Rain Shows California’s Programs To Help The Homeless Fail

Severe storms that hit California in the early weeks of January created many problems, including weak bridges, insufficient reservoir capacity, poor drainage on many urban roads, and helplessness in the face of inevitable landslides. exposed.

Nothing rains more than the failure of California’s many programs to help the most homeless, and how little of the more than $11 billion allocated to help the homeless last year has helped. clarified. His one video, taken in the early morning hours of a storm on January 5th, says a lot about this (you can watch it on YouTube below). https://youtu.be/xBuOZExJZ8Y).

This video shows homeless people huddling in their sleeping bags and splashing water on them. It shows people huddled under soggy blankets and in barely covered alcoves leading to the entrances of buildings. Above all, one city with a budget of tens of millions of dollars spent on “homeless services” has been shown not to serve people who are homeless when they need it most. California’s official death toll of over 172,000 homeless people is just two of them, both of whom were knocked down from trees by storms and killed by branches that encroached on their tents.

No one knows that more people could die from the after-effects of exposure to extreme cold and damp environments. Many Californians view the state’s homeless as some kind of human wreckage, as many homeless suffer from mental illness and post-traumatic stress disorder and are often poorly functioning. It doesn’t matter because no one deserves the misery inflicted on the homeless this winter.

Some of California’s most prominent and powerful politicians often say they recognize this. New mayor Karen Bass, who has more than 56,000 homeless residents in the city of Los Angeles, declared a state of emergency over their situation on his first day in office last month. She hopes to humanely eliminate some tent cities, but so far only dozens have moved indoors.

Governor Gavin Newsom has committed more than $10 billion to homeless services in the current state budget and billions more in the upcoming planned budget. In California, starting in 2022, he has more homeless people than when the 2023 budget passed, and far fewer beds in shelters than before the coronavirus pandemic.

One safe bet is that none of the more than 50 state and local government programs into which big money was spent on Jan. 5 has been asleep in the rain. According to one state report, his $10 billion allotment for this year is too expensive to house all the homeless now. That valuation called for a 30x increase, or $300 billion.

This amount could accommodate thousands of homes, but there is no indication that even that amount will solve the problem. A bedroom unit costs less than $3,600, not enough to permanently shelter most of today’s homeless. But the use of hotels and motels purchased by state and local governments as temporary and permanent housing for the homeless did not solve the problem.

The anti-homeless portfolio has an idea that’s not yet there: Using a portion of a huge government allotment to replace the hundreds of millions of square feet of vacant office and commercial space currently plaguing many California property owners. Buy or lease part. Working conditions for white-collar workers. Research shows that about one-third of the state’s former office workers are likely to work from home permanently.

So far, California has seen only about 11,000 conversions of its vast spaces into permitted housing units. Reform state law now says it can proceed without zoning changes. How about using some of the billions of dollars allocated to the homeless for this? That would allow for far more units and in far less time than new construction.

Just as it’s time to completely rethink the entire housing crisis, where state officials release new and different needs estimates every few months, even when it comes to this kind of fresh thinking about homeless housing. There is. No one knows when and where the next major storm chain will strike most violently, but if California continues to host as many non-residents as it does now, the misery they will cause. It is impossible to exaggerate.

To contact Thomas Elias: tdelias@aol.comTo read more of his column, visit californiafocus.net online.