LA Mayor Begs the Wealthy to Help Buy Housing for the Homeless
Karen Bass now frames socialism as an “unprecedented partnership”.
Back in the fall of 2022, Los Angeles voters passed a referendum for a “mansion tax” that would impose a new transaction tax on any real estate sale in excess of $5 million. The measure passed with nearly 58% of the vote, and owners of luxury homes were selling their properties as quickly as they could to avoid being hit with a success penalty.
The money was suppose to help address issues related to the area’s serious homelessness problems. Subsequently, luxury house sales plummeted and the “mansion tax” has only raised a fraction of the lofty fiscal target promised to the voters.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Now Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is pleading with “the most fortunate” to help fund housing for the homeless. She is calling it an “unprecedented partnership.”
“We will not hide people but what we will do is house people,” the Democratic leader touted as she began her remarks on the city’s struggle to house over 40,000 homeless people. “The crisis on our streets is nothing less than a disaster.”
Bass touted the success of her signature Inside Safe program, which moved over 21,000 homeless people into temporary shelters, according to The Associated Press.
She insisted this “strategy” and “system” moving the homeless into temporary housing would eventually end the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles.
I must admit, I am having another attack of schadenfreude. Back in 2022, successful real estate entrepreneur Rick Caruso and then Democrat Congresswoman Karen Bass were in a dead heat in the race to be the next mayor of Los Angeles. Los Angeles residents were very close to picking a savvy business mogul who might have offered novel solutions to troubling problems.
Los Angeles voters chose poorly.
As a reminder, Los Angelinos could have elected a real estate mogul in 2022. https://t.co/o3kEv0TJ2O pic.twitter.com/PM3g5qEaSl
— Leslie Eastman ☥ (@Mutnodjmet) April 19, 2024
Business owners and residents have begun noticing that the city hasn’t followed-up on any of its previous promises and have filed a lawsuit.
According to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), the city’s leading centralized hub for homeless services, more than 75,500 people were considered homeless in 2023, a 9% increase countywide. In the city, about 46,200 were considered homeless, a 10% increase from the previous year.
Fox News Digital reported that a coalition of business owners and residents in L.A. filed a lawsuit against the city, arguing it did not honor its 2020 settlement agreement that promised it would build thousands of shelters and sweep out homeless encampments.
Last week, the Los Angeles City Council agreed to pay an outside firm $2.2 million to audit its homelessness programs after a request by a federal judge.
Vote in haste, repent in leisure.
And she has the nerve to brand it an “unprecedented partnership”
It’s actually quite precedented. It’s Socialism
— KarenBassProgressReport (@KBassProgReport) April 18, 2024
The approach is going over as well as you would expect.
— Francois Botha (@F_Botha_USA) April 18, 2024
All will be well, though. It’s just a matter of time before “squatters rights” is embraced as a solution.
Some residents in an Arleta neighborhood have raised concerns after a vacant home was taken over by a squatter. But KCAL News’ Joy Benedict was invited into the home, where she got heard his side of it all.
The man, who wished not to be named, moved into the home recently after spending years on the street.
“I used to stay around in the park, but I came into the abandoned house to start repairing it,” he told Benedict.
…The Los Angeles County Department of Building and Safety, along with Los Angeles Police Department and the local Los Angeles City Council member’s office have been contacted over the ordeal. But, with the owner dead and no family members claiming the property, the process becomes more complicated.
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Comments
lol …. they voted for this mess
give it too them high hard and often.
To be fair, like the 2020 election, it is widely believed that the vote counters decided the Mayoralty race, and not the voters.
Government – always on the take; always with the hand out for more.
If not restrained continuously it will take everything.
Overview of America,
https://www.gaconstitutionparty.org/overview_of_america_cd2019
Here’s yet another recent example, this one from the State-Where-It’s-Hard-To-Believe-It-Was-One-of-the-Original-Thirteen,
https://hotair.com/headlines/2024/04/20/she-seems-nice-ma-transportation-secretary-basically-were-going-after-everyone-who-has-money-n3786904
You can be forgiven if you’re confused on the gender of this person.
Since I am sure that almost all the wealthy in LA are hard left, I think it is only fair that the Mayor MANDATE that these people take in and feed, clothe and educate these illegals.
On THEIR OWN DIME.
PERMANENTLY.
Ask-Tell-Make reimagined.
Build it and they will come. As soon as wealthy citizens start housing the homeless, they will have even more homeless. After all free room, food, utilities, probably have a pool too. They’ll flock to LA hoping to get a room in Cher’s mansion.
