The ‘Mayor of Skid Row’ Says Los Angeles Has a Homeless Problem Because Politicians Get Money from Keeping It, Not Solving It.

August 16, 2019 in News by RBN Staff

 

Source: Need To Know

Stefan Molyneux

California has the highest poverty rate in the US in spite of the fact that it has a high minimum wage and abundant social programs. Stefan Molyneux visits Jeff Page, an activist known as the ‘Mayor of Skid Row’ in Los Angeles, who tells him the problem began in 1967 when the city created the Skid Row containment zone as an area to corral the homeless and mentally ill who overflow government institutions. Downtown LA is being revitalized, Skid Row has become valuable real estate, developers want the homeless out of there, and they want taxpayers to cover the cost. So, in 2016, voters passed Measure HHH, which allotted $1.2 billion to house 10,000 homeless people. Corruption followed the money. Developers said it would cost $450,000 per unit to house the street people. How much it would cost to keep them there was not a topic of concern. There was ample margin for sweetheart deals with cronies at every level of the project. Jeff calls the politicians, developers, and non-profit agencies that flourish in this racket “poverty pimps,” because they consider homeless people merely as a commodity – something you use to make money. He says the LA Police Department is also in on the scam. They have a $2-billion budget that would go away if the crime rate dropped. Crime must remain high to justify large budgets. The system is flawed by design. [This is the reason private charity always outperforms public charity. Governments can never overcome poverty because they are the greatest cause of it.] -GEG