Posted on 05/18/2018 6:28:30 AM PDT by Louis Foxwell
The Homeless Hole That Ate Los Angeles What’s a few billion more for social justice? May 18, 2018 Daniel Greenfield AddThis Sharing Buttons Share to Facebook46Share to TwitterShare to More45Share to Print 36
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical left and Islamic terrorism.
The homeless are everywhere in the City of Angels. The retail strip of any neighborhood, no matter how glitzy, will host at least one wandering schizophrenic cursing random pedestrians and the sky. Colorful tent cities grow in the shade of blighted overpasses like poisonous mushrooms. There are homeless encampments on the lawn at City Hall across from the LAPD HQ. Near Venice Beach, the smell of ordure can be overpowering, and last year the befouling of public streets led to a Hepatitis A outbreak. The hard rain that’s falling isn’t coming from the cloudless sky: it’s streets being power washed with bleach.
Walk down a street in the trendier parts of Los Angeles and you’re more likely to spot marijuana dispensaries than churches. The ubiquitous green cross is everywhere. Its faithful believe in only one higher power that they can’t smoke. So as the homeless problem grew, they turned to government.
And to higher taxes.
Proposition HHH was going to solve the homeless crisis by hiking property taxes to raise $1.2 billion. The money would be used to build housing for the homeless. $1.2 billion could house all the homeless.
Couldn’t it? If it couldn’t, it was part of a $4.6 billion package of homeless tax hikes. There was Proposition H which added to the already hefty sales tax. Los Angeles voters backed that one too.
But instead the number of homeless increased faster than the supply of homeless housing. By ’18, the number of homeless was up to 58,000 from 32,000 in 6 years. Increasing subsidies to the homeless only increased their number. As usual, government social welfare was generating more of the problem.
And, even more predictably, no amount of social services spending was ever enough. The annual shortfall was estimated this year at $270 million. The new projected cost hovers at $628 million.
The Measure H sales tax wasn’t supposed to run a deficit (but like every government program ever, it was bound to) until the fourth year when costs would exceed revenue (necessitating more tax hikes.)
But the tax and spend holiday came early instead because government excels at spending money.
The homeless housing being approved costs an average at $479,000 per unit. Two run at $650,000.
That’s not homeless housing: it’s homeless luxury condos. And it’s being paid for by the same middle class that is being squeezed out of Los Angeles by the coalition of Democrat politicos and lefty activists.
Total development cost for Measure HHH has hit $869 million.
Why is “affordable housing” so unaffordable? One reason is that, as usual, it’s also kickbacks to a variety of special interest groups. If you want incentives for building affordable housing, you have to pay union wages. And that raises costs by 30% making building affordable housing… unaffordable to actually build.
The linkage fee, due in 2019, is the latest brilliant plan to solve the housing crisis by taxing housing. The $100 million it raises will go into the same gaping hole where shortfalls twice as high as that just vanish.
The $4 billion bond in 2018 is just more money leaking into an unpluggable money hole.
Government regulations raise the cost of housing so that only luxury condos are profitable. And then tax the luxury condos to build affordable housing which end up costing luxury condo prices. The middle class flees a city and state where it can’t afford to buy a house. And after tax reform’s impact on the wealthy in high tax states, the exodus of those who have been subsidizing this is also underway.
And so the plan to tax luxury condo buyers to build luxury condos for the homeless may hit a snag.
That won’t however stop voters from voting for them.
California’s top-two primaries are the single greatest act of voter suppression today. The primaries make it futile for Republicans to participate in elections. When there isn’t a Republican on the ballot in the general election, the only voters who show up are lefty Democrats motivated to vote against more centrist Democrats. And that swings the electorate to a demographic that will vote for any lefty plan.
But it’s the sense of crisis that moved voters to pass multiple tax hikes and spending packages. Public officials and activists cried, “crisis” and got everything that they wanted. But they were the ones who created the crisis. And every taxpayer dollar that they got was dedicated to making the crisis worse.
All the plans to fight homelessness only attracted more homeless. That’s the reality behind the mysterious massive increase in the homeless population. Whether it’s in Los Angeles or New York, when lefties begin a major campaign to fight homelessness, the number of homeless suddenly increases.
There are a variety of reasons for this phenomenon, including newfound motives by activist groups to discover more homeless once there’s a funding bonanza. And the programs bring in homeless from outside the area or incentivize people who aren’t homeless to claim the status to get the benefits.
At the rate of $479,000 per unit, trying to house every homeless vagrant will quickly outpace any of the old tax hikes and revenue plans. When 26,000 new homeless people can show up in 6 years, building housing for all of them would cost $13 billion. And housing them would require permanent subsidies.
The last budget came in at a little over $9 billion. The proposed 2018-19 budget is $9.9 billion and includes $430 million in homeless spending. That’s up from $178 million last year. To put that into perspective, Los Angeles will spend less than $300 million on street and road infrastructure that is a core function of municipal management. 5% of the budget is going to a tiny fraction of the population.
And yet social welfare spending on that tiny fraction can quickly eat up much of city spending. And then turn into what Mayor Garcetti dubbed an, “almost undefeatable spout.”
The “undefeatable spout” manifests itself in lefty social welfare programs. The spout bursts forth because individual maladjustment is treated as a social problem that is the fault of society. Subsidizing the misbehavior makes it worse while corruption and incompetence gobble up the cash. The amounts actually needed outstrip expectations. And the problem is never solved because it’s never addressed.
Instead it’s enabled, coddled, subsidized, encouraged and transformed into a proud victim identity. And a few years later, it’s even worse than ever. But what’s a few billion more for social justice?
Homelessness is not a social problem. Mostly it’s due to untreated mental illness and drug abuse. There are people who became homeless after suffering life setbacks, but it might have been better not to price them out of their homes. Government regulations have made Los Angeles one of the more expensive places to build housing. Adding to the cost of housing will only price more people out of their homes.
The left’s idea of helping the homeless does them no favors.
Decriminalizing abusive behaviors like public urination and defecation led to a Hepatitis A outbreak. Taxing homes will raise housing prices higher so that government housing becomes the only option for more people. And that will further increase demand for housing beyond anything that can be met.
And then the “undefeatable spout” eats your budget.
Los Angeles is only getting started. Billions more will be thrown at the homeless problem. The problem will get worse. New tax hikes and spending measures will roll out every year. And there will be more schizophrenics wandering the streets or fouling the beach. The same homeless hole that’s eating San Francisco has camped its colorful tent in Los Angeles. And isn’t leaving no matter how much is spent.
The article answers you.
During the early to mid eighties liberal judges shut down the bulk of the nation’s mental institutions through judicial activism.
Over strenuous opposition from families of the mentally ill and the local communities.
How crazy, that a movie could have that impact.
I’ve heard similar things about that movie with Jane Fonda, The China Syndrome, which dealt with nuclear power. I’ve heard that movie, which coincidentally was in theaters at the time of the Three Mile Island incident, helped the anti-nuclear movement, so that development of nuclear power plants was just about stopped in its tracks.
These same people tell us NOT to feed feral cats. They multiply.
TELL ME THE DIFFERENCE !!!
Most of them used to be called mental patients and resided in mental hospitals.
The LEFT changed all that.
The LEFT created the problem and as usual the solution is more money from the taxpayer.
“California’s top-two primaries are the single greatest act of voter suppression today.”
I disagree. I say this because in many races the Republican voters are outnumbered by Democrats two-to-one and more.
In a conventional election these Republican voters are irrelevant to who wins in November.
But like in one of the Assembly races where the two leading candidates were Democrats there was a lefty-socialist named Darrell Fong and a law and order Dem named Jim Cooper.
Cooper won because he directly ran to get the Republican vote and that shut out the leftist.
In the old system the socialist would have won.
Yes, this system doesn’t make it easier for the GOP to gain anything in California but the GOP surrendered California to the Democrats decades ago. At least this way a growing number of Dems are having to move to the right in order to win their elections.
That’s not great, but it is an improvement.
There’s nothing “progressive” about these people or the political philosophy they espouse.
L
That’s why we moved to Tennessee. If you strike up a conversation and you don’t know where your gas tax dollars go, you’re considered intellectually substandard.
“why didn’t we have all these homeless in 1960 or 1970? What changed in society so that we are compelled to tolerate homeless encampments set up wherever these vagrants decide to pitch a tent?”
The ACLU sued the State of California back when Reagan was Governor. Courts found that institutionalizing mentally ill people against their will somehow violated their civil right to be insane.
So nearly every State mental institution in the country was closed and the patients were “freed” to wander the streets without being medicated.
It’s right there in the Constitution.....someplace.
I haven’t found it but some judges did.
L
It’s a great state, isn’t it? We just need to get rid of our RINO governor and for us, our RINO Representatives. I wrote to Phil Roe when I first moved here, wanting him to vote for someone other than Boehner as Speaker. I got back a letter full of Praises for Boehner. I was done with Roe at that point. He’s deep state for sure. He had a real conservative run against him last time, but unfortunately the guys campaign fizzled and I don’t think he even made it to the ballot. Hopefully next time.
Liberal judges started issuing rulings in the 60’s and 70’s that people who were involuntarily committed to mental institutions had to be turned loose. Well they were in those institutions for a reason. When turned loose, they couldn’t make it in society and started living on the streets. The rise of drug use in the 60’s also contributed to the problem. The third pillar is socialism. They started subsidizing it in the name of “compassion” or “solidarity” or whatever other mushy-headed reason they cited. If you subsidize something you get more of it. If you tax something you get less of it. Basic economics.....which is of course anathema to Socialists.
Mr. Sg has a friend who has regular conversations with what seems like everyone in three counties. They really get the word out. Here’s hoping....
Where does that awful picture come from?
I always cringe when I see it posted.
How crazy, that a movie could have that impact.
No real data, just emotion and rhetoric magnified by the mass media.
http://gunwatch.blogspot.com/2015/02/how-switchblades-were-banned.html
The 1970s era was when the whole notion of “tolerance” really took off. Kids were taught to be “tolerant,” that they cannot be judgmental about others, that all cultures were equally good. We have amost two generations now raised with these attitudes. These bums could pitch their tents on the front lawns of these “tolerant” people and daily defecate and urinate there and the property owners would still preach “tolerance.”
The ability to critically think about society and it’s problems was bred out of these tolerant people.
Gee whiz, no one could ever have predicted it.
It is so bad even my leftie friends can’t take it any more. This upscale neighborhood is filled with vagrants and thieves. Every week I hear of an aggressive bum attacking or threatening women at some fast food place or parking lot.
I would chisel your words in stone. Only common sense.
Front Page had some sad reports, such as
Tina Trent Michelle • a day ago
One of the official justifications— at least official in that landlords are assured by officials that it will augment losses — is that section 8 rents paid are set higher than market rates because tenants are likely to destroy the property.
I have been in many publicly subsidized apartments and homes doing home visits where the house is maintained beautifully, with careful decorations, arranged if shabby furniture, and food for the foster kids or grandkids or great-grandkids being raised there. It is humbling to see decency enforced among neighboring chaos. But I always knew what I would be walking into because we already knew these were the good clients. We also knew what we would find in the other ones. There is no mystery in any of this: we vigilantly enforced no standards. That was the policy, drilled into us on the grounds that nothing would be more evil than imposing a standard or judging someone.
I came to believe that some people did terrible things to their children because they knew if they wanted attention or more free stuff, they couldn’t just be a bit neglectful and get whatever perverse incentive they were seeking: they’d really have to make an effort to get those kids taken away. It would have to be unusually bad.
We colluded. Though many didn’t: I know many people who could not stomach the unethical demands of the job and walked away. It was always the policies coming from the diversity police that drove the good people away, not the work itself, sad as it was.
With homeless people, I imagine the same dynamic exists: the system is designed to reward the most dysfunctional within the larger cohort of homeless people, to enforce a non-judgment regime. - http://disq.us/p/1slq8ye
There was also a very influential author and lecturer during that era named Thomas Szaz, a psychiatrist, who promoted his anti-establishment view of mental illness itself and of its treatment. He was worshipped by the left, eager to debunk any restrictions on human behavior whatsoever.
He actually did recognize that modern medicine was trying to do away with the concept of sin and abomination and replace it with medical and social maladjustments for which they could prescribe treatments.
While much of what he said about the misconceptions about mental illness and treatment had value, others took his positions to extremes, attempting either to propose that there really is no such thing as mental illness, or that if someone is "crazy", it is society's fault.
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