By Gary Wickert
The Atlantic magazine wrote an article in 2011 entitled “Hey, Barney Frank: The Government Did Cause the Housing Crisis.” Liberals, including then-Congressman Barney Frank, had repeated the mantra that the housing crisis of 2008 and the financial fallout which followed was caused by a failure to adequately regulate banks. The truth is that government and liberal policies which claimed to be motivated by a desire to make homeowners out of less affluent people who were not able to pay their mortgages. It began with cheap credit and lax lending standards foisted on lenders by the government. This fueled a housing bubble and an upward spiral in home prices. When the bubble burst, the banks were left holding trillions of dollars of worthless investments in subprime mortgages. Wall Street did what they could to salvage the government’s mess by packaging these failing loans into low-risk financial instruments such as mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). In the end, liberal compassion resulted in millions being thrown out of their homes and one subprime lender after another filed for bankruptcy. It was only the latest confirmation of Ronald Reagan’s quote, “The top 9 most terrifying words in the English Language are: I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”
Fast forward to 2022 and it is government to the “rescue” once again—this time with a utopian plan to end homelessness. Homelessness across many of the country’s liberal-run cities and states has reached epic proportions. Tent cities, public encampments, and makeshift cardboard box homes along city sidewalks and under bridges are littered with drug needles, garbage, and the stench of human feces. Crime is rampant and assaults are a part of daily life among the homeless. Some reports indicate that cities like Los Angeles are home to 70,000 homeless people. That is more than the entire population of Brentwood, California or Evanston, Illinois.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development spends billions of dollars each year on homelessness, but its “progressive” efforts have not even put a dent in the problem, and homelessness has increased in the process. The failure, it seems, is that government has once again misdiagnosed the problem. They look at homeless as though it is a housing problem and that the compassionate solution is to provide free housing without any responsibility for the beneficiaries of the housing to participate in or seek drug treatment programs or mental health care. They are not even required to look for a job. The compassionate HUD program is called “Housing First.” In essence, it is a government program to “give the homeless housing.” Experience has shown, however, that this is an extremely expensive program with nothing done to improve the lives of the homeless. In fact, studies have shown that “Housing First” has actually caused an increase in drug and substance abuse and higher rates of overdose deaths.
To make matters worse, these liberal programs cannot even see their own failure; probably because the tax dollars are too good to turn down. A New York-based website called “Breaking Ground” boasts “We believe that everyone deserves a home.” A post by its president and CEO Brenda Rose—whose salary is a whopping $470,067 before bonuses—referred to “Housing First” as a “revolutionary approach” that has had amazing success, because its philosophy is that the first and primary need for a person experiencing long-term homelessness is to obtain a stable home. Meanwhile, a June 17, 2022, New York Times article reported that attempting to count the homeless is unreliable and doesn’t include the number of homeless who are in shelters around the city. New York homelessness has been compounded by Biden inflation and high rents.
Ideologically driven public policies such as “Housing First” are responsible for America’s rise in homelessness. When you approach homelessness as an economic problem, the tendency is to throw “free” taxpayer money at it. As the theory goes—if you throw enough money into the assisted housing sector, people will get back on their feet, get a job, and start paying taxes. The problem is the homeless are homeless for a reason. Anti-social and dysfunctional personal behaviors are not being addressed. Instead of adapting these programs to address the failures, government has doubled down. In 2013, A law was passed by Congress requiring that all federally funded assistance programs apply the Housing First formula to remedy homelessness. The result? Since 2013, homelessness has grown exponentially. California enacted a law that requires every state dollar spent on homelessness to be spent on Housing First programs. But Housing First does nothing to treat drug addiction and other destructive behaviors, so the cycle continues to grow. Compassionately providing every homeless person with a permanent home may make you feel good, but it has done little to reduce homelessness. The beneficiaries of free housing can’t be compelled to search for work or receive job training or even obey the law. In 2017, San Francisco spent $305 million on homelessness.
The city has 4,397 homeless in 2022. That is nearly $700 per person; with no results. Much of the money has gone to board members and CEOs of these homeless programs.
And it should come as now shock that the highest levels of homeless people exist in the most hard-care Democratic strongholds. Outside of New York, the top ten cities with the worst homeless problems are Los Angeles, Seattle, San Jose, San Diego, San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Santa Ana, and Anaheim—all in California, where the people care the most. Conservative states like Texas and Florida have no cities in the top 25.
The tax dollars continue to flow, and the problem gets worse. Just like the affordable housing mandates in 2007 and 2008 caused the housing crisis, government benevolence and compassion once again exacerbate a problem that it claims to want to fix