Article from Reason by ZACH WEISSMUELLER.
In 2016, Los Angeles voters approved a referendum to spend more than $1.2 billion dollars building new housing for the homeless. It’s part of a plan championed by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who declined our interview request.
The city set a target in 2016 of building 10,000 new housing units within a decade, but just one percent of those apartments will be ready for occupancy by the end of 2019.
“It’s going to be too late when they get through spending the money,” says Jimmy Anderson, who’s lived on Skid Row for 40 years and currently sleeps at Union Rescue Mission. “There’s going to be triple the homeless who’re out here now.”
…
The state legislative analyst’s office found that “increasing competition for limited housing is the primary driver of housing cost growth in coastal California,” which has some of the nation’s highest housing prices and rents thanks partly to local interest groups, which often use tools like zoning and the state’s environmental review law to delay or kill new housing projects. Those obstacles prevent new housing units from being built, which drives up prices. As a result, people living on the margins are priced out and turn to the streets.
Read the entire article at Reason.
Image Credit: By Jericho [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
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The more of these kinds of homes they build, the more homeless will come. Another epic failure just like the train to nowhere!
Have anyone bother to ask these homeless the reason(s) why they have become homeless? Is it lack of employment, mental health, drug usage, or simply the desire to evade responsibilities? And, if they are homeless, how can they buy tents, eat, drugs, etc. and stay healthy?
An L.A. problem caused by those they elected. No bailout, period.