Althouse: "The two biggest 'Housing First' initiatives for the homeless in Madison don't have enough money to continue operating and could be closed...."

December 23, 2023

"The two biggest 'Housing First' initiatives for the homeless in Madison don't have enough money to continue operating and could be closed...."

"[T]he 60-unit Rethke Terrace project for homeless singles and veterans on the East Side and the 45-unit Tree Lane Apartments for homeless families on the Far West Side... ran into trouble, and [were] declared chronic nuisances due to a high volume of police calls, which often involve nonresidents, a lack of security and other issues.... Now come the challenges of determining exactly how long the projects will stay open, supporting tenants and figuring out what happens if or when the projects are shuttered and sold...."

From "2 biggest Madison homeless projects could close within months, leaving city scrambling" (Wisconsin State Journal).

40 comments:

Kevin said...: Poor writing.

The city itself would not be “scrambling” but sitting exactly as it was.; 12/23/23, 3:57 PM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: Democrats never have enough money for out VETERANS.

Democrats always have enough money for illegal entrants.; 12/23/23, 4:02 PM
The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...: “Which often involve non-residents”

Sure. Inexplicable. Upcountry degenerates, no doubt.

Post-Covid working-from-home has left many of Washington State’s government office buildings in Olympia nearly vacant. Upper middle-class proggies from adjacent neighborhoods fantasize/signal about the offices being converted into junkie housing. Astoundingly, they seem incapable of visualizing how such a conversion would trash their own pricey and generally desirable neighborhoods. Just one more little data point regarding their remove from reality.; 12/23/23, 4:11 PM
Krumhorn said...: All them leftie best intentions always find the same sticky end. B-b-b-but they mean so well. Just like that outgoing Louisiana governor who has pardoned over 50 hardcore felons including murderers. WTF could do wrong with THAT?

- Krumhorn; 12/23/23, 4:15 PM
Immanuel Rant said...: Just on a whim, what is the salary of the person in charge of either place?

Of the top 3?; 12/23/23, 4:18 PM
TaeJohnDo said...: I know! Turn them into housing for illegal immigrants. I men, unhoused and undocumented workers.; 12/23/23, 4:19 PM
Bootstrap said...: This is the result when government continually (purposely) misdiagnoses the problem. It is not the “lack of a home”. The problems are failed schools, failed parenting, multi-generation welfare dependency, victimhood culture, drug addiction and mental illness. Until those problems are faced up to, the fabulously misnamed “homeless crisis” will continue. But to the fantastically expensive permanent homeless bureaucracy complex, this is a feature, not a bug.; 12/23/23, 4:26 PM
R C Belaire said...: Good intentions meet reality. Again.; 12/23/23, 4:56 PM
hawkeyedjb said...: Housing First has never worked, and never will. Sobriety First - otherwise you're just moving the drunks and junkies inside.; 12/23/23, 4:57 PM
Jersey Fled said...: Surprise, surprise; 12/23/23, 4:59 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: “Everybody has asked the question. . ."What shall we do with the Negro?" I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are wormeaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature's plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!”

Fredrick Douglass; 12/23/23, 5:00 PM
Mike of Snoqualmie said...: King County has used housing first for over a decade. The druggies are even more numerous now and more spread out

