Los Angeles Homeless Camp Costs Taxpayers $2,600 Per Tent
“That’s higher than what a typical one-bedroom apartment rents for in the city, according to the website RentCafe.”
The city of Los Angeles is trying to deal with its massive homeless problem by making tents available for those in need. The problem is the ridiculous monthly cost of over $2,600 per tent.
Couldn’t you put people into apartments for less than that?
Amazingly, this report comes from National Public Radio:
High Cost Of Los Angeles Homeless Camp Raises Eyebrows And Questions
In Los Angeles, city officials grappling with an ongoing homelessness crisis have turned to an idea that for decades was politically unpopular and considered radical: a government-funded tent encampment.
Other cities, including San Francisco, Seattle and Tampa, Fla., have opened similar programs in recent years. But the high public cost of LA’s first sanctioned campground — more than $2,600 per tent, per month — has advocates worried it will come at the expense of more permanent housing.
The campsite opened in late April on a fenced-in parking lot beside the 101 freeway in East Hollywood. The lot-turned-campground can accommodate up to about 70 tents in 12-by-12-foot spots marked by white squares painted on the asphalt.
On a recent afternoon, the site was nearly full. A row of port-a-potties stood along one side of the camp. The program also provides showers, three meals a day and 24-hour security. Campers get entered into the county’s database for matching unhoused people with social services and housing resources…
According to a report by the city administrative officer, the new East Hollywood campground costs approximately $2,663 per participant per month. That’s higher than what a typical one-bedroom apartment rents for in the city, according to the website RentCafe. While the per-tent cost covers services, meals, sanitation and staffing, some are concerned that the city is investing too much in short-term Band-Aids over long-term solutions.
Just unreal.
$2,600 per month, per tent for the homeless in Los Angeles. Government funded.
You read that correctly.https://t.co/ISTaEtaURr— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) May 26, 2021
$2,663 a month per tent is significantly more than most studio and one bedroom apartments in Los Angeles.
The homeless industrial complex is getting rich and has zero interest in solving homelessness. https://t.co/M79hsr7H3t
— Kevin Dalton (@NextLAMayor) May 26, 2021
Wouldn’t it make more sense to give homeless people a housing voucher, not cash, for $1,500 a month? There should also be an option to enter rehab or a mental health facility. Until the issues of addiction and mental illness are addressed, this problem will never be solved.
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Comments
That’s where we should be putting illegal immigrants.
If tents are good enough for our citizens why should illegals be put in hotels?
But not at that price.
So I guess this could be called glamping?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsrBlKpbBS8
just saying…
Setting up semi permanent facilities is very expensive. Lots of service contracts: lease on the land, lease on the shower trailers, rent on porta potty, cleaning and maintenance services for both, water delivery service, dining facilities ECT.
Those of us with experience in Iraq and Afghanistan and other lesser known destinations can attest to this fact. Perhaps this can serve as a window into the absolutely frenzied resistance to ending our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
More money sloshing around in sketchy contracts to support those efforts than you would ever imagine. Same is true for the folks providing these services to the ‘homeless’.
use city owned land, I’m sure there is plenty, converting a trailer to a shower is a one time cost. The campers can build porta pottys. The only real expense should be the utilities and the cost of a pump out truck.
Why deliver water, just tap into the existing water and sewer. The basic infrastructure already exists. They could buy a used or new pump out truck instead of renting one out.
Then again, it would prevent the relative or neighbor of some high up in the city from getting their cut.
Buck,
The goal isn’t to minimize costs. The goal is to provide services through political patrons. Funneling tax dollars to political allies has been refined to an art form.
The easiest way is on a ‘temporary and emergency’ basis. Traditional anti competitive restraints are loosened for ’emergency’ spending. Additionally there are often prohibitions on using funds for permanent facilities while an ’emergency’ and/or ‘temporary’ designation allows funds to be used which would be prohibited in a ‘permanent’ allocation.
Municipal and State budgets have lots of perverse incentives that actually make it easier to waste large sums via an ’emergency’ v the traditional budget allocation and authorizing process.
Besides the nice folks supplying the overpriced services can then make more campaign donations to the politicians who approve the spending. They can also steer some of their sub contracts to the politician’s nephew or another ‘worthy’ vendor.
