Joyce Krawiec serves in the North Carolina Senate. She represents Davie County and Forsyth County, NC. Christian, wife, mother, small business owner, and conservative.
Jesus told us that the poor would always be among us. He also told us to open our hands to them.
Many point to this scripture as a command from Jesus to have more and more public funds going to the poor. They fail to recognize that Jesus wasn’t talking to the government. He was talking to you and me, as individuals.
As government has taken over many duties assigned to Christians, we have begun to expect that many things are the responsibility of the government. Scripture teaches us otherwise.
Government does very few things well and helping the poor is one of the biggest failures. Nothing is as glaring a failure as the plight of the homeless in America. It has been growing by leaps and bounds over the past few years and the failure of the government to reduce homelessness is breathtaking.
Many people are poor because they are unwilling or unable to produce anything of value for their fellow man. It could be products or services, but many are not capable of providing that asset.
The government has dumped billions of dollars into the homeless problem and it keeps getting worse. The more money poured into it, the bigger the problem gets.
California is the perfect example of complete failure. California cities are home to more than half of the entire nations unsheltered homeless. San Francisco and Los Angeles lead the nation and Seattle is close behind.
“Housing First” is a national model that these cities are following. According to Wikipedia the definition is “a policy that offers unconditional, permanent housing as quickly as possible to homeless people.” Without prequalification like drug and treatment, sobriety and mental health treatment, what could go wrong?
This is certainly a lofty goal and makes one feel good about the intentions. We also know that the road of good intentions has paved the way to some destructive highways. How could something that sounds so good be such a monumental failure?
Home encampments, tent cities, are ruining some beautiful cities and, of course, crime increases dramatically. These metropolitan cities are allowing the homeless population to set up camp, in many cases, wherever they want. Businesses are leaving because of encampments on the sidewalks in front of store fronts.
“Housing First” policies have not helped. I know you’ve heard the saying, “if you subsidize something, you get more of it.” That’s true.
A Wall Street Journal article points out that many of these homes are occupied by people who would have found housing anyway. Having a free home is very enticing, and some are occupied by people who could afford to find their own housing. It is impossible to build enough free homes in California where “affordable housing” in the state costs more than $700,000 per unit.
A study by University of Pennsylvania criminologists found that when Los Angeles banned encampments in 2006, violent crime was reduced and death rates among the homeless fell. Now that the city has allowed these encampments to continue the number of deaths on the streets has quadrupled. About 15% of the crime involves the homeless population.
A priority must be to look at why the homeless population is growing. It’s obvious that much of it is caused by substance abuse and mental health issues. Providing “housing first” is not going to solve that issue. Some might say it is enabling the destructive behavior to continue.
While cities advocate for more affordable housing, they continue to make houses more unaffordable. Every regulation placed on home construction drives up the cost. There are thousands of these regulations that have accumulated through the years.
You may have noticed that anytime a large municipality wants to add a new facility to our ever-growing government, it always chooses the area where the “affordable housing” is located. It keeps costs down for the new buildings but it displaces those who can only afford the housing in those neighborhoods. Those structures can’t be replaced at an “affordable price” for these residents.
The wheel keeps turning and we keep going around and around. Nothing actually gets done.
As Christians, we have a responsibility to help the poor. We now know that throwing money at the problem is making it worse. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
We must find a better way.
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Joyce Krawiec serves in the North Carolina Senate. She represents Davie County and Forsyth County, NC. Christian, wife, mother, small business owner, and conservative.