The Progressive Approach To Homelessness Comes To Madison, Wisconsin

“Homelessness” is one of my favorite topics because it provides an endless supply of examples of clear, dramatic, and immediate failure of the government programs supposedly intended to assist the poor and vulnerable. All of the big progressive cities follow some version of the same policies, which in summary amount to spending more and more money to provide “housing first” as the obvious solution to homelessness. All of these cities have rapidly stepped up spending over the past decade on promises to the voters to solve the homelessness problem with more subsidized housing; and all of them have then seen homelessness rise relentlessly along with the spending. It’s almost impossible to believe that nobody can learn from this experience.

For today I’ll provide the latest update from Los Angeles, as well as look at how a very similar approach has worked out in the smaller (but equally progressive) city of Madison, Wisconsin.

In a post back in March, I went into considerable detail about the efforts over the past several years of the City and County of Los Angeles to solve homelessness by ramping up spending to build new housing units into which the homeless can be placed. In 2016 the voters passed a special bond issuance, called Proposition HHH, in the amount of $1.2 billion. An LA-based non-profit called Local Housing Solutions, which advocated for Proposition HHH, described the initiative as providing funding mostly for “permanent supportive housing units for people experiencing homelessness.”

And then, as recounted in my post, in the aftermath of the referendum and as the spending took place over the following several years, the number of homeless people counted in LA City and County proceeded to go from 44,359 in 2015 to 69,144 in 2022.

Next, in early 2022, the efforts in LA to solve homelessness by spending ever more public funds on supportive housing got another big jolt of funding, this time when the City agreed to add some $3 billion of spending as part of a settlement of a lawsuit. In my March 2023 post I promised to check back in another year or so to see if all the spending is starting to make any difference at all. Checking back today, I find that a big official survey of homelessness was conducted in LA back during the summer, with the results reported in the Los Angeles Times on June 29. The results will not surprise any reader here:

The homeless count for Los Angeles County is in, and officials say the numbers are discouraging. The annual point-in-time count released Thursday by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority found a 9% increase in Los Angeles County and a 10% increase in the city of Los Angeles.

The Times provides the following chart showing the inexorable rise of homelessness over the past nine years:

Does anyone think that if we just allow more time for the whole $3 billion to get spent that that will turn things around?

Well, all of that is taking place in the big, faceless, soulless City of Los Angeles, with its huge and unaccountable bureaucracy. Perhaps we should look to a much smaller and more intimate, if equally progressive, place.

So, consider the latest news out of Madison, Wisconsin (population about 270,000). Like Los Angeles, Madison has also adopted the official orthodox progressive “housing first” policy as its way of addressing homelessness. How is that going? The Wisconsin State Journal has the story on December 21 (h/t Ann Althouse):

2 biggest Madison homeless projects could close within months, leaving city scrambling . . . . The two biggest "Housing First" initiatives for the homeless in Madison don't have enough money to continue operating and could be closed and sold early next year. As a result, the city of Madison is chasing options to ensure that dozens of vulnerable people aren't put out on the street.

The Wisconsin State Journal piece contains some substantial history on the projects, including the adoption of the “housing first” orthodoxy and the oodles of public funds from many sources that got poured in:

At the time of their conception, Rethke Terrace and Tree Lane were seen as big, bold attempts to get the homeless off the streets or out of temporary shelter into new, four-story, modern buildings with units that provided privacy, bathrooms and kitchens. . . . The projects were largely financed by federal tax credits provided by the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority. . . . The two developments got financial assistance from the city, Dane County and the federal low-income housing tax credits. Also, the city and county housing authorities assigned project-based housing vouchers to 54 of the 60 studios at Rethke and 40 of the 45 units at Tree Lane. 

With all that money available, how did it all go so wrong? The Wisconsin State Journal quotes Madison Community Development Director Jim O’Keefe:

"We didn’t get here overnight; the conditions at these properties developed as the result of years of neglect and inattention on the part of their property managers . . . and owners. . . .”

“Years of neglect”? Looking further in the article, we find that one of the projects (Rethke) opened in 2016, and the other (Tree Lane) in 2018. That makes five years in one case, and seven in the other, to go from brand new to uninhabitable. Both, moreover, had been subject to City “nuisance orders” as early as 2019, at which point the paint would have been barely dry.

So as of now, a receiver has been appointed, and he has asked the court to “immediately commence the process of winding down the projects,” including helping tenants to relocate.

Perhaps the model of building brand new housing, and then handing it out with no demands or expectation of responsible behavior (let alone rent) in return, has some kind of fundamental problem. But don’t expect the people currently administering these programs ever to figure that out. Their solution will always be more money and a bigger staff for their agency.