Illustration of the ultrastructure of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. It is an enveloped RNA (ribonucleic acid, blue) virus. Within the membrane are spike proteins (red), membrane proteins (orange) and envelope proteins (yellow). Spike proteins allow the virus to bind to the host cell. Membrane proteins and envelope proteins play a role in virus assembly. SARS-CoV-2 causes the respiratory infection Covid-19, which can lead to fatal pneumonia.
Further evidence supports controversial claim that SARS-CoV-2 genes can integrate with human DNA
A team of prominent scientists has doubled down on its controversial hypothesis that genetic bits of the pandemic coronavirus can integrate into our chromosomes and stick around long after the infection is over. If they are right—skeptics have argued that their results are likely lab artifacts—the insertions could explain the rare finding that people can recover from COVID-19 but then test positive for SARS-CoV-2 again months later.
Stem cell biologist Rudolf Jaenisch and gene regulation specialist Richard Young of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who led the work, triggered a Twitter storm in December 2020, when their team first presented the idea in a preprint on bioRxiv. The researchers emphasized that viral integration did not mean people who recovered from COVID-19 remain infectious. But critics charged them with stoking unfounded fears that COVID-19 vaccines based on messenger RNA (mRNA) might somehow alter human DNA. (Janesich and Young stress that their results, both original and new, in no way imply that those vaccines integrate their sequences into our DNA.)
Researchers also presented a brace of scientific criticisms, some of which the team addresses in a paper released online today by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). “We now have unambiguous evidence that coronavirus sequences can integrate into the genome,” Jaenisch says.
SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has genes composed of RNA, and Jaenisch, Young, and co-authors contend that on rare occasions an enzyme in human cells may copy the viral sequences into DNA and slip them into our chromosomes. The enzyme, reverse transcriptase, is encoded by LINE-1 elements, sequences that litter 17% of the human genome and represent artifacts of ancient infections by retroviruses. In their original preprint, the researchers presented test tube evidence that when human cells spiked with extra LINE-1 elements were infected with the coronavirus, DNA versions of SARS-CoV-2’s sequences nestled into the cells’ chromosomes.
Many researchers who specialize in LINE-1 elements and other “retrotransposons” thought the data were too thin to support the claim. “If I would have had this data, I would have not submitted to any publication at that point,” says Cornell University’s Cedric Feschotte, who studies endogenous retrovirus chunks in the human genome. He and others also said they expected higher quality work coming from scientists of the caliber of Jaenisch and Young. In two subsequent studies, both posted on bioRxiv, critics presented evidence that the supposed chimeras of human and viral DNA traces are routinely created by the very technique the group used to scan for them in chromosomes. As one report concluded, the human-virus sequences “are more likely to be a methodological product, [sic] than the result of genuine reverse transcription, integration and expression.”
In their new paper, Jaenisch, Young, and colleagues acknowledge that the technique they used accidentally creates human-viral chimeras. “I think it’s a valid point,” Jaenisch says. He adds that when they first submitted the paper to a journal, they knew it needed stronger data, which they hoped to add during the review process. But the journal, like many, requires authors to immediately post all COVID-19 results to a preprint server. “I probably should have said screw you, I won’t put it on bioRxiv. It was a misjudgment,” Jaenisch says.
In the new PNAS paper, the team provides evidence that artifacts alone can’t explain the detected levels of virus-human chimeric DNA. The scientists also show that portions of LINE-1 elements flank the integrated viral genetic sequence, further supporting their hypothesis. And they have collaborated with one of the original skeptics, Stephen Hughes of the National Cancer Institute, who suggested an experiment to clarify whether the integration was real or noise, based on the orientation of the integrated viral sequences relative to the human ones. The results support the original hypothesis, says Hughes, a co-author of the new paper. “That analysis has turned out to be important,” he says.
“The integration data in cell culture is much more convincing than what was presented in the preprint, but it’s still not totally clean,” says Feschotte, who now calls Jaenisch’s and Young’s hypothesis “plausible.” (SARS-CoV-2, he notes, can also persist in a person for months without integrating its genes.)
