Speaker 1: Good afternoon. This is briefly with the Chief. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Patrick Jordan here on kg or at dB dot com.
Speaker 1: You can catch me every Wednesday at five pm Eastern
Speaker 1: Standard Time on kvis Rumble channel, their Facebook page, and
Speaker 1: their Twitter feed. Now you can also catch me a
Speaker 1: pining all by myself on Twitter at last Jordan, I
Speaker 1: talk about a whole wide variety of things, and today's
Speaker 1: show we're going to talk public policy. We're going to
Speaker 1: talk why housing first is failing. And then it's just
Speaker 1: not going to be me opining. I'm going to bring
Speaker 1: doctor Christopher Calton on from the Independent Institute, and we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about homelessness, where how we got, how
Speaker 1: we got to public housing versus a public policy, why
Speaker 1: it's failing, and maybe some a direction forward where we
Speaker 1: should go. Now, as you guys all know, I do
Speaker 1: have my hand in the homeless issue in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: and so this is the topic that interests me. I
Speaker 1: do sit on the board of the Los Angeles Mission.
Speaker 1: You can see on the banner there ww dot Los
Speaker 1: Angeles Mission dot org. You can check them out and
Speaker 1: make a donation today. And I did serve some meals
Speaker 1: down there and Thanksgiving, and I went down for Christmas
Speaker 1: and I'm waiting for the next event I'll go volunteer again.
Speaker 1: But they do some great work in downtown LA. They
Speaker 1: do transformal housing, so they bring you in and try
Speaker 1: to do the best they can to get you off
Speaker 1: the street and integrate you back in society in a
Speaker 1: positive way by doing wrap ar own services, including cognitive
Speaker 1: Babel therapy programs, which I think are the gold standard
Speaker 1: for helping people to change their lives. But we'll get
Speaker 1: to that in a minute though my lead segment. Though,
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about a couple of issues in
Speaker 1: my lead segment, and the first is Walter Kurt Is.
Speaker 1: He looked at what Nick Suhirly did in Minneapolis and
Speaker 1: he decided to go out to Ohio and check out
Speaker 1: do they have fraud and the childcare state funded, government
Speaker 1: funded childcare system in Ohio? And he did find it.
Speaker 1: So let's listen to a clip here from Walter Kurt.
Speaker 2: When I say that this location has that this organization
Speaker 2: has received lots of money, I'm not joking. Forty two
Speaker 2: million dollars in federal fundation has been sent to the
Speaker 2: Somalian Education Resource Center over the past ten years or so,
Speaker 2: from twenty seventeen till now. And you'll also notice by
Speaker 2: the way that you can see the jump. You see
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen, twenty nineteen, you know they've got some money
Speaker 2: that are coming in. Then twenty twenty it's a jump,
Speaker 2: and then twenty twenty one it is a massive jump,
Speaker 2: and then a massive jump again, and then in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five it is a huge jump, huge jump. So
Speaker 2: now they've received over fourteen million dollars this year. Okay,
Speaker 2: so this is a very well funded organization, very well funded.
Speaker 2: They have lots of money. So the question is where
Speaker 2: are they And that's not an easy question to answer
Speaker 2: because if you look them up on Google, it shows
Speaker 2: that they're permanently closed.
Speaker 3: That's nice.
Speaker 2: Fourteen million dollars and you're permanently closed. I'm not really
Speaker 2: sure how you do that in a single year, but
Speaker 2: be okay, that's fine. Well maybe the address is wrong. Well,
Speaker 2: there's four addresses, so you go to address one. It's
Speaker 2: the backside of a motel. There's nothing there. You get
Speaker 2: to address too, there's something that on a sign that
Speaker 2: says the Somalian Culture Center, but there's all nothing there,
Speaker 2: and it looks to be a dentist location. Then you
Speaker 2: go to another location and it's a parking lot, and
Speaker 2: then you go to another location there's nothing there, So
Speaker 2: anyway for locations. Later we find the Somalian Education Resource Center.
Speaker 2: It is in a single office at the top of
Speaker 2: a multi tenant office building in the very back on
Speaker 2: the third floor, the final door on the top of
Speaker 2: the building, all the way in the back. And the
Speaker 2: only thing that looks expensive about this place is the
Speaker 2: very high dollar security system that is on the outside door.
Speaker 1: So that's Walter Kurt. Now, Walter is he's got a
Speaker 1: show called a Political Theater, which I jump on every
Speaker 1: now and then. You can find it on spaces on
Speaker 1: X and I think we got a banner for that.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing about there. It is so you
Speaker 1: can you can go to his y his substack page
Speaker 1: w WC dispatch dot com backslash p backslash the Political
Speaker 1: Leader and you can find him there. And he is
Speaker 1: going to do a series of visits to check out
Speaker 1: these locations to see if they actually exist exist just
Speaker 1: like they just like Nick Tirley did in Minneapolis. Now,
Speaker 1: the thing about one of the things that's being said
Speaker 1: is Trump is frozen the money going to these daycares
Speaker 1: in these states, and it's, oh my god, they're cutting
Speaker 1: off the funding.
Speaker 4: Virtuality.
Speaker 1: When you got off sieve, when you got a hole
Speaker 1: in your organization and you're bleeding money, you don't keep
Speaker 1: pouring the money in and try and fix that hole.
Speaker 1: You stop pouring the money in, fix the hole, and
Speaker 1: then you turn this pigot on again when you know
Speaker 1: everything's fixed and you're not losing fun. So that's all
Speaker 1: that Trump is doing. So Trump's not doing anything wrong.
Speaker 1: But I dealt with federal grants and federal money, and
Speaker 1: I have to tell you they were pretty tight when
Speaker 1: I was dealing with them. These were homeland security grants.
Speaker 1: It was the tens of millions, not the hundreds of
Speaker 1: millions and the billions that we're talking about. But they
Speaker 1: would come and inspect to make sure that we were
Speaker 1: hitting our timelines, we were hitting our scope of work,
Speaker 1: that we're doing all the things that we're supposed to
Speaker 1: be doing. And so it's curious to me, how do
Speaker 1: we get to a point when we didn't have those
Speaker 1: systems and controls in place. And you know, for me,
Speaker 1: this is an issue of competency. Certainly, Governor Waltz, whatever
Speaker 1: you want to think about him, has demonstrated a lack
Speaker 1: of competency in protecting the people's money, which is a
Speaker 1: big obligation for him. If we're going to give people's
Speaker 1: money out, we need to make sure it's being properly spent.
Speaker 1: Do they have no problem having systems and controls in
Speaker 1: place and making sure you pay your taxes? I think
Speaker 1: they can put some good systems and controls to make
Speaker 1: sure that people aren't wasting your money. But check out
Speaker 1: Walter Kurt at the Political Theater. I will jump on
Speaker 1: a show every now and then and give a commentary
Speaker 1: on X and I do like the spaces, so you
Speaker 1: can catch me on a lot of different spaces. His
Speaker 1: is one of my favorites. So also, I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about another issue. This one's in New York and
Speaker 1: this is the Mindami, the new mayor of New York
Speaker 1: has a point is somebody be in charge of tenant
Speaker 1: relations and some of his to deal with his tenant
Speaker 1: issues in York. And her name is Shia Weaver, and
Speaker 1: she has made some comments about public property that is
Speaker 1: shocking to me. Let's let's row with that video.
Speaker 5: I think the reality is is that for centuries we've
Speaker 5: really treated property as an individualized good and not a
Speaker 5: collective good. And we are going to and transitioning to
Speaker 5: treating it as a collective good and towards a model
Speaker 5: of shared equity will require that we think about it differently,
Speaker 5: and it will mean that families, especially white families, but
Speaker 5: some POC families who are homeowners as well, are going
Speaker 5: to have a different relationship to property than the one
Speaker 5: that we currently have.
Speaker 1: Yeah, to think about that, that is a different relationship
Speaker 1: with property that we currently have, like you know, home ownership, building,
Speaker 1: well building, financial independence, it's yours. You know, we fought
Speaker 1: a war with King George over this called revolutionary war.
