California Housing the homeless

In my personal opinion here in Southern California it seems like the government has created a new bureaucracy centered around housing for the homeless and low-income earners. Although the intent may be well-intentioned, the execution and results are often dismal. I really think that instead of providing housing for these people the government should be providing institutional care.

Many of the current programs in reality are just a mechanism for transfer of wealth. What would really be interesting is a study of the major contractors involved in these programs and their political party donations and labor union status.

The truth is, at least in my eyes is that the majority of the homeless really need psychiatric and drug treatment and not permanent housing.

Unfortunately, it’s so easy for the government to play the altruistic benefactor and giving taxpayer dollars to hide the symptoms and not really address a cure.

California Housing the homeless

Today let’s take a look at San Francisco’s homeless hotels fiasco. You probably heard about this, but San Francisco has embarked on a program of placing homeless people in luxuries for hotels paid for by tax dollars. The original story was that these hotel rooms that the city of San Francisco was paying for were designated for healthcare and public safety personnel who were working on virus related matters. But, somewhere along the line, homeless people were somehow designated as emergency frontline responders and put into these city paid for hotel rooms.

Naturally, the city didn’t want nearby residents or the press to really find out about what they were doing, so the city enacted an emergency disaster law that allowed them to keep the information private. When the press tried to get a hold of the information and what hold tells were being used and exactly who was being house there, city officials claimed that revealing this information could jeopardize the safety and privacy of the people the city was facing in these hotel rooms.

It said that many of the neighborhoods surrounding these new homeless hotels and motels have seen a marked increase in crime and drug activity in the areas. So, naturally the city what doesn’t want to disclose any information about the location of the hotels and are using their new emergency law to keep everything secret. But it’s almost impossible to keep a situation like this under wraps for long.

Perhaps, investigative journalism is not dead because the present San Francisco has managed to find out quite a bit about the very secret homeless hotel program. Included in part of this program is a very controversial free marijuana, alcohol and cigarette program for the homeless people placed in these hotels this is overseen by the San Francisco Department of Public Health. Naturally, when the press pushed to get information about the free drug program the Department of Public Health stated that “no such record currently exist.” Then, a public records investigation seems to show that the Department of Public Health had approved almost $4000 to buy the homeless vodka and beer through June 16, 2020.

To further keep information from the tax paying and voting citizens, it is said that city and hotel workers are being required to sign nondisclosure agreements and if these agreements are violated they could be fined up to $1000 or even imprisoned or both!

Now we all know that real estate and housing is expensive in San Francisco, but it said that this program is paying almost $200 a night per room which is almost double the standard San Francisco one-bedroom rental. Said that the city is contracting for these hotel rooms for a period from 90 days to two years!

Some city workers say that even with the free housing and booze provided by the city there’s a bout a 20% attrition rate and most guests remain outside of their hotel room for most of the day. This whole plan to shift the home was from 10 and park benches to hotel rooms began in May of this year, yet the neighborhoods that this program was supposed to improve, have really shown no sign of improvement!

Here in San Diego with proposition ‘A’ that’s on the ballot in November the city intends to build low income housing that’s going to cost the average city of San Diego homeowner over $500 in the first five years of this program added to their property tax. Do you really think that this program is going to be much better than what’s been happening in San Francisco? I’ll be writing more about proposition A very soon.

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