The “homeless” solution

When talking about the ever increasing homeless problem, I am often asked “Okay, but what are you going to do about it?” This would be my approach:

First we need to focus on separating the bad actors (criminals) from the good ones who might be capable of benefitting from existing programs that help with housing or drug addiction. Cracking down on crime by prioritizing funding for law enforcement first will allow us to fully open the jail and bring in more deputy DA's. This will help get the bad actors off the streets and away from the other homeless who are negatively influenced and impacted by their poor life choices. We also need to prioritize resources to efficiently extradite people with out-of-county warrants.

Second, we can focus on reducing barriers and burdens to home builders and landlords (i.e. permit fees and applications). The current process to build a home or add an apartment onto your existing property is absolutely ridiculous. Making it financially advantageous to add homes and apartments to the market without unnecessary delays will give the homeless more opportunities for realistic placement options.

Lastly, we need to be focusing our grant funding and volunteer energy with respectable partners such as Salvation Army who will better serve the homeless population, as opposed to the enabling centers like the Devereux in Empire who attract bad actors from other communities.

Accomplishing these three tasks will put us on the right track, and eventually we could see the majority of these encampments disappear for good. This is a very brief overview of a fairly complex set of problems, but I have yet to see a leader in our community attempt to address the homeless problem with this mindset and perspective.

Encampments near our schools, is this okay with you?