The real question is whether the cell culture data have any relevance to human health or diagnostics. “In the absence of evidence of integration in patients, the most I can take away from these data is that it is possible to detect SARS-CoV-2 RNA retroposition events in infected cell lines where L1 is overexpressed,” Feschotte says. “The clinical or biological significance of these observations, if any, is a matter of pure speculation at this point.”
Jaenisch’s and Young’s team do report hints of SARS-CoV-2 integration in tissue from living and autopsied COVID-19 patients. Specifically, the researchers found high levels of a type of RNA that is only produced by integrated viral DNA as the cell reads its sequence to make proteins. But, Young acknowledges, “We do not have direct evidence for that yet.”
Harmit Malik, a specialist in ancient viruses in the human genome at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, says it’s a “legitimate question” to ask why people who should have cleared the virus sometimes have positive polymerase chain Reaction tests for its sequences. But he also remains unconvinced that the explanation is integrated virus. “Under normal circumstances, there is so little reverse transcription machinery available” in human cells, Malik says.
The controversy has grown decidedly more civil since December. Both Young and Jaenisch say they received more intense criticism for their preprint than any studies in their careers, in part because some researchers worried it played into the hands of vaccine skeptics spreading false claims about the newly authorized mRNA vaccines. “If there ever was a preprint that should be deleted, it is this one! It was irresponsible to even put it up as a preprint, considering the complete lack of relevant evidence. This is now being used by some to spread doubts about the new vaccines,” Marie-Louise Hammarskjöld, a microbiologist at the University of Virginia, posted in a comment on bioRxiv at the time.
And what of the original journal submission? “They rejected it,” Jaenisch says.
This FaceBook community chat group (Shelton Talks!) is so notorious for its egregiously obnoxious censorship habits, it has all but reduced unwitting forum participants to the status of children–prompting this investigation of the four’s (Cassandra Rhoades, Jessica Christine? Renecker, Kevin Richard, Sarah Meyer) bonafides in the belief from the acorn comes the tree and not far at that. It is anticipated the review will stir controversy, the kind (not even close) that isn’t permitted on ‘Shelton Talks!’, but with the distinction of being applied according to the arc of cronyism and the weak excuse FaceBook makes them do it as well as write bad checks and be mean to their dog.
JESSICA Christine(?) RENECKER — dob:8-1-93
120 Foxglove Ave, SE, Shelton, WA 98584. (360)426-4471
Shelton School Dist. para-educator, pool@sheltonschools.org
Cassandra Cleo Rhoades DOB:2-15-88 60 Cardigan Court, E, Shelton, WA 98584 Certified Peer Counselor at Catholic Community Services of Western Washington Engaged to Keith Garlinghouse Lives in Olympia, studies @ TESCCassandra Cleo RhoadesCassandra Cleo RhoadesCassandra Cleo RhoadesCassandra Cleo RhoadesSarah Marie Meyer/(Cummings) dob: 8-9-86, 303 Pine St, W, McCleary, WA 98557, PO Box 444Sarah Marie Meyer/(Cummings) dob: 8-9-86, 303 Pine St, W, McCleary, WA 98557, PO Box 444Sarah Marie Meyer/(Cummings) dob: 8-9-86, 303 Pine St, W, McCleary, WA 98557, PO Box 444
Photos can be deceiving and these are undated. Presumably these lions of FB censorship have reached puberty. I’ve never met the girls. But the courts have.
