Ilhan Omar Promises The Squad Will Eliminate Homelessness With "Homes For All" Legislation

[CrusaderFrank]

Hotair ^ | 10/25/2019 | John Sexton

During a town hall event Thursday, Rep. Ilhan Omar was asked if she would support a home guarantee and make a commitment to “building millions of social housing units.”

Ilhan Omar replied that when she first came to America she was shocked to see homeless people. “It is a moral stain on our country that we have half-a-million or more people facing homelessness,” Omar said. She added, “In a few weeks, we are going to introduce our Homes For All legislation, which will, hopefully, guarantee a home for everyone by investing federal dollars in the creation of millions of homes.”

Omar went on to explain that the Squad would be rolling out a coordinated effort regarding Homes for All: “We collectively in the progressive caucus, mainly the Squad…are going to be rolling out a Homes for All package, each one of us, that will deal with many of the systematic problems that we have in our housing.”

I guess it was inevitable that the party of free college and free health care would get around to promising free homes for all. Obviously, there aren’t a lot of details here yet but Omar says there are half a million homeless people in the US, which is in line with recent government reports that found about that many people were homeless on a given night in 2017:

On a single night in 2017, 553,742 people were experiencing homelessness in the United States. For every 10,000 people in the country, 17 were experiencing homelessness. Approximately twothirds (65%) were staying in emergency shelters or transitional housing programs, and about onethird (35%) were in unsheltered locations.

The number of homeless in a given year is much higher because most people are only homeless temporarily. They either find a place to live (with friends or family) or they find a new job, etc. The long term homeless who you see living on the street in tents are a different population, a majority of whom have mental problems or drug problems that prevent them from reintegrating into society. So if Omar’s plan is to provide free homes to the people she saw on the streets then she’s necessarily going to be giving those homes to a lot of people who have other serious problems that go beyond a lack of affordable housing.

I’m also curious about the cost of all of this. In 2016, LA residents passed proposition HHH which raised $1.2 billion to create just 10,000 new housing units for the homeless. But 2 1/2 years later the plan is looking like a debacle:

Today the ten-year goal to build 10,000 units of homeless housing is in serious jeopardy, beset by delays, losses in federal tax credit funding, and skyrocketing construction costs. Not a single HHH unit was completed by the end of 2018…

The city has committed $311,672,673 of the $1.2 billion voter-approved bond money to 33 development projects to build a total of 2,133 units of affordable housing, including 1,643 with supportive services for the chronically homeless. It has broken ground on eight projects and approved construction loans for five more, which are slated to launch within a month.

But even if all goes according to plan, no more than 239 of the affordable units are expected to be completed by the end of this year, including 164 for permanent supportive housing.

Maybe a nationwide approach will be more successful, but ultimately, no matter who provides the money, this is going to boil down to city bureaucracies that have to actually make these projects happen. Anyone who thinks that is going to go smoothly, efficiently, or cheaply, hasn’t been paying attention.

This clip courtesy of the Washington Examiner:

CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO

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Same way the War on Poverty ended poverty, right?

 

[Oldstyle]

Has she promised to cure cancer yet?
(As unoriginal as that sounds...).

Free cancer for everyone! (eye roll)

 

[Toro]

Hotair ^ | 10/25/2019 | John Sexton

During a town hall event Thursday, Rep. Ilhan Omar was asked if she would support a home guarantee and make a commitment to “building millions of social housing units.”

Ilhan Omar replied that when she first came to America she was shocked to see homeless people. “It is a moral stain on our country that we have half-a-million or more people facing homelessness,” Omar said. She added, “In a few weeks, we are going to introduce our Homes For All legislation, which will, hopefully, guarantee a home for everyone by investing federal dollars in the creation of millions of homes.”

Omar went on to explain that the Squad would be rolling out a coordinated effort regarding Homes for All: “We collectively in the progressive caucus, mainly the Squad…are going to be rolling out a Homes for All package, each one of us, that will deal with many of the systematic problems that we have in our housing.”

I guess it was inevitable that the party of free college and free health care would get around to promising free homes for all. Obviously, there aren’t a lot of details here yet but Omar says there are half a million homeless people in the US, which is in line with recent government reports that found about that many people were homeless on a given night in 2017:

On a single night in 2017, 553,742 people were experiencing homelessness in the United States. For every 10,000 people in the country, 17 were experiencing homelessness. Approximately twothirds (65%) were staying in emergency shelters or transitional housing programs, and about onethird (35%) were in unsheltered locations.

