked up by HUD during the Obama administration, has created what is now an extremely profitable scam for public bureaucrats, powerful nonprofits, and politically connected developers. But it is not working for anyone else.

This article originally appeared in Epoch Times.

California’s Homeless Housing Scam

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Pogressive politicians have created the homeless crisis. Their policies have made housing unaffordable, driven away decent job opportunities, and encouraged vagrancy and drug addiction. Their solution—taxpayer subsidized housing, provided free and with no conditions imposed on any homeless person—is a special interest scam, guaranteed never to solve the problem. And nowhere in America is that problem worse than in Los Angeles, California.

Over the past week, two local elected officials in Los Angeles have made public statements on the homeless crisis that grips the region. They represent two completely different perspectives on how to resolve that crisis.

The first came in the form of a thank you letter from retiring Los Angeles City Council member Mike Bonin, sent to those of his constituents who wish him well in whatever he does next. With respect to his legacy, Bonin writes: “By providing housing and services, we are changing lives and providing a pathway out of homelessness. Since the launch of the Venice Beach Encampments to Homes initiative, 76 people have been permanently housed.”

Seventy six people. Remember that number.

Bonin’s philosophy is consistent with what remains of the prevailing progressive doctrine regarding homelessness, known as “Housing First.” It is defined on the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development website as “an approach to quickly and successfully connect individuals and families experiencing homelessness to permanent housing without preconditions and barriers to entry, such as sobriety, treatment or service participation requirements.”

This approach has made Bonin infamous even among the mostly progressive residents of Venice Beach, where an estimated 2,000 homeless have taken over this tiny beachfront suburb of Los Angeles. Only a small fraction of them have been given “supportive housing” or temporary shelter, and only a small fraction are held accountable for using and selling hard drugs, public intoxication, theft, vandalism, or worse.

The other public official who has recently weighed in on L.A.’s challenges is the outspoken county sheriff, Alex Villanueva. In an interview with California Insider, Villanueva describes how progressive policies have combined to “defund, defame, and defang” his department.

In a must-watch video, Villanueva claims the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is the only major local government in the United States that has not begun to pull back from the defund the police movement. He claims the worst effect of defunding is the hiring freeze, which has prevented the department’s veterans from mentoring new hires before they retire.

But it is the county’s response to the homeless crisis that draws Villanueva’s most withering remarks.

“The problem with city government and county government is that they [woke ideologues] occupy every seat at the table,” according to Villanueva. “That’s why every single plan the city has, or the county has, with regard to homelessness is destined to fail. No other opinion gets in.”

“They think that if we build enough supportive housing we will end homelessness in Los Angeles,” he continued. “But the more you build, the more people will come. Right now we have 25 percent of the nation’s homeless in Los Angeles County. What’s going to prevent more homeless people from coming to Los Angeles if they see someone living in a $500,000 condo with a beach view? They’ll say, ‘hey, I want one too.’ We cannot create the magnet that brings other people here.”

Subsidized Housing: The Boondoggle Archipelago

Villianueva is not exaggerating, and the problem has been known for some time.

In a 2019 report by the California Policy Center titled “The Boondoggle Archipelago,” several representative examples of staggering costs for “supportive housing” were documented. San Francisco’s Proposition A funded housing at an estimated cost of $500,000 per unit. Alameda County’s Measure A1 funds housing at $736,000 per unit. San Jose’s Measure A funds housing at between $406,000 and $706,000 per unit. Los Angeles’ plan to repurpose an existing structure on the Veterans Affairs campus in West Los Angeles cost $926,000 per unit. Also in Los Angeles, $1.2 billion in bonds to construct supportive housing will cost an estimated $550,000 per unit.

And back in Venice Beach, Mike Bonin’s backyard, officials plan to build 140 new apartment units on a city-owned property that is currently the only significant beach parking available to the public. Dubbed “The Monster on the Median” by outraged residents, the estimated total project cost comes up to at least $1.1 million per unit.

These costs are not coming down. For the 2021-2022 fiscal year, Los Angeles County has budgeted $527 million to address homelessness. For same fiscal year, the city of Los Angeles has allocated $1 billion, nearly 10 percent of all spending, “for the homeless crisis.” Add to that the spending by many other cities in Los Angeles County, plus direct state and federal spending, plus the ongoing disbursements from bonds approved for homeless housing. Will it work?

The last time Los Angeles County counted its homeless was in 2020, because the 2021 count was canceled due to COVID. The 2022 count has been postponed for the same reason. But in 2020 there were an estimated 66,000 homeless in Los Angeles County. It is unlikely that housing has kept up with the influx since, as Villanueva accurately proclaims, Los Angeles is a national magnet for homeless migration. At $500,000 per unit, it would cost $33 billion to house every homeless person in Los Angeles, assuming no more arrived. That doesn’t include the swollen bureaucracy and ongoing costs to manage homeless housing, nor any spending to actually treat them and get them on a path to independence.

As noted in a lengthy 2019 study published by the California Policy Center titled “The Homeless Industrial Complex,” and as expressed more recently in a provocative and compelling book, San Fransicko, by the writer and activist Michael Shellenberger, homelessness is not simply a housing problem to be solved with more housing. It is primarily a mental illness, drug addiction, and crime problem. At the very least, some of the billions in public funds for “housing first” need to be redirected, with equal amounts spent immediately on treatment, and for some, incarceration. In many cases, involuntary treatment—i.e., incarceration—is the only way to rescue people from addiction.