04-8-00191-4 | STATE OF WASHINGTON VS RHOADES, CASSANDRA Cleo
Comment (Sentenced By: TONI A. SHELDON; Community Supervision: Y; Restitution: TBD; Court Costs: 100 CVF; Sentence Description: 02-22-2005 DISPOSITION: 12 MOS SUPERVISION; 30 HR COM SERVICE; 6 DAYS DETENTION; WITH CREDIT; ART; UA’S; NO CONTACT WITH SARA HARTMAN; KAYLA GUILLO; DANIELLE; DUGGER OR WALMART, $100 CVF; RESTITUTION TBD; PARENT PAY TBD; 06-28-2005 MODIFIED: 12 ADDITIONAL HRS COMMUNITY SERVICE; 08-02-2005 MODIFIED: NO SANCATIONS; )
Comment
Comment (SCOMIS JUDGMENT BASIC INFORMATION: Judgment Type: CRI; Date Signed: ; Signed By: ; Date Filed: 2005-02-22; Effective Date: 2005-02-22; Judgments This Case: 1; Judgment Status: SAT; Date: 2008-04-14; )
Comment
Comment (SCOMIS JUDGMENT EVENTS: 2005-02-22 ORD ORDER OF DISPOSITION ; 2006-04-13 JD JUDGMENT OFFENDER HAS REACHED THE AGE OF 18 100.00; 2008-04-14 STFJG SATISFACTION OF JUDGMENT ; )
Events and Hearings
10/08/2004 Motion for Arrest Detention Probable Cause
This video depicts why ANTIFA acolytes see cops as violent unchecked homicidal Fascists. These are not idiosyncratic rogue cops, but examples of a culture that continues to murder profiled victims because WE indicate to these thugs the lives they take/destroy don’t matter. It isn’t just a few bad cops. Racism is systemic because it is endemic. WE, even more than the cops, are the racists, We are the bigots, WE are the oppressors!
10’s of thousands between Catalina & LA Marine researchers in California say they’ve unearthed an underwater dump of as many as 25,000 barrels — an estimated 350 and 700 tons — of toxic DDT.
Marine researchers in the Pacific say they’ve unearthed an underwater dump of as many as 25,000 barrels — an estimated 350 and 700 tons — of toxic DDT in what they believe to be a long-forgotten waste site dating back to World War II.
Scientists at University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography used underwater “Roombas” — drones with sonar technology — to trawl more than 36,000 acres of seabed between Catalina Island and the waters off the coast of Los Angeles, a region previously known to contain high levels of DDT in the ecosystem.
Images snapped during their search show 27,345 “barrel-like” objects containing the insecticide, the Associated Press now reports, just 3,000 feet below the water’s surface.
Shipping logs dating back through the century show that Southern California’s industry had used the area of seafloor as a dumping site until 1972, when the so-called Ocean Dumping Act went into effect.
Scripps Institution of Oceanography scientists called the DDT motherload a “staggering” discovery.
Eric Terrill, director of the Marine Physical Laboratory at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, called the discovery “staggering.”
“It really was a surprise to everybody who’s worked with the data and who sailed at sea,” said Terrill, the excursion’s chief scientist, during a press conference on Monday.
More testing is needed to confirm the presence of DDT and whether surrounding water, sediment and sea life has been contaminated.
A 2015 study by Scripps oceanographer and professor of geosciences Lihini Aluwihare first identified high amounts of DDT and other synthetic chemicals stored in the fat of deceased bottlenose dolphins.
Scientists used underwater drones with sonar technology to locate the dumping site.
“These results also raise questions about the continued exposure and potential impacts on marine mammal health, especially in light of how DDT has been shown to have multi-generational impacts in humans,” said Aluwhihare, who was not involved in the recent barrel search.
First developed in the 1940s, DDT was originally used to ward off malaria, typhus and other insect-borne diseases in humans, as well as providing insect control for US crops. Bolstered by Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” a book that prompted widespread concern over the rampant use of manmade pesticides, the newly established Environmental Protection Agency ordered a stop to DDT in 1972 following public outcry. Since then, studies have shown its potential for damage to the environment and human health, including a risk of developing cancerous tumors at high levels of exposure.
If systemic racism is rife, systemic bigotry is ubiquitous. Indeed, it may be incorrigibly inherent in all our institutions and democracy itself. It (profiling) preceded the advent of AI which has now amplified it to an especially pernicious form in our justice, employment, rental, financial, sentencing, romantic, and social credit scores.
