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Last week, LAPD officer Sean Dinse revealed this Kenneth Fire– one of six plaguing the Los Angeles pool – was under criminal investigation.
He was homeless, allegedly an illegal alien subdued by the inhabitants within minutes and miles of the fire source. Witnesses reportedly saw him wielding a blowtorch while yelling, “I’m doing it.”
Later detained on a probation violation due to insufficient evidence, this individual appears to harbor an intent to harm the community—an intent as unmistakable as the inner demons he struggles with.
Consider this with the reality that, according to the LAFDthere were 13,909 fires in LA region associated with homelessness. This is almost double the number of applicants in 2020.
MAN ARRESTED NEAR LA FIRES WITH A POSSIBLE LAMP IS AN ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT: ICE SOURCES
This juxtaposition underscores the growing and enormous risk to public safety posed by our national homeless policy — Housing First — that ignores the stark truth: mental illness and substance abuse disorders often accompany homelessness.
Housing First’s staunch advocates include Governor Gavin NewsomLos Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Supervisor Mitchell of Los Angeles County, who manage the most destructive and costly wildfires in history and America’s most troubled state, county and city in terms of homelessness.
Fires rage, lives are lost, and communities are destroyed. It’s time to face the undeniable truth: Housing First has failed as a primary approach to homelessness.
Homeless people face thick and often intertwined challengesincluding underemployment or unemployment, the absence of a secondary school, the unavailability of a support network, and especially for the female population, domestic violence.
Mostly they also struggle with mental illnesses and addictions despite the federal government’s erroneous data.
During my 13-year tenure as the Chief Executive Officer of Northern California’s largest homeless and children’s program, it was documented that 77% of our women struggled with addiction and 60% with mental illness. In the broader homeless population, the federal government claims that number be 37%but the UCLA Policy Lab found otherwise… 78% of the chronically homeless struggle with these issues.
Faced with these challenges, many homeless people resort to criminal activities as a means of survival. Conversely, criminal behavior can also catalyze homelessness.
In my program, 55% of our women had a criminal record. In the total homeless population, estimates range from 20-70%. Based on front-line experience and the broader context in which prison and prison early releases have increased while rehabilitation efforts have decreased, an estimate of 70% is much more likely.
The great news is that most homeless people can build the resilience and skills needed to change their lives and overcome these complex challenges. I have seen this first hand in thousands of cases and my confidence is unshakable.
However, such profound transformation has not and will never happen under the national Housing First approach.
Adopted in 2013. Housing in the first place is a public policy approach to connect the homeless with permanent housing as quickly as possible.
It was a great sound bite and hard to argue with…at least at first.
This meant that American taxpayers were on the hook to provide all homeless people with a lifetime of housing – in the form of permanent housing – without any requirements such as sobriety, engagement in treatment services or looking for a job, ever.
LOS ANGELES IN HOT WATER FOR SPENDING HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS ON WORSENING HOMELESS CRISIS
Shelters with structured rules, transitional housing programs and treatment services have become almost obsolete. Their funding was cut in order to increase the number of “permanent, unconditional housing vouchers”.
Most nonprofits serving the homeless have bowed to the federal government’s approach, as the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is the largest funder of the homeless.
President Obama he promised that Housing First would eradicate homelessness within a decade. Yet 11 years later, America’s homeless population has jumped to the highest level ever recorded, accompanied by a 238% increase in the homeless death rate.
California—the only state to fully adopt Housing First (2016)—now ranks among the worst states in the nation.
In addition to these disastrous results was the quiet publication of the only long-term study of Housing First which showed it to be ineffective and often deadly. Through 14-year analysisalmost half of the individuals died by the age of five, and only 36% remained fostered after the age of five.
Fires rage, lives are lost, and communities are destroyed. It’s time to face the undeniable truth: Housing First has failed as a primary approach to homelessness.
The Free Up Foundation developed the Human First public policy framework based on real-life experience and an understanding that people are complex and resilient.
The new Trump administration should adopt the Free Up framework as follows:
1. Eliminate housing first as the sole national approach to homelessness.
2. Redefine success from being “adopted” to helping people reach their full, God-given potential.
3. Refunds for temporary residency programs that instill community, responsibility and growth. Shelters with policies, transitional housing programs, and approved camping sites should be included, all of which facilitate the effective delivery of treatment services. (Only 10-20% of the homeless population is likely to need “lifetime subsidized” housing.)
4. Fund and require (as appropriate) treatment services including mental health and substance abuse counseling, and employment training.
5. Prohibition unauthorized camps which are often burdened by crime, drugs, sexual abuse, and are increasingly the source of fires.
6. Re-engage faith and law enforcement communities that were ostracized by HUD after emerging as the chief executive officer for the homeless.
7. Regularly measure and report progress toward success. Fund and reward success.
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Over the past decade, Americans have recognized the authority of the hard left’s approach to homelessness. In general, the more a region embraced Housing First, the more homelessness grew and decimated everything in its path – homeless people, taxpayers, public spaces and public safety.
Free Up’s Human First framework will boost individual productivity and public safety while restoring normalcy and returning the billions a year to the taxpayers who earned it.
