The Whole Idea Behind Homeless Advocacy Is To Not Solve The Problem

Perhaps it is a little early for another update here on the “homelessness” situation in San Francisco. (My last update was about six months ago in March 2023.). But there is a good reason for an update now: At least a few people seem finally to be catching on that the basic idea behind “homelessness” advocacy is to exploit an issue that brings forth great human empathy to generate vast taxpayer funds and then to not solve the problem. The spending continues and increases without limit. There is way too much money — for advocates — in “homelessness” for the problem ever to get solved, or even to decrease materially.

Two recent pieces from Bay Area writers commenting on the situation are: Sanjana Friedman at Pirate Wires, August 17, “San Francisco's Homeless Ticking Time Bomb”; and Susan Dyer Reynolds in the Marina Times August edition, “Fraudenbach: How the Coalition on Homelessness is holding San Francisco hostage.”

From the intro to Friedman’s piece:

The hardest thing you’ll ever have to comprehend in terms of San Francisco’s government is the city’s leaders aren’t incompetent. This is what they want. . . . Once acquainted with the basic facts of the crisis, including the incredible sum of money dedicated to solving the problem, the average San Franciscan concludes the city must be run by morons. . . . Even with supportive services, the numbers don’t add up. This is because the average person assumes the small cabal of activists who run the city’s bloated homeless industrial complex want to temporarily shelter and rehabilitate the homeless. They do not.

(Emphasis added.). So, what do they want?

The goal of San Francisco’s activist government is to provide every person who moves to the city with a free, one-bedroom apartment for the rest of their life.

Needless to say, that goal is completely impossible to achieve.

My March 2023 post recounted the story of the big 2018 referendum, where San Francisco voters approved a payroll tax on city businesses to raise an additional $300 million per year to address the homelessness crisis, and to finally solve it once and for all. The $300 million got added to prior spending of about $285 million, close to doubling prior city spending on the homelessness issue. Note that these figures only include spending on the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH), and do not include other amounts of government spending on the homeless individuals, including cash grants, welfare, food stamps, Medicaid, and much more.

Friedman has the latest numbers on homelessness headcount and spending put out by the city, which as she states “don’t add up.” The number of “homeless” in the city is given as 7,800, of which 4,400 sleep in the streets and 3,400 in shelters. (These numbers are based on a survey taken in 2022, which is more recent than the 2021 data used in my March post.). In a city of just over 800,000 people, this is just shy of 1% of the population. Spending this year for HSH is said to be $672 million. If spent on the 7,800 identified as homeless, that would come to more than $86,000 per head — a fantastic sum, given that none of the money actually goes to the supposed beneficiaries in cash. Rather, all of it is spent on the Homeless Industrial Complex to provide shelters and “services.” (The homeless people get cash and in kind benefits from other programs outside of this budget.)

But Friedman goes on to say that more than half (56%) of the budget of HSH does not go to the current homeless population, but rather to provide something called “permanent supportive housing” (PSH) to some 9,000 people who were previously homeless. That would be approximately $3500 per month for each of these people. Friedman describes the deal they get:

[T]here are no PSH-wide income maximum or minimum cutoffs, and no PSH-wide requirement that the tenant show progress in becoming financially independent, such as by working an ever-increasing number of hours, or even regularly looking for a job. If you're hopelessly addicted to drugs, SF will essentially enable your addiction in perpetuity, or for as long as you want.

If the remaining 44% of the $672 million is dedicated to the 7,800 currently on the streets or in shelters, that would come to about $3200 per month for each of them, the majority of whom live on the streets. Again, that $3200 is only for “homelessness” services, and does not include food, clothing, medical care, or anything else, all of which are provided by other government handouts.

Anyway, some 9,000 got the PSH apartments, and promptly another 7,800 turned up for the next round.

And, from Reynolds’s piece:

San Francisco’s homeless advocates believe money is the answer, with organizations coaching new arrivals to say they’re “from San Francisco” while helping them navigate the system. The “nonprofits” themselves complete what has become a billion-dollar industry chasing its own tail, with 59 providers receiving $240.6 million in fiscal year 2019–20, according to the latest audit by the city’s budget and legislative analyst.

Money may not be the answer to the homelessness problem, which never improves no matter how much is spent. However, it is clearly the answer for the advocates, who are pocketing money by the hundreds of millions. Remember, of that $240.6 million mentioned in Reynolds’s piece, exactly zero goes to the homeless individuals. All of it goes to the service providers. (The other $400+ million of the HSH budget also does not go to the homeless people, but rather to the government workers.)

Reynolds’s piece culminates with this quote from ex-San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown: “[The homelessness problem] is not designed to be solved. It is designed to be perpetuated. It is to treat the problem, not solve it.”

He sure got that one right. There is way too much money in homelessness for the problem ever to be solved.