Government doesn’t work like that. It isn’t about to improvise low-cost solutions, that’s just not how it’s done (here or anywhere).
It’s done bureaucratically. A committee is appointed to draw up a list of requirements, then another committee decides how, specifically, these requirements can be precisely met and still another puts out requests for bids for the assorted identified services and goods.
Not surprisingly, the requirements often specify and particular methods and means to be employed, thus closing off creativity or improvisation at the start.
That’s what happens when government processes work well; stir in some corruption and it can get a lot worse.
To be fair, some private charities aren’t much better. Especially if they’ve managed to raise more funds than they have ways and means to effectively use them.
You want solutions that employ creativity and improvisation? You won’t find anything like that here. You don’t expect a cow to bark or a dog to moo, do you?
I had a couple of cases against the school district: what corruption! They’re not even shy about it.
CATO (Crazy, Addicted, Tramps and Out of luck). Tramps==life style choice.
Some people are all four.
I think the Tramps category is much underestimated. There are people that choose to live this way. It ain’t a bad life. No commuting, no lawn to mow, etc.
rush used to call them ‘urban outdoorsmen’
Leave it to the Communists to make abject poverty so pricy and unaffordable.
Brings to mind the oft-quoted observation that if Liberals were put in charge of the Sahara Desert, pretty soon there would be a shortage of sand.
It’s their reverse-Midas-touch.
The Homeless Industrial Complex strikes again.
That we have such a complex there is no doubt — simply look at the tens of thousands of public employees, plus the private contractors, consultants, etc. All need to be paid. CommoChief is correct, it becomes very expensive.
Add to this all the usual city hall graft and it’s easy to see $2600 per month.
Now, try to shut it down. Heh.
There was a reason these people were flooded into our cities, and given enough aid money to maintain their drug habits. (In CA, they get almost 1,000 dollars a month – each. Which means on the first of the month, MILLIONS of these dollars hits the streets.)
Wait till enough of them start getting pregnant. Can you fathom that army of orphaned crack and meth babies?
All part of the left’s plan to destroy our cities from within – while looting for themselves. ESPECIALLY the money laundered to the media via ‘news’ jobs, ‘book’ deals, Netflix ‘specials’, etc.
Always follow the money.
So for 70 tents …2,184,000 a year lol
We should locate the homeless camp out in the desert, 100 miles from the nearest town. Surround it with barbed wire and armed guards. Use the residents government benefits to pay for it and provide food water and tents. Those who violate vagrancy laws will be moved to this camp.
“Government doesn’t work. It doesn’t deliver the mail on time. It doesn’t educate our children properly. It doesn’t keep the city safe.”
— HARRY BROWNE, “Why Government Doesn’t Work”
You don’t have to be crazy to live there, but it helps
Only comment I can make is that most landlords won’t rent to these people even for $2,600 a month for darned good reasons. First, they’re not likely to actually receive the money. The damage deposit won’t cover even a tiny fraction of the rolling disaster their rental will become. Their drugged-up friends will crowd in, and all the neighbors (of which you may have a rental or two in the mix also) will complain. The police will visit frequently, any pet policy will be ignored, they won’t leave when their lease is up, and they’ll leave the walls saturated with meth to the point you’ll have to tear most of the rental to pieces in order to bring it to code again. Oh, and that’s if they don’t rip up the walls for copper or set the place on fire.
$2600 a month for a tent is cheap when compared to the alternative.
there are thousands of old shipping containers out there, wouldn’t be that expensive to convert a 20 footer into mini apartment
The elephant in the room with enough of these people is that housing them will create buildings full of nightmarish scenarios: drug deaths, fights, shootings, beatings, vandalism, fires, prostitution – you name it. And anyone who thinks these crazies will sit in their tiny apartments watching tv all day: may you be the only victims of tsunami of crime enemating from whatever building they are housed in.
Sounds like a payoff scam, one side scoops in tax money and pays off to backers
I remember all the lieberals who were in high dudgeon over the $500 toilet seats in the NASA and DOD programs. But you won’t see a single one of them criticizing these tents.
$500 is a bargain. The current price tag is $23 million. But it still has a bad odor problem, which is going to cost a lot more money to fix….