Whoever thought putting 100% of people with disabilities into one building, and all of them also extremely poor…well, this is the new and more illegal way to concentrate poverty. Someone has too bring this up. The supportive housing sites are just like the people complaining said…they bring MORE criminal activity and shady people to your neighborhood.

You’re also right – conflating a mental health and drug issue with actual homelessness (families and elderly) has been a massive failure, along with zero enforcement of laws. Nothing will change until there is a widespread acknowledgement that the current “leaders” failed and their “plan” does nothing but enable and make problems worse. I hope the media begins to cover the reality of Harm Reductio and Housing First – and how those programs have made the issues worse, more expensive and farther from realistic solutions.

Oh, and I stopped commenting on Spotlight because they muzzle reasonable perspectives that counter the misinformation they place in their articles, trying to actually prop up failed leaders and policies, and their obsession with identity politics. They aren’t news, they are propaganda for the labor hacks, and super progressive failed policies.

While I am of the ‘build-more-units if you want lower rent’ school of thought, your comments are spot on. And yes, I have seen the fair-housing issues with the NGOs with steering. We also attempted to house some homeless in a six unit place we owned in SJ and it was a nightmare, one of the tenants scared two separate single women (1/3 of the units) out of the building within a week. None of the homeless lasted more than 3 months as their social worker knew they had committed numerous evict-able violations and wanted to keep their vouchers clean.

I think one of the bigger problems is the conflation of all these issues into one size fits all solutions. Frankly, most at-risk tenants need a one-time infusion of cash, some need a couple hundred a month, some need help moving out of CA, some need Section 8 level help and some need to be committed. But the $1M, 400 sqft SRO has very obvious benefactors and photo-ops.

I do not think the situation is fixable until CA bottoms out, something I thought was impossible until recently. CA needs to become Detroit, which will certainly lower rents and housing costs and slowly rebuild itself up from that. But by no means should anyone move to, raise a family in or start a business in CA.

On top of that – the “supportive” housing properties popping up – especially in downtown (Villas, Second Street Studios) are sadly what many people were afraid of. They are filled with single adult males, many with criminal records – and those properties get constant calls to police and are more like institutions than housing communities. They are the new wave of public housing – just concentrating really poor and disabled people in buildings in certain districts.

This is a major fair housing issue – and these properties are a nightmare to manage. Many living in them need treatment, not a 400 Sq ft apartment that cost nearly $1 million to build.

CA has it all wrong sadly on housing.