I am willing to donate the cost of two coach buses to carry as many illegal invaders from Texas to Los Angeles.
Like asking them to pay for the bullet the firing squad uses on them.
But since the rich lefties will be the first up against the wall I’m ok with that.
If LA isn’t ready for the “Big Lie”, then nowhere is ready. They voted for it, and should embrace it.
“From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.” Probably the most evil words ever spoken. I’ll look forward to hearing how this plan works out! “Voluntary” contributions are something straight out of Atlas Shrugged. I suspect there will be quite a bit of shrugging going on in LA.
Typical leftist crap. Take a niche case with a somewhat arguable point and try to act like it justifies their insane crap in the other 99% of cases.
In this case, the house was ACTUALLY abandoned – the owner is dead and seems to have no actual family claiming the property. OK, in that case, you might be able to argue that somebody taking it over is fine.
But the other 99% of cases is them blatantly and illegally forging fake leases to steal property that IS currently owned, taking care of, and trying to actively rent or sell, and then telling the actual owner that not only can they not remove them, but they have to pay electrical/water bills and the OWNER will be arrested if they turn it off, and when they are finally removed months if not years later, and frequently is stuck with tens of thousands of dollars of destruction to his property, while the illegal squatter faces zero legal consequences.
I hate these liberal scum with every fiber of my being.
No, it doesn’t belong to them
End of story
Better: Wealthy residents buy airfare to ship these illegals back to whatever 3rd world crap hole they came from – along with POS mayor.
That state has “spent” $24 billion in a decade “on the homeless” and almost none of it went to actually help the homeless.
Right. How many times do the citizens have to pay to house the homeless? They’re already paying now, and yet none of the money is going anywhere that actually helps,
It puts me in mind of the “adopt-a-roadway” scam. We already pay taxes for the government to maintain that roadway, but unless someone volunteers time and money to clean every discrete section, no one will.
I have used your example before. 20 years ago, the DOT (for each state) would be responsible for picking up trash. Now their goal is to convince other people to pick up the trash.
Government become orchestration and activism, vs. services and facilities.
They won’t do things; they’ll tell you the important things you must do. For a fee, of course.
You know… just a thought here…. many of the homeless are mentally ill and many of them are drug addicted. How about building a ‘ hotel’ staffed with doctors and nurses somewhere in the countryside and then enforcing laws against littering and small crimes and other minor public offenses with confinement to these places for a year, with the proviso that failure to take ordered medications or disruptive behavior would cause an extension of confinement. We could call them
Mental Institutionssomething nice. Of course you would want the courts to have the option to use ordinary jails for those whom medical/mental treatment would not help.I grew up in a country that had this system and it was a much pleasanter place to live.
Whenever Government sets out to “solve” a problem, it makes the problem worse.
A corollary: the only sure beneficiary of any Government program is the Government itself.
These funds are a jobs program for all of the college graduates with nonsense degrees who get hired into the civil service. To use a well worn phrase, it’s all part of the poverty industrial complex.
#MoneyForLosers
Portland recently contacted 100 addicts on the street. The headline said that 14% of them were interested in treatment. But the fine print stated that only one of them took them up on the offer, and we aren’t sure how far he got beyond a free meal and a bed for the night. That is what we are getting for our hundreds of millions of dollars. Addicts only get better when they hit bottom, period, and Portland’s plan is to forever keep them slightly above that bottom, thus ensuring their continued employment. The people who know the least about addiction see themselves as the saviors. Sheeesh!
It’s not just Portland, it’s everywhere, even in Texas, hundreds of millions, probably trillions for the homeless
I’m sorry, I did t sell you the drugs, I did t make you take them, I did t beat you as a child
I don’t literally owe you anything and it’s time to stop
Either clean your a$$ up, take a hand up and get your a$$ productive again as a member of society, or chose to die
We. Are. Done….
In 2020 the entire US budget was $7 trillion, but according to this genius the state of Texas has spent “probably trillions” just on the homeless.
You should stick to flushing out and battling the evil Muslim horde and leave the accounting to people with an IQ.
While I am sure that Gonzo is over exaggerated to prove a point, we can all agree that we have a $34 TRILLION because we’ve been handing out money hand over fist.
Well, Her Honor might consider opening the doors of the Getty House, the official residence of the mayor.
I’d guess from its size that she could house 50 – 100 (checks notes for proper term) . . . ah yes . . . “newcomers” there.
