L.A., S.F. And Other Homeless-Dominated Cities Just Don’t Get It–They Can Solve The Problem Of Homelessness By Moving The Mentally Ill To Institutions And The Mentally Healthy Offered ‘Housing’ At Some Of The 800 Federal (FEMA) Camps
By Dave Levine
I read a piece by Donna Littlejohn and Elizabeth Chou at L.A. Daily News on the L.A. homeless crisis.
L.A. City Councilman Mitch Englander doesn’t get it and neither does anyone else mentioned in this story, in my opinion. The homeless problem can be solved the way it should have been decades ago.
Some history on this is in order. Governor Ronald Reagan was forced by public pressure–as well as political pressure from his own party screaming about “the high cost of mental institutions”–to let the crazies out of the state’s institutions under the bipartisan Lanterman-Petris-Short Act of 1972. Recessions and the high cost of living especially in western states since that time have caused many Americans to become homeless. We have both the mentally ill homeless and “the jobless homeless” who are mentally sound all living in the streets together.
The ACLU and other leftist groups will of course fight this idea. But if California cities and other states’ cities want clean and safe streets, they must get the homeless off the streets. Call it “tough love”!
The FEMA camps are there, manned and ready. These camps–most of them set in abandoned airplane hangers–were set up under the Clinton and Bush administrations. Jobs programs from the counties these camps are based in would be offered to those homeless who aren’t mentally ill and who can work. These camps would be run by federal taxpayer dollars. In this way, every American would be helping the homeless. It would be a massive undertaking, but it would work.
Just to be clear, no mentally sound homeless person could be forced to live in these camps. They can of course be moved outside a city’s limits if the city so desires and county ordinances, like city ordinances on vagrancy, can force them to “move on” even further. Living under freeways and on the streets is no longer an option.
Incidentally, I have first-hand experience with homelessness. I was homeless in parts of 1970, 1973, 1978, 1980 and for a few weeks in 1985, all while in Southern California.
No one likes the idea of putting people in institutions and the healthy homeless offered FEMA camp living but if cities want their streets back, they’ll have to take action on this. The Lanterman-Petris-Short Act was a colossal mistake. It’s high time that mistake was corrected.
I’ll be talking about this in my Thursday commentary and on my show on Wednesday.
