Is this the Collapse of the Great American Empire?
An Apartment for the Homeless to Cost $837,000 in LA
11 commentsI was talking to William Wallis on his show about the state of things in L.A. and I quoted some of my old figures about the politically inflated cost of housing.
The first apartments cost an average of $479,000 a unit. Some went as high as $650,000 a unit. But that wasn't good enough. Two years later, the cost of an average unit hit $531,000, with some apartments going up to $746,000. Building an apartment in Los Angeles for a crackhead was costing more than the price of a mansion in some parts of the country.
Despite all those high prices, only 228 apartments were actually built in four years.
City Controller Ron Galperin performed an audit on the $1.2 billion allocated for the homeless in 2016, and blamed the lack of progress on "red tape" and "a lot of consultants".
Unable to build apartments for less than the cost of a mansion, Los Angeles launched a pilot program to build 8x8 aluminum sheds for the homeless for only $130,000 each. The average cost of a home in LA is $500 per square foot. The aluminum sheds with 64 square feet of space managed to completely blow that away. But the no-bid contract probably helped.
Old news. We're now up to a whopping $837,000.
A $1.2 billion program intended to quickly build housing for Los Angeles’ sprawling homeless population is moving too slowly while costs are spiking, with one project under development expected to hit as much as $837,000 for each housing unit, a city audit disclosed Wednesday.
About 1,200 units have been completed since voters approved the spending in 2016, which was then a centerpiece in a strategy intended to get thousands of people off the streets. But the tally of units built so far is “wholly inadequate” in the context of the homeless crisis, said the audit issued by city Controller Ron Galperin.
In recent years, homeless encampments have spread into virtually every neighborhood, while the population has climbed to an estimated 41,000 people. Many are drug addicted or mentally ill, and violence is commonplace.
There are more homeless than ever and the politically connected who helped create this crisis are cashing in on the whole mess more than ever.
The Real Cost of Homelessness
In 2016, Los Angeles Mayor Gil Garcetti proclaimed, as might an emperor or king, he would empower citizens to “transform their streets and urban corridors into vibrant, walkable spaces that reflect the unique characteristics of their communities.”
As of September 2020, Los Angeles has solved its homeless problem. The approximate 60,000 homeless encamped on Los Angeles’ streets, urban corridors, parks, and freeway underpasses vanished to be replaced by approximately 60,000 unhoused residents. Empowered by Garcetti’s hands-off the homeless order of protection issued for “public health and safety reasons,” these unhoused are reimagining their lives free of health and safety regulations and taxation applicable to the housed.
Enter Hollywood screenwriter W. Peter Iliff (Point Break, Varsity Blues, Trump’s America.)
Iliff is a homeowner and father with that rarest of 21st-century qualities, common sense. Iliff’s cozy Spanish revival home is a short walk from the Cattaraugus underpass of The Christopher Columbus Transcontinental Highway. Several months ago, hardcore addicts erected a palatial 35-foot by 10-foot hovel that blocked the sidewalk and one traffic lane in the tunnel.
The Christopher Columbus highway bisects Iliff’s neighborhood. Families living on the south side must walk through the underpass to shop along the Robertson Boulevard urban corridor or take their children to Raynier Park, both of which are on the highway’s north side. One homeless man, wielding a lead pipe, chased a father and his four-year-old boy away as he screamed he would crush the father’s skull. Another accosted a terrified young mother walking to the park with her baby in a stroller. They threatened motorists driving through, filched bicycles, and burglarized homes for months as the stench from their fetid encampment grew unbearable.
Iliff steadily received messages from moms and nannies terrified to walk through the tunnel. Iliff repeatedly petitioned the city councilman, Council President Herb Wesson, Jr., and police for help. Garcetti’s order prevented police action. Wesson, who represents a majority black and Latino council district South of the highway, ignored them.
