Granite Countertops And Sparkly Unicorn Solutions For The Homeless
Michael Shellenberger writes about how the "progressive" approach to homelessness problems in California has been beyond regressive in its effects.
For example, there's "shelter" and "a roof over a person's head" and then there's housing priced like a Brentwood condominium.
As Shellenberger writes:
Liberal idealism also wasted much of the $1.2 billion that L.A. voters raised in 2016 when they voted to tax themselves to build housing for the homeless. "It was supposed to build 10,000 units but in truth will create half that because each one costs $527,000 to $700,000," said Bales. "They will take ten years to build, at which point 44,000 lives will have been destroyed by living on the street."Why did progressive housing activists in L.A. insist on building such expensive apartments for so few people, so slowly, rather than quickly building cheaper units faster for 44,000 people?
"[Housing First] is a dogmatic philosophy," said Bales. "I've lost friends. One of my closest friends is attacking me for pushing for housing that costs $11,000 instead of $527,000 per person. He can't get that we can't provide a $527,000 to $700,000 apartment for each person on the street. I've been in planning meetings where people said, 'Everybody deserves a granite countertop,' but that isn't going to work for 44,000 people."
Next there's the idea that homeless people are mostly just like the rest of us, save for the missing roof:
For decades, many progressives have claimed that homelessness is really just a kind of poverty, a manifestation of social inequality. In 1986, celebrity comedians Whoppi Goldberg, Robin Williams, and Billy Crystal held "Comic Relief," a telethon for homelessness. Throughout it, they emphasized that the homeless were just like you and me, just poorer. Today, many of California's leading homelessness advocates insist that the current crisis is due mostly to the housing shortage.Homelessness experts and advocates disagree. "I've rarely seen a normal able-bodied able-minded non-drug-using homeless person who's just down on their luck," L.A. street doctor Susan Partovi told me. "Of the thousands of people I've worked with over 16 years, it's like one or two people a year. And they're the easiest to deal with." Rev. Bales agrees. "One hundred percent of the people on the streets are mentally impacted, on drugs, or both," he said.
And then there are the unscientific ideas about mental illness and how to address it:
Many reformers believed mental illness was created by poverty and inequality and argued that solving it required creating "mentally healthy" environments, organizing tenants, and fighting landlords.These reformers viewed mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder as socially constructed and not the result of biology, as most doctors believe today. They sought clinics that would "promote health" and "the development of a resilient character." They wanted clinics to treat the "totality of [a patient's] being in the totality of his relationships." The psychiatrist played a special role, the reformers said. "One might even say," wrote Francis Braceland, an influential psychiatrist who had studied with Carl Jung, " the ideal goal of the psychiatrist is to achieve wisdom."
The reformers were so confident in their convictions that they smashed the state mental institutions before creating an alternative. The reformers hyped new psychiatric drugs, which reduced the symptoms of schizophrenia, as a bridge to the new system. There was little resistance to the radical changes by existing mental institutions, whose leadership had been demoralized and discredited. And yet there was no evidence that community-based treatment would work.
...Congress had "encouraged the closing of state mental hospitals without any realistic plan regarding what would happen to the discharged patients," notes Dr. Torrey, "especially those who refused to take medication they needed to remain well."
This has worked out in predictable ways. Every now and again, at 3 a.m. here in Venice, somebody is walking down the middle of my street screaming at the top of their lungs.
Yeah, dude, great that Jesus is coming, but 10 a.m. would work a little better for those of us going for a little REM in the wee hours.
Is the problem granite countertops or is it that land values are high in cities?
NicoleK at September 13, 2019 2:14 AM
While high land prices probably are part of it, from the quotes above, it seems like the issue is that the planned apartments are much fancier than they need to be.
What is it about granite countertops that makes planners think everyone deserves them? My house doesn't have them, and I haven't been unemployed for even a minute in more than thirty years.
Old RPM Daddy (OldRPMDaddy at GMail dot com) at September 13, 2019 5:16 AM
Take a guess why places like Bismarck North Dakota don’t have much of a homeless problem.
Building housing for the homeless is like building housing for illegals. The demand will always exceed the supply.
Isab at September 13, 2019 5:41 AM
10 years? To build an apartment building?
Those things are sprouting like weeds here. Completion takes about a month in the suburbs and about six months in the urban core - even with nice amenities like granite countertops. This is not a construction issue. It's a legal issue.