The number of homeless in a given year is much higher because most people are only homeless temporarily. They either find a place to live (with friends or family) or they find a new job, etc. The long term homeless who you see living on the street in tents are a different population, a majority of whom have mental problems or drug problems that prevent them from reintegrating into society. So if Omar’s plan is to provide free homes to the people she saw on the streets then she’s necessarily going to be giving those homes to a lot of people who have other serious problems that go beyond a lack of affordable housing.

I’m also curious about the cost of all of this. In 2016, LA residents passed proposition HHH which raised $1.2 billion to create just 10,000 new housing units for the homeless. But 2 1/2 years later the plan is looking like a debacle:

Today the ten-year goal to build 10,000 units of homeless housing is in serious jeopardy, beset by delays, losses in federal tax credit funding, and skyrocketing construction costs. Not a single HHH unit was completed by the end of 2018…

The city has committed $311,672,673 of the $1.2 billion voter-approved bond money to 33 development projects to build a total of 2,133 units of affordable housing, including 1,643 with supportive services for the chronically homeless. It has broken ground on eight projects and approved construction loans for five more, which are slated to launch within a month.

But even if all goes according to plan, no more than 239 of the affordable units are expected to be completed by the end of this year, including 164 for permanent supportive housing.

Maybe a nationwide approach will be more successful, but ultimately, no matter who provides the money, this is going to boil down to city bureaucracies that have to actually make these projects happen. Anyone who thinks that is going to go smoothly, efficiently, or cheaply, hasn’t been paying attention.

This clip courtesy of the Washington Examiner:

CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO

------------

Liberal housing policy - just when you think failure couldn’t be greater, liberals prove otherwise

 

[Oldstyle]

With all due respect, Kiddies...if we let these people run ANYTHING we will be well and truly screwed!

 

[Andylusion]

I find it odd that all the left-wing cities that 'focus on the issue of homelessness' are all the same cities that homelessness is a crisis.

If having government involved, solved the problem.... then why has not a single one of these cities that have all poured millions into fighting homelessness, ever solved it?

Let me spin this around....
For the sake of argument.....

We don't want toxic waste dumped in a river.

We do want renewable energy.

Do you fine renewable energy plants and subsidize dumping of toxic waste? No of course not. Why would we reward what we don't want, and penalize what we do?

Instead we would fine dumping toxic waste, and subsidize renewable energy. (for the sake of argument).

Now you would understand instinctively that you don't reward something you don't want. You don't subsidize bad actions.

Why don't we ever apply these most basic of concepts to homelessness?

The worst thing you can do about homelessness, is pay people to be homeless. The programs "hey lets give everyone a house!" have never worked in all human history... because.... if you are going to give someone a house, or apartment, or anything, to be homeless.... what do you think people are going to do?

I can tell you straight up what I would do. Rent sucks. If all I have to do is prove I'm homeless, and I can get the government to give me a place to live.... I'd do it. Rent is the most expensive bill that average people have. First thing I'd do is ditch that payment, and live off the government.

This is why no left-wing city ever ends up solving the homeless problem. No matter how much money they spend, the problem ends up worse than before they tried to "fix it".

Your point about rewarding bad behavior is legitimate however I would argue that the majority of the homeless, at least in Portland, have disabilities that significantly impact their ability to live a normal life or even hold down employment or just basic individual functions that we take for granted as healthy people. For most of them this wouldn't be rewarding bad behavior since its not really bad behavior by them that has then in their situation its the inability to mentally or physically function in a way that they can get out of their situation longterm and thrive. A man that lives on a sidewalk in downtown Portland who talks to himself and has no real concept of normality isn't going to benefit from being told to work for a living, but at the same time they won't understand how to manage a home that was given to them. It's definitely not something that can be solved by a cookie cutter, one size fits all solution. It's why it keeps getting worse and worse in my opinion. It's a very complicated humanitarian issue that is almost requires an individual approach somehow.

I wonder about that.... How many are mentally disabled, and how many are just able bodied people who don't want to work.

Man Makes $100,000 Pretending to Be a Handicapped Shnorrer | Matzav.com

This guy had a college degree, but just realized he could make more money pretending to be homeless and disabled.

But let's go with your assumption for the sake of argument.....

I would still suggest this is a terrible idea. Why? I would assume that you know that owning a home, isn't just owning a home. You have to take care of it. You have to stop the kitchen sink from leaking, or it will rot the wood, and you'll have black mold, and on and on.

