That was not the LA Times headline, which read, “Can licensed tent villages ease California’s homelessness epidemic? This nonprofit thinks so.”
The nonprofit in question — Urban Alchemy — is using other people’s money (yours) to pursue its hare-brained idea of replacing pop-up tents with $44,000 ones.
The LA Times story was a puff piece that began, “The rows of white canvas cabin tents newly erected in an out-of-the-way quarter of Culver City, along the bank of Ballona Creek, have the ambiance of an Army field base.
“Miles to the east in South Los Angeles, more modest camping tents — like one might buy at a sporting goods store — line the parking lot of the shuttered Lincoln Theater, evoking something more like a Boy Scout jamboree.
“Though dissimilar in style, the two tent villages have a common purpose: They’re the easiest step from the deprivations and hazards of the street to a place where meals are served three times daily and guards are on duty around the clock.
“The camps are managed by Urban Alchemy, the San Francisco-based nonprofit that has rapidly grown into a multimillion-dollar street services enterprise and embodies an elastic philosophy of shelter. Urban Alchemy calls them “safe sleep villages.”
So, the homeless get to live in bigger tents while Urban Alchemy gets another fat city grant. Taking care of the homeless is quite lucrative. Down in Paragraph 20, the LA Times story reported these tents cost $44,000.
Further down in the story, the LA Times reported on just how safe the safe sleep villages are to people who are not homeless.
It said, “Linda Mora, manager of a check cashing business, said residents of the camp were causing chaos.
“‘They come in, they yell, they scream,’ said Mora, echoing several other shop workers on a section of Central Avenue where city trash cans were overflowing and several people lay or sat on the sidewalk or in alleys. ‘People don’t feel safe inside.’”
“Mora said customers had complained of being robbed as they left.”
The story also said, “In addition to that, the village has an operating budget of $3 million annually, mostly for 24-hour staffing and meals catered by Everytable.”
And that, dear reader, is the heart of the homeless epidemic, as the press so carelessly calls the situation. There is no epidemic. Fewer than 1 in 500 Americans are homeless. HUD says there are 582,642 homeless people in America.
In the decades since Jimmy Carter left the White House, the media has bombarded Americans with propaganda about the homeless. Initially it was a way to embarrass his replacement, Ronald Reagan. There were 400,000 homeless in 1987. The rise is but 5,073 per year on average.
But the media declares over and over again, without any attribution, that anyone can be homeless. Think about it. If only 1 in 500 Americans is homeless, then that is a pretty elite group. Being homeless in a capitalist society is nearly impossible.
In fact, Americans are 40 times more likely to be a millionaire than homeless. The nation has 22 million millionaires — that’s 8.8% of the adult population. Millionaires are much more epidemic than homelessness.
Capitalism rocks.
But helping the homeless is a lucrative business for nonprofits — which is a clever name for a corporation that pays no federal income tax. The LA Times said Urban Alchemy was a startup in 2018 that within 3 years had revenues of $51 million.
Success in the homeless industry is measured by dollars, not effectiveness.
Indeed, the Biden administration bragged about $8.732 billion on the homeless. That is $15,000 a person. No wonder homelessness continues. It is a goose laying golden eggs for the SJW crowd.