Speaker 1: He tried to tax us. We got mad and we
Speaker 1: fought a war with him. And that's that's property. He's
Speaker 1: tried to take our property. And here we got now
Speaker 1: in New York an administration administration that is talking about
Speaker 1: taking people's personal property, their houses, away from them so
Speaker 1: that they could be a shared resource for everybody in
Speaker 1: the city of New York. And you know, it's interesting
Speaker 1: to me because we just took Maduro out of Venezuela.
Speaker 1: Now if you're married. Say I'm a student of history.
Speaker 4: I love history.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't all that long ago that Venezuela was
Speaker 1: one of the wealthiest countries in South America. And then
Speaker 1: Hugoshabez came to power through the ballot box, and then
Speaker 1: he quickly took over as a dictator, and he quickly
Speaker 1: nationalized the oil industry, and when he didn't have enough
Speaker 1: oil money, he started nationalizing all the other industries, and
Speaker 1: he impoverished that nation. When he died of cancer, Maduro
Speaker 1: took over and he continued in that vein, and the
Speaker 1: only people that got rich were the people at the top, Maduro,
Speaker 1: his friends, and the people that helped him with this
Speaker 1: corrupt socialist utopia that they what they called Venezuela. Ninety
Speaker 1: percent of the people living in Venezuela today are impoverished,
Speaker 1: a third of their population left. That is what this
Speaker 1: kind of nonsense thinking brings.
Speaker 3: You.
Speaker 1: Now see, she's since backed off some of those comments
Speaker 1: because there was such huge kickback on what she said. Additionally,
Speaker 1: some of the other information came out that her mom
Speaker 1: owns a house in Nashville worth one point five billion
Speaker 1: in a gentrifying neighborhood oh my god, another horrifying term gentrification.
Speaker 1: But her mom owns a one point five million dollar house,
Speaker 1: seems like she's Does that mean she's a racist? According
Speaker 1: to Turning her Darter, that's exactly what it means. So
Speaker 1: this is nonsense. And I think one of the things
Speaker 1: that you if you follow public policy, one of the
Speaker 1: things they used to switch the equity calculator for folks
Speaker 1: is rent control. Right, And one of the cities I
Speaker 1: worked in, the city, West Hollywood, established rent control in
Speaker 1: the mid eighties. And what it really looked to me
Speaker 1: over time because I was there shortly after the established
Speaker 1: rank control. I worked there for nine years, I left
Speaker 1: for six and I came back as a lieutenant. And
Speaker 1: I remember getting this call one night, right.
Speaker 4: It was this guy.
Speaker 1: He was complaining about his neighbor, his upstoes near him.
Speaker 1: She obviously worked in the clubs. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: clubs in the area. It was the entertainment hotspot. And
Speaker 1: she would come it's like three in the morning. She'd
Speaker 1: walk on her upstairs on her floor and high heels,
Speaker 1: make noise. And he would call almost every night to complain.
Speaker 1: And finally he got to the lieutenant right complaining that
Speaker 1: we weren't doing anything about this lady walking in her
Speaker 1: apartment at night. And you know, I got to talking
Speaker 1: to the guy. I go, well, you know, walking in
Speaker 1: your apartment is not really a violation of any noise rules.
Speaker 4: If she's not doing anything malicious, just walking in her apartment,
Speaker 4: there's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 1: And you know, I was asking him and he says, well,
Speaker 1: I'm a lawyer and I need to get my sleep.
Speaker 1: And so I asked him, I said, how long have
Speaker 1: you been there? He says, well, I've been here about
Speaker 1: seventeen years. So he got there shortly after rent control started.
Speaker 1: He says, I was a young law student and I
Speaker 1: needed the rent control. I said, well, did you pass
Speaker 1: the bar, you're now a lawyer. I mean, did you
Speaker 1: ever consider moving? He says, well, I have a house.
Speaker 1: I bought a house years ago, about fifteen miles away,
Speaker 1: but this is close to the office and I want
Speaker 1: to keep it. And you know what that told me
Speaker 1: that rent control stops being about making sure that people
Speaker 1: who have the least can stay in their apartments, because
Speaker 1: that's what a rent control started at. Elderly people were
Speaker 1: being priced out of the apartments they had to leave, right.
Speaker 1: So it was supposed to help the old people, help
Speaker 1: the poor people. Right. So here this guy gets there.
Speaker 1: And also it really did rent Control did, in my mind,
Speaker 1: was switch the value of that property to this renter
Speaker 1: because it was cheap. He could keep it as a
Speaker 1: second residence close to his office. Well, he has his
Speaker 1: big house somewhere else that he drove to on the
Speaker 1: weekends or when he wanted to see his wife or
Speaker 1: family whatever. And the worst thing about it was his complaint.
Speaker 1: You know, the lady upstairs is making a lot of
Speaker 1: noise now. She moved way after him, which means because
Speaker 1: what happens with rank control as a house is vacated,
Speaker 1: it goes back to market. Right, So she's playing a
Speaker 1: ton more for her apartment than he is because he
Speaker 1: was in there on the beginning. He's getting the value
Speaker 1: of that of the increased housing costs because he doesn't
Speaker 1: have to pay the increased housing costs to keep that apartment.
Speaker 1: He that equity is transferred to him alone. Nobody's got
Speaker 1: the equity ruler out for this lawyer who doesn't need
Speaker 1: that apartment. That recontrol department and that and that happens
Speaker 1: all the time in these programs, corruption of fraud creeps in.
Speaker 1: That's why just let the market handle it. Let's not
Speaker 1: do reank control, Let's not do the crazy things that
Speaker 1: they want to do in New York. And let's let's
Speaker 1: not take people's property away from them. Let the market
Speaker 1: do it. Build some homes, reduce regulation, Let's build some homes.
Speaker 1: And we're probably going to get into a little that
Speaker 1: with my with my guests, because we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about homelessness and the causal factors for it.
Speaker 4: But you know, I.
Speaker 1: Have to send some of my prayers and thoughts were
Speaker 1: to the New Yorkers, given that these are the kind
Speaker 1: of people they're putting in charge in New York City.
Speaker 1: But let's let's bring up our our guest and and
Speaker 1: we'll let him.
Speaker 4: Talk a little bit.
Speaker 1: This doctor Christopher Elton from the Independent Institute. I always
Speaker 1: let my guest talk about my lead segment. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: sure you've got some comments about.
Speaker 4: Rint control and people listen on property. What what do
Speaker 4: you think?
Speaker 3: Well, rint Control has always admit a disaster. This is
Speaker 3: nothing new. This is what drives me crazy about these
Speaker 3: leftist policies is they try You know, the definition of
Speaker 3: insanity is doing the same thing over and over again
Speaker 3: and expecting different results. And that's exactly what they do.
Speaker 3: Rint control is not a new policy. We can I'm
Speaker 3: a historian, right, we can look back at history say
Speaker 3: what was the effect of it in the past. Did
Speaker 3: it work or did it have negative unintended consequences? And
Speaker 3: every single time it did, right, Rents go up under
Speaker 3: rent control because, as you said, when people vacate, rents
Speaker 3: go back to market rates, and those market rates are
Speaker 3: now higher because people aren't building new apartments as much
Speaker 3: because of the rent control laws, right, So we're increasing scarcity.