Serendipitously, a homeless outreach group sued Los Angeles in federal court. The complaint claimed the city had failed to shelter the homeless per the terms of a $1 billion Homeless Relief Bond approved by voters. The complaint also asked the court to order Los Angeles’ removal of persons living in freeway underpasses because of exposure to excessive heat and exhaust. U.S. District Judge David Carter agreed. He enjoined the City of Los Angeles to move the homeless out of the tunnels, including the Cattaraugus underpass.
After the police arrested the Cattaraugus addicts on robbery charges, Iliff, along with his neighbors, quickly raised money on Go Fund Me to buy boulders for placement along the tunnel’s sidewalk. They wanted to keep the tunnel clean and safe. Iliff and his ‘Rebel Alliance’ removed piles of rubbish, jugs of urine, feces, and used syringes, steam cleaned the area, then set the boulders. They liberated the underpass. Families could safely pass through.
Within hours, a phalanx of homeless outreach groups with no stake in Iliff’s community bombarded Wesson’s office with demands for the immediate removal of the hostile architecture, i.e., boulders. Wesson tweeted the boulders were wrong on “so many levels” and assured the outreached that he and his team were working to remove the hostile boulders. The humanitarian outreach groups also doxed and sent anonymous death threats to Iliff and others on the GoFundMe list. Within hours, the city served Iliff with a notice to remove the boulders or face felony dumping charges. A cowardly community council condemned Iliff’s group’s action. Protestors flooded a virtual council hearing on Zoom, turning it into something akin to the Communist Chinese Struggle Sessions used during Mao’s Cultural Revolution to humiliate dissidents publicly. To avoid felony charges, Iliff suffered the humiliation of begging forgiveness for his and his neighbors’ attempt to keep their families safe.
While speaking at Iliff’s Struggle Session, an émigré from the former Soviet Union, now fighting for socially just outcomes ala Karl Marx here said, “In all of these discussions the unhoused person has been framed as some kind of intrusion or public safety hazard — he is a resident of this neighborhood and has as much of a stake in it as anyone who owns a home here.” Exactly where does this unhoused resident receive income tax, property tax, and utility bills?
The city’s overzealous coronavirus lockdown bankrupted small businesses by the thousands while allowing big box stores to operate. The result? Los Angeles’ reimagined urban corridors are deserted, like the streets in 28 Days. Peter Iliff, who tried to be reasonable in a city unhinged, awaits his fate. The addicts are moving back into the Cattaraugus underpass. All this as Garcetti, Team Wesson, the spineless City Council, the Lilliputian Board of County Supervisors, and their Pravda, the Los Angeles Times, are at work reimagining law enforcement.
Mayor Garcetti and Councilman Wesson could have fought the State Courts order without incurring political damage. Neighboring cities do not allow fetid homeless encampments to proliferate. Old rail cars could have been converted to individual shelters and kept on railroad sidings. I suspect the socialists running this city have perpetuated the homeless epidemic to further divide Los Angeles citizens. As Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals Rule #3 states, “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.” With the housed, the unhoused, and the unhinged, at odds, madness rules the day. The only rational thing left to do is “Pray for Surf.”
Image: Pixabay
Tucker: Gavin Newsom is overseeing the 'death of suburbs'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mF-HCjtvTo
HALF THE POPULATION OF CA ARE ILLEGALS.
THE GLOBALIST DEMOCRAT PARTY IS HELL BENT ON FLOODING ALL OF AMERICA WITH MORE ‘CHEAP’ LABOR ILLEGALS.
AMNESTY WILL ENABLE 50 MILLION ILLEGALS ACROSS AMERICA BRING UP THE REST OF MEXICO.
Los Angeles Is Squandering $1.2 Billion While Homeless Face a ‘Spiral of Death’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRVYI_fAHHs
The Homeless Crisis of Los Angeles : Exploring Skid Row
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s70osRSxZdA
A Homeless Village Is Growing on Apple’s Silicon Valley Property
According to recent reports, a growing homeless encampment has been set up on dozens of acres of undeveloped land in the heart of Silicon Valley owned by tech giant Apple.
VICE News reports that despite Apple committing billions of dollars to fix California’s housing crisis, an encampment of homeless people living in RVs, shacks, and tents has taken over dozens of acres of undeveloped land owned by Apple in the center of Silicon Valley.
