The San Diego Housing Fee is below fireplace over plans to buy and convert three lodges into housing for the homeless that comes with a price ticket of $400,000 per room.
Critics of the plan argue its a waste of taxpayer cash that fails to handle the foundation causes of homelessness.
“California’s acquired a couple of third of the homeless of the whole nation. And we hold simply throwing increasingly more {dollars} at this downside with out actually attending to the foundation reason behind psychological well being or alcohol abuse or drug abuse,” San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond mentioned on “Fox & Buddies” Friday.
“Spending all this $157 million on extra rooms doing the identical factor and it’s inflicting the identical downside, that’s fruitless,” he added.
The fee final week voted unanimously to maneuver ahead with the proposal to purchase three Prolonged Keep America Resorts with 412 apartment-style items for $157.8 million, or roughly $383,192 per unit, in response to native studies.
In San Diego County, there have been an estimated 8,500 homeless folks in 2022 — up an alarming 10% since 2022, in response to knowledge from the Regional Job Power on Homelessness.
Whereas San Diego and different California cities try to grapple with the disaster, California Gov. Gavin Newsom introduced final month that he plans to spend $30 million to construct 1,200 tiny properties to shelter a tiny fraction of the roughly 170,000 folks homeless within the Golden State.
San Diego is about to obtain about 150 of the properties, Fox Information reported.
Brian Jones, the Republican chief of the state Senate, referred to as the plan a “band support on a disaster that’s uncontrolled,” in response to Fox.
Since taking workplace in 2019, Newsom has signed off on greater than $22.3 billion in new spending on housing and homelessness packages — however critics like Desmond have but to see any outcomes for all the cash town and state retains spending.
“We simply hold getting increasingly more homeless folks on our streets. Our numbers are going up. They’re not happening. Previously three years, the state of California has spent $10 billion on homeless and making an attempt to repair the homeless downside, the homeless answer. We’re simply caught on this unending cycle,” Desmond mentioned.
He mentioned he believes the cash ought to as an alternative be invested in psychological well being and drug dependancy points.
“That’s what folks actually need to get into, is remedy, not simply the resort room the place they’ll proceed to make use of and proceed within the dangerous habits…that acquired them homeless within the first place,” Desmond informed Fox hosts.
Homeless advocate Michael McConnell informed FOX 5 final week that there are already a whole bunch of individuals able to fill the resort items as quickly as potential.
“If we did this in each space of town, you possibly can simply think about the simply unimaginable distinction it will make, actually for the parents who must unit, however for the entire neighborhood to have so many people off of our streets doing so a lot better,” he added.
Residents wouldn’t be staying within the housing without spending a dime.
“The people who find themselves going to be staying right here, they’re going to should pay 30% of any earnings that they get,” McConnell mentioned.
Supply By https://nypost.com/2023/04/28/san-diego-blasted-for-157m-plan-to-buy-3-hotels-to-house-homeless/