A Confluence of Interests

Mike Bonin, along with countless other intransigent progressives, refuses to accept this reality. But ideological idiocy alone does not explain why common sense reforms aren’t sweeping away these failed policies.

The homelessness and crime problems afflicting California’s cities, especially Los Angeles, have not been solved because there is a confluence of interests between public bureaucrats, powerful nonprofits, and politically connected housing developers, who prefer that policies remain unchanged. The billions pour in, and as the problem only gets worse, additional billions pour in, enriching a Homeless Industrial Complex that thrives on failure.

Members of law enforcement in Los Angeles County, from the elected sheriff to the officers on the streets to the unions that represent them (to their immense credit) have recognized that progressive ideology—as epitomized by retiring local politician Mike Bonin—has caused the problem and is only making the problem worse. It is up to the remaining players that influence policy in Los Angeles and elsewhere to come to the same conclusion.

Eventually, we may hope common sense will prevail. Deregulate home construction. Stop harassing private employers and let them create jobs. Stop decriminalizing crime. Build inexpensive and safe shelters on inexpensive real estate. Reject entirely the absurd position that drug addiction is a legitimate “lifestyle.” Get addicts off the streets and get them sober.

As it is, Los Angeles is more than just a progressive failure. It is a false beacon to every troubled person in America who stands at the crossroads between recovering their dignity with hard work and self-discipline, and succumbing to drugs and dissolution. It is a blazing, nihilistic beacon, telling these souls they can give up, come to California, live on the beach, and disintegrate.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

Will Police Unions try to Change Homeless Policy?

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Over the past week two local elected officials in Los Angeles have made public statements on the homeless crisis that grips the region. They represent two completely different perspectives on how to resolve the crisis.

The first comes in the form of a thank you letter from retiring Los Angeles city council member Mike Bonin, sent to those of his constituents who wish him well in whatever he does next. With respect to his legacy, Bonin writes:

“By providing housing and services, we are changing lives and providing a pathway out of homelessness. Since the launch of the Venice Beach Encampments to Homes initiative, 76 people have been permanently housed.” Seventy six people. Remember that number.

Bonin’s philosophy is consistent with what remains the prevailing progressive doctrine regarding homelessness, known as “Housing First.” It is defined on the US Department of Housing and Urban Development website as “an approach to quickly and successfully connect individuals and families experiencing homelessness to permanent housing without preconditions and barriers to entry, such as sobriety, treatment or service participation requirements.”

This approach has made Bonin infamous even among the mostly progressive residents of Venice Beach, where an estimated 2,000 homeless have taken over this tiny beachfront suburb of Los Angeles. Only a small fraction of them have been given “supportive housing” or temporary shelter, and only a small fraction held accountable for using and selling hard drugs, public intoxication, theft, vandalism, or worse.

The other public official who has recently weighed in on these challenges facing Los Angeles is their county sheriff, the outspoken Alex Villanueva. In an interview with California Insider, Villanueva describes how progressive policies have combined to “defund, defame and defang” his department.

In a must-watch video, Villanueva claims that the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is the only major local government in the U.S. that has not begun to pull back from the defund the police movement. He claims the worst impact of defunding is the hiring freeze, which has prevented the department’s veterans from mentoring new hires before they retire. But it is the county’s response to the homeless crisis that draws Villanueva’s most withering remarks.

“The problem with city government and county government is that they [woke ideologues] occupy every seat at the table,” according to Villanueva, “That’s why every single plan the city has, or the county has, with regard to homelessness is destined to fail. No other opinion gets in.”

“They think that if we build enough supportive housing we will end homelessness in Los Angeles. But the more you build, the more people will come. Right now we have 25 percent of the nation’s homeless in Los Angeles County. What’s going to prevent more homeless people from coming to Los Angeles if they see someone living in a $500,000 condo with a beach view? They’ll say, ‘hey, I want one too.’ We cannot create the magnet that brings other people here.”

California’s Subsidized Housing – The Boondoggle Archipelago

Villianueva is not exaggerating, and this problem has been known for some time. In a 2019 report by the California Policy Center entitled “The Boondoggle Archipelago,” several representative examples of staggering costs for “supportive housing” were revealed. San Francisco’s Proposition A funding housing at an estimated cost of $500,000 per unit. Alameda County’s Measure A1 funds for housing costing $736,000 per unit. San Jose’s Measure A funds for housing coming in at between $406,000 and $706,000 per unit. Los Angeles’s plan to repurpose an existing structure on the Veterans Affairs campus in West Los Angeles to create supportive housing at a cost of $926,000 per unit. Also in Los Angeles, $1.2 billion in bonds to construct supportive housing at an estimated cost of $550,000 per unit.

And back in Venice Beach, Mike Bonin’s back yard, the plan to create 140 new apartment units on a city owned property that is currently the only significant beach parking available to the public. Dubbed “The Monster on the Median” by outraged residents, the estimated total project cost comes up to at least $1.1 million per unit.

These costs are not coming down. But for the 2021-22 fiscal year Los Angeles County has budgeted $527 million to address homelessness. Also for the 2021-22 fiscal year, the City of Los Angeles has allocated $1.0 billion, nearly 10 percent of all spending, “for the homeless crisis.” Add to that the spending on homeless by many other cities in Los Angeles County, plus direct state and federal spending, plus the ongoing disbursements from bonds approved for homeless housing. Will it work?