I hope you’ve been well. I write this letter to you from an apartment that’s a five-minute drive from where my wife and 2-month-old daughter are living. Yet I’m too scared to visit them, let alone hold my baby anytime soon. I tested negative for COVID-19 three days ago and have no symptoms. But I was recently on a plane. And, most crucially, I’m in India.
The world’s largest democracy is battling a devastating COVID-19 wave that has left its hospitals short of oxygen, its government out of ideas and its people increasingly without any hope in sight. More than 350,000 people were infected on Sunday and more than 2,800 people died. But those numbers, like all statistics, tell only a part of the story. A severe shortage of testing kits means many Indians who are carrying the virus can’t get tested. Meanwhile, hospitals are only admitting patients who have tested positive, creating conditions where many who are dying from COVID-19 simply aren’t being counted.
Who will the pandemic take next? That’s the question I’ve been pondering as I wait for the next WhatsApp message, text or Facebook alert with a cry for oxygen or worse, news of another death. Just last week, I lost a cousin and two friends, all in their 30s. I have uncles, aunts and other friends who are battling for life. These are all people who come from backgrounds of reasonable privilege. But even money and connections can’t buy them basic health care at the moment. No one knows if their oxygen supply will be intact by the time you read this. These are the experiences of millions of Indians like me. I can’t take any risks with my wife or daughter, because right now, if you need critical care in India, you might as well start saying your final goodbyes.
So how did India, the world’s largest manufacturer of vaccines and a pharma industry giant, turn into this picture of desperation, so woefully underprepared for this wave? Over the past year, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi failed to build oxygen plants and expand hospital facilities. Earlier this year, when cases were low, Modi’s party even declared victory over COVID-19, crediting the prime minister for his leadership. Hubris has a way of biting back — though it invariably hurts not those guilty of it, but those most vulnerable.
IndiaDoctors
Still, this isn’t only about India. Michigan’s hospitals are quickly filling up with younger patients amid a surge in infections there, even as America aggressively vaccinates its population. If this pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that the virus knows no borders. The double mutant variant of COVID-19 that’s wreaking havoc in India will, sooner or later, spread to other parts of the world. It’s already been detected in Greece.
Yet I’m also spotting a silver lining. Complete strangers are helping each other source oxygen and hospital beds on social media platforms, showcasing the best of humanity in a time of shortage that could so easily have brought out our worst instincts. Ignoring the tensions between their countries, ordinary Pakistanis are offering aid and solace to Indians in strife. In the U.S., the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin is sending oxygen concentrator machines to India. You can contribute to their efforts here.
In 2016 influential political leaders, activists, and media outlets in Los Angeles said they had a simple solution to homelessness: build more housing. Echoing an argument heard across the country, they claimed that rising rents have thrown people onto the streets and that by directly providing free “permanent supportive housing,” cities can reduce the number of people on the streets and save costs on emergency services.
In response, 77% of Los Angeles voters approved a $1.2 billion bond for the construction of 10,000 units for the city’s homeless. That commitment made Los Angeles the most significant testing ground for the “Housing First” approach that has become the dominant policy idea on homelessness for West Coast cities. Even before the passage of the bond, the concept’s creator, Sam Tsemberis, was lavished with praise by the national media. In 2015, the Washington Post wrote that Tsemberis had “all but solved chronic homelessness” and that his research “commands the support of most scholars.”
Sam Tsemberis: He has been hailed by the Washington Post as having “all but solved homelessness.” But Los Angeles, above, challenges his “Housing First” model.
In the years since, “Housing First” has taken even greater hold in California and the across the West. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti recently declared that “we need to have an entitlement to housing.” California Gov. Gavin Newsom went a step further, arguing that “doctors should be able to write prescriptions for housing the same way they do for insulin or antibiotics.”
