SURE, BUT THEN IT WOULDN’T PRODUCE GRAFT IN CALIFORNIA: Money California wastes on the homeless could buy a first-class life in Missouri.
In some places, one unit of supportive housing for people who are homeless costs a cool million dollars. And, every month after it is built taxpayers fork over $17,000 for security, maintenance, social workers to help them get government assistance, utilities, cleaning and such.
To put that in perspective for people in normal America, you could buy each Californian suffering from homelessness two first-class tickets to Kansas City International Airport, get them a limo ride to their new home, which would be a new three-bedroom ranch, fully furnished (natch) with a new Tesla in the garage, and still save hundreds of thousands of dollars. Every month, you could give them a salary for picking up cans and other debris along the highways that would be greater than half of what working Missourians make and still save $10,000 off that monthly bill.
If money and houses could solve homelessness, this is what California would do — and Missouri would be a winner, as all those formerly homeless people paid property and income taxes thanks to the taxpayers of the palm-festooned paradise on the Pacific.
Well, if California wanted to solve homelessness. But homelessness is too lucrative a problem to solve.