Portland decided that they could guaranty every homeless person a place to live. They did this the way liberals always do, by creating a big government program.
At first, it seemed like it was working and then homeless people began coming to Portland to let them supply them with a free place to live. It quickly broke the budget and eventually, they were forced to declare defeat and they ended the program. Now, they say the reason it failed was that it wasn’t statewide or countrywide.
That reminds of Junior Kearnes. He wasn’t the dumbest man in the county but that was only because he had a younger brother. He decided to start buying hay in West Virginia and then bringing it back to Ohio and selling it. The problem was, he was paying 55 cents a bale in West Virginia but could only sell it in Ohio for 50 cents. I pointed out that he couldn’t make any money that way. He said, “I know, but next week, I’m getting a bigger truck.”
But by the end of 2017, the program was in a crisis. There weren’t enough shelter providers to handle the influx of homeless from outside the city and the county.
Rather than solving homelessness, the largest family shelter provider in King’s County turned away 400 families in the first half of 2018, which is more than the number of families that were provided shelter.
The budget for the program exploded when it began to provide motel rooms for homeless families that they could not place in shelters.
In July, a Facebook post from the Portland police union proclaimed that homelessness had turned the city into “a cesspool.”
Instead of a government giveaway program, wouldn’t it make more sense to get them jobs, so they can take care of themselves? Just saying.