Five years in, the project has been plagued by construction delays, massive cost overruns, and accusations of corruption. The Los Angeles city controller issued a scathing report, “The High Cost of Homeless Housing,” which shows that some studio and one-bedroom apartments were costing taxpayers more than $700,000 each, with 40% of total costs devoted to consultants, lawyers, fees, and permitting. The project is a boon for real estate developers and a constellation of nonprofits and service providers, but a boondoggle for taxpayers. The physical apartment units are bare-bones — small square footage, cheap flooring, vinyl surfaces — but have construction costs similar to luxury condos in the fashionable parts of Los Angeles. Meanwhile, unsheltered homelessness has increased 41%, vastly outpacing the construction of new supportive housing units. Los Angeles magazine, which initially supported the measure, now wonders whether it has become “a historic public housing debacle.”
Before completing a single housing unit, the city reduced its projected construction from 10,000 units to 5,873 units over 10 years, with the potential for further reductions in the future. But the long-term problem runs much deeper: Even if one accepts that permanent supportive housing is the solution, there are currently more than 66,000 homeless people in Los Angeles County. Under the best-case scenario, Proposition HHH will solve less than 10% of the problem over the course of a decade.
Arrested development: Five years in, most of LA’s homeless projects are barely off the ground. Los Angeles Office of the Controller
Despite Housing First’s uncertainties, other West Coast cities desperate to solve homelessness, including Seattle and San Francisco, have been captured by its seductive messaging and promise of respite. As Los Angeles grapples with the unforeseen consequences of its big bet on “Housing First,” the federal, state, and local governments, especially in major metropolitan areas, are preparing to commit billions of dollars to the program, whose track record remains woefully under-examined.
As Los Angeles’s “Housing First” program has failed to meet expectations, Mayor Eric Garcetti is now downplaying it as just one of several needed approaches to homelessness. lamayor.org
Ever since clinical psychologist Tsemberis pioneered the model in New York City in the 1990s, political leaders, activists, and academics have insisted that Housing First is an “evidence-based” intervention that reduces homelessness, saves taxpayer money, and improves lives. Supporters frequently argue that the program reduced costs in a study of chronic alcoholics in Seattle, consistently demonstrates high retention rates in multiple academic surveys, and eliminated chronic homelessness in Utah. “We’re going to stem this crisis by building supportive housing in every neighborhood throughout Los Angeles,” City Council member Herb Wesson recently claimed.
These studies, however, are not as persuasive as activists suggest. Although the study of chronic alcoholics in Seattle does show a net reduction in monthly social service costs of $2,449 per person, this figure does not include $11 million in capital and construction costs for the housing units themselves; in other words, Housing First saves money if the cost of housing is not included. Even on its own favorable terms, the study’s purported savings aren’t as dramatic as they appear: While the Housing First participants showed a 63% reduction in service costs over six months, a wait-listed control group that was not provided housing showed a 42% reduction in service costs over the same time period, raising questions about the specific effectiveness of the intervention.
Claims that studies show one-year retention rates of roughly 80% for Housing First participants are open to question. In a meta-study of three best-in-class Housing First sites, researchers found that 43% remained in housing for the first 12 months, 41% were “intermittent stayers” who left and returned, and 16% abandoned the program or died within the first year. These findings challenge the argument that Housing First is a long-term solution to homelessness.
Finally, advocates and the media have long touted Utah as the gold standard of Housing First. “The Daily Show” called the state’s program “mind-blowing,” the Los Angeles Times reported in 2015 that Utah “is winning the war on chronic homelessness,” and dozens of media outlets announced that the state “reduced chronic homelessness by 91%.” These miraculous results, however, were not the result of Housing First policies, but apparently clerical manipulation by state officials. According to the Deseret News and economist Kevin Corinth, “As much as 85% of Utah’s touted reductions in chronic homelessness … may have been due to changes in how the homeless were counted.” It’s not that all of the chronically homeless were housed; they were simply transposed onto a new spreadsheet. Moreover, between 2016 and 2018, the number of unsheltered homeless in Utah nearly doubled – hardly the victory that Housing First activists had declared.
Media, including Comedy Central’s “Daily Show,” hailed “Housing First” in Utah. But stats were fudged.