Treatment now is what's needed. The druggie will commit crimes. Part of the sentence should be drug treatment; 12/23/23, 5:08 PM
Leland said...: The initiatives served their purpose, but now the grift is over.; 12/23/23, 5:10 PM
rehajm said...: Bad policy.; 12/23/23, 5:14 PM
Jupiter said...: Oh. They "ran into trouble", did they? Just when things were going so well, too.; 12/23/23, 5:56 PM
Tim said...: Same story over and over again. NIMBY. We want to provide housing for the homeless, but keep them all corraled together and away from us decent people, thus providing a ready feeding ground for the predators. If you want to provide housing for them, put one or two units in every subdivision. Then depend on the neighborhood to help control the problem. Because most of those neighborhoods will have a sheepdog or two who will help the police solve the real issue.; 12/23/23, 6:24 PM
wildswan said...: The government has a fatal rule: "They are all the same." Homeless? They are all the same. Some are mentally ill, some are addicted, some have addiction related illnesses, some are criminals, some are handicapped by injury or illness, some have lost their jobs, some are vets who have lost their jobs. No matter. Treat them all as if they are elderly vets who have lost their jobs. This guarantees that the handicapped, unemployed and the elderly vets who have lost their jobs will also lose government housing because the others in with them will trash everything around them. The left just will not look at the way it makes social problems worse and fix it by saying: they are not all the same and the non-destructive types go to the head of the line. They read a little sad story about a misunderstood little sad addict and they think they'll just kiss the nasty boo-boo with money and bandage on a theory and make it go away and hurray for me. Or let's say that the kind of people who become government administrators begin there and proceed on into indifference and careerism.; 12/23/23, 6:37 PM
Assistant Village Idiot said...: There are people who have screwed up their lives but may be able to become decent and reclaimed. Unfortunately, the false generosity of letting irresponsible people share in what they are given for their rescue often destroys their nests. The have never learned to say no to grifters and drifters, who move in, use drugs, and assault the women nearby.

I dealt with this for a living. More housing does work for some people - really, it is a godsend for some. But it is just money pissed away in so many instances.; 12/23/23, 7:19 PM
Mike of Snoqualmie said...: There are two classes of homeless: the lawful and the unlawful. The lawful are people down on their luck who with the right help can achieve productive lives again. People like veterans, battered women, handicapped, sick or injured.

The unlawful are the drug addicted and the mentally ill who will not obey society's rules. They must commit crimes to fuel their drug addictions. The only way to help them is by using jail time as a 2x4 to get their attention and make them reach bottom. Drug and/or mental health treatment is what they need to recover, but many want to continue taking drugs and roaming the streets.

There's also the criminal element who use the druggies as protective cover to commit their crimes. They are the cut-shops, pimps, and fences. Long term stays in the gray bar hotel are what they need.

The progressives, also known as the decivilizers, don't understand the true nature of Man, and insist that if society just gives the unlawful some tender loving care, the unlawful will see the error of their ways and accept drug treatment instead of trashing the low-barrier hotels the government has put them in. When pigs fly.; 12/23/23, 7:32 PM
Gospace said...: So if you give people things that other people have to work fl, and often sacrifice other things to get, it doesn’t change their lives and make them better people.

Gee, I wonder if anyone in the history of the world has ever noticed this phenomenon before.

Aside, of course, everyone in the world with a working brain.; 12/23/23, 7:51 PM
Mark said...: No. Say it ain't so. A public housing provider is a slumlord??

I'm shocked, shocked. Now where are my gambling winnings?; 12/23/23, 7:58 PM
Josephbleau said...: In Chicago all new developments must include low income percentages. The idea is that minorities will be improved by being near white people.

But what results is that Blacks are being shot in communities that are 200 yards from wealthy white developments. Whities select condos based on line of sight for random 9 mm rounds.

Whities feel safe but, carjacking by 13 year olds can reduce your lifespan. "I Am a Chicago Lib that Eats Vegan and Exercises to live forever, But I was killed by a kid who wanted my BMW-7"; 12/23/23, 8:25 PM
Tommy Duncan said...: Blogger wildswan said...

The government has a fatal rule: "They are all the same."

Even worse, progressive government puts all the dysfunctional people in the same place together, somehow believing that dysfunctional people will be improved through constant exposure to other dysfunctional people.

Some of us remember Cabrini-Green in Chicago...; 12/23/23, 8:40 PM
JRoberts said...: Why is it that when liberals promote “sustainable programs” they never mean self-sustaining.

The programs are only sustainable with an ever-growing flow of taxpayer dollars.; 12/23/23, 8:56 PM
walter said...: "Just on a whim, what is the salary of the person in charge of either place?

