Some California counties winding down hotels for homeless
AP
Some California counties are pushing ahead with plans to wind down a program that’s housed homeless people in hotel rooms amid the coronavirus pandemic
Some California counties winding down hotels for homelessBy JANIE HARAssociated PressThe Associated PressSAN FRANCISCO
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Some California counties are pushing ahead with plans to wind down a program that’s moved homeless people into hotel rooms amid the coronavirus pandemic despite an emergency cash infusion from the state aimed at preventing people from returning to the streets in colder weather as the virus surges.
Gov. Gavin Newsom recently announced $62 million for counties to move hotel guests into permanent housing or to extend hotel leases that were part of “Project Roomkey,” which he rolled out this spring as a way to protect some people experiencing homelessness from the virus. The Federal Emergency Management Agency agreed to pick up 75% of the cost.
But counties say that with federal relief funding expiring soon, it’s time to transition residents from expensive hotel rooms to cheaper, more stable housing. Officials hope to offer a place to every resident leaving a hotel, though they acknowledge not everyone will accept it and affordable housing is difficult to find.
California is one of several states, including Washington, that turned to hotels to shelter homeless people as the virus took hold. Homelessness has soared nationwide during the pandemic, and it was already at a crisis level in California because of an expensive housing market and a shortage of affordable options. The nation’s most populated state has by far the highest number of people on the streets, though other places have a higher per capita rate.
In San Francisco, advocacy groups and some officials are outraged by the mayor’s plan to start moving hundreds of people out of hotels around the holidays. They say it’s ridiculous when thousands of people are still sleeping on sidewalks and in cars, and they don’t believe the city can find enough virus-safe housing for 2,300 people living in more than two dozen hotels.
“It makes absolute zero sense. It is outrageous, it’s irresponsible, and it basically tells people experiencing homelessness that you’re not a priority for the city,” Supervisor Hillary Ronen said as she and other leaders announced proposed legislation to slow the move and ensure every resident is offered alternative housing.
The Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing said in a statement that money from the state will provide “more flexibility and time” but would not say if San Francisco had changed its timeline. The department has said it plans to move homeless people out of all 29 hotels by June.
“We will continue to work with city staff and our service providers to deliver on our commitment to get people housed and ensure no one in our hotels gets moved back on the streets,” the statement said.
An estimated 150,000 people experiencing homelessness live in California, and there are signs that number will only increase with an economy ravaged by the pandemic. Newsom has awarded $800 million to cities and counties to buy hotels and other properties to convert into housing, saying he didn’t want to squander an opportunity to get more people indoors.
At times, connecting homeless people to shelter, work, medical care and social services boils down to finding them in time, and the hotels have been a huge help, advocates say. They say hotel residents have flourished with regular checkups and meals.
“If this were to be taken away from us at this time, it really would be like having a carpet pulled out from under us in a really major way,” said hotel resident Nicholas Garrett, who appeared with the San Francisco supervisors.
Dr. Danielle Alkov spoke of one of her patients, a transgender woman who has blossomed after being brought indoors. But her hotel is scheduled to be among the first to close.
“She’s thriving, she’s engaged in medical care, she’s very future-thinking for probably the first time in a long time, thinking about her career goals, her educational goals,” Alkov said. “The idea of her not having a stable place to go, and losing all the progress that she’s made, would be devastating.”
In Los Angeles, the Homeless Services Authority said nearly 600 people have moved out of hotel rooms and into interim housing, with 62 others in permanent housing. About 3,400 people remain in hotel rooms, and while the agency has received funding from the city to extend leases at several hotels, it will keep moving people into other housing, spokesman Christopher Yee said.
Alameda County, which includes Oakland, hopes to use state money for rental subsidies and to extend leases on hotel rooms but will continue with plans to close five of nine hotels between December and February. Over 1,000 people are in hotels there.
It’s much more cost-effective to use the money “for permanent housing with leases than to continue the hotel program indefinitely,” said Kerry Abbott, director of the county’s Office of Homeless Care and Coordination. And while some people have chosen to return to a shelter, “our goal is to make sure everyone has a housing offer. Most people will take a housing offer.”