The recent debate surrounding Housing First has predominantly been focused on the physical and budgetary metrics of housing retention and cost reductions. But these surface-level concerns obscure a deeper question: What happens to the human beings in these programs? The results, according to the vast majority of studies, point to a grim conclusion: Housing First does not meaningfully improve human lives.
Although housing programs are often an effective solution for families experiencing a temporary loss of shelter, Housing First programs do not have a strong track record improving the lives of the unsheltered homeless — the people in tents, cars, and on the streets — who often suffer from more severe challenges. According to research by the California Policy Lab, 75% of the unsheltered homeless have substance abuse condition, 78% have mental health conditions, and 84% have physical health conditions. In theory, Housing First would address these problems. In every program, residents are offered a wide range of services. At the Pathways to Housing program in New York City, a flagship program founded by Sam Tsemberis himself, residents are served by an “interdisciplinary team of professionals that includes social workers, nurses, psychiatrists, and vocational and substance abuse counselors who are available to assist consumers 7 days a week 24 hours a day.” However, despite this massive intervention, the Pathways program shows no reduction in substance abuse or psychiatric symptoms over time – in fact, those conditions often worsened.
This basic finding is confirmed by a range of studies showing that residents of Housing First programs show no improvement regarding addiction and mental illness. They are housed but broken, wracked by the cruelest psychoses, compulsions, and torments – all under the guise of medical care.
Los Angeles’s “Housing First” produces homes, but fails to address the problems of the once-homeless.
A Housing First experiment in Ottawa, Canada, illustrates this paradoxical outcome in stark terms. Researchers divided the study into two populations: an “intervention” group that was provided Housing First and access to primary care, medically assisted treatment, social workers, and on-demand services; and a non-intervention “control” group that was not provided housing or services – they were simply left on the streets. To the shock of the researchers, after 24 months the non-intervention control group reported better results regarding substance abuse, mental health, quality of life, family relations, and mortality than the Housing First group. In other words, doing nothing resulted in superior human outcomes than providing Housing First with wraparound services.
One explanation may be that Housing First programs are deliberately not oriented toward recovery, rehabilitation, and renewal. They operate on the “harm reduction” model, which allows residents to continue using drugs such as alcohol, heroin, and methamphetamine, and does not require mental health treatment as a condition of residency. In theory, this permissive policy would help “reduce harm” to the individual; in practice, however, it may create a community-level effect that makes it hard for any individual to find recovery. Here is the basic chain of events: Homeless individuals with substance abuse and psychiatric disorders are placed together in a residential facility where they are allowed to continue the way of life they had on the streets. Despite the availability of services, there is no incentive to use those services and no disincentive to the problematic behavior associated with street homelessness. Consequently, widespread addiction often becomes the norm within Housing First programs.
Preferring Homelessness
This chain of events is not just a thought experiment. In Birmingham, Ala., researchers inadvertently created this exact problem when they put participants of two different programs – one “recovery” program and one “harm reduction” program – in the same apartment complex. Immediately after beginning the experiment, the recovery group “began abandoning the provided housing, complaining that their proximity to persons not required to remain abstinent (i.e., the other trial group) was detrimental to their recovery. They claimed that they preferred to return to homelessness rather than live near drug users.” The researchers quickly stopped and reorganized the trial, writing that “this unexpected reaction shows one possible risk to housing persons with active addiction.”
Still, Housing First advocates insist that their policy is working. When reached for comment, Tsemberis insisted that the Washington Post headline declaring that he had “solved homelessness” is true. “The most effective way to end homelessness for people with mental health and addiction is to provide housing and wraparound support,” Tsemberis said. He points towards rates of “housing stability” as the key metric, while conceding that Housing First does not provide “a cure for mental illness and addiction.” This is a suggestion that policymakers have “solved homelessness” simply by bringing people indoors, no matter their addictions, mental illnesses, and human torments.