Speaker 3: And so when they do get to adjust, they adjust
Speaker 3: by larger margins, they adjust upwards. So you do have
Speaker 3: a small group of beneficiaries who benefit that, and even
Speaker 3: that's a minor benefit in many cases, because landlords start
Speaker 3: neglecting the properties because they're still trying to eke out
Speaker 3: a profit when they can't raise rents as they need to,
Speaker 3: they still have maintenance costs. In the seventies, who saw this,
Speaker 3: it was a thing. I can't remember what year it was,
Speaker 3: but there was a famous world series I think in
Speaker 3: the late seventies where there was an aerial shot of
Speaker 3: the stadium Yankees or Mets, whichever one it was, and
Speaker 3: you could see a building burning in the background. It
Speaker 3: was an apartment building. And this was taking place commonly
Speaker 3: there because of New York's rent control laws, where landlords
Speaker 3: were committing arson on their buildings for the insurance money,
Speaker 3: because they were losing their shirts on these rent control policies,
Speaker 3: because they couldn't raise rents and they still had to
Speaker 3: harbor all of these costs for maintaining their buildings, right,
Speaker 3: So it's always been a disaster. It was actually in
Speaker 3: a an economist around the same time, I can't remember
Speaker 3: the name of them, but in the seventies who took
Speaker 3: pictures of cities that had been bombed during the war
Speaker 3: and took pictures of cities that had rent control policies
Speaker 3: and put them side by side and would ask his
Speaker 3: students to pick out which one was which. And you
Speaker 3: couldn't tell, right, because they were just so destroyed by
Speaker 3: these policies, the neglect that rent control forces on landlords.
Speaker 3: So they've always been a disaster.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think in my example, so here there's not
Speaker 1: even a means test, right, So, I mean, if you
Speaker 1: want to help people who have the least and let
Speaker 1: them have controlled rents. And my example, Yeah, when the
Speaker 1: guy was a young student, all right, maybe he needed
Speaker 1: a little rent control. But you know now that he's
Speaker 1: a practicing attorney, he's making money, he's got a house
Speaker 1: somewhere else. Why does he get to stay in a
Speaker 1: rent control department? So there's no's you don't even have
Speaker 1: a means test to it.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: He gets to keep the equity increase by staying there. Right,
Speaker 1: he gets to hold the value of the grease. He's
Speaker 1: in a neighborhood that people want to be in because
Speaker 1: it's the entertainment area. He wants to keep it there.
Speaker 1: He wants nobody to make any noise around him, right,
Speaker 1: he controls all of that. He could just leave, But no,
Speaker 1: I can't give up my rent control apartment because I
Speaker 1: am entitled to it. That's the other thing that bothers
Speaker 1: me about people in rentrol. I am entitled to this.
Speaker 1: This is mine, And that is the same attitude that
Speaker 1: they're fighting against with landlords.
Speaker 4: You're not entitled to more money.
Speaker 1: Right, and yet they're entitled to the equity of that property.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: That just drives me crazy.
Speaker 4: What do you think?
Speaker 3: And you mentioned the corruption too. One other story I
Speaker 3: like to tell about rent control Islie Charlie Wrangell, the
Speaker 3: representative Charlie Wrangle in New York would use a rent
Speaker 3: control department as his office. Right, So this absolutely gets
Speaker 3: captured by corruption, their abused policies. Argentina, after Melee took office,
Speaker 3: they did away with rent control and rent dropped precipitously, right,
Speaker 3: so we see both effects. Rent control absolutely has the
Speaker 3: opposite effect of its intent, of its intentions, And that's
Speaker 3: what Milton Friedman said. One of the biggest mistakes you
Speaker 3: can make is to judge policies by their intentions rather
Speaker 3: than their effects. When we judge control by its effects,
Speaker 3: you can't support it.
Speaker 4: I love Milton Freeman. I knew this would be a
Speaker 4: fun discussion.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, it creates scarcity, is what it does.
Speaker 4: Right there. What's the incentive for building.
Speaker 3: More artificial scarcity?
Speaker 4: Artificial scarcity?
Speaker 1: And then they have to, you know, force builders to
Speaker 1: develop low income housing. You know, if you want to
Speaker 1: build this luxury one, you have to build ten units
Speaker 1: that are loan. So we do all these stupid policies
Speaker 1: that just just exacerbate the problem. But hey, we're here
Speaker 1: to talk about homelessness. And you know, before we get
Speaker 1: into this, I want people to understand. Now I'm a
Speaker 1: fan of the Independent Institute, and I want to give
Speaker 1: you guys, you a chance to talk about the institute
Speaker 1: where you work at. You're a fellow there, right, and
Speaker 1: you're a doctor, so a good doctor, a PhD. And
Speaker 1: explain the Independent Insuit and what you guys do.
Speaker 3: Right. So, we are a think tank devoted to peace
Speaker 3: and prosperity. I often describe as classically liberal, where free
Speaker 3: market anti war is usually the explanation I give to people.
Speaker 3: That's not our official elevator pitch, but I think that
Speaker 3: summarizes kind of where we stand on on most issues.
Speaker 3: So we can you know, we're opposed to foreign interventions
Speaker 3: and foreign conflicts. We strongly favor private property rights, free trade,
Speaker 3: and very nonpartisan. You look at our stuff, you're going
Speaker 3: to find stuff critical of Republicans and Democrat policies.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: We don't. We don't favor one side or the other.
Speaker 3: We stand by our principles and so you will find
Speaker 3: that from us, very very very consistently.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I've I've read several of your policy positions,
Speaker 1: not yours, in particular, but the institute position, and I agree,
Speaker 1: there's I disagreed with their your opinion on autoplating automated
Speaker 1: isolate reader, there's probably another guy that wrote that article
Speaker 1: because I'm a fan of yeah, if it's done, if
Speaker 1: it's done right, and I was a big fan of that,
Speaker 1: and I would love to use that technology to make
Speaker 1: LA safer.
Speaker 4: But a lot of people are getting in a way
Speaker 4: of that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm out of the business now, I'm retired,
Speaker 1: but that I just saw it as a possibility. I
Speaker 1: travel with the London saw it. But I think you
Speaker 1: can put controls in place to make it a little better.
Speaker 1: But then on this one, you know, on homelessness, and
Speaker 1: I think the drug laws, I think I read some
Speaker 1: articles about that as well. I probably line a lot
Speaker 1: closer with you, particularly on this housing first stuff, because
Speaker 1: I've seen how it hasn't worked. So I read your
Speaker 1: article and I said, I got to interview this guy,
Speaker 1: so let's give Let's give a little bit of your
Speaker 1: background and then we'll get into So tell us about
Speaker 1: doctor Christopher Calton. Did I say it right as a
Speaker 1: Calton or a Culton.
Speaker 3: It is Calton. Nobody ever says it that way, but
Speaker 3: that's that's how I pronounce it. So you're I think
Speaker 3: the first person outside of my family to do that
Speaker 3: without without me telling them. But yes, Calton is how
Speaker 3: we pronounce it. Everybody else pronounce it Carlton. I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't usually correct them. We get Carlton sometimes in
Speaker 3: the South, which is where I grew up, Carlton, and
Speaker 3: so I'll correct that. But uh yeah, So I my
Speaker 3: PhD is in history. I actually studied business history or
Speaker 3: what we call history of capitalism now, but I studied
Speaker 3: under an old school, like nineties era business historian, and
Speaker 3: so that's kind of how I like to identify. Homelessness.
Speaker 3: Was a bit of a shift for me, and I
Speaker 3: took this job and I've dived into it for the
Speaker 3: past few years now, and that's my role at Housing
Speaker 3: and Homelessness. I do have a pretty strong economic background,
Speaker 3: even though it wasn't one of my fields. I'd spent
Speaker 3: a lot of time studying that as research fellows, like
Speaker 3: summer research fellows during grad school at economic organization, so
Speaker 3: I have a pretty strong grasp of economics as well.
Speaker 3: So I try to bring these insights in there, historical
Speaker 3: and economic perspective on these issues, and particularly with homelessness,
Speaker 3: the historical perspective is not very well fleshed out. History
Speaker 3: is hard to write about things that you don't have
Speaker 3: good documentation for, like homelessness. We didn't really have homelessness
Speaker 3: policy until eighties. So I'm actually working on a book
Speaker 3: on the history of homelessness, trying to explain how we
Speaker 3: got to modern homelessness of the nineteen eighties to the present,
Speaker 3: which is very different than historic homelessness. Right, homelessness before
Speaker 3: the eighties or late seventies usually didn't mean people living
Speaker 3: outside of a roof. It meant young single men that
Speaker 3: paid for an sro hotel for a dollar a day.