Of the top 3?"
--
Indeed; 12/23/23, 9:32 PM
hawkeyedjb said...: Tim said...
"If you want to provide housing for them, put one or two units in every subdivision."

I have seen the ruin caused by this practice; it was called Section 8. It is surprising how few lowlifes it takes to wreck a neighborhood. What this notion fails to take into account is that the law-abiding run when the criminals are introduced; they don't want to be part of some social experiment that will most likely fail and ruin their community and destroy their home value.

I have a better solution: Put every one of the drunks, druggies and bums in the neighborhoods of the pols and non-government tit-suckers who propose and carry out these schemes. That will concentrate the problem among those who don't really give a hoot about solving it.; 12/24/23, 7:53 AM
EdwdLny said...: Like every other lib policy, a money draining fuck up . But, more importantly, it's not a bug but a very deliberate feature. Each and every time.; 12/24/23, 9:03 AM
MadTownGuy said...: Police calls that often involve non-residents...and money runs out...

I'm not seeing the connection. Why are they running out of money? Are the residents not making rent, maintenance costs too high, too many open units?

Madison.com used to allow access without a paywall. It's no fun since they became stingy.; 12/24/23, 9:54 AM
Jupiter said...: "If you want to provide housing for them, put one or two units in every subdivision."

Let's put a couple right in your bedroom, Tim.; 12/24/23, 9:56 AM
Jupiter said...: "Put every one of the drunks, druggies and bums in the neighborhoods of the pols and non-government tit-suckers who propose and carry out these schemes."

That will never work. The extra police that the Defund The Police pols always demand for their own neighborhoods will scare the druggies away.; 12/24/23, 9:58 AM
Patrick Driscoll said...: The vast majority of these unfortunates are dirtbag drug addicts or mentally ill and should be separated from the general populace. Most drug addicts never get better and the mentally ill require regular observation and medication to keep them being a danger. The left however revells at the thought of introducing chaos into the lives of normal folks and will never stop. Assist the genuinely needy, lock the rest up for our safety and theirs.; 12/24/23, 10:32 AM
Anon said...: The article blames "years of neglect" for the problems at projects opened in 2016 and 2018.; 12/24/23, 11:25 AM
Ampersand said...: The so-called homelessness epidemic can be solved by (1) identifying the mentally ill and institutionalizing them (some involuntarily), (2) identify the drug addicts and either offer them treatment or jail cells, (3) identify the criminals and incarcerate them, (4) offer the sane, nonaddicted, noncriminals emrgency housing and job training. In other words, be a meanie and ignore the media fallout.
Unfortunately for the rest of us, parasites are an important electoral constituency. One of the major political parties loves them for a host of reasons. In fact, there is a symbiotic relationship between the Dems and the "homeless".; 12/24/23, 2:37 PM
MadTownGuy said...: Anon said...

"The article blames "years of neglect" for the problems at projects opened in 2016 and 2018."

Things got that bad in 5-7 years! I'm guessing it was either total neglect or vandalism, or some combination of the two. Wow.; 12/24/23, 2:51 PM
Alu Toloa said...: Just as bad breath is better than no breath at all, bad housing is better than none. Repealing the Model Landlord Tenant Act's provision that tenants are absolutely forbidden from waiving any of its "protections", including, infamously, the minimum habitability provisions that make housing unaffordable for many of the "deserving" homeless would do more, at no cost to the taxpayers, than any of these doomed to fail subsidized projects. Before the Model Act was widely adopted in the '70s, the homeless were the "bums and hoboes". SRO hotels, leaky roofed, rat "infested" crappy old housing was affordable, and far better than tents on sidewalks, or "projects" quickly ruined by criminals and the unsocialized. Why are the aware not screaming from the rooftops about the racist presumption (a disproportionate number of the "unhoused" are BIPOC) that tenants are too stupid to decide if they'd rather live in an "unhabitable" dