Perspective: SJ leaders must refocus (anti-)homelessness tactics

SJ City pols regularly decry our homelessness epidemic, and taxpayer money is liberally dedicated to “solutions”—yet public safety problems persist. Using an LA case study, the Westside Current’s Tim Campbell identifies two failures of insufficient strategies: twisting semantics to justify a soft-on-crime approach, and quickly developing housing without addressing key factors of addiction/mental illness.

If you’re concerned about the obvious failures of current City and County homeless programs, Dr. Adams’ appointment should frighten the heck out of you.  Expect LAHSA and its cohorts to continue its dismal track record by:

  • Insisting housing construction is the only solution to homelessness, a policy that’s resulted in an “unacceptably slow” rate of building (per the City Controller) at costs far above market. And a policy that has cost the City and County more than $150 million in lost HUD funding in six years.

  • Calling its programs successful when it can offer no verifiable evidence any of its programs has achieved substantial progress in reducing homelessness.

  • Calling the homelessness crisis a housing problem while ignoring the very real effects of substance abuse and mental illness among the homeless community. 

  • More semantics. Faced with widespread program failures, the Homeless Industrial Complex has turned to rephrasing the problem.  Illegally parked RV’s become “homes”.  Tent encampments become “communities”.  It’s much easier to defend letting someone stay in their “home” than explaining why you can’t clear an encampment. 

The City of Los Angeles has 40% of the County’s population but 60% of its homeless.  Advocates would like us to believe it’s a housing affordability problem, but housing in Long Beach or El Segundo is just as expensive as it is in L.A.—more so in some cases. Those cities are also constrained by the Boise decision, yet they don’t have large and growing encampments protected by the agencies that are supposed to be clearing them and sheltering their inhabitants.

The only logical explanation for the City’s failure to address the homeless crisis in the presence of a system that supports failure….

This article originally appeared in the Westside Current. Read the whole thing here.

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Image by Wikimedia Commons

Jax Oliver