Speaker 3: They were homeless because they were disaffiliated. They didn't have
Speaker 3: community connections or anything like that. But they actually paid
Speaker 3: for room and board and had a place to live,
Speaker 3: and most of them worked. Very few people that were
Speaker 3: classified as homeless lived on the streets. They were usually
Speaker 3: heroin addicts who Nails Anderson, an old homelessness expert in
Speaker 3: the nineteen twenties, said they couldn't be away from their dealers.
Speaker 3: I think about that a lot, because I think that
Speaker 3: explained San Francisco, a great deal these guys that deny housing,
Speaker 3: declined housing, or live on the streets even when they
Speaker 3: have it. But aside from that, before the late seventies
Speaker 3: or the eighties, homelessness really it wasn't a category of population.
Speaker 3: It was just a status of young, single, mostly white
Speaker 3: men that just weren't part of a community essentially. And
Speaker 3: then by the eighties it's mental illness, drug addiction, people
Speaker 3: living on the streets, like actually on the streets in
Speaker 3: large numbers. It became something new. So I'm working on
Speaker 3: that history, and I don't think anybody else has ever
Speaker 3: really tackled that problem because it's hard to write about
Speaker 3: from history.
Speaker 1: Respective there's a book out of the Manhattan Suit I
Speaker 1: I forget the name of it.
Speaker 3: Yes, Stephen Idy's Homelessness in America.
Speaker 1: I believe I'm probably about eighty percent through that. So
Speaker 1: when you talk about Soros, and I understand what you
Speaker 1: talking about, hoboes, bombs, and he has different names for
Speaker 1: it too, So I think that's the only one that
Speaker 1: I've ever seen that has kind of a historical has
Speaker 1: taken a historical approach to it when he talks about
Speaker 1: how he got here and where we're at today, but
Speaker 1: we are talking about you, guys. Let's throw the banner
Speaker 1: for the Independent Instudent. Let's do it a little advertisement
Speaker 1: with them, and let's talk about the book that you
Speaker 1: contributed to, which talks about how housing versus failed, and
Speaker 1: that is beyond homelessness, good intentions, bad outcomes, and transformative solutions,
Speaker 1: which is probably you dominate what we're going to be
Speaker 1: talking about here for the rest of the hour. And
Speaker 1: here it is right here.
Speaker 4: You can see it.
Speaker 1: There's the title name. You can go right to the
Speaker 1: Independent Institute and buy the book there. I'm sure you
Speaker 1: can get it on Amazon as well. And I've read
Speaker 1: the summary and we're going to get into it right now. So,
Speaker 1: so you contributed to this book. You're not the author,
Speaker 1: but you could retribute to heavity of the book.
Speaker 3: Is that correct, doctor, Yeah, contributing author. Yeah, it was
Speaker 3: edited work with several authors.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's let's talk about housing first less. I
Speaker 1: think the audience needs to know what is housing first
Speaker 1: and how did we embrace this as a policy?
Speaker 4: Uh in the US today?
Speaker 3: Housing first is the idea that to help the homeless,
Speaker 3: you give them immediate housing with no strings attached, right,
Speaker 3: and so this contrast to Uh, you were calling it
Speaker 3: something different. I call it usually housing readiness. Sometimes the
Speaker 3: linear model, staircase model, goes by many names, but housing
Speaker 3: readiness is the one we use in the book. Which
Speaker 3: was the idea that we're going to have a series
Speaker 3: of housing solutions that include sobriety and service requirements, service
Speaker 3: participation requirements to help you become independent and self sustaining.
Speaker 3: This was actually developed in the Clinton era, right, so
Speaker 3: this was a Clinton administration kind of idea that was
Speaker 3: made federal policy and I think nineteen ninety four. And
Speaker 3: we don't have good historic data on homelessness numbers going
Speaker 3: back that far. We only have it starting in two
Speaker 3: thousand and seven. Before then, it's spotty data, so it's
Speaker 3: hard to judge the historical success. But the few years
Speaker 3: that we have data of before we switch to housing first,
Speaker 3: housing readiness did show a decline in overall homelessness, a
Speaker 3: gradual decline year after year in those years that we
Speaker 3: have have data for. But in two thousand and nine
Speaker 3: was when we officially made the shift. For twenty thirteen,
Speaker 3: you can give different dates. Two thousand and nine, with
Speaker 3: the Hearth Act signed by President Obama, started our shift
Speaker 3: to housing first. It kind of started with George W.
Speaker 3: Bush who shifted HUDs thinking toward housing first. Then the
Speaker 3: Heart Act in two thousand and nine and twenty thirteen,
Speaker 3: it was kind of the transition was complete because HUD
Speaker 3: stopped giving grants to anything that did not comply with
Speaker 3: the Housing first guidelines. And the big shift between housing
Speaker 3: readiness and housing first was sobriety requirements and service participation. Right.
Speaker 3: So under housing readiness, you would start with like emergency
Speaker 3: shelter very temporarily. Then you would go into transitional housing
Speaker 3: where you would stay for a few months or a
Speaker 3: few years, and you would participate in like works work
Speaker 3: training programs to help you become employable and find a job,
Speaker 3: sobriety programs to help you get off drugs if you
Speaker 3: were on drugs, you know, other things. You know, there
Speaker 3: are different things. Some of them might be parenting programs
Speaker 3: to help you, you know, restore your family and you
Speaker 3: would graduate, right, And so this is why sometimes it's
Speaker 3: called the staircase model. And the goal was to eventually
Speaker 3: get you to where you had your own housing that
Speaker 3: wasn't paid for by the taxpayer, where you were a
Speaker 3: productive member of society where you were living independent and
Speaker 3: where you could sustain yourself. And that worked for between
Speaker 3: a third and maybe a little more than a third
Speaker 3: of the people who went through these programs. But what
Speaker 3: was very important is because we were using these resources efficiently,
Speaker 3: we weren't sustaining people for their entire life. We could
Speaker 3: help a wider pool of people. So when we switched
Speaker 3: to housing first, the idea was, Okay, we're going to
Speaker 3: replace transitional housing with rapid rehousing. And the main difference
Speaker 3: between the two is rapid rehousing doesn't have any of
Speaker 3: the program requirements. And then we're going to people are
Speaker 3: going to get into permanent supporting housing when it becomes available,
Speaker 3: and permanent supported housing is permanently subsidized housing right again
Speaker 3: with no sobriety requirements of service participation. So the goal
Speaker 3: of independence and self sustaining lifestyle that's thrown out. It
Speaker 3: says we're impossible. We're going to make you permanent words
Speaker 3: of the state. And so what happens is, instead of
Speaker 3: using the resources that we devote to homelessness do to
Speaker 3: help as to cast as wide a net as possible,
Speaker 3: we have a small group of beneficiaries that dominate the resources,
Speaker 3: which is ironic because that was the argument in favor
Speaker 3: of housing first, as you had a small group of people.
Speaker 3: This was Malcolm Gladwell's two thousand and six article advocating
Speaker 3: housing first, called million Dollar Murray said, people like Murray Barr,
Speaker 3: who ran up a hospital bill of a million dollars
Speaker 3: over a decade. This is a small group of homelessness
Speaker 3: dominating resources, and so we need housing first to end this. Well.
Speaker 3: Housing versus has actually perpetuated it even more so because
Speaker 3: now there's permanent support of housing only reaches a small
Speaker 3: percentage of the homeless population. There's not enough of it
Speaker 3: to go around, and they're permanently subsidized. So all these
Speaker 3: resources are being tied up in this small group of people,
Speaker 3: and so the people that get it have a higher
Speaker 3: rate of staying stably housed, which is the new goal
Speaker 3: under Housing First. It's no longer independence, now it's housing stability.
Speaker 3: So within the group of beneficiaries, they have a higher
Speaker 3: rate of housing stability, but they're not able to help
Speaker 3: but a small fraction of people who experience homelessness. In
Speaker 3: San Francisco, the budget for homelessness is something around seven
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty million dollars a year, and more than
Speaker 3: half of that is spent subsidizing the living of people
Speaker 3: that are no longer counted as homeless because they're in
Speaker 3: permanent support of housing. You're not counted as homeless if
Speaker 3: you're in rapidory housing or permanent supportive housing. So the
Speaker 3: lieon's share of homelessness spending goes susping these permanent wards
Speaker 3: of the state while other people get neglected. And the
Speaker 3: problem with this is really dystopian, right, because Housing First
Speaker 3: is supposed to focus on the chronically homeless. So one
Speaker 3: of the pillars of Housing First is we want to
Speaker 3: focus on the most desperate cases, which sounds nice in theory,
Speaker 3: but in practice it's really creepy because what they have
Speaker 3: to do to negotiate who gets help and who doesn't
Speaker 3: is hand out people hand people vulnerability assessment tests. So
Speaker 3: you go up to a wholeless person that wants help
Speaker 3: and needs help, and you give them a questionnaire to
Speaker 3: see how desperate their situation is, and if it's not
Speaker 3: desperate enough, they don't get help at all. So instead
Speaker 3: of helping the chronically homeless, you're actually creating more because
Speaker 3: people that could get out of it more easily with
Speaker 3: some help, have to suffer until their condition deteriorates. The
Speaker 3: worst example of this I ever heard of was a
Speaker 3: woman in Portland who has denied housing repeatedly until she
Speaker 3: lost both of her legs to frostbite and became a
Speaker 3: double amputee. And then she got housing because now she
Speaker 3: passed the vulnerability assessment test. Right. So it's extremely dystopian
Speaker 3: and it is failed by every measure. It has not
Speaker 3: helped reduce homelessness, does not help reduce chronic homelessness every
Speaker 3: measure it is found.
Speaker 1: And you know, we got to get into why why? Okay,
Speaker 1: so what was the studies or what was the evidence
Speaker 1: base because we've talked about this the evidence. What is
Speaker 1: the evidence that said housing first would even work in
Speaker 1: the first place? Why do we get this policy? Because
Speaker 1: I think as a public policy implementation guy, I saw
Speaker 1: this as a train wreck. When I was being forced
Speaker 1: to identify using jail if information, the top five and
Speaker 1: ten percent utilizers in La County, right that we were
Speaker 1: looking at all our databases and the Sharf's department and
Speaker 1: the jails were one of the big ones in terms
Speaker 1: of costs. So I ran the data stuff so it's
Speaker 1: I said, this isn't right because the most difficult ones
Speaker 1: are the hardest ones to address. We should be doing
Speaker 1: the easy one first, just because you know it's a
Speaker 1: low hanging fruit. I mean to me, that's a public policy,
Speaker 1: common sensing. But what was the evidence to show that
Speaker 1: this would work? And how do we get this as
Speaker 1: a policy beyond just Obama passing a law.
Speaker 3: So housing first originated in New York in an organization
Speaker 3: called Pathways to Housing by ran by a man named
Speaker 3: Samson Barris, and he published a case study in nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety nine where he recognized that the housing readiness programs,
Speaker 3: and while I will, as a smallest side say that
Speaker 3: the housing readiness as federal policy did have its own
Speaker 3: problems because it did neglect people who couldn't be expected
Speaker 3: to achieve in dependents, namely the mentally people that were
Speaker 3: a product of the institutionalization in the sixties and seventies,
Speaker 3: the schizophrenics, people with extreme bipolar disorder that couldn't sustain
Speaker 3: a job, that are more prone to addiction because people
Speaker 3: with mental illness are much more likely to develop substance
Speaker 3: abuse problems. Right these people there, So there is a
Speaker 3: portion of the homeless population, which dominates what we see
Speaker 3: as the unsheltered homeless, the people in these tent encampments
Speaker 3: who who may not in many cases cannot be expected
Speaker 3: reasonably to become self sustaining, and housing readiness left them
Speaker 3: by the wayside. And Sam Simbaris recognized this, and so
Speaker 3: he started a program where he said, you know what
Speaker 3: I'm gonna do. I'm going to just give them housing
Speaker 3: with no strings attached and see if they can remain
Speaker 3: stably house. But he focused specifically on people with a
Speaker 3: diagnosed mental illness, and that's really key. This case study
Speaker 3: was not looking at the whole homeless population. He was
Speaker 3: looking at the people who were left by the wayside
Speaker 3: under housing readiness, specifically the mentally ill. And what he
Speaker 3: found is they had a higher rate of housing stability
Speaker 3: when you permanently subsidized their housing, right. And so it
Speaker 3: was a success when it was used as a complementary
Speaker 3: program alongside housing readiness, which is how it originally operated, right.
Speaker 3: So when it was supplementary, it did work. I do
Speaker 3: think there's a place for these kind of programs for
Speaker 3: you know, you have to do something with the severely
Speaker 3: menial ill that can't care for themselves, right, You can't
Speaker 3: expect them to get a job and lead a normal life.
Speaker 3: It's a sad truth. But we don't have a cure
Speaker 3: for schizophrenia, which was like eighty percent of the deinstitutionalized population,
Speaker 3: so we do have to deal with that. And so
Speaker 3: it looked like the success rate. And so what he
Speaker 3: showed is by shifting the goalpost from independence to housing stability,
Speaker 3: the success rate went to something went from something like
Speaker 3: thirty seven percent I don't remember the exact numbers to
Speaker 3: something like eighty seven percent, right, a lower bar, but
Speaker 3: higher success rate within that population of the mentally ill.
Speaker 3: And so when people say this is an evidence based approach,
Speaker 3: that's what they're referring to, these case studies that ignore
Speaker 3: the total population and look only at the beneficiaries. If
Speaker 3: you only look at the beneficiaries, housing first looks more successful.
Speaker 3: But when and that works fine if we're talking about
Speaker 3: an independent organization, but when we're talking about national policy,
Speaker 3: we have to look at the aggregated data, right, the
Speaker 3: entire population. And when we look at that under housing first,
Speaker 3: what we find is the trend in homelessness was going
Speaker 3: down until we switch to housing first, and then it
Speaker 3: started spiking upwards, and homelessness spending also skyrocketed, which is
Speaker 3: very important point. So homelessness and homelessness spending have skyrocketed
Speaker 3: since we've adopted housing first, and that's because this is
Speaker 3: not a good program for people who can potentially achieve independence.
Speaker 3: It's a horrible program for them. Right, So we switch
Speaker 3: to this one size fits all policy instead of making
Speaker 3: it supplementary to housing readiness. It's not a one size
Speaker 3: fits all policy that even people that just have an
Speaker 3: addiction problem or are just down on their luck but
Speaker 3: aren't you know, like severe schizophrenics or something like that,
Speaker 3: they're still just expected to deteriorate until they're beyond the
Speaker 3: point of no return, and then they're going to be
Speaker 3: made permanent words at the state or they're going to die.
Speaker 3: And that's what we find, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, I when I was the chief of the
Speaker 1: police for the LI Metro here, so it would be
Speaker 1: similar to like New York system. You know, I ran,
Speaker 1: I ran the policing and security for the Eli Metro,
Speaker 1: and we had homeless on the system, and we recognized
Speaker 1: that we had severely mentally ill and then people who
Speaker 1: were capable and then people who were just using it
Speaker 1: because maybe it was too hot or too cold outside. Right,
Speaker 1: So I understand that dynamic. But here's here's one of
Speaker 1: the things that I guess I wanted to So they
Speaker 1: focused on one group and then they expanded, as its
Speaker 1: usual it happens about they expanded it to a bunch
Speaker 1: of other groups, not recognizing or ignoring the fact that
Speaker 1: it may not have been the right program for them.
Speaker 4: Who is the right group? Would you would say the
Speaker 4: right group.
Speaker 1: For housing first is probably those people who just i'll
Speaker 1: just use the terminology they use, fell into homelessness because
Speaker 1: of economic issue. But generally they're a functioning societal member,
Speaker 1: but they're struggling, Right, that.
Speaker 4: Would be a good use.
Speaker 1: Homeless first would be good use, good policy for that group.
Speaker 3: Right, Well, I think compared to them living on the streets, yes,
Speaker 3: I don't necessarily think that that's the best policy for them.
Speaker 3: I think we need to re envision I'm sorry, revisit
Speaker 3: commitment laws and voluntary commitment laws and make it a
Speaker 3: little easier to have people committed for long term stays
Speaker 3: in psychiatric hospitals. And this is a controversial position because
Speaker 3: a lot of the horror stories around psychiatric hospitals. There
Speaker 3: was some exaggeration to it, but there was also some
Speaker 3: truth to it, like psychiatric hospitals were never like the
Speaker 3: nicest places to live. But you know, when we it's
Speaker 3: all about comparative analysis, right, when we compare different options,
Speaker 3: that still seems to be the least bad, right, because
Speaker 3: what we're dealing with is the majority of these people
Speaker 3: at schizophrenia. Others had severe mood disorders, and then a
Speaker 3: few had what they call organic brain diases, which aren't
Speaker 3: as common because a lot of that was neurosyphilis, which
Speaker 3: now we have penicillin, so we don't see that as
Speaker 3: much as we used to. But the schizophrenia was the
Speaker 3: bread and butter of psychiatric hospitals, and that's the it's
Speaker 3: very common among the unsheltered homeless. And then severe bipolar
Speaker 3: disorder is another one, and you know, like that's what
Speaker 3: we're dealing with. We don't have cures for these things.
Speaker 3: There's no solution to them that's going to give us
Speaker 3: butterflies in our stomach, right, But we got to do
Speaker 3: living on the streets, you know, where they become addicted
Speaker 3: to drugs, where they're not on medication, where they don't
Speaker 3: see doctors where they can't take care of themselves, where
Speaker 3: they're you know, mentally ill people are a little bit
Speaker 3: more likely to commit violent crimes that there is a
Speaker 3: you know, most of them don't, but they do have
Speaker 3: a higher propensity too than the average population. But they
Speaker 3: are significantly likely to be victims of violent crimes. So
Speaker 3: we leaving them on the streets. Leaving them on the
Speaker 3: streets is a horribly inhumane position. And so then the
Speaker 3: question is is housing first? Is institutionalization better? I tend
Speaker 3: to think institutionalization is better because there's story after story
Speaker 3: of these people when they are institutionalized for brief stays.
Speaker 3: I was just writing about a famous one in the
Speaker 3: eighties and nineties, Larry Hogue, the wild Man in ninety
Speaker 3: sixth Street. They said when he would be briefly institutionalized
Speaker 3: in a psychiatric hospital, he would be put on meds
Speaker 3: and he would be calm, he'd be amiable, he'd be
Speaker 3: this a great person. Everybody loved him. And then when
Speaker 3: he was released, because they couldn't hold him, once he
Speaker 3: was no longer a danger to himself, they couldn't hold him,
Speaker 3: he'd go off his med he would start smoking, crack.
Speaker 3: He was a crack addict, and he was violent. He
Speaker 3: was dangerous. He pushed a woman in front of a bus.
Speaker 3: He would threaten people with a baseball back spiked with nails. Right,
Speaker 3: I mean, like what we say lead, So if we
Speaker 3: have housing first for that person, we still aren't enforcing
Speaker 3: that they're on their meds. Right, We're still not stopping
Speaker 3: them from overdosing and drugs, which is like thirty percent
Speaker 3: I think of the overdoses in San Francisco or people
Speaker 3: in permanent supportive housing. Right, So it's it's not I
Speaker 3: think the best site show, you.
Speaker 1: Know what, I think I asked the question wrong. So
Speaker 1: is there a group of people that housing first works for?
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking those are people who are not mentally
Speaker 1: and not really addicted, but are just startling with finances
Speaker 1: that they get help with shelter until they can, you know,
Speaker 1: get a better job or get a job. Right, is
Speaker 1: there a group of people that can be helped by
Speaker 1: housing first?
Speaker 3: In your mind, that's a that's a tough question to
Speaker 3: answer because in the sense you say, well, yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: if you're if you're not addicted to drugs, if you're
Speaker 3: not mentally ill, then maybe. Yes. The problem is it
Speaker 3: when it's a one size fits all policy, you're not
Speaker 3: you don't even have room for sobriety requirements. You take
Speaker 3: the family of four that's down on their luck, that
Speaker 3: might benefit from the subsidized housing, and you're placing them
Speaker 3: in a crack den essentially, or a fentanyl den, now
Speaker 3: you know, and and they're surrounded by drug dealers and prostitutes,
Speaker 3: and there's no room to get out of that under
Speaker 3: Housing first, especially in California, where Housing first law is
Speaker 3: much worse than the federal law because you're not even
Speaker 3: allowed to encourage people to get into recovery or you'll
Speaker 3: lose your funding. Federal law, you can still encourage people
Speaker 3: to intertreatment, but not under state law in California. So so,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe in a different formula there could be,
Speaker 3: but I don't think so. I think housing readiness just
Speaker 3: works if you're not mentally ill. Housing readiness seems to
Speaker 3: just produce better results.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's let's get into all right, So housing,
Speaker 1: You know, the way I talk about it is as
Speaker 1: I've dealing with housing in public policy, is we're driven
Speaker 1: by a very narrow selection of options for housing. With
Speaker 1: housing first, and we really need to expand those options
Speaker 1: if it could be successful, because there it's as you
Speaker 1: say in the book, it's homelessness is a complex issue.
Speaker 1: There's a variety of reasons why people end up homeless.
Speaker 1: They could be a variety of joint issues. They could
Speaker 1: be mentally ill and addicted, right, or they could just
Speaker 1: be mentally ill, or they could just be with addiction problems,
Speaker 1: or you know, one of the studies I read that
Speaker 1: seven percent of the people ending up in homeless in
Speaker 1: La County was that it was because of domestic violence.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of different reasons that cause them
Speaker 1: to be homeless, and it's really you have to target
Speaker 1: those actually those causal factors to be successful, and housing
Speaker 1: first doesn't really do that. As you say, one size
Speaker 1: fits all. Right, So if you had, if if you
Speaker 1: could wave your magic wand and and what would what
Speaker 1: would be some of the strategies you would use to
Speaker 1: deal Let's say, let's say with addiction. You you have
Speaker 1: some of these homeless they're addicted either to alcohol or drugs.
Speaker 1: What would be a strategy you would use to get
Speaker 1: them off the street. What would be that the responsible
Speaker 1: way to do that?
Speaker 3: Well, Well, the first thing is you just need more
Speaker 3: treatment beds. Right. It's there's there are many people in
Speaker 3: California who actually would have sought treatment and have been
Speaker 3: denied it because there aren't enough treatment beds for all
Speaker 3: the people struggling with substance abuse in California. So, and
Speaker 3: that's that's a really important thing to understand, is there
Speaker 3: are more people that want treatment for addiction in California
Speaker 3: then there are available treatment beds. That should never be
Speaker 3: the case, right, So you need more treatment beds if
Speaker 3: it's not. It's just like with housing, right, with you know,
Speaker 3: you want to get people off the streets, you need
Speaker 3: more housing, right, that's one of the components. Well, it's
Speaker 3: the same thing with with treatment beds for people with
Speaker 3: substance abuse is you need to have enough to supply
Speaker 3: the population needs and you don't have that with treatment beds. Now,
Speaker 3: other programs that I think are helpful or diversion programs,
Speaker 3: these drug diversion programs or jail diversion programs. You'll hear
Speaker 3: them call different times where if you're arrested for some
Speaker 3: offense and you face jail time, the judge might say, okay,
Speaker 3: well you have an option of going to prison, or
Speaker 3: you can go into treatment voluntarily. Most of the people
Speaker 3: I know through my work who are recovering drug addicts
Speaker 3: who are formally homeless got clean through diversion programs like
Speaker 3: that is a very successful approach. Now, the previso in
Speaker 3: progressive areas is you can't extend this diviolent crimes, right
Speaker 3: because the left wing narrative is often that crime is
Speaker 3: environmentally determined, it's social structures and all this stuff poverty,
Speaker 3: And there's some truth in that if we're looking at
Speaker 3: property crime, but if we look at violent crime, it
Speaker 3: doesn't hold up. So you can't extend that to violent crime.
Speaker 3: I think there might be some room to do it
Speaker 3: for property crime. I think there's absolutely room to do
Speaker 3: it for drug crimes, like if you're arrested for possession.
Speaker 3: But diversion programs do have good success rate, they're better
Speaker 3: than compulsory treatment. Compulsory treatment has the lowest success rate.
Speaker 3: This is where you just say we're going to arrestue
Speaker 3: and force you to go into treatment. This is what
Speaker 3: in academic literature they distinguish as instead of compulsory coercive treatment,
Speaker 3: where we're giving you the option between prison and it
Speaker 3: doesn't sound like much like a distinction without a difference,
Speaker 3: I think to a lot of people. But psychologically it's
Speaker 3: very powerful because it gives them a sense of agency
Speaker 3: over their decision and in doing so, it gives them
Speaker 3: more buy in and we see higher success rates. So
Speaker 3: diversion programs work very very well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as I told you in the green room before
Speaker 1: we started, one of my last project was a rapid
Speaker 1: diversion program in Skaala Row in LA and it was
Speaker 1: a bunch of us, you know. It was the Public
Speaker 1: Defender's Office was alternate Public Defender's Office and Karthur Foundation
Speaker 1: was involved in the Sheriff's Department was involved, which is
Speaker 1: what I represented, and then we had a public health
Speaker 1: mental health we're involved.
Speaker 4: So we put it all together and.
Speaker 1: They had somebody from the MacArthur Foundation helping to do
Speaker 1: the policy shaping and stuff like that, but it was
Speaker 1: really driven by the Public Defender's Office. And if you
Speaker 1: got a ticket on skid Row from LAPD, because they
Speaker 1: had that area and it was the La City at
Speaker 1: Tourney was also involved, you could go to the local
Speaker 1: court and they would do mental health assessment and that
Speaker 1: you would be offered. Do you want to go to
Speaker 1: jail or do you want to try a program? Is
Speaker 1: exactly what you're talking about. And one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why I felt that was successful is right because the
Speaker 1: person had the option, as you called it agency, right,
Speaker 1: the person had the option. And there's also a little
Speaker 1: bit of a hook. Even though all these guys had
Speaker 1: been in jail before, they're not afraid of jail. Many
Speaker 1: said no because they said, a week in jail because
Speaker 1: of overcrowding, I'd rather do that than get sober, right,
Speaker 1: But some of them said yes, and we got a
Speaker 1: ninety two percent success rate, And so for me, that
Speaker 1: is but you know that is that is that differs
Speaker 1: from housing first, right, because you yeah, you're you're laying
Speaker 1: out an expectation from them, right and uh, and many
Speaker 1: of them were successful. And one of the shortcomings that
Speaker 1: we had, because I just want to reinforce what you said,
Speaker 1: is finding a bed for them, a treatment bed. That
Speaker 1: was our biggest struggle, and finding a treatment debt bed
Speaker 1: that would be flexible because the shortage of treatment. The
Speaker 1: shortage of treatment bed meant that they could pick and
Speaker 1: choose who they wanted in their program, which is another thing, right,
Speaker 1: You know, scarcity, I get to just cherry pick who
Speaker 1: I'm going to have in my program. Right, So we
Speaker 1: had a lot of these things to overcome, and uh,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad to say it's been successful. So it
Speaker 1: reinforces exactly what you're talking about. But let's talk about
Speaker 1: mental health. So you you talked about and we got
Speaker 1: care first model here, which I think is a very
Speaker 1: weak version of where we try to commit people. I
Speaker 1: think the governor just threw something out there, but it
Speaker 1: really does. It seems to me care first, not care first.
Speaker 1: It's the care courts doesn't necessarily give the strongest hook
Speaker 1: to get people to commit people, right. I think it's
Speaker 1: kind of weak, but it's at least a nod that
Speaker 1: that is an approach. So you're talking with the mental
Speaker 1: or let's say, the third of the people on the
Speaker 1: street who are mentally ill, seriously mentally ill. Because there
Speaker 1: are some people who are mentally ill. I got to
Speaker 1: clarify this.
Speaker 4: There are some people mentalville who know what they're doing.
Speaker 4: They have some mental illness, but the.
Speaker 3: Mental illness is often episodic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well yes, and but we're talking about the severely
Speaker 1: mentally ill, who you can't expect for them to have
Speaker 1: form intent and their uh when, which is how we
Speaker 1: determine criminality and uh and they are they just we
Speaker 1: can't expect they're gravely disabled, right, And that's that's what
Speaker 1: we're talking about, right. So what are this is the
Speaker 1: group that you're talking about some level of commitment, right?
Speaker 1: And how would you shape that policy? If we got
Speaker 1: to that policy, how would you want to do that?
Speaker 1: Would that be law enforcement intervention, court intervention, family intervention?
Speaker 1: How do we get there or do you say all
Speaker 1: of the beove in terms of intervention? Just doing the assessment.
Speaker 3: I think the first thing is, so I will mention
Speaker 3: no matter what a state does to make it easier
Speaker 3: to commit a person, they have a federal barrier in
Speaker 3: the form of the Supreme Court ruling in the seventies
Speaker 3: that basically made it nearly impossible to involuntarily commit somebody
Speaker 3: for long periods of time. So even if the state
Speaker 3: passes the perfect law without some turning of that precedent
Speaker 3: in that court case, you're going to face legal challenges.
Speaker 3: There was an attempt to do this in the nineties
Speaker 3: in New York with a woman who went by the
Speaker 3: Joyce Brown I think was her name, but she went
Speaker 3: by the name Billy Boggs, famous famous homeless person in
Speaker 3: the eighties, not the nineties, And they had a team
Speaker 3: that would go out and find them in aal ill
Speaker 3: and try to take them to a psychiatric hospital. She
Speaker 3: was the first one they picked up, and the ACLU
Speaker 3: or somebody like one of these organizations civil liberties organizations
Speaker 3: immediately took her case and got it thrown out the program.
Speaker 3: The program was shut down pretty quickly in New York. Right,
Speaker 3: So it's you face these these legal challenges at the
Speaker 3: federal level because of this court case from the seventies.
Speaker 3: So until them, unless that's overcome, we're going to face
Speaker 3: challenges with recommitting people who need it. Beyond that, I
Speaker 3: think the biggest thing is just making it easier for
Speaker 3: families and guardians to have people committed. Right, That doesn't
Speaker 3: always lead to perfect outcomes. You do hear these horror stories.
Speaker 3: The story that was involved in the case that led
Speaker 3: this was in Florida, Florida State Hospital where my mom
Speaker 3: used to worked. Actually, somebody who seem maybe accurately should
Speaker 3: not have been committed, maybe wasn't mentally ill, but was
Speaker 3: committed by his father. But these were rare cases, right,
Speaker 3: And so most of the time, the family is going
Speaker 3: to be the people best positioned to make that call.
Speaker 3: I think, more than law enforcement, more than social workers,
Speaker 3: even more than doctors. I think the family is going
Speaker 3: to be in the best position to make the call
Speaker 3: because more often than not, family has your best interests
Speaker 3: in mind more than any of these other actors, right,
Speaker 3: more than the police. Not that the police don't care,
Speaker 3: but they're not your family. They're not your parents or
Speaker 3: your spouse, right. So I think that's the biggest thing
Speaker 3: is if we can overcome the federal president, then just
Speaker 3: making it easier for families and guardians, that would immediately
Speaker 3: significantly reduce the people in this situation living on the streets.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I will add to that. When I was running
Speaker 1: the La County jail system program, so I did the program,
Speaker 1: treatment programs, whatever educational programs to reduce recidivism.
Speaker 4: We had a lot of mentally ill.