Between 30 to 100 homeless people have reportedly set up camp on the property owned by Apple in North San Jose. The area covers about 55 acres according to the local CBS affiliate KPIX. Some current residents of the site say that they feel they can be left alone there, despite the area’s proximity to PayPal’s corporate headquarters and other office buildings.
Before the start of the coronavirus pandemic, around 6,000 homeless people lived in San Jose with fewer than 1,000 beds available to them. It’s common for homeless people living outdoors and in vehicles across the Bay Area to be moved from place to place by security and police, those staying on the Apple property have largely been left alone according to Renee Corona who has lived in an RV on the property for nearly two years.
Corona, who receives disability payments but cannot afford to live in San Francisco where she was raised, stated: “This is an area where you’re secluded from the city. I don’t think a lot of people knew about this.” She added: “I’m grateful that they don’t kick us out. I just want to say thank you. They don’t bother us.”
San Jose City Council member David Cohen, whose district includes the property, told VICE News that his office is trying to schedule a meeting with Apple to discuss the site. “We’re setting up a meeting so that I can begin to talk to them about what we might be able to do to help the people who are living there, and to figure out some plan for offering services,” Cohen said.
Read more at VICE News here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com
THESE VIDEOS SHOULD CONVINCE ANYONE OF THE DANGERS OF LETTING THE DEMOCRAT PARTY RUN THE COUNTRY.... INTO THE GROUND!
Walking Tour of Downtown Seattle in May 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZAFbj-918A
Searching for Hope: Homeless in Sacramento
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TL5MROuIaGU
Inflation is Surging as Wages are Falling - People are Unprepared
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pu9Ad7Y3SZE
Is Los Angeles the worst run city in America - Homeless Update
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeYZoWWBc4s&t=3s
Homeless Woman Doesn't Drink or Use Drugs. In a Tent for 8 Years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kNDhSl_IyE
Homeless Woman Has a Masters in Mathematics and Engineering
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT3VGI0V5Rs
What are you Spending Money On? - Prices Skyrocket
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TWlhnCmvws
The Economy is like a Bad Magic Trick - Full of Smoke and Mirrors
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTUKpeXiB2U&t=37s
MacArthur Park Is a Complete Wreck - Hollywood Homeless Breakdown
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81Yl97OypH0&t=32s
Chaos by the Bay: The Truth About Homelessness in San Francisco
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw8MACDZ3RI
City of Roses or City of Homeless? Portland's human tragedy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcZvD7lKZto
Meet the Homeless Americans Living in Walmart Parking Lots
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1AWLo_fK1U
Living on the brink: One family’s struggle to survive the pandemic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y92ubHU_AS8
Feeding a family on a food stamp budget
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXKkakwf6Vk
This is life on $7.50 an hour
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SCB1t28nDU
Another line they cut into: Illegals get free public housing as impoverished Americans wait
Want some perspective on why so many blue sanctuary cities have so many homeless encampments hovering around?
Try the reality that illegal immigrants are routinely given free public housing by the U.S., based on the fact that they are uneducated, unskilled, and largely unemployable. Those are the criteria, and now importing poverty has never been easier. Shockingly, this comes as millions of poor Americans are out in the cold awaiting that housing that the original law was intended to help.
Thus, the tent cities, and by coincidence, the worst of these emerging shantytowns are in blue sanctuary cities loaded with illegal immigrants - Orange County, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, New York...Is there a connection? At a minimum, it's worth looking at.
The Trump administration's Department of Housing and Urban Development is finally trying to put a stop to it as 1.5 million illegals prepare to enter the U.S. this year, and one can only wonder why they didn't do it yesterday.
According to a report in the Washington Times:
The plan would scrap Clinton-era regulations that allowed illegal immigrants to sign up for assistance without having to disclose their status.
Under the new Trump rules, not only would the leaseholder using public housing have to be an eligible U.S. person, but the government would verify all applicants through the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, a federal system that’s used to weed illegal immigrants out of other welfare programs.
