Fix Homelessness How to rebuild human lives

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Social Housing Commission building Australia
Social Housing Commission building Australia

One Size Does Not Fit All

Let’s take a one-week break from my reporting on California homelessness to celebrate this Big News! FR-6700-N-25! Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO)! Maybe that sentence was MEGO to you (mine eyes glaze over) but it’s GOGOGO for government and nonprofit executives looking for federal dollars. The Department of Housing and Urban Affairs is passing out billions “in competitive funding to homeless services organizations across the country for supportive services and housing programs for people experiencing homelessness.” HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge announced, “As our nation faces a worsening housing crisis, it is imperative that we continue to invest in communities’ efforts.” Specifically, HUD is looking for projects that “end homelessness for all persons experiencing homelessness” and “use a Housing First approach.”  Read More ›

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Homeless camp on the street - Generative AI illustration
Homeless camp on the street - Generative AI illustration

Report: Homelessness Data Reveal Reasons for Collapse of King County Outreach Program

Download the report here. Shoddy Data Hid Failed State of Homelessness Program, Study Shows Seattle, WA – A study from the Fix Homelessness Initiative of Discovery Institute reveals the expensive failure of the government to run a now-defunct downtown outreach program in Seattle funded by the region’s leading foundations and corporations. It also reveals a lack of transparency from non-profits receiving millions in contracts from King County to address homelessness. “Information about the downtown program is hard to come by,” said Caitlyn Axe of Discovery Institute “But the data we have reveals ineffective use of millions in funding while private nonprofits are accomplishing far more with far less.” Axe’s research examined the multi-million dollar Partnership for Zero (PfZ) homelessness program Read More ›

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Washington state spends $143 MILLION to get 126 out of homelessness—now Jay Inslee is asking for more

“That’s the equivalent of spending… $1,137,256 per person to exit homelessness.” By Ari Hoffman and Jonathan Choe Despite spending over $1.1 million for each of the only 126 people who transitioned out of homelessness, Washington Democrat Governor Jay Inslee claimed that his initiative for removing encampments from state land and getting people into housing requires more money in order to continue. Inslee has failed to adequately address the state’s homeless crisis, which has grown exponentially during his more than a decade in office. Friday, during a photo op at a tiny home village in Olympia, Inslee touted his Rights of Way Safety Initiative (ROW), a program that since last summer has attempted to remove encampments from state land, including from the sides of freeways, Read More ›

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Thinker under jail bars
Thinker under jail bars

It’s Friday, and Meth’s No Fun Any More

Let’s go back to the campus of the Orange County Rescue Mission (OCRM), where each formerly homeless student wears a lanyard that holds up an electronic ID card. The card is a key for his or her bedroom but also tracks whether and when the students show up at their class or work assignments. Freshmen — students in the first 3-5 months of what is typically an 18-month program — go through assessments of physical and mental health, educational and legal status, computer skills and financial understanding. They participate in therapy groups, work through three books in a Design for Discipleship series, and wear yellow lanyards. Sophomores wear green lanyards, get all the documents and character references they need to Read More ›

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Front side of typical american porch colonial house with white traditional columns and pillars, beautiful garden in the back and forest
Front side of typical american porch colonial house with white traditional columns and pillars, beautiful garden in the back and forest

Wesley J Smith on the Origins of the Homelessness Crisis

Wesley J. Smith joins Dr. Elaina George on Liberty Talk to discuss the origins of the homelessness crisis. Listen to the podcast episode below:

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Heading Toward Recovery

As my last column showed, the San Francisco government dismisses addicts from hospitals and returns them to the Tenderloin’s drug-laden open arms. Many San Francisco taxpayers have grown cynical about the streets-hospital-streets routine, with ineffective policing and insufficient 30-day drug/alcohol rehab programs thrown in. The San Francisco circle game permanently helps almost no one but costs thousands of dollars per day of hospitalization, tens of thousands for a typical insurance-paid rehab program, and millions in grants to politically-connected nonprofits that merely enable drug use. You can research this yourself by looking at website ads for drug and alcohol addiction programs. One typical ad emphasizes private rooms with queen- or king-sized beds, amenities like indoor basketball courts, a professional recording studio, Read More ›

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man falling down from a hole of light, surreal concept
man falling down from a hole of light, surreal concept

The Lowest Depths

Back to California. Maxim Gorky’s The Lower Depths, first staged in 1902, focuses on run-down people living in a flophouse: Vaska the thief, Nastya the prostitute, Luka the tramp, and Kvashnya the meat-pie seller, along with a downwardly-mobile baron, a suicidal actor, and others equally miserable. But in the play, at least temporarily, they are alive and conscious. If fentanyl had hit Russia then, even famed Moscow Arts Theater director Konstantin Stanislavski would have been stymied in creating some dramatic action: Users of the synthetic opioid are often inactive, with stiff limbs. Gorky portrayed lower depths, but fentanyl drops users in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district into the lowest depths, close to death. I’ve walked many crime-ridden areas by day, but Read More ›