Advocates portray Housing First as a science that transcends politics. The policy was first adopted by the George W. Bush administration and has gained support from Republicans and Democrats alike. As the Washington Post observed, it is “a model so simple children could grasp it, so cost-effective fiscal hawks loved it, so socially progressive liberals praised it.
However, the real-world evidence from cities such as Los Angeles challenges this narrative. If Housing First has demonstrated anything, it is this: It provides a stable residential environment for the homeless to live out their pathologies, subsidized by the public and administered by the social-scientific sector. It does, not however, address addiction, mental illness and other factors that limit human potential and lead to homelessness.
A defensive Garcetti: “Nobody embraces only housing. It’s got to be housing with services together.”
In Los Angeles, despite the insistence that Housing First is the answer, some uncertainty is creeping in. Mayor Garcetti is now on the defensive, as homelessness in Los Angeles continues to increase despite billions in spending. After the federal government released a study questioning the premises of Housing First, Garcetti backed away from the unidimensional approach, telling reporters with irritation in his voice: “Sometimes people parody Housing First as ‘only housing.’ Nobody embraces only housing. It’s got to be housing with services together.”
In more bad news for public officials and supporters of Housing First, there is an emerging body of evidence that calls into question the “cost savings” of the program. A recent study in Massachusetts shows that Housing First does not reduce rehospitalization and service utilization, while another study in Chicago suggests that Housing First might increase overall costs. Furthermore, researchers have concluded that the purported cost savings in earlier Housing First studies would not apply to the 82% of the homeless population that is not chronically homeless.
Ron Galperin: The Los Angeles controller has found the city’s housing program to be riddled with high costs and delays. LA Office of the Controller
In Los Angeles, this could spell disaster. In the most optimistic scenario laid out by the controller’s office, the city will build 5,873 supportive housing units at an initial cost of $1.2 billion, plus an estimated $88 million in annual service costs associated with the Housing First model. The recipients of this housing will not meaningfully improve their lives in terms of addiction, mental illness, and spiritual well-being — and there will still be 60,000 people on the streets across Los Angeles County. In other words, even under its own theoretical assumptions, Proposition HHH is doomed to fail.
The City of Los Angeles did not return a request for comment.
The potential silver living might be that a reconsideration of the Housing First approach could lead to a wider reckoning for policymakers and political leaders. At the end of the Housing First experiment in Los Angeles, the city will be responsible for thousands of wards of the state with little hope for recovery, as well as tens of thousands of campers in its public spaces. A few curious citizens will read through the academic literature and find a vast discrepancy between the ideological promises of Housing First and its real-world outcomes. They might then conclude that proponents should have known better.
This and all other original articles created by RealClearInvestigations may be republished for free with attribution. (These terms do not apply to outside articles linked on the site.)
(1) The presiding officer may grant a petition for intervention at any time, upon determining that the petitioner qualifies as an intervenor under any provision of law and that the intervention sought is in the interests of justice and will not impair the orderly and prompt conduct of the proceedings.(
2) If a petitioner qualifies for intervention, the presiding officer may impose conditions upon the intervenor’s participation in the proceedings, either at the time that intervention is granted or at any subsequent time. Conditions may include:
(a) Limiting the intervenor’s participation to designated issues in which the intervenor has a particular interest demonstrated by the petition; and(
b) Limiting the intervenor’s use of discovery, cross-examination, and other procedures so as to promote the orderly and prompt conduct of the proceedings; and
(c) Requiring two or more intervenors to combine their presentations of evidence and argument, cross-examination, discovery, and other participation in the proceedings.
(3) The presiding officer shall timely grant or deny each pending petition for intervention, specifying any conditions, and briefly stating the reasons for the order. The presiding officer may modify the order at any time, stating the reasons for the modification. The presiding officer shall promptly give notice of the decision granting, denying, or modifying intervention to the petitioner for intervention and to all parties.