The most recent homeless count for Los Angeles County was in 2020, with the 2021 count cancelled because of COVID and, for that same reason, the 2022 count postponed at this time. But in 2020 there were an estimated 66,000 homeless in Los Angeles County. It is unlikely that housing has kept up with the influx, since, as Sheriff Villanueva accurately proclaims, Los Angeles is a national magnet for homeless migration. At $500,000 per unit, it would cost $33 billion to house every homeless person in Los Angeles, assuming no more arrived. That doesn’t include the bureaucracy swollen and perpetual costs to manage homeless housing, nor any spending to actually treat them and get them on a path to independence.

As noted in a lengthy 2019 study published by the California Policy Center entitled “The Homeless Industrial Complex,” and as expressed more recently in a provocative and compelling book, “San Fransicko,” by the writer and activist Michael Shellenberger, homelessness is not just a housing issue, to be solved by more housing. It is primarily a mental illness, drug addiction, and crime issue. At the very least, some of the billions in taxpayer sourced funds that are mandated to be spent on “housing first” need to be redirected, with equal amounts spent immediately on treatment, and for some, incarceration. In many cases, involuntary treatment, i.e., incarceration, is the only way to rescue people from addiction.

Mike Bonin, along with countless other intransigent progressives, refuse to accept this reality. But ideological idiocy alone does not explain why common sense reforms aren’t sweeping away these failed policies.

The homelessness and crime afflicting California’s cities, especially Los Angeles, has not been solved because there is an identity of interests between public bureaucrats, powerful nonprofits, and politically connected housing developers, who prefer that policies remain unchanged. The billions pour in, and as the problem only gets worse, additional billions pour in, enabling a Homeless Industrial Complex that thrives on failure.

Members of law enforcement in Los Angeles County, from the elected sheriff to the officers on the streets to the unions that represent them, and to their immense credit, have recognized that progressive ideology – as epitomized by retiring local politician Mike Bonin – has created the problem and is only making the problem worse. It is up to the remaining players that influence policy in Los Angeles and elsewhere to come to the same conclusion, despite whatever detriment a new approach might inflict on their budgets and their prerogatives.

This article originally appeared on the website California Globe.

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The Homeless Industrial Complex and the California State Budget

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AUDIO/VIDEO:  How attempts to help the homeless have been taken over by the Homeless Industrial Complex, a system of legalized corruption where billions of dollars are wasted building “supportive housing” at a cost of over $500,000 per unit, and only developers and politicians benefit. 2nd segment: A quick look at California’s just-released 2021-22 State Budget proposal  – 18 minutes on KABC Los Angeles – Edward Ring on the Larry O’Connor Show.

Mayor Garcetti’s Homeless Policy is Destroying Los Angeles

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Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti is arguably the most incompetent, destructive, negligent, no good, irresponsible mayor in American history. And he’s got plenty of competition, especially now. San Francisco’s London Breed, Ted Wheeler in Portland, Bill DeBlasio in New York City. Blue City mayors bent on destroying civilization are plentiful, but Eric Garcetti is the worst member of this odious gang.

It isn’t as if Garcetti doesn’t have partners in the ongoing annihilation of urban civilization in what ought to be America’s magnificent megacity on the Pacific Rim. He’s got a city council that is equally corrupt and delusional, and a newly elected Los Angeles County District Attorney, George Gascon, who is one of the most dangerous, pompous imbeciles to ever live. But Garcetti is in the bully pulpit. Garcetti sets the tone. Garcetti could make a positive difference if he had the vision and the guts. The buck stops with Garcetti.

Garcetti attracted well deserved outrage when he not only arbitrarily enforced “lockdown” orders throughout most of 2020, but went a step further and posted a page online – still up – where people can turn in anyone they think is violating the “Safer at Home” order. Then, just in case anyone hadn’t yet realized what a sinister authoritarian they had as mayor, Garcetti set up a bounty to encourage people to turn in their neighbors, and announced to the press that “snitches get rewards.”

The arbitrary enforcement of pandemic restrictions make Garcetti’s snitch hotline particularly offensive. Neighbors, and competitors, get paid to anonymously turn in the corner bistro or nail salon, while big box retailers and corporate fast food franchises stay open with impunity. Citizens can be turned in and cited for walking their dog, while within the city’s growing archipelago of homeless favelas, anything goes.

The problem of affordable housing and a growing homeless population afflicted Los Angeles before the pandemic, and since the pandemic began has become worse than ever. It is the signature failure of Garcetti’s mayoral tenure. The manner in which Garcetti has bungled the related issues of housing and the homeless provides a sordid glimpse into an administration riddled with corruption and delusion. They have literally done everything wrong.

There are many flawed theories that underlie housing and homeless policies in Los Angeles. To name a few: “Housing first,” first endorsed by Obama’s Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, which prioritizes funds to provide shelter before using any government money for treatment or counseling. The concept of “wet shelters,” which admit homeless individuals regardless of their sobriety. And the most misguided of all, “inclusive zoning,” the preposterous theory that the most appropriate way to house the homeless is to construct shelters on some of the most expensive real estate on earth.

This notion, that somehow anyone who is homeless, for whatever reason, has a right to live for free in a wealthy neighborhood, would be material for hilarious satire, except for the fact that the purveyors of this nonsense are dead serious. Some of the proponents of inclusive zoning are motivated by compassion unfettered by the numerous reality checks that should apply, others are stone cold communists, determined to destroy the rights of property owners. But the most influential advocates for inclusive zoning are the special interests that correctly recognize it as a scam they can ride to riches.