Right? I had a toilet in the basement that started leaking, and I had to pull the whole thing out and replace it. I had to pull up the flooring and replace it. Hosed down some molded walling, and replace other parts.

Owning a house takes care and responsibility.

You are telling me, that these people are talking to themselves, and incapable of showing up a Wendy's and asking "do you want fries with that?", are going to be given a house?

Do you see the problem? If they can't do the most menial of things, how are they going to take care of a home? What happens when the hot water heater springs a leak, and they just wander off mumbling to themselves, while the water spreads mold all over the walls and floors?

Let's even make this simpler. What happens when they don't do anything about a bug infestation? Bed bugs? Roaches? Ants?

You put that person in an apartment, and they let in an infestation of bugs, and every single apartment in the complex will end up a massive bug farm.

I can hose down my condo for months on end, and it will never make a difference if my neighbor does nothing about the bugs on his side of the wall.


You see the problem?

I assume you are at least aware of the government housing projects from the 1970s, and how they all consistently failed. Their were many reasons they failed, but one reason was because the people themselves did nothing to maintain the projects. You take people from the slums, who are either unwilling or incapable of maintaining a house, and move them to a new house, you are just going to end up with a new slum. That's what happened. The slums were torn down. They moved the slum dwellers to bran new buildings. In a matter of years, the new buildings, were now slums.

The reasons slums are slums, is because the people living there make them slums.

If you put homeless people in buildings, and they refuse to take care of those buildings... in the end those buildings will become slums. At some point they will be condemned, and the people will be back on the street homeless.

I agree with you that simply giving them a home is not helping them in the long run, as I mentioned in my original posts, but it's just that turning a blind eye to them living on a sidewalk or in a city park is also not helping them.

What would you suggest?

I think we should criminalize it. Have these people arrested, and then sent to get treatment or help.

In the long term, possibly have a religious-government partnership to open asylums, where people are given long term care from religious organizations.

I would disagree about criminalizing homelessness, if that's what you really mean. Being homeless with mental health issues isn't a criminal act in my opinion and in turn a policy like that typically fails with getting them needed help and usually just become a product of the criminal justice system. In most states, if not all, in the country homeless people with mental illness are incarcerated far more than they are given real medical or physiological treatment. They get arrested, released, and the process becomes cyclical. You shouldn't need to have a criminal record in order to get treatment in my opinion.

What also does not help is that the number of public psychiatric beds rarely meet minimum standards across the US and are often reduced as cost cutting measures which leaves these people without the help they should have. For example Oregon's standard is 50 beds per 100,000 people. At the moment the current ratio is 16 beds. That's a problem.

A couple of things up front that I would suggest would be increasing the amount of psychiatric beds available to above the minimum standards for the population of that area instead of reducing them or trying to operate below standards, stop cutting funding for mental health facilities as a whole, encourage the expansion of mental health courts to help divert people who suffer from mental illness away from jail and into treatment, create incentives for families to get their loves ones help instead of creating consequences for being homeless or for having mental health issues.

I would also say that fixing vague laws and processes around involuntary treatment would be a good step too. Proving to a judge that someone is a danger to themselves or others isn't as easy as people really think since at the time of the hearing the person may not be displaying the same acts he or she was when arrested or reported, and very few actually ever make it to a judge and are just released.

You shouldn't need to have a criminal record in order to get treatment in my opinion.

In an ideal world, I would agree. But the reality is, you can't force people to get the help they need, unless they commit a crime.

As long as being out on a public sidewalk isn't a criminal act.... then you can't make those people get help. You can talk at them until the end of time, and they'll never go. The voices in their head, told them not to.

So what do you want to do? Because they'll never get help, if they have the freedom to choose. We know this because they have the freedom now. There are dozens of free public clinics, and they simply don't go.

Ideally, we would have a culture of responsibility, where people understood it was part of their duty as a human being, to take care of people in their family, and the family would take care of someone with mental illness.

But short of that, you being a stranger, and going to say to someone with mental problems, that they need help... it isn't going to work.

So what do you suggest? I think criminalizing is the solution.

A: The state can assign them to get help.
B: The state can contact relatives, and ask them to aid in giving help.
C: The homeless themselves, will get motivated to improve their lot.... or they will at least go to a shelter.

In all cases, I see no outcome that could possibly be worse than the status quo.

You disagree still? What is your alternative?

What also does not help is that the number of public psychiatric beds rarely meet minimum standards across the US and are often reduced as cost cutting measures which leaves these people without the help they should have. For example Oregon's standard is 50 beds per 100,000 people. At the moment the current ratio is 16 beds. That's a problem.

stop cutting funding for mental health facilities as a whole

I would agree with you.... but that's the reality of government. Government run anything, is going to suck.

That's why I had hoped to offer a public-private charity joint venture. Something where the government gives a flat fee of some sort, and the rest is made up by private charities.

The government never has endless money to fight all problems. The public itself needs to find solutions. It's rather simple to say "just spend more money" but it's a different thing to actually have the money. Government simply does not have endless money. It just doesn't.

Most governments are running a debt. They don't have money for everything we want. We need to find our own solution. Not another 'bankrupt the country program' solution.

I would also say that fixing vague laws and processes around involuntary treatment would be a good step too. Proving to a judge that someone is a danger to themselves or others isn't as easy as people really think since at the time of the hearing the person may not be displaying the same acts he or she was when arrested or reported, and very few actually ever make it to a judge and are just released

Which again, is why I go back to criminalizing.

Declaring someone incompetent is naturally going to be difficult. And it should be difficult. It must be extremely difficult.

Can you imagine how dreadfully dangerous it would be, if having someone declared incompetent was easy? I can already see some drug addicted son, declaring their parents incompetent, and stealing their social security.

It happens now with competent parents.

So I am very highly cautious about the idea of simplifying the competency laws. Far better in my opinion, to simply make it a crime to poop on a street corner, and have these people picked up.

 

[B. Kidd]

Homelessness is a humanitarian issue in my opinion and is in desperate need of meaningful attention. I live outside of Portland and anytime you go into the city you see that the homeless population is reaching a real and concerning tipping point. I applaud Omar's focus but on the surface i'm not sure how realistic her plan is but i'd have to read it in more detail once it's made ready for the public, if that happens. In my personal opinion I would think that just giving them a home with no real way to afford it or take care of it or a legitimate way to gain equity from it is setting them up for potential future hardship and additional stressors. Many homeless people suffer from mental health issues and need more than just a roof over their heads, although that is important too, and so if her plan includes programs that also address the foundational concerns of their current situation then that would be worthwhile.

I find it odd that all the left-wing cities that 'focus on the issue of homelessness' are all the same cities that homelessness is a crisis.

If having government involved, solved the problem.... then why has not a single one of these cities that have all poured millions into fighting homelessness, ever solved it?

Let me spin this around....
For the sake of argument.....

We don't want toxic waste dumped in a river.

We do want renewable energy.

Do you fine renewable energy plants and subsidize dumping of toxic waste? No of course not. Why would we reward what we don't want, and penalize what we do?

Instead we would fine dumping toxic waste, and subsidize renewable energy. (for the sake of argument).

Now you would understand instinctively that you don't reward something you don't want. You don't subsidize bad actions.

Why don't we ever apply these most basic of concepts to homelessness?

The worst thing you can do about homelessness, is pay people to be homeless. The programs "hey lets give everyone a house!" have never worked in all human history... because.... if you are going to give someone a house, or apartment, or anything, to be homeless.... what do you think people are going to do?

I can tell you straight up what I would do. Rent sucks. If all I have to do is prove I'm homeless, and I can get the government to give me a place to live.... I'd do it. Rent is the most expensive bill that average people have. First thing I'd do is ditch that payment, and live off the government.

This is why no left-wing city ever ends up solving the homeless problem. No matter how much money they spend, the problem ends up worse than before they tried to "fix it".

Your point about rewarding bad behavior is legitimate however I would argue that the majority of the homeless, at least in Portland, have disabilities that significantly impact their ability to live a normal life or even hold down employment or just basic individual functions that we take for granted as healthy people. For most of them this wouldn't be rewarding bad behavior since it's not really bad behavior committed by them that has them in their situation it's the inability to mentally or physically function in a way that they can get out of their situation longterm and thrive. A man that lives on a sidewalk in downtown Portland who talks to himself and has no real concept of normality isn't going to benefit from being told to work for a living, but at the same time they won't understand how to manage a home that was given to them. It's definitely not something that can be solved by a cookie cutter, one size fits all solution. It's why it keeps getting worse and worse in my opinion. It's a very complicated humanitarian issue that almost requires an individual approach somehow. Faith based programs could help too in my personal opinion.

Here in Las Vegas we have two excellent job training programs for the disabled: Opportunity Village and Goodwill. Neither are run by local Gov't.
Maybe Portland could get off it's ass and check out what works!