U.S. District Judge David Carter leaves a court hearing in Los Angeles on Feb. 4
by Hugh Hewitt (4-10-21)
Hugh Hewitt, a Post contributing columnist, hosts a nationally syndicated radio show on the Salem Network. The author of 14 books about politics, history and faith, he is also a political analyst for NBC, president of the Nixon Foundation and a professor of law at Chapman University Law School, where he has taught constitutional law since 1996.
Homeless encampments dot almost every city and many unincorporated areas in Southern California and, as any visitor to San Francisco knows, the legions of the unhoused are not limited to Los Angeles or San Diego.
But Los Angeles city and county, which counted 66,000 homeless a year ago, is the undisputed epicenter of cardboard structures and plastic tents, spilling out over sidewalks and onto streets, collecting under almost every highway underpass and along the cement river beds of the region. Every single person “living rough” is a unique tragedy. A judgment is coming, and soon.
Federal District Court Judge David O. Carter now sits in judgment in a civil suit brought last March by residents and business leaders against the city and county. The plaintiffs charge that the local governments have wasted public funds, endangered citizens and ignored their duty as the homeless crisis has spread. They are seeking immediate relief and action. Many say Carter will rule in the plaintiffs’ favor soon.
Carter is not a judge who sits mulling things in his chambers; he is well known for taking the toughest cases and issuing stern orders. This winter, Carter held a hearing in the heart of Los Angeles’s Skid Row, a sprawling 50 blocks of dystopia downtown. It’s far from the only encampment of the unhoused, but it is rife with violence against women, homeless veterans, the addicted and the mentally ill. To spend a day in Skid Row is an awakening. To spend a night there, I suspect, would be harrowing.
Carter has warned in previous orders that the situation reminds him of the massive government resistance to desegregation beginning in the 1950s and of indifference by government to overwhelming prison overcrowding in the past decade. On both occasions, federal district courts took over as state and local governments broke down. Many citizens and not a few officials want Carter to place the city and county in receivership, seize the vast resources allocated but ineffectively spent or hoarded and use the thousands and thousands of city and county properties to rehouse the homeless.
The case has attracted the interest of parties from every corner of the culture and region. To this conservative professor of constitutional law, there is overwhelming evidence of past intentional discrimination on the basis of race and gender by the local governments. Nor has it been easy for faith-based groups to help the people who are unhoused; the City of Los Angeles excludes many faith-based groups from ministering to the desperate because of the groups’ insistence on sober living within their walls. Big Law — the city’s most influential lawyers — have joined the legal fray on behalf of the destitute, interest groups and property owners denied use of their property by encampments two and three deep on sidewalks and streets.
Mayor Quinton Lucas of Kansas City, Mo., is among the nation’s many mayors dealing with the homeless in new ways. He’s open to allocating much of the stimulus money headed toward his city — some $200 million — to a fund from which the interest would be spent on housing stock and addiction and mental health services to his city’s 1,800 to 2,000 unhoused people. Other jurisdictions across the country should consider banking their stimulus and using it as a permanent endowment for homeless relief — the problem is never “solved” but can be managed if done carefully, preserving capital and spending the interest on the ever-changing face of homelessness.
Could a judge order a local government to set aside stimulus money and use those funds, where needed, to stem the rising tide of homelessness? Some legal observers who are following the case believe the judge may be so frustrated with the executive and legislative inaction that such an order is conceivable.
Under this theory, Carter could seize not only the incoming stimulus funds — perhaps a billion or more for the city and county — along with the billion-plus already voted in bonds by local residents to address the crisis — and sweep away the deadlocked bureaucracy that hasn’t fixed the problem. Everyone would cheer.
In its place, he could take the list of available properties already provided to the court — there are more than 14,000 available properties owned by local governments in the county — and invite the private sector to construct temporary and permanent housing across the sprawling geography of the region. There is no lack of space or money, only will and purpose.
Carter has spent a year building a record, holding hearings, probing various agencies. If he finds that circumstances and inaction by elected authorities compel him to act, he will have the broad support of the public, the legal community and probably both the left and right appointees of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The homeless crisis in California cries out for the third branch of government to step in where the first two have failed so comprehensively.