On January 13, the City of Los Angeles Planning Commission is going to vote on whether to approve the “Reese-Davidson Community,” a proposed 140 unit monstrosity to be built on 2.8 acres that straddle the main thoroughfares connecting Venice Beach to the rest of Los Angeles. Located just a block from the beach, the city-owned property is currently used to provide parking for beach visitors. The most virtuous choice for the city would be to keep the property as it is, at least if they ever manage to make the beach a safe place again for families to visit on the weekends. But there are other options.

Real estate in the heart of Venice Beach and close to the ocean is extremely expensive. The market value of this land, if it were sold to a developer to build an unsubsidized, 140 unit multi-family complex, is conservatively estimated at $35 million. Imagine how this money might be spent by a resourceful city council committed to helping more people at a reasonable cost. Low income housing can be built in low income areas of Los Angeles for a fraction of the cost for the Reese-Davidson project, as can “permanent supportive housing” for the homeless. The construction cost alone is estimated at over $1,000 per square foot, over $68 million. Taking into account the value of the land and the parking structure, this project is going to end up costing over $735,000 per unit – most of them studios.

This isn’t unusual for taxpayer subsidized housing projects in Los Angeles. In 2019 the City Controller, Ron Galperin, published an embarrassing audit of how the city used its voter approved Prop. HHH funds, which authorized the city to issue $1.2 billion in general obligation bonds to partially subsidize the development of supportive housing units. The gist of that report? Galperin writes: “The current median cost per unit for projects in the Proposition HHH pipeline is $531,373, and more than 1,000 units are projected to exceed $600,000.”

The implications of these findings, which represent not only a scandal for Los Angeles, but dozens of other cities in California under the same mismanagement, illustrate the futility of this approach. To house the more than 60,000 homeless living in Los Angeles today at these prices for shelter would cost $32 billion. Since these projects are also designed to accommodate low income residents of Los Angeles, easily ten times more numerous than the homeless, the true cost to get the job done is in excess of $300 billion. And this is the low estimate.

The current theory of “housing first” means that until all the homeless are housed, money cannot be allocated to treating their addictions, even to the extreme of not requiring sobriety as a condition of their residency in these permanent housing units they’re being given. This means that Los Angeles, with its mild winters and inviting beaches, is a magnet for the indigent across America, from sea to sea. This is already a demonstrated fact, as a street culture reminiscent of Lord of the Flies plays out daily in Venice Beach. The party never stops, and the only heat comes from gangs.

But even if the number of homeless in Los Angeles were capped somehow, meaning that someday they all would find permanent supportive shelter, why would the developers that are building and operating these housing projects ever want to solve the problem? This is where the concept of “inclusive zoning” becomes extremely useful. One of the besieged Venice Beach residents, Soledad Ursua, recently interviewed by the Epoch Times, explained how the racket works. “Developer fees are a fixed percentage. If you’re one of these nonprofit developers, what which project would you work on, one that pays 10 percent of $10 million or 10 percent of $100 million?”

This ten-to-one range of potential costs is not far fetched. Taking into account the value of the land and the inevitable cost overruns, it is possible, even likely, that the apartments of the Reese Davidson project in Venice Beach will come in at a total project cost of around a million dollars per unit. If the many amenities were dispensed with, and these studios were constructed efficiently in some of the inland neighborhoods of Los Angeles, it ought to be possible to build studios at a cost of $100,000 per unit. And for that matter, why aren’t homeless, especially the significant percentage that would be sane and able bodied if they were denied drugs and alcohol, not just rounded up and offered shelter in a supervised tent encampment? Such facilities could be built quickly and cheaply, and overnight, not only would taxpayers save billions, but Los Angeles would lose its status as a magnet for the stoners of the world.

One must ask, and ask again, why aren’t these solutions being pursued, or even seriously considered? Why isn’t Eric Garcetti using the resources of his city to change the legal and legislative environment to make practical solutions possible? What aren’t taxpayers demanding these reforms? The reason is because too many people are getting rich on this fraudulent masquerade of compassion. They are making billions in fees, receive additional billions in tax credits, to create projects that operate exempt from property taxes and business taxes. As the problem just gets worse.

Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti may or may not deserve all of the unflattering descriptions leveled at him by his critics. He is part of a much larger hypocrisy. But Garcetti knows exactly what is going on, and nobody is in a better position to do something about it than him. The homeless and housing policies of Garcetti’s administration are destroying Los Angeles. With the lone exception of the relative handful of bureaucrats, consultants, builders and operators that are making a killing, everyone in this vast city are victims of this failed policy. Not just the hard working residents who can still afford their rent or their mortgage, but the homeless themselves.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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Homeless Anarchy in Los Angeles

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Anyone thinking about blaming the police for the anarchy that grips America’s liberal cities is not paying attention. The police know how to do their jobs, but the politicians, elected by progressive liberals, do not let them. And often enough, even when there are laws left on the books that might permit prosecution, activist prosecutors, also elected by progressive liberals, do not press charges.

Life in California, as usual, epitomizes this dysfunction. In 2014 voters approved Proposition 47, which downgraded drug and property crimes. In 2016 voters approved Proposition 57, which released thousands of nonviolent criminals. Back in 2006, the ACLU prevailed in the Jones vs City of Los Angeles case; the judgment prohibits arrests for vagrancy unless there is a space available in a homeless shelter.