Those already getting HUD assistance would have to go through a new verification, though it would be over a period of time and wouldn’t all come at once.
“We’ve got our own people to house and need to take care of our citizens,” an administration official told The Washington Times. “Because of past loopholes in HUD guidance, illegal aliens were able to live in free public housing desperately needed by so many of our own citizens. As illegal aliens attempt to swarm our borders, we’re sending the message that you can’t live off of American welfare on the taxpayers’ dime.”
The Times notes that the rules are confusingly contradictary, and some illegal immigrant families are getting full rides based on just one member being born in the U.S. The pregnant caravaner who calculatingly slipped across the U.S. in San Diego late last year, only to have her baby the next day, now, along with her entire family, gets that free ride on government housing. Plus lots of cheesy news coverage about how heartwarming it all is. That's a lot cheaper than any housing she's going to find back in Tegucigalpa.
Migrants would be almost fools not to take the offering.
The problem of course is that Americans who paid into these programs, and the subset who find themselves in dire circumstances, are in fact being shut out.
The fill-the-pews Catholic archbishops may love to tout the virtues of illegal immigrants and wave signs about getting 'justice" for them, but the hard fact here is that these foreign nationals are stealing from others as they take this housing benefit under legal technicalities. That's not a good thing under anyone's theological law. But hypocrisy is comfortable ground for the entire open borders lobby as they shamelessly celebrate lawbreaking at the border, leaving the impoverished of the U.S. out cold.
The Trump administration is trying to have this outrage fixed by summer. But don't imagine it won't be without the open-borders lawsuits, the media sob stories, the leftist judges, and the scolding clerics.
Los Angeles County Pays Over a Billion in Welfare to Illegal Aliens Over Two Years
BY MASOOMA HAQ
In 2015 and 2016, Los Angeles County paid nearly $1.3 billion in welfare funds to illegal aliens and their families. That figure amounts to 25 percent of the total spent on the county’s entire needy population, according to Fox News.
The state of California is home to more illegal aliens than any other state in the country. Approximately one in five illegal aliens lives in California, Pew reported.
Approximately a quarter of California’s 4 million illegal immigrants reside in Los Angeles County. The county allows illegal immigrant parents with children born in the United States to seek welfare and food stamp benefits.
The welfare benefits data acquired by Fox News comes from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services and shows welfare and food stamp costs for the county’s entire population were $3.1 billion in 2015, $2.9 billion in 2016.
The data also shows that during the first five months of 2017, more than 60,000 families received a total of $181 million.
Over 58,000 families received a total of $602 million in benefits in 2015 and more than 64,000 families received a total of $675 million in 2016.
Robert Rector, a Heritage Foundation senior fellow who studies poverty and illegal immigration, told Fox the costs represent “the tip of the iceberg.”
“They get $3 in benefits for every $1 they spend,” Rector said. It can cost the government a total of $24,000 per year per family to pay for things like education, police, fire, medical, and subsidized housing.
In February of 2019, the Los Angeles city council signed a resolution making it a sanctuary city. The resolution did not provide any new legal protections to their immigrants, but instead solidified existing policies.
In October 2017, former California governor Jerry Brown signed SB 54 into law. This bill made California, in Brown’s own words, a “sanctuary state.” The Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the State of California over the law. A federal judge dismissed that suit in July. SB 54 took effect on Jan. 1, 2018.
According to Center for Immigration Studies, “The new law does many things: It forbids all localities from cooperating with ICE detainer notices, it bars any law enforcement officer from participating in the popular 287(g) program, and it prevents state and local police from inquiring about individuals’ immigration status.”
Some counties in California have protested its implementation and joined the Trump administration’s lawsuit against the state.
California’s campaign to provide public services to illegal immigrants did not end with the exit of Jerry Brown. His successor, Gavin Newsom, is just as focused as Brown in funding programs for illegal residents at the expense of California taxpayers.
California’s budget earmarks millions of dollars annually to the One California program, which provides free legal assistance to all aliens, including those facing deportation, and makes California’s public universities easier for illegal-alien students to attend.
