California announced an expensive new way to combat homelessness: throw more money into the Homeless Industrial Complex.
Governor Newsom announced a new $920 million initiative to track homelessness on a new website, accountability.ca.gov. He says that it will help Californians “quickly assess how their local government is tackling the homelessness and affordable housing crisis.” He continued: “As California continues to support local officials working to fix this issue, make no mistake — we expect results, not excuses.”
The website will not address the root cause of homelessness: drug addiction and a mental health crisis. Instead, it measures how many homes are built for the homeless and how many people are employed in the industry in each county.
When journalist Michael Shellenberger studied homelessness in California in his groundbreaking book San Fransicko, he found that providing homes for the homeless only lead to them dying faster because the state refuses to rehabilitate their drug addictions. He also found that California employs many governmental programs to combat homelessness but they don’t work with law enforcement and they don’t even work together. It is a lucrative industrial complex. Newsom can’t be serious about attacking this if he thinks a website that will count out free housing is the answer.
