For years the people running America’s woke cities pretended not to notice the swarm of tent-dwelling homeless addicts populating their sidewalks, freeway off-ramps, and parks. Now Leftists after making it even worse. Some on the far Left don’t want to solve this entrenched problem for one essential reason. Read on.
For years, Leftist leaders pretended not to notice the human feces spotting the sidewalks even as they artfully tip-toed around the piles. They waved off disease concerns. They denied there was a problem. And the people who called it out were derided as mean-spirited and worse. The living bone yards of quivering humanity stationed on city street corners morphed over time into piles of filthy clothes on sidewalks. It took a mirror under the nose to determine if the pile of clothes was dead or alive.
Nobody wanted to be around this scene of death and dying on the sidewalks of woke American cities. Anyone who called it out for the mess it was was called a bigot.
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This was after billions were spent to “end homelessness.”
Suddenly, franchises of Plans to End Homelessness in Ten Years appeared in cities in the 2010s.The programs would be re-upped. Eventually, they started calling it something else, probably out of embarrassment.
President Obama announced a housing first model to end homelessness in 2013 and promised to have all homeless veterans housed by 2016.
Homeless centers were opened, complete with stolen shopping cart parking, and “homelessness” got worse.
After denying for years that there was a homeless crisis — or something like it, the Left’s leaders in these cities performed an about-face so pronounced it nearly shocked the conscience.
Leftist leaders of San Francisco, L.A., Portland, Seattle and other cities decided to embrace these drifters who traveled there to smoke their rent money and live in a tent for free.
Then there were more piles of clothes. More tents. More theft. More boneyards of humanity.
Suddenly, taxpayer-funded non-profit workers were in the media ballyhooing how these drifters needed better tents and better drug tools. Taxpayers paid for new tents and drug paraphernalia to make living on the streets easier for addicts. Since that which is rewarded is repeated, more came.
Then government Leftists who refused to acknowledge the obvious drug problems on their streets again went all-in on “housing first” programs, putting addicts in small apartments where they could use — and die — out of view of politicians and the media.
And more people died. The “fix” was was catastrophic.
This phenomenon wasn’t about homelessness; these street people were there to get high. If they pitched a tent they could use their government check for drugs instead of housing. But these Leftist cities refused to acknowledge the real problem. And they made things even worse.
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Billions of American tax dollars have been thrown at the “housing first” problem. And billions more have been promised. And the plunder continues. Non-profits, NGOs, and friends of grifting politicians got into the homeless business to get that government cheese to End Homelessness. But it hasn’t and it won’t. The issue is well on its way to becoming an entrenched political point.
“What’s once was a cause is becoming a multimillion-dollar industry,” drug counselor and homeless expert Kevin Dahlgren told me on my Adult in the Room podcast. “And because there are so many jobs and funding attached to ending homelessness, there’s no motivation to actually officially end it because everybody loses their jobs and loses the funding.” See his comments for yourself below.
You probably figured that out, but, unbelievably, it gets worse.
“I’ve done extensive outreach in Seattle, Washington and I used to go to camps where activists would show up uh, Antifa kids, right?” Dahlgren continued, “They would show up and scream for hours, ‘They’re not ready! they’re not ready!’ as we tried to get people off the streets and into treatment.”
Sound familiar?
“That’s for the homeless person to decide, right? [But] in one incident, I was out there with We Heart Seattle, Andrew Suarez, and myself … and so we had known this kid who was interested in treatment,” he explained. “He was in his early 20s and he was regularly messaging Andrea of We Heart Seattle and finally one day he messaged and said ‘I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m done, I’m done, I’m done.’ And as a drug and alcohol counselor, I knew that time was right [and] we had to do this. So Andrea shows up.” Unfortunately Antifa did, too. “And they surrounded his tent and linked arms to prevent her from getting him to treatment.”
They physically prevented her from getting the man to treatment at a facility where she had secured him a spot.
“So guess what happened right after? He died of an overdose. Died. Oh, man that just pisses me off!” said an outraged Dahlgren. “They killed this kid.”
Both the government grifters and Antifa don’t want the problem solved.
Dahlgren said, “And so, [the Homeless Industrial Complex] really kind of pivoted a bit and made it more about the person’s right to be homeless and let’s just help them become comfortable on the streets, such as tarps, tents, harm reduction … but it doesn’t actually help them. It’s no permanent solution. ”
“They’ve very strategically pivoted that, and not many people noticed. [T]hey changed their policy,” he told me. “They’re not really here to solve the problem, they’re here to help people remain comfortable on the streets until” — and he’s not joking — “capitalism is abolished.”
And to add insult to injury, Antifa and its fellow travelers erect tents in parks that have just been cleared and restored by the city to encourage more camping and blight. “It’s common practice,” Dahlgren said. “It started in Seattle and it just started happening in Portland more recently.”
“These activists will simply erect tents in parks, not for anyone specific, but just for anyone who happens to wander by. I think that’s completely insane,” Dahlgren lamented. They could use their time helping people instead of engaging in these theatrics.
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When “the blight is seen,” he explained, “it furthers their narrative that capitalism has created this mess. Housing people goes against their narrative, so they need to continue this in a very disengenuine way. [sic]”
Anyone who’s watched Antifa over the years as I have will recognize this truth. They encourage takeovers of houses that happen to be empty. Remember the Red House in Portland? In 2020, during the Summer of Love, Portland Antifa set up Seattle-like “autonomous zone” in the name of stealing other people’s homes. They erected a sign saying, “Fascism is capitalism in decay.”
Sign: “Fascism is capitalism in decay”
Some antifa are calling their Portland street occupation the “Red House Autonomous Zone,” or RHAZ. The “Red House” is the name given to a property being illegally occupied by squatters & far-left extremists. pic.twitter.com/t4epsl9pXS
— Andy Ngô 🏳️🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) December 9, 2020
The Portland anarchist group PLOCKERS did the same thing just a few years earlier after the Occupy takeovers.
Everything to the Left is a political battlefield, even drugged-out street people.
And now the homeless problem will only get worse if the same people are left in charge.