Cue the “homecoming” scene from Dr. Zhivago.
If those wealthy people just paid their fair share then the problem would be solved.
I listened to a interview on Joe Rogan a few years ago featuring Michael Schellenberger who was running for Governor of California. He laid out the homeless problem quite nicely. It’s not a question of money, there is plenty, it’s that everyone involved has no desire to solve anything because there is too much money to be made. If they solved homelessness then they would be out of a job.
It’s a similar thing with various organizations.
The NAACP prattles on and on, finding racism where it doesn’t exist.
The ADL has now branched out into taking umbrage at every slight of the LGBQFAHSOLAHTEEDO “community”.
Et cetera.
AS I stated elsewhere–the poverty industrial complex.
Part of the larger “Grievance Industry”.
“We’re bigger than US Steel”.
Schellenberger said in part that along with The Grift of money, some of the known solutions to part of it are too distasteful for the political grift, philosophical grift, or feels grift.
For example, some people are too damaged to make decisions for themselves, yet even services that require some requirements are too distasteful for some P0V.
His take gets no traction, one presumes because he straight out calls out “liberal” policies and preferences.
Who am I to insult the dignity of the “unhoused”?
To quote Otter “what is needed is a really stupid and futile gesture”. Mayor Bass found it. FJB
The vile Dhimmi-crats in California and elsewhere in the U.S., at all levels of government, predictably exhibit the anti-Midas touch — everything that they govern and control turns to excrement.
Or enforce the law, deport 3 million illegal aliens from CA, and free up housing inventory for 3 million legal CA residents overnight.
Wow he’s a mathematical genius, too!
Just imagine if we got rid of the “muzzies’!
You really live kissing the ass if Muslims. What, your side bitch wear a hijab?
Crazed extremists should be locked away at gitmo.
The mnemonic is CATO.
40% crazy
30% addicts
20% tramps (like the lifestyle)
10% out of luck
being helpful can help only the 10%.
Exactly.
Most of the ten percent get out of it on their own.
Distributing free fentanyl would remove 30% very quickly.
Hadn’t heard that mnemonic. That’s good. The big breakdowns like Schellenberger take too many words to recite crisply.
C’mon Comrade Bass, just cut to the chase. Become the tyrant Communist Dictator you were born to be.
Just confiscate the homes and give them away. You can use Venezuela and South Africa as examples.
If you really want to go full tyrant, just force white people into the streets, tie their hands with old tires, and burn them to death.
How about, “No.”
I find this entire thing to be amusing.
How about begging the homeless to find a job?
A few years ago, the town in which I lived decided to build “Homes for Veterans.” (ie veterans who were homeless.)
The City put out bids and a singular home was built and given to a “worthy” disabled veteran.
It was a media circus when the all of the dignitaries presented the home to the veteran. Banners were hung. Speeches were made. People cried. People cheered. Fireworks went off. It was a momentous display.
Someone made a Chapter 119 (FOIA) request for the bills on the construction.
Companies who had bid on the project bid higher than normal because the government doesn’t care about costs and efficiency. There was the scandal of City Council members making money off of the project including one who failed to provide receipts for goods and services. In the end, the house cost four times as much to build as an identical house that was built right across the street.
The “worthy” vet decided that he would do some less than noble things (drugs, code violations, lack of paying electric and water bills, etc.) which resulted in him leaving the home which he had trashed and essentially destroyed.
The City never built another home for anyone.
The moral of the story is that when government does something, it results in higher costs and lots of corruption. The second moral is that when people are “given” something, they have a tendency not to care for it as much as if they had worked for it.
No one can tell me that building homes for the homeless will make things “better” for anyone other than the public relations image for officials. It won’t solve the problem.
Another “urban” American Mayor, another rejected applicant for MENSA membership.
Hmmmm, if there was only a pattern of commonality we could identify…
So now it is someone else’s fault. How convenient. Get out now, you fools. My Brother in Law and family, all of my nieces and nephews who resided in LA just did that very thing over the last two years. Moved to Utah and Tehatchepi and can’t believe how much their anxiety and mental state have relaxed.
LA fat black mayor bass gives herself pat on back and raise?
While black americans are forced to the back of the waiting line behind illegal aliens?
smh
You first.
There must be hundreds, if not thousands of the “Hollywood” sorts who are forever telling the rest of us how to behave, and have a spare house or two sitting unused.
Surely they can step up and solve this problem.