The result of these laws is predictable enough. California’s unsheltered homeless population is now more numerous than all the rest of the homeless in the United States combined. And why not? Along with great weather, there are no serious legal consequences for being intoxicated on methamphetamine or heroin, much less marijuana or alcohol, nor are their serious legal consequences for stealing to support your drug habit. And if you want to set up a tent, almost anywhere, nobody can make you move along until they provide you a shelter.

If California is ground zero for urban anarchy, Venice Beach is one of the epicenters. Well before the COVID-19 pandemic and pre-election planned rioting turned the anarchy up two notches, Venice Beach was already occupied, and terrorized, by well over a thousand homeless. Today, the homeless population in Venice Beach is estimated to have at least doubled to 2,000, in an area of only three square miles. Several factors caused this increase.

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in thousands of prisoners being released from the Los Angeles County Jail, and many of them headed for the beach. A new homeless shelter was opened earlier in 2020 in Venice Beach, and while it only has 140 beds (at a cost of $8 million), it serves meals to many more, and has no requirements for sobriety or even a curfew. But how the City of Los Angeles responded to the COVID-19 crisis had an even greater impact on Venice Beach.

For years, once per week the streets would be cleaned. This forced people living in cars or RVs to move them to allow trash and debris including feces to get regularly swept up and washed away. But since March 2020 there has been no street sweeping. Also suspended in 2020 by court order was a 2016 LA County ordinance that prevented homeless people from accumulating more than what could fit into a trash bin (about eight cubic feet). If that weren’t enough, since COVID came along, the police have virtually stopped enforcing all laws and ordinances still in effect that might regulate the number of homeless and the behavior of the homeless.

Venice Beach residents are besieged as never before. When speaking with residents to prepare this report, one of them said “I feel like I have a house in the middle of a large homeless encampment.” Residents describe the mountains of trash that have begun to accumulate as a result of a breakdown in code enforcement, along with an explosion in the rat population. For those who have been assaulted or shot, of course, rats and trash are just a nuisance.

The degree to which civilization has receded in places where the homeless have taken over in Los Angeles is difficult to separate from the other epic distractions that have dominated the news in 2020. But these other distractions, COVID-19, economic hardship, mass rioting and vandalism, have compounded the problem of the homeless.

For example, on one residential corner in Venice Beach, for the past few months a man has lived there, working on welding projects. Many of these projects involve converting scrap metal into knives, machetes and axes. According to a neighbor, the man was approached by Antifa and offered marijuana in exchange for weapons, but he refused, stating he only would work for methamphetamine. The entire operation, the generator, the welding torch, the hammering in the middle of the night, is hazardous and disturbing. But despite hundreds of calls to the LAPD, this man continues to ply his trade.

Police Undermined by Progressive Prosecutors

What the City of Los Angeles needs to do is challenge the 2006 Jones ruling in federal court. They need to join with other California cities to put initiatives before California’s voters that will repeal Prop. 47 and Prop. 57. But under pressure from progressive billionaires and BLM activists, they are moving in the opposite direction.

The currently serving Los Angeles District Attorney is Jackie Lacey, an black woman who by most accounts would be considered light on crime. But not light enough. Running against Lacey in November is George Gascon, formerly the D.A. for San Francisco. Gascon is endorsed by Bernie Sanders and Black Lives Matter, and his campaign has already benefit from over $1 million spent by George Soros to defeat his rival. To say Gascon would not restore the ability of law enforcement to restore order to the streets of Los Angeles is an understatement.

One would think that a liberal black woman serving as the Los Angeles District Attorney would at least earn a respectful opposition from radical activists, but not Jackie Lacey. In March, Black Lives Matters protesters showed up at Lacey’s house, banging drums, pounding on their front door, and demanding a “community meeting.” In response, Lacey’s husband opened the door, pointed a gun at the protesters, and demanded they get off the porch. A Los Angeles judge has just ruled that California’s liberal attorney general, Xavier Becerra, should file charges against him, just in time for the November election.

Not long ago, Rudy Giuliani characterized places like Los Angeles as “criminal friendly cities.” This is an accurate description. On top of everything else, California’s state legislature passed SB 10 in 2018, designed to make California the first state to end the use of cash bail for all detained suspects awaiting trials.” The legislation would replace the state’s cash bail system with “risk assessments.” This legislation was successfully challenged through a referendum petition, so this November California’s voters will decide if they want jails to release suspects without the hook of bail to improve the chances they’ll ever show up in court.

What is happening in Los Angeles is typical for California, and is part of larger and related policy failures. Everything California’s government has done for over 30 years, ever since the progressive grip on the state and local governments became nearly absolute, has made life more difficult for its once thriving middle class. Excessive regulations for the law-abiding small businesses, which big business takes in stride and the underground economy ignores. Urban containment, draconian building codes, and punitive permit fees that have made housing unaffordable.

California has become a feudal economy, and if entire cities are turned into fetid, ungovernable swamps, so what, as long as the right slogans are uttered, and fists are raised in solidarity with the oppressed?

“Black Lives Matter.” “All Cops Are Bastards.” Let’s hear you say it, if you want to have a political career. On your knees. Raise your fist. Say what we tell you to say, because “silence is violence.” Has it come to that? Is this all it takes to remain a successful politician?