When I lived in California, the local government used to let the homeless camp in old military buildings on abandoned bases. And the local emergency services had to respond weekly to fires, fights, overdoses, etc. One time, my neighborhood was almost burned down because of a grass fire started in a nearby homeless encampment by the railroad tracks. Grass fires up by that encampment were a regular occurrence. Dry grass, passed out drunks, and fires don't mix well.
For the most part, these are not people who can be left to live on their own. Giving them apartments is not the solution. Many of them need regular supervision, the kind that cannot be effectively given with random visits by a social worker.
It's ego massaging on the part of Lefties that giving a homeless drug addict an apartment will solve all his problems. They get to feel good about themselves spending society's money on apartments for the homeless without putting in the hard labor required to actually solve the problem.
To accomplish that, Lefties have convinced themselves that poverty is the root cause of homelessness in the US, not drug addiction or mental illness - because those problems would require actual work to solve.
Conan the Grammarian at September 13, 2019 6:13 AM
Take a guess why places like Bismarck
Because about half the year it's cold enough to freeze your balls to your thighs. And if you're actually homeless in that weather, you'll end up missing toes and fingers, presuming the sawbones manage to save your hands and feet.
"One hundred percent of the people on the streets are mentally impacted, on drugs, or both," he said.
I'm going to go with "both" for 8 times out of 10. They may not want to take their prescribed meds, but they know they need something so they self-medicate. With more pleasing substances. Or whatever they can get.
I R A Darth Aggie at September 13, 2019 6:40 AM
@Isab: Take a guess why places like Bismarck North Dakota don’t have much of a homeless problem.
Cursory research confirms your suspicions, via Wikipedia population data* and government homelessness data:**
North Dakota
Population: 760,077
Homeless (2018): 542
% of Population: 0.07%
Calfornia
Population: 39,557,045
Homeless (2018): 129,972
% of Population: 0.33%
Ohio
Population: 11,689,442
Homeless (2018): 10,249
% of Population: 0.09%
* Wkipedia, 2018 Estimated Populations
** United States Interagency Council on Homelessness
(https://www.usich.gov/homelessness-statistics)
Old RPM Daddy (OldRPMDaddy at GMail dot com) at September 13, 2019 6:51 AM
“Because about half the year it's cold enough to freeze your balls to your thighs. And if you're actually homeless in that weather, you'll end up missing toes and fingers, presuming the sawbones manage to save your hands and feet”
Precisely, if you have a place with a climate that allows outdoor living year round, the homeless will be ever with you, and will move there from harsher climates to take advantage of the benefits.
Wouldn’t be surprised if Bismarck’s solution to their “homeless problem” is a one way bus ticket to LA come October 1st.
Isab at September 13, 2019 6:52 AM
"Wouldn’t be surprised if Bismarck’s solution to their “homeless problem” is a one way bus ticket to LA come October 1st."
There were several cities in Texas that used to send their "problem" homeless people to Austin. I don't know if it's still happening. But, my understanding is that a large portion of the homeless population here arrived here homeless. The problem is not that people lost their homes while they lived here. The city is a destination for the homeless. I imagine that LA (and Portland) are similar.
ahw at September 13, 2019 7:38 AM
Out here in the MidWest, winter culls the homeless population,nothing like a couple feet of snow and a below zero wind chill to clear out the street crazies. Also most of MidWest is still rural, and has fewer big urban areas with rat holes for the homeless to hide in. Try begging, dumpster diving and scoring drugs in the middle of a corn field, it just does not work.
Here, we know that a build up of street crazies and the problems they bring with them is just a temporary thing that will get sorted out in early january when the first big snostorm and sub zero weather culls out the street druggies, blanket beggars, curb poopers abd doorway pissers.
Think of it as evolution in action.
God, how I love deep snowdrifts and below zero wind chill in the morning!!!
biil jonas at September 13, 2019 7:59 AM
It still happens. But they keep it quieter these days. The legislature in Austin got pretty pissy about it.
I have known a few people who were fully mentally capable and not incapacitated by drugs who were homeless. But all of them were homeless by choice. They didn't see a reason to spend money on a residence, mainly because they traveled so much. So free apartments wouldn't be useful to them either.
And yes, I agree that just because there are one or two people who are homeless by choice doesn't invalidate the other 99.9999% of people. Those I've known who were homeless for financial reasons got a home of some sort within three months.
As for that Jesus guy, if he is all that they claim he is no one needs to be yelling and shouting he is coming for you. If he wants you he'll come get you.
Ben at September 13, 2019 8:04 AM
The Left hates incentives and individual initiative. The idea that if you lowered restrictions people would build housing cannot be accepted by them.
I read an account by a guy in San Fran who has a landscaping company. Whenever he encountered a homeless person he gave his card and said he had work for them. Over 100 cards he gave out but not one person ever showed up for a job.
A big part of the problem is the smaller family size today. When big families lived near each other they could often somehow deal with the crazy relative, keep them in some apartment or in their basement bedroom. Now not so much.
In Chicago, there used to be SROs (Single Room Occupancy)--like a dorm. Bathroom down the hall, you get a single room. All the winos lived there. With an address they could get their social security check. Progressives got them torn down as if destroying the building got rid of the winos. Out on the street they went.
cc at September 13, 2019 8:58 AM
So, your tax money, again...
Wonderful place, that California.
How are you allowed to keep anything?
Radwaste at September 13, 2019 11:30 AM
A passage from Dan Savage's 1999 book "The Kid" (about him and soon-to-be husband Terry, the 20-year-old pregnant "gutter punk" Melissa, and the adoption). I should explain that the other "birth moms" Dan and Terry had already met at the seminar were essentially born-again Christians.
“There were two issues Laurie (the adoption agency rep) felt we should think about while making our decision. First the drinking and the drugs; second, Melissa’s lifestyle. Melissa planned on going back to the streets after she had the baby, and that would create special 'challenges' for us in our relationship with our child’s birth mom. Laurie was a little concerned that Melissa was different from the births moms we’d met at the seminar, so she wanted us to brace ourselves. We didn’t tell Laurie that as far as we were concerned, the less Melissa was like those birth moms the better. Laurie kept calling Melissa homeless, but we knew what Melissa was: she was a gutter punk, one of those kids who travel around the country looking like punks and smelling like hell, sleeping on downtown streets and driving business owners crazy. Seattle’s full of them in the summer.
"Seattle’s too cold and wet for anyone other than the truly homeless to live on the streets year-round; as soon as it gets cold, the gutter punks who come up here in the summer head south, to Arizona, southern Clifornia and Mexico. A few damp gutter punks can be found in Seattle in the winter, but it’s the summer when they return in force, tanned, rested, and ready to hit us up for change.
"Terry works at one end of Broadway, Seattle’s hip/queer shopping district, and I work at the other end. Walking from Terry’s bookstore to my office between May and October means wading through a clumps of gutter punks. Two of three stand or sit at almost every corner, with huge backpacks, bedrolls, and punked up hair. They wear sweatshirts, baggy army pants, boots and white T-shirts. From sleeping on grass, in alleys, and under overpasses, gutter punks tend to take on a uniform greenish-gray-grime color. Some travel with dogs. Most of the punks are pretty harmless, but a run-in with one suffering from some major psychological damage or on too much acid can ruin your whole day.
"In addition to rejecting mainstream American values, like cars, homes, jobs, gutter punks also reject mainstream personal hygiene, like toothbrushes, soap and shampoo. When you’re living on the streets and begging for change, you’re not going to pour what money you do come by into hair-care products and dental floss, or pump quarters into washing machines at laundromats.
"But after you’ve been asked for change six or seven thousand times in one day, you can get pretty tired of gutter punks. Even the bleedingest heart eventually hardens. Some will sneer at you as you race to work, without acknowledging that they depend on your , as well as your guilt and empathy, to move change out of your pocket and into theirs. On some level I envy gutter punks and think the circuit they’ve created is kind of a wandering Woodstock. One day, I suspect, kids who are in their teens and early twenties right now and who don’t run off to be gutter punks for a few years will feel the way all the sixtiesw kids who didn’t go to Woodstock now feel. They’re missing out on their generation’s defining cultural experience. Twenty years from now, we’ll all be reading the great novels of the Gutter Punk Generation, and the people who weren’t gutter punks will claim they were, just like some people who didn’t make it to Woodstock claim they did.
"But while I look forward to the novels they are going to write, living in Seattle it’s easy to get sick of the gutter punks and their shtick.”
lenona at September 13, 2019 11:48 AM
Do the midshipman dorms at the Naval Academy have granite countertops?
Michael Ejercito at December 29, 2019 10:10 PM
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