Like a previously viewed movie, I know how this one ends. In a previous column, I criticized the inability of county leaders to see how the safe parking site on Oklahoma Avenue was going to work out (“SLO County’s decision to close its safe parking site was predictable,” May 11). Here, I am predicting that a new homeless initiative is going to fail.
I am referring to the news in The Tribune that the state of California has awarded San Luis Obispo County the sum of $13.4 million to relocate 200 homeless people, from a total of $199 million allocated statewide. The location where they are now living was not disclosed, but it’s likely to be along the Bob Jones Trail.
That works out to $67,000 per homeless person relocated. That is a lot of money, especially considering that the state of California currently is facing a $31.5 billion deficit. And, I would guess that the actual budget deficit will be even higher, as it is based on predicted tax revenues that may turn out to be lower due to the accelerating flight of businesses from California, as they take their taxes and their tax-paying employees with them. Things are about to get pretty difficult for a state that has been on such a profligate spending spree that it was even giving stimulus checks to illegal immigrants. California has cultivated many dependents.
How will this money be spent? According to KSBY, it will be for “outreach” and housing. I would guess that much of the money will be spent providing them with rental housing, probably hotel rooms, at least until the funds run out. A homeless industrial complex has developed in California, which feeds itself with government funding and which is constantly on a quest for additional funding to provide homeless services.
Will it solve the problems of these lucky homeless and turn them into sober, functioning people? Probably not. It is unlikely to cure their addictions and mental disabilities. As San Francisco and other cities have discovered, homelessness is not a problem that can be cured by throwing money at it. In fact, it tends to make the city’s problem worse by attracting more homeless.
Will this solve the problem of the homeless encampments along the Bob Jones Trail? No, it won’t.
You do not need to be a psychic to see how this will work out. Even if the 200 homeless all move out of their encampments and into apartments or rooms, others will promptly move in for the same reason that the prior residents did. Many of the homeless are pretty mobile and can make rational decisions in obtaining necessities like food and a place to live. This area provides attractive camping spots and proximity to stores. As the authorities have discovered, it is not possible to keep the homeless out of that area. After the 200 move out, others will move in and it will be eventually re-populated, and we’re back to square one.
And, eventually, many of the original 200 will move back once their free housing funds are exhausted, and perhaps earlier if they find themselves unable to successfully live within the structure and restrictions of supervised living in an apartment or room.
What will this $13.4 million expenditure have accomplished? Other than temporarily housing and supporting 200 homeless people and offering them programs that usually do little to change their life trajectories, it will provide very little long-term benefit. The same problems as they currently suffer will eventually return most of them to the encampments. It may provide a short-lived decrease in the problems caused by the encampments, and fund the operating costs of the homeless organizations, but it will not “cure” the homeless problem for even most of the 200. Fighting homelessness is a Sisyphean task. Too often, our homeless spending resembles re-upholstering the deck chairs on the Titanic—a short-lived, slightly incremental increase in comfort, but without altering the ultimate outcome.
This $13.4 million is not free money. It may be a grant from the state, but ultimately it is the money that you and I pay in taxes. And even if it is subsidized by federal money from one of the profligate Biden spending bills, it is money that we and our children are going to have to pay back at some point. For that kind of money, we are entitled to a more long-lasting “fix.” It is in our own interests to spend the money carefully.
You have my prediction. Check back in a year or two. Will there still be homeless camps along the Bob Jones Trail? Will the 200 people served then be living functioning, sober, independent lives? Will anything lasting have been accomplished?
I hope I am proven wrong. Δ
John Donegan is a retired attorney in Pismo Beach who is so frugal that he still considers $13.4 million big money. Write a response for publication by emailing it to letters@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Jul 6-16, 2023.
Here’s my predictable outcome: When, like Ward Cleaver, a head-of-household, 40-hour per week job pays enough to own a home, send your kids to college and have your spouse stay home and bake cookies, people now in despair will happily adopt ‘traditional’ values.
I hadn’t realized that the inability to buy a house in SLO and to support a spouse, and to send your kids to college, forced people to take up fentanyl and meth. Somebody better tell Hollywood that they don’t have any valid excuses for their addictions.
Right, it’s those Hollywood “globalists.”
I mostly agree with you on this, Mr. Donegan. However, it is customary in op-ed pieces to present possible solutions to the problem. You don’t seem to have any, which makes your words ring hollow—pretty much just an anti-government statement. I wonder who solves our homeless problem if it’s not the government?
You assume the problem can be “solved”. It can’t. The problem is addiction and mental health, not housing. We are unable to institutionalize addicts and the insane, and their problems make reasonable co-existence with the rest of society impossible. The best we can do is just isolate the problematic homeless.
So, your solution is to change the laws back to where they were before Ronald Reagan was governor and open more Camarillo mental health hospitals (Camarillo is now a university, but a few years ago when I toured their grounds, I got a funny feeling. Camarillo was not known for its humane procedures. Shock therapy, debilitating drugs were all part of the regimen). It’s an expensive solution, as Gov. Reagan noted. Sorry if I put words in your mouth. But that’s basically what you’re saying, unless we want to simply tolerate the blight on our cities.
A project in Portland actually saw some progress. with the majority of the homeless reintegrating into regular housing. Unfortunately, the same program did not work in San Francisco. Read the story:
https://www.axios.com/local/portland/2023/…