Speaker 1: A third of our population was mentally ill in La County,
Speaker 1: so we're talking kind It was like thirty five hundred
Speaker 1: and four thousand people, some severely mentally ill, and we
Speaker 1: were just stabilizing when I first got involved, and they
Speaker 1: got rid of those folks who were in charge, and
Speaker 1: they started actual treatment, and I wrote a strategic plan
Speaker 1: for homelessness in La County and how we should we
Speaker 1: should use that as an opportunity that they're starting their treatment,
Speaker 1: so we need to bridge them to treatment on the outside,
Speaker 1: and we need to do this continuous treatment for them.
Speaker 1: As they touched the criminal justice system.
Speaker 4: I didn't get.
Speaker 1: Anywhere because my sheriff was fighting with the Board of
Speaker 1: Supervisors and the funding was not going to come to
Speaker 1: the sheriff's provment to develop any new programs.
Speaker 4: But I really felt we went up with a lot.
Speaker 1: Of mentally ill people in the jails, and we could
Speaker 1: start treatment there and then use that to leverage treatment
Speaker 1: through mental health courts or some other way and get
Speaker 1: voluntary commitments from folks when they're sober or and and
Speaker 1: they're they're there, they've been medicated, uh, and maybe we
Speaker 1: would get some luck there. But I just I just
Speaker 1: don't see that happening in La at this time, or
Speaker 1: at least it wasn't happening a few years ago when
Speaker 1: I was in charge. But we gotta we got to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about I had all these little
Speaker 1: things I was going to show just to spurred the conversation.
Speaker 1: But I'm not having any problem with this conversation. So
Speaker 1: let's let's get it too. We got we got to
Speaker 1: talk about the waste of housing first, how much are
Speaker 1: we wasting with this program that's not working? And and
Speaker 1: we got five minutes left?
Speaker 4: And how much? Uh uh? And let's talk.
Speaker 1: About the homeless industrial complex, which you coined in the article,
Speaker 1: or at least in the uh in the book it's
Speaker 1: in there? Can uh talk about those two issues? How
Speaker 1: much is wasting and how is it fostered? This housing,
Speaker 1: this homeless industrial complex?
Speaker 3: How much waste is going on is always a hard
Speaker 3: question to answer because the answer is usually more than
Speaker 3: we realize. So the audit, the state audit that came
Speaker 3: out what a year ago, I think, said over five years,
Speaker 3: California spent twenty four billion dollars on homelessness and hasn't
Speaker 3: tracked outcomes? Right, how much of that is wast? Not
Speaker 3: tracking outcomes doesn't mean that it all went to waste, right,
Speaker 3: We don't have the outcomes, that's the point, right, But
Speaker 3: I think we can suspect that it's pretty wasted. It's
Speaker 3: not all in the homelessness front exactly right. Two thirds
Speaker 3: of the homeless population is unsheltered in California, for God's sake.
Speaker 3: So you know, my position is all of it's wasted, right,
Speaker 3: like it's not doing it, if it's not working, it's
Speaker 3: all wasted. Right. The public money, right, private money is
Speaker 3: not wasted where these you know, like Union Rescue Mission
Speaker 3: we were talking about before the show, Right, it's not
Speaker 3: wasted in places like that where they're actually helping people,
Speaker 3: you know, land on their feet. But the government money,
Speaker 3: it all seems to be wasted just by the measure
Speaker 3: of the growth in homelessness, right. So waste is enormous,
Speaker 3: and there's tons of corruption. There was a store like there,
Speaker 3: I mean corruption in the homeless industrial complex is organization
Speaker 3: like there was one that was paid more than one
Speaker 3: hundred dollars for each meal at FEDA homeless person and
Speaker 3: all they were feeding them was instant noodles. So I
Speaker 3: mean they're just pocketing this money. These people are paid
Speaker 3: several hundred thousand dollars a year, you know, or more,
Speaker 3: and barely any of that actually reaches the homeless. And
Speaker 3: most of what does is just these permanent subsidies for
Speaker 3: permanent supportive housing where people die in high, high numbers
Speaker 3: from over drug overdose. Right. So to me, it's all wasted,
Speaker 3: every penny of it's wasted of the public money, right,
Speaker 3: because if you're not spending it, well, it's not just
Speaker 3: broad in corruption. If you're spending it on misguided policies,
Speaker 3: it's going to waste. And that's what we're doing with
Speaker 3: housing first.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so you have to have keep promance indicators
Speaker 1: if you're spending you know, and it's not like the
Speaker 1: state doesn't know that. We're talking about California for our
Speaker 1: audiences national is. You know, they spent twenty four billion
Speaker 1: dollars and we're not getting a good outcome. And it's
Speaker 1: and the Democrats know it, and they genuflect. I know
Speaker 1: you guys are non partisan, but I got to throw
Speaker 1: this out there. You know, one of their own lawmakers says, hey,
Speaker 1: we are spending on the right issue, homelessness, but we're
Speaker 1: not getting outcomes. And this was a couple of years
Speaker 1: ago he said this, And I think a lot of
Speaker 1: policymakers know that, but they they're loath to admit it
Speaker 1: because it would hurt them politically, right, And we got
Speaker 1: to get past that.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: I remember when I was working and said, well, you know,
Speaker 1: you're showing us bad information. I go, yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: we got we got some room to improve, but we're
Speaker 1: not going to improve if we're not willing to talk
Speaker 1: about things not working right.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: Okay, we got ninety seconds, you know. I this was
Speaker 1: a great show.
Speaker 4: We just blasted.
Speaker 1: It went by quickly. So let's hey, let's talk about
Speaker 1: what do you got coming up? Doctor Kelton?
Speaker 4: What do you got coming up?
Speaker 1: What can we look out for in terms of writing
Speaker 1: and what's going on? Independence, dude, selling yourself, sell your institute.
Speaker 3: I recently published a report. This isn't coming up that
Speaker 3: this has recently published a report on nimbiism Not in
Speaker 3: Anybody's backyard. You can find it for a free download
Speaker 3: on the website. This is about the nimbi phenomena in California,
Speaker 3: the history of it, the outcomes. Uh, it's it's almost
Speaker 3: kind of comical to read some of these absurd examples
Speaker 3: in California of people blocking housing for for the stupidest reasons.
Speaker 3: So that's a recent thing. My current project, my current
Speaker 3: big project is a book on the history of homelessness.
Speaker 3: But that that won't be out for a while. That's
Speaker 3: that's still very much in the drafting phase.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll be looking forward to that. As I said,
Speaker 1: I'm almost through the Manhattan Institute guy. His his book.
Speaker 1: His book is Wow. It's really dense, you know, that's
Speaker 1: what I got into it. It's wrote a review print no,
Speaker 1: did you okay?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I'll probably try to get him on down
Speaker 1: the road here once to get through that book. And
Speaker 1: I'll be looking for your book as well. And uh,
Speaker 1: and I'll probably read that as well. It's this is
Speaker 1: one of the I think one of the most important
Speaker 1: issues of the day, and I think we're handling poorly
Speaker 1: as a public policy issue. And I think one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why we're handling poorly is we've narrowed our
Speaker 1: options to just what some people have accepted as politically
Speaker 1: correct for them. And we got to stop doing that
Speaker 1: on public policy. You know, there's no correct way, particularly
Speaker 1: with homelessness, you know, because a variety of different ways
Speaker 1: lead you to homelessness. But doctor, hey, thank you for
Speaker 1: coming on my show Briefing with the Chief. I'd love
Speaker 1: to have you back. I hope this was a good
Speaker 1: experience for you.
Speaker 3: It was, Yes, enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: Thank you all right, folks, This is Briefing with the Chief,
Speaker 1: doctor Christopher Calton. You can find him at the Independent Institute.
Speaker 1: Go and check out his work there and all the
Speaker 1: great work of the Independent Institute. And you can catch
Speaker 1: me next week on Briefing with the Chief like I said,
Speaker 1: KJADB dot com every Wednesday, five pm Eastern Standard time.
Speaker 1: And thank you folks. Amanda, you can take it away.
Speaker 1: Doc stick around for a quick debrief sure,