But it isn’t just politicians who have brought Los Angeles and other progressive cities to the brink of complete chaos. Activist judges, activist prosecutors, and well funded activist attorneys have all played a role. In some respects the legal obstacles to common sense governance outweigh the political obstacles. The City of Los Angeles should just round up the homeless and put them into supervised tent encampments in inexpensive areas, but the lawsuits would stop that in its tracks. But in feudal California, there’s an innovative workaround.

Instead of solving the problem for pennies on the dollar, homeless advocates build “permanent supportive housing” for $500,000 per unit, using taxpayers money, and for every unit they build, hundreds of homeless remain on the streets. This utterly futile scheme has cost California’s taxpayers billions while the numbers of homeless have only increased.

The next step California’s progressive policymakers envision, well under way, is to erase zoning restrictions and allow investors and developers to collect subsidies and tax incentives to build rent-subsidized multi-family dwellings, randomly dropped onto the sites of demolished single-family homes. Imagine the feeling, when next door to the home you’ve worked for all your life, one of your many new neighbors, living for free in a looming six-plex, is a welder who works all night for methamphetamine.

Police in Los Angeles, like in all cities ran by progressive liberals, are up against a system that is failing. It makes their jobs nearly impossible. The only way their lot will be improved, along with that of residents in Venice Beach and other besieged communities across all of California’s urban landscape, will be through a sustained realignment by voters that categorically rejects progressive politics.

On the other hand, California’s cities offer the example that will be America’s fate if Biden wins in November.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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How the Homeless Industrial Complex Plans to Destroy Venice Beach

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“I intend on putting in another proposal in the next week or two that asks the city to look at the federal bailout or stimulus funds we’ll be getting as a result of this crisis…and using some of that to either buy hotels that go belly up or to buy the distressed properties that are absolutely going to be on the market at cheaper prices after this crisis is over. And use that as homeless and affordable housing. It’s going to be a hell of a lot cheaper to purchase stuff that is already there and move people in there than if we start from scratch. A lot of good stuff is being done.”
– Mike Bonin, LA City Councilmember, 11th District, remarks at 4/18 virtual town hall

It isn’t often you’ll find a politician revealing so explicitly what they’re intending to do, especially when it involves the displacement of an entire well-established community. Nor is it often, if ever, that something so tragic and disruptive as a disease pandemic comes along to hasten the accomplishment of such a nefarious objective.

The policies being enacted in California, and in Los Angeles in particular, to help the “unhoused” find shelter, have little to do with helping the “unhoused.” If they did, the problem would have been solved years ago. Venice Beach provides an excellent case study in how everything being done to help the “unhoused” has a hidden agenda.

The key to understanding this hidden agenda is to recognize that a Homeless Industrial Complex has arisen in California that acquires power and profit by pursuing an utterly dysfunctional strategy. In Los Angeles, for example, instead of rounding up homeless people, sorting them according to their various challenges – drug addiction, alcoholism, criminality, mental illness, laziness, or just bad luck – and moving them into supervised camps in low cost areas of Los Angeles County, the Homeless Industrial Complex has grown into a voracious leviathan, devouring billions in taxpayers’ money. And for all practical purposes, and with all that money, they have just made the problem worse.

This is because you can’t ensure the rule of law when you permit people to wander the streets stoned out of their minds, or sprawled across park benches in a heroin stupor, or drinking and carousing all night long, urinating and defecating everywhere, and then permit them to receive free food and bedding in a shelter two blocks from the beach with no curfew and no restrictions on behavior. But that’s what they did in Venice Beach.

Furthermore, you can’t get the tens of thousands of homeless living in Los Angeles into shelters of any kind, when you’re spending over $8 million to build a shelter with 154 beds, but that’s what they did in Venice Beach. And you can’t move these homeless from that temporary shelter into “permanent supportive housing” in a new structure containing 140 apartments at an estimated total project cost of over $200 million. But that’s what’s planned for Venice Beach.

The members of the Homeless Industrial Complex know this. But they don’t care, because public bureaucracies get funding to expand, and “nonprofit” corporations and their for-profit subcontractors get public funding and tax incentives. These perks are far more lucrative when the “solutions” they construct are on high value land, even though locating supportive housing and shelters in inexpensive areas would solve the problem.

The Next Step – The Destruction of a City

Which brings us back to Councilmember Bonin’s revealing comment: The City of Los Angeles intends to use bailout funds to buy distressed properties and use them to house the unhoused. There are all kinds of problems with this. Here’s what’s happened, and what’s coming next:

The homeless could have been kept off the streets. But the public authorities and their allies in the Homeless Industrial Complex hid behind insufficiently challenged court rulings and legislation that made it prohibitively expensive to house all the homeless, and almost impossible to treat them or hold them accountable.

The current pandemic has crushed the economy, and has been equally devastating to both small landlords and renters. But how have elected officials responded? They have clamped down on landlords, making it impossible to evict tenants, or raise rent, and are even considering mandating a 25 percent rent reduction. While there is some moral justification for these measures during these extraordinary times, what sort of reciprocal relief has been offered landlords? Nothing. No property tax relief, much less grants or low interest loans. “Distressed properties.” Indeed.

For years developers have been eyeing the residential paradise that remains intact on the blocks immediately behind the Venice Beach boardwalk. Armed with phony legislative mandates to protect “sprawl,” and “greenhouse gas,” which has prevented construction of entire new cities along California’s 101, I-5 and 99 transportation corridors, developers hope to demolish these beachfront neighborhoods and fill them with multi-story, multi-family units.

