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Last week, Los Angeles Police Officer Sean Danes revealed this Kenneth Fire– one of the six who tortured the Los Angeles basin – was under criminal investigation.
There was a homeless individual who was allegedly an illegal alien subject to the population Within minutes and miles of the fire originating. Witnesses reportedly saw him holding a blowtorch and shouting: “I'm doing this.”
He was later held on a felony probation violation due to insufficient evidence, and this person appeared to harbor an intent to harm society — an intent as unmistakable as the inner demons he struggles with.
Consider this along with the fact that, According to LAFD dataThere were 13,909 fires in Los Angeles area Associated with homelessness. This is nearly double the number reported in 2020.
Man arrested near Los Angeles fires with possible stove is illegal immigrant: Ice Sources
This juxtaposition highlights the growing and enormous threat to public safety posed by our nation's homeless policy—Housing First—that rejects the bare truth: mental illness, and substance use disorder, too often accompany homelessness.
Advocates include Housing First Governor Gavin NewsomLos Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, and Supervisor Mitchell of Los Angeles County, who oversee the most destructive and costly wildfires in history and the most troubled states, county and city in America regarding homelessness.
Fires rage, lives are lost, and communities are destroyed. It is time to face the undeniable truth: Housing First has failed as a primary way of dealing with homelessness.
Homeless individuals face density and distress all too often Intertwined challengesincluding underemployment or lack of employment, lack of a high school diploma, lack of a support network, and for the female population in particular, domestic violence.
Often, they also suffer from mental illness and addiction Despite erroneous federal government data.
During my 13-year tenure as CEO of Northern California's largest program for homeless women and children, 77% of women struggled with addiction and 60% with mental illness. In the broader homeless population, the federal government claims The number will be 37%But the UCLA Policy Lab found otherwise… 78% of chronically homeless people suffer from these problems.
In the face of these challenges, many homeless people turn to criminal activity as a means of survival. Conversely, criminal behavior can also stimulate homelessness.
In my program, 55% of our women have criminal records. Estimates of the total homeless population range from 20-70%. Based on frontline experience and the broader context in which rates of early incarceration and prison release have risen while rehabilitation efforts have diminished, an estimate of 70% is more likely.
The good news is that most homeless people can build the resilience and skills needed to change their lives and overcome these complex challenges. I have witnessed this myself in thousands of cases, and my confidence remains steadfast.
However, such a profound transformation has never and will never happen under the country's housing-first approach.
Adopted in 2013, Housing first It is a public policy approach to connecting homeless people to permanent housing as quickly as possible.
It was a great sonic bite and hard to argue with… at least at first.
This meant that American taxpayers were on the hook to house all homeless people for life — in the form of permanent housing — without any requirements such as sobriety, participation in treatment services, or seeking employment, whatsoever.
Los Angeles is in a tough position to spend hundreds of millions on worsening homelessness
Regulated shelters, transitional housing programs, and treatment services have become almost obsolete. They were defunded to increase the number of “unconditional housing vouchers in perpetuity.”
Most nonprofits serving the homeless have been subject to the federal government's approach, with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) being the largest funder of homelessness.
President Obama The promise of Housing First would end homelessness within a decade, but 11 years later, the number of homeless Americans has risen to the highest level ever recorded, accompanied by a 238% increase in the homeless death rate.
California—the only state to fully adopt a Housing First program (2016)—now ranks among the worst states in the country.
Beyond these dismal results, it was the quiet release of the only long-term study of the Housing First initiative that proved ineffective and often fatal. on Analysis of 14 yearsNearly half of the individuals died by the fifth year, and only 36% remained in residence after the fifth year.
Fires rage, lives are lost, and communities are destroyed. It is time to face the undeniable truth: Housing First has failed as a primary way of dealing with homelessness.
The Free Up Foundation has developed a Human First public policy framework grounded in real-life experience and the understanding that humans are both complex and resilient.
The next Trump administration should adopt a liberalization framework as follows:
1. Eliminate Housing First as the nation's exclusive approach to homelessness.
2. Redefining success from “housing” to helping people achieve their full God-given potential.
3. Refund temporary residency programs that instill community, accountability, and growth. Grounded shelters, transitional housing programs, and permitted encampments should be included, all of which facilitate efficient delivery of treatment services. (Only 10% to 20% of the homeless population is likely to need “lifetime subsidized” housing.)
4. Fund and require (as needed) treatment services including mental health and substance abuse counseling, and employment training.
5. Ban Unlicensed camps It is often plagued by crime, drugs and sexual assault, and is an increasing source of fires.
6. Re-engage faith and law enforcement communities that were ostracized by HUD when it emerged as chief homelessness chief.
7. Measure and report progress toward success regularly. Funding and rewarding success.
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Over the past decade, Americans have ceded their power to the hard left's approach to homelessness. Across the board, the more an area embraces housing first, the more homelessness increases and destroys everything in its path — homeless people, taxpayers, public space, and public safety.
Free Up's Human First framework will advance individual productivity and public safety while restoring normalcy and returning billions annually to taxpayers who have earned it.
