California Spent $17 Billion on Homelessness. It’s Not Working.

The Wall Street Journal published an article yesterday with the headline "California Spent $17 Billion on Homelessness. It’s Not Working." I saved it until the end of my day, anticipating a deep dive into spending on the homeless and an analysis of the results thereof. Instead I got boilerplate pablum. The article focuses on an episode familiar to those of us in the Bay area: the Wood Street encampment under Interstate 880 in Oakland and its eventual clearing last year by CalTrans. Far from chronicling the obstacles to public officials trying to do their jobs erected by assorted judges and professional activists, it interviewed various residents of the encampment & presented them sympathetically.

Curiously absent from the entire article is any mention of drugs or crime. The residents of the encampent are presented as normal people, just like you & I, who can't make rent in the Bay area's famously expensive housing market. The question "If that is so, why don't you move?" is unaddressed (save by the furious commentors). The impact of a large number of people living like this (endless calls to the local fire & police departments) is mentioned in passing, but in the time-honored California media tradition, is couched in the passive voice: fires "happened".

I suppose my takeaway is pity for the authors. Forbidden by political fashion from considering certain causes of the situation (primarily drugs), they are unable to reason effectively about it– it's an event much like an earthquake, or a flood; something that simply happens to us, and in the face of which we are helpless. No wonder the leftists of my acquaintance are so frequently hopeless & angry, and that liberals report much higher levels of mental & emotional health issues.

The article ends with a single resident of the camp obtaining a housing voucher from the government & eventually securing an apartment. I don't think that suggests what the authors think it does.

06/03/23 07:58

This WSJ article presents human events as weather. Something that, like an earthquake or a flood, just happens to us & about which we can do nothing. "California Spent $17 Billion on Homelessness. It's Not Working." https://www.wsj.com/articles/california-homeless-population-oakland-wood-street-encampment-78d42cc3?mod=hp_lead_pos7

This WSJ article presents human events as weather. Something that, like an earthquake or a flood, just happens to us & about which we can do nothing. "California Spent $17 Billion on Homelessness. It's Not Working." https://www.wsj.com/articles/california-homeless-population-oakland-wood-street-encampment-78d42cc3?mod=hp_lead_pos7