As an aside, but essential to any discussion of the homeless crisis, California’s environmentalist inspired legislative mandates are the reason that developers can no longer make a profit building affordable homes without subsidies. These laws caused California’s housing shortage and were a major factor in causing California’s homeless crisis. They should be revised or repealed.

While there is room for legitimate debate over how cities should manage densification, some of which would still be inevitable and mostly beneficial even if Californians did not live under the oppression of urban containment, what is happening in Venice Beach is not legitimate. It is economic war.

The elected officials in Los Angeles have allowed the homeless population in Venice Beach to become dangerously out of control. Trespassing, theft, disturbing the peace, vandalism, public intoxication and worse are all crimes that are now ignored. The people living in Venice Beach, working hard to pay rent or mortgages, were besieged before this pandemic began. Now, in a cruel twist of injustice, they are under “lockdown,” as the still unrestricted and unaccountable homeless become further entrenched.

Purchasing “distressed” properties will never house all of the “unhoused,” because Venice Beach’s natural attributes of perfect weather, endless beach, and big sky sunsets over the Pacific cannot be altogether destroyed no matter how much the neighborhoods are blighted. In a place like Venice Beach, if you buy houses and give them away, more “unhoused” will come. To squeeze the property owners in Venice Beach while displaying compassion without conditions to the homeless is a travesty. But blight can be useful.

Once Venice Beach acquires a critical mass of blighted and distressed properties, and manage to “house” a sufficient number of the formerly “unhoused,” two things will happen. The blight will empower the city to declare entire square blocks as subject to eminent domain, and the lowered average income per census tract will qualify developers for low income tax credits. At that point, bring on the bulldozers, and say goodbye to a city, a way of life, and whatever incentives may have remained for hard working property owners to work hard and own property.

Councilmember Bonin and his comrades must feel very proud to have seized this moment.

This article originally appeared on the website California Globe.

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The Manger vs The Monster

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And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.
– Luke 2:7

Advocates for the homeless frequently invoke biblical passages in order to appeal to the Christian compassion that still guides the hearts of most Americans, whether they are religious or secular. “No room at the inn,” is a phrase the American Left relies upon to justify everything from open borders and immigration amnesty to affordable housing and homeless shelters. But what sort of inn? An inexpensive manger that is warm, dry, and safe? Or an overbuilt monstrosity? Both options are warm, dry, and safe, but the monster is so grossly expensive that only a few find shelter.

California’s policies currently favor these overbuilt monstrosities, with the biggest losers the homeless. The average cost for “permanent supportive housing” in California is now easily in excess of a half million per unit. A recent audit in the City of Los Angeles estimated the average cost at $550,000 per unit. According to a program overview released by the Santa Clara County’s Office of Supportive Housing, their average cost is in excess of $500,000 per unit. In San Francisco, according to a report released by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, over $700,000 per unit. Across the Bay in Alameda County, a 2018 report released by the City of Oakland discloses average costs of over $600,000 per unit. On Federal property in Los Angeles County, remodeling an existing building to provide permanent supportive housing is estimated to cost over 900,000 per unit. But the champion of all monstrosities is in Venice Beach, California, where developers propose to construct housing for the homeless at a cost of approximately $1.4 million per unit.

Dubbed by its opponents as “The Monster on the Median,” this building is set to occupy three acres of city owned property located in the heart of Venice Beach. The land is currently used for public beach parking, as well as periodically hosting farmers markets and craft fairs. If these three acres were zoned for mixed use commercial development, they would sell for around $100 million. Any rational policymaker would either leave this property alone, allowing it to remain one of the last scraps of publicly accessible open spaces in Venice Beach, or sell it to a commercial developer.

Instead what is being proposed is a 140 unit “community project,” a concrete blockhouse with a three acre footprint that will rise over the residential neighborhoods of Venice Beach like the fortress of an occupying army, which is not an entirely inaccurate metaphor. At an estimated construction cost of around $700,000 per unit, and including the value of the land, the total project cost of this monstrosity will exceed $200 million. This is an astonishing, criminal waste of public money. To house every one of the City of Los Angeles’s estimated 60,000 homeless in structures like this monster would cost taxpayers around $100 billion. That will never happen. What’s going on?

It doesn’t require a cynic to recognize that something’s rotten: The incentive to build monsters instead of mangers is because with these monsters, project developers and financiers have a larger monetary denominator to work with. Much larger. That’s more budget to accommodate overhead, fat consultancy contracts, huge payoffs to litigators, hefty payments to the public sector for permits and fees, lucrative deals with subcontractors, and the promise of endless additional work since at this rate, and at this cost, the problem will never get solved. But how is this ever justified morally?

Here’s where one of the more insidious manifestations of socialist ideology comes into play. Like all socialist principles, it reeks with compassion but is utterly impractical if not nihilistic in the real world. Building homeless housing and low income housing on some of the most expensive real estate on earth is to fulfill the ideals of “inclusionary zoning.” Relying on “scientific studies” that defy common sense, the role of inclusionary zoning is to “encourage the development of affordable housing in low poverty neighborhoods, thereby helping foster greater social and economic mobility and integration.”

“Greater social and economic mobility and integration.”

