Appleseed Humanity

In a move clearly tailored to do more for their image than for the intended recipients, several elected officials LAPD representatives, social services officials and other community leaders all pledged their undying support on Wednesday for a plan designed to give homeless veterans and those who have lived on the streets of LA for some time a new source of housing.

But they plan to take five years to do it.

Released on November 9, this vastly inadequate and long-overdue plan – which is still inexplicably described by its supporters as ‘ambitious’ – aims to allocate around $230-million of the city council’s budget to fund long-term homes for some of the 48,000+ people these self-satisfied leaders so blithely allowed to suffer the unwarranted misery of street life until the cameras turned up.

The money will come from savings achieved by freeing those people from the indignities of emergency shelters, hospitals and frequent spells in jail for vagrancy that is the fault of these leaders, not theirs.

“It’s over 40% cheaper to house them this way and support them than to leave them on the streets,” Jerry Neuman, who co-chaired the ‘LA Business Leaders Task Force on Homelessness,’ a joint program by the local Chamber of Commerce and the United Way.

And why, may we ask, did it take them so long to see that? Was it really necessary to get cameras there first?

LA’s Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the Mayor of  Long Beach, Bob Foster have are also part of the plan, together with LA Police Chief Charlie Beck, LA’s County Sheriff Lee Baca, Los Angeles and Santa Monica city councils, federal officials, religious leaders and nonprofits.

The project was inspired by a growing belief among those who work with the homeless that putting a permanent roof over their client’s heads must be the priority. This also matches President Obama’s declared aim to end homelessness among veterans and those who have been displaced for more than a year.

Naturally, a plan to help those Americans whose lives have been blighted by homelessness, usually by no fault of theirs, has hit fierce resistance – from their fellow Americans;

LA County Supervisor Michael Antonovich has complained about the program’s intent to use taxpayer funds to provide housing for people who abuse drugs and refuse treatment. He calls it “Warehousing without healing.”

Previous programs were also short-lived, thanks to a vocal minority who were perfectly willing for homeless people to get a new start – as long as it was not in their zip code.

”We think every city in the county has to recognize they have homeless people in their community, and they have to help  take care of them,” Neuman told the LA Times.

The task force now plans to engage other county and city officials in order to expand the program and its benefits.

And with such selfish, bigoted, knee-jerk resistance ranged against it we can only hope this plan’s leaders are thick-skinned.

This company was formed in November last year after a group in the financial industry told me they would fund our project to re-house the homeless with $25-million in seed capital.

In February those backers walked away, with no explanation whatever. And trying to replace them has been a quest of such endless frustration it hardly bares thinking about.

Our plan is to secure a small amount of money [less than $5m] from an investor, then use that as the seed capital to get the $500m+ funding the project will cost. We then pay the investor a very healthy profit and use the rest of the funding to buy homes, which will then be donated to non-profit groups who work with the homeless.

The goal is to give their clients – especially those with children – a chance to reboot their lives and rejoin a society from which they were suddenly and rudely excluded through no fault of their own.

Many people have told me we’re crazy to plan to just ‘give away’ $100,000+ homes with no wish for a profit, but homeless people have no savings and no immediate chance of a job in an economy this damaged, so what else can you do?

They need and deserve a new chance in life, giving them that chance requires a radical solution and this is the most obvious one we can think of.

But to make it happen takes money, so first we need an investor.

Our ideal candidate is someone who cares enough to want to help homeless families get a new start, and wouldn’t mind making money and looking like a hero in front of countless examples of the national media in the process.

And what do we find? Swarms of slack-jawed, self-serving intellectual anorexics who swear they can fund us…for a very fat fee. Paid up-front.

The winter is coming and it’s making me sick that I still can’t find one individual who thinks making a great deal of money for helping 3+ million children escape six freezing months on the streets, while being the focus of a vast swathe of media attention is a bearable idea.

If you know or can locate this rare being I’d appreciate the introduction. Get back to me today and let’s take it from there…

Photo by Elver Barnes.