According to the Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on United States Taxpayers 2017 report, for the estimated 12.5 million illegal immigrants living in the country, the resulting cost is a $116 billion burden on the national economy and taxpayers each year, after deducting the $19 billion in taxes paid by some of those illegal immigrants.
BLOG: MOST FIGURES PUT THE NUMBER OF ILLEGALS IN THE U.S. AT ABOUT 40 MILLION. WHEN THESE PEOPLE ARE HANDED AMNESTY, THEY ARE LEGALLY ENTITLED TO BRING UP THE REST OF THEIR FAMILY EFFECTIVELY LEAVING MEXICO DESERTED.
New data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that more than 22 million non-citizens now live in the United States.
NAFTA AND THE DESTRUCTION OF THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS AND JOE BIDEN WAS PARTNERED WITH BILLARY CLINTON TO PERPETRATE NAFTA AND OPEN BORDERS!
The American Left Is BANKRUPT
Chris Hedges on how CLINTON Betrayed us with NAFTA
Chris Hedges | America is BROKEN
Chris Hedges Exposes the Sad Truth About AMERICANS
ECONOMIC PAIN IS HERE, MILLIONS IN U.S. JUST FELL INTO POVERTY, OIL PRICE SCARE, ENDLESS CREDIT CARD
Retail Crime is Only Getting Worse - Real Estate Buyer's Estate
here is america's housing crisis:
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10. There is no crisis at the Border – Think of what’s happening at the border not as a crisis but an opportunity -- for Democrats to import a new electorate. Those midnight flights to relocate thousands of illegals across the country is an urban legend. Pictures of illegal encampments just south of the border – an optical illusion. Just ask Vice President Harris. She was close to the border -- once.
A New Dem Bill Would Make ‘Tent Cities’ Permanent Fixture
Maryland state bill would prevent police from removing homeless camps from public property
Patrick Hauf and Matthew Foldi • February 23, 2022 5:00 amSome of the nation's most liberal cities are cracking down on their homeless populations. But Maryland may soon ban police from removing homeless people from public property.
A Democratic-backed bill in the Maryland statehouse would prevent police from enforcing Failure to Obey Lawful Orders laws, which critics say would permit homeless camps, known as "tent cities," on public property. The sponsor of the bill, Democratic delegate Sheila Ruth, said in a committee hearing that these tent cities are not harmful or dangerous to communities.
"We shouldn't be destroying homeless encampments," Ruth said.
Ruth did not respond to a request for comment.
Ruth is pushing to permit homeless encampments in Maryland as Democratic politicians roll back on similar policies across the country. The Los Angeles City Council in October banned homeless camps in 54 locations. Austin, Texas, in May overwhelmingly voted to ban public camping across the city. Seattle and Washington, D.C., have cleared out homeless camps in recent months, and New York City mayor Eric Adams (D.) on Friday released a plan to remove homeless people from public areas such as subway trains.
Baltimore City estimates that there are more than 2,000 homeless people in the city on any given night. Statewide estimates put Maryland's homeless population at more than 6,000.
Maryland Republicans say Ruth's bill is the latest example of state Democrats' misplaced priorities on criminal justice.
"The last couple of years the focus of Maryland legislators has unfortunately been to treat criminals as victims and encourage breaking the law," state senator Michael Hough told the Washington Free Beacon.
Republican state senator Justin Ready said Ruth's bill would "encourage vagrancy like they have in places like San Francisco," worsening crime in Baltimore and other poverty-stricken areas in the state.
Maryland's term-limited Republican governor, Larry Hogan, is using his final months in office to press for a $500 million "Refund the Police" package and bills for tougher sentences for violent criminals. The Free Beacon reported in November that 88 percent of African-American Marylanders back Hogan's Refund the Police initiative.
Democratic state legislators in 2020 spiked Hogan's bills on tougher sentences and judicial transparency, even though polling showed near-unanimous support for his tough-on-crime reforms among Baltimore residents and African Americans across the state.
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