In practice, this means if you work hard your entire life to live in a neighborhood where your children can go to decent schools and feel safe walking the streets, if you skip vacations and take on a 2nd job to pay off an astronomical mortgage, it does not matter. If you lose the inclusionary zoning lottery, prepare to have an apartment house dumped onto the lot where your neighbor’s single family home just got demolished. Then, while investors pad their profits with property tax exemptions for creating “inclusionary” housing, prepare to have this property occupied by tenants who pay little or no rent out of their own earnings – if they work at all – because your taxes will be paying their rent for them. Prepare for them to openly consume drugs and watch your belongings since petty theft and heroin use is now decriminalized in California.

That is what happened to Venice Beach. And it’s coming to your neighborhood.

There is nothing compassionate about this. In the real world, people congregate in low income neighborhoods because they have low incomes. This is where developers build, at no cost to taxpayers, defacto low income, market housing. This is where charities build and operate shelters, because they are affordable. And when people are fortunate enough to be able to afford to move from low income neighborhoods to middle income neighborhoods or beyond, they expect to be rewarded for their efforts, not have to wonder if the Homeless Industrial Complex will destroy their new neighborhood.

The obligations of compassion don’t end when the Homeless Industrial Complex is finally forced to build inexpensive mangers instead of overwrought monsters. What if baby Jesus was born in a barn filled with addicts injecting heroin and smoking methamphetamine? What if the three wise men didn’t have to bring gifts, because gangs of thieves had set up lucrative criminal enterprises to pay for their drugs, and instead of the hospitality of the innkeeper providing food, King Herod dispensed free government meals?

Compassionate Christians who reelect these corrupt politicians should imagine that scene defining their next Christmas pageant. And while this all sounds horribly cruel during the holiday season of giving, true cruelty is to accept the solutions currently being pursued. They are wasting billions while suffering only increases.

These are the tragic consequences of a perfect storm of flawed legislation and court rulings. In California, the practical effect of Prop. 47, sold to voters in 2014 as criminal justice reform, has been to decriminalize possession of hard drugs and petty theft. At the same time, court rulings such as Jones vs. City of Los Angeles prohibit law enforcement from relocating or detaining anyone camping in a public space unless they can offer them “permanent supportive housing.” The final straw is the “housing first” regulations originating at HUD during the Obama administration that require virtually all federal grant money get spent on housing, rather than also on parallel treatment for substance abuse and mental health.

Tolerate vagrancy, drug use and petty crime. Permit an alliance of developers, service nonprofits, and government bureaucrats to hijack and waste every dollar taken from taxpayers to help the homeless, abetted by useful idiots who believe this impossible, toxic intersection of futile, corrupt strategies somehow constitutes “compassion.” The result? Billions have been spent, additional billions will be spent, and the population of homeless in California, already numbering over 130,000, will only get bigger and more unmanageable.

This is the fraud presided over by supposedly compassionate politicians such as California governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. Hiding behind supposedly compassionate principles such as “inclusionary zoning” they are spending billions of dollars to construct monstrous housing boondoggles where homeless people will be given “permanent supportive housing” in order to “integrate with the community.” At the same time, California’s unsheltered homeless, the majority of whom are either mentally ill, substance abusers, criminal predators, or all three, shall be subject to minimal expectations.

Perhaps it’s time for the Homeless Industrial Complex bureaucrats to construct one of these housing monsters on the park property immediately adjacent to Gavin Newsom’s gubernatorial mansion. Isn’t that sort of “integration” the logical endpoint of “inclusionary zoning?” Perhaps these monstrosities should follow Gavin Newsom, and every other wealthy liberal who pushes these scams – and they are scams, designed to enrich the Homeless Industrial Complex, not to help the less fortunate – to the streets where they live and the schools where their children learn.

Instead of into the neighborhoods of hard working families, let California’s completely unaccountable homeless come en masse to the exclusive, “low poverty” enclaves of the liberal elites who engineered this crisis. Let them come, with all the lawless behaviors that California’s liberal laws enable. Let them urinate in your hedges, defecate on your lawn, shoot heroin and smoke methamphetamine in plain sight, beg, bellow, fight, rape, mug, murder, and, of course, steal everything that isn’t nailed down or under armed guard.

This is exactly what happened to Venice Beach. Fact. Where’s the difference?

And yes, we know, some of the homeless just need a helping hand. So how does it help the virtuous homeless when we fail to police the predators among them?

Isn’t it funny how politicians like Gavin Newsom are willing to impoverish the taxpayers with tens of billions in housing bonds that have not even begun to solve the problem, and leave unchallenged laws and court rulings that turn their state into a magnet for lunatics, addicts, predators, perverts and bums, and destroy neighborhoods across the state with “inclusionary zoning,” but make sure to leave their own streets and schools untouched by this growing nightmare.

Nothing about California’s homeless policies today qualifies as genuine compassion, because compassion has to be rational. Compassion has to have a winning strategy, not become an endless, losing war. California’s housing for the homeless policy is corruption masquerading as compassion.

If Gavin Newsom, Eric Garcetti and all the rest of them cared about the homeless, they’d build the modern day equivalent of mangers, warm, dry and safe, located in more affordable neighborhoods. They’d defy HUD’s preposterous “Housing First” mandate, rallying compassionate reformers in every Continuum of Care agency in the U.S. to back them up. They would use the money they saved to actually help the homeless in every way – managing their mental illness, treating their addictions, training them for jobs. That would be compassion worth its name, and worthy of the season.

An edited version of this article originally appeared in the California Globe.