Musk goes after homeless programs
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non-profit organizations profit from homelessness rather than work to eliminate it
Throwing money at the problem isn't fixing it.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/11/us/california-homeless-spending/index.html
California has spent a stunning $17.5 billion trying to combat homelessness over just four years. But, in the same time frame, from 2018 to 2022, the state’s homeless population actually grew. Half of all Americans living outside on the streets, federal data shows, live in California.
Across the country, homelessness is on the rise. But California is adding more homeless people every year than any other state. More than 170,000 unhoused people now live here.
“The problem would be so much worse, absent these interventions,” Jason Elliott, senior adviser on homelessness to Gov. Gavin Newsom, told CNN. “And that’s not what people want to hear. I get it, we get it.”
But with $17.5 billion, the state could, theoretically, have just paid the rent for every unhoused person in California for those four years, even at the state’s high home costs.
“That is reductive … Perhaps that would work for me, because I don’t have significant behavioral health challenges.” said Elliott. “If two thirds of people on the streets right now are experiencing mental health symptoms, we can’t just pay their rent.”
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That’s part of it, certainly in California.
My son and I volunteer about once a month with a charity here called ‘midnight run’, that takes food and clothes around manhattan to distribute directly to homeless people. They know what spots we come to and roughly when.
We see plenty with alcohol problems, but almost none of the stone eyed drug addicts you see in the encampments (really open air drug markets) in CA.
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I dont agree that the organizations that try to help homeless are actually doing so to increase the number of homeless. I think that is kind of a dumb viewpoint.
I dont know what the answer is but I think that probably 33% have addiction problems and dont want to be and can't be helped. 33% are actually on hard times and do want and could use assistance. Not sure about the middle 33%.