The hotels won’t go away entirely. Abbott said the county plans to operate a 98-room quarantine and isolation hotel for six months next year and keep an additional 240 hotel rooms open through 2021 for residents who require the extra care.
By year’s end, Sacramento County plans to close trailers housing 46 people either recovering from the virus or awaiting test results. But county spokeswoman Janna Haynes said shelter hotels will stay open through early next year and nobody will be forced to leave without a place to go.
Even though the program is ending, Abbott, of Alameda County, says people have benefited deeply, with some able to start addressing issues that have kept them out of stable housing.
“Many people have been inside for the first time in a decade or longer, and have stayed inside, and have benefited from a place to stay, the services and the food and even the community our providers have put in place,” she said.
Trump Campaign: Democrats Give Housing to Illegal Migrants, Penalizing Black Americans Spencer Platt/Getty Images
NEIL MUNRO
28 Aug 2020 23
3:30
President Donald Trump’s campaign used the issue of illegal immigration on Thursday to seek votes from working-class blacks.
A short video released by the Trump campaign Twitter account highlighted the president’s record on improving public housing in New York and other cities.
“My name is Judy Smith,” said one black woman, who continued:
I live in New York City public housing. I’m grateful for the spotlight that President Trump is putting on New York City public housing. I think it’s wrong that the Democrats put illegal immigrants before black Americans. How is it that we have people waiting on the waiting lists for New York City public housing for 10 years or more, but yet we have illegal immigrants living here? Something is wrong with that picture.
President Trump is bringing real solutions to real problems. #RNC2020 pic.twitter.com/3Q7s2ZEchE
— Team Trump (Text VOTE to 88022) (@TeamTrump) August 28, 2020
The comments were likely aimed at working-class blacks in many swing states, including several Midwest states.
“Working-class African Americans are significantly more supportive of policies that seek to: decrease the number of immigrants coming to the United States, increase the federal role in verifying the employment status of immigrants, and attempts to amend the Constitution’s citizenship provisions,” said a 2013 peer-reviewed study by Tatishe Nteta, a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The study continued :
For African Americans who lost a job to an immigrant, working-class membership resulted in a 13 percentage point increase in the probability of support for an increased federal role in workplace oversight [against employment of illegal immigrants] when compared to middle-class African Americans who experienced a similar loss.
Numerous polls show that blacks — like all other groups — say they wish to welcome migrants, but strongly prefer that Americans get jobs before companies import more migrants.
Nationwide, the expanded supply of new migrants also cuts Americans’ disposable wages by inflating their housing costs . That reality is recognized by investor groups who are urging more immigration. For example, the Economic Innovation Group says , “The relationship between population growth and housing demand is clear. More people means more demand for housing, and fewer people means less demand.”
Mike Bloomberg’s pro-migration advocacy group, New American Economy , pushed the same argument :
The research shows that an increase in the absolute number of immigrants in a particular county from 2000–2010 results in corresponding economic gains—increased demand for locally produced goods and services, a corresponding inflow of U.S.-born individuals—that are reflected in the housing market.
The video also included comments from other blacks in New York:
My name is Manuel Martinez … Under the Trump administration, New York City Housing Authority has received an influx of cash that it has not seen since 1997.
My name is Claudia Perez I’m the resident council president of Washington Houses, which is in Spanish Harlem. [New York Mayor] Bill de Blasio and the way he has dealt with public housing residents is disgraceful. President Trump administration has opened their ears and has listened … [and] is bringing real solutions to real problems.
The video ends with the claim, “More Funding: Better Housing: Promise Made: Promise Kept.”
Donald Trump's labor & immigration promises for a 2nd term are vague but useful. They are also better for ordinary Americans than Joe Biden's business-backed, open-ended inflow of wage-cutting & rent-raising blue-collar workers & college- graduates. https://t.co/OmE4tRPf4T
— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) August 26, 2020
Another line they cut into: Illegals get free public housing as impoverished Americans wait
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/04/another_line_they_cut_into_illegals_get_free_public_housing_as_impoverished_americans_wait.html
By Monica Showalter
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.
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