Los Angeles Is Spending Over $1 Billion To House the Homeless. It’s Failing.
December 7th, 2019Via: Reason:
The city initially ballparked the permanent units at a median cost of $350,000 a piece. Three years later, the estimated cost rose to more than half a million per unit. Some units are approaching $700,000 each.
Andy Bales says he saw it coming.
“I was a critic 10 years ago of this plan even before it came about,” he says. “A very expensive way of spending all the resources on a few and leaving the many out in the cold.”
In Los Angeles, three out of four homeless people live unsheltered on the street. Bales had wanted the city to allocate a portion of the money to nonprofits and churches like his to provide temporary relief but says critics dismissed and even laughed at him.
“There’s this group that is so dogmatic about permanent supportive housing as the solution,” he says. “And they think the only solution is the perfect rather than good.”
Bales says that, given the current emergency, the city should reconsider its heavy focus on finding a long term solution.
Union Rescue Mission just opened what’s called a Sprung structure, a relatively inexpensive but sturdy and weather-resistant tent with 120 beds. He encourages the city to invest more in Sprung structures and other cheap, easily constructed solutions like mobile homes, container homes, or even 3-D printed concrete houses.
“We cannot spend $600,000 per person per unit and ever get it done,” says Bales. “We’ve got to think innovatively or we’re going to have a bigger disaster on our hands.”
What a disaster. I watched the Tim Pool video above as well. Tim’s appreciation is the price you pay for being sane. His observation is correct, unfortunately. Wait until outbreaks of cholera hit, to shift from civil asset forfeiture and internment to more lethal forms of extermination – which it is already – just a matter of speed.
And yet, what political solutions can solve what’s coming? The system won’t/doesn’t/can’t keep up now and it’s breaking down in real time. It’s very likely this, and every other problem, accelerates next year. I personally think the Repo debacle is telling us the music has stopped.