Will politicians ever be able to solve the “homeless problem”? The political class in California seems to think that throwing money at the problem will make it go away. Many of us have thought this is the wrong strategy.
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) points out the fallacy of the body-politic approach to problem solving. Incorporated cities and the county of Santa Barbara have also fallen into this money pit.
The WSJ reports: “The number of homeless people in California grew about 50 percent between 2014 and 2022. The state, which accounts for 12 percent of the U.S. population, has about half of the nation’s unsheltered homeless, an estimated 115,000 people, according to federal and state data last year.”
So, what was the solution to stopping this explosive growth? The WSJ goes on: “California spent a record $17 billion combating homelessness in the past four fiscal years. For the state budget year starting in July, Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed another $3.7 billion.”
Justifiably, people aren’t happy with how this issue is being handled. Even in Lompoc the number of so called “unhoused” has become far more noticeable in the last few years; and in Santa Barbara, State Street seems to attract large numbers of the unwashed as they prey on tourists and local businesses.
The WSJ reports on what Gov. Newsom thinks about this: “Mr. Newsom late last year threatened to withhold funding from local governments that he believed weren’t attacking the problem aggressively enough. That included programs to move squatters, willingly or not.”
But Newsom seemed to forget that the homeless have a court-given right to sleep anywhere they want on public property including sidewalks, underpasses, bridge abutments, public spaces and even the front of City Hall if no other housing is available.
So, local governments are caught between a rock and a hard place when trying to “move squatters, willingly or not.”
Since the influx of cash, a growing nonprofit industry has sprung up to help the homeless. Employees of these groups are paid handsome salaries for their efforts, but the size of the problem is greater than the resources available.
Nowhere in this state are there enough beds and transition shelters available for the growing population. Just outside Lompoc, a growing homeless shelter has expanded in size several times, and still there isn’t enough space for the local population.
Add to that the fact that as the WSJ reports, “Many of the drug addicts and mentally ill on Wood Street (in Oakland) wanted nothing more than to be left alone.”
Another factor is the cost of housing. In our county, land prices are outrageous and construction costs are approaching $900 a square foot.
Apartments in Lompoc — one bedroom and one bath — go for about $1,500 a month ($18,000 a year plus utilities), A person earning minimum wage ($15 and hour; $30,000 a year) would have very little left for food or transportation.
So, will money solve this problem? No, because simply throwing money at people who are either unwilling or unable to help themselves will only offer an incentive to others to do the same thing.
The answer is complex; it starts in local schools. Instead of addressing social issues in schools, how about teaching kids the fundamentals they need to compete in society and acquire productive employment after their schooling is complete? Leave the social problems for their life experiences to solve.
Teach the kids self-worth; today it’s popular to tell one group of people they are somehow inferior to another just to satisfy one noisy group or another. I was taught that in our country all people are equal.
Lastly, stop rewarding thieves by increasing the amount of merchandise they can steal, and not sending crooks and users of illegal drugs to jail. It doesn’t work, because the more you do to “help these people” the more they will steal.
It has taken several decades to create this problem; and tossing a few billion at it here and there is not the solution.
Meanwhile, in Santa Barbara, Lompoc and at the county level they are still “talking about solutions” and throwing more tax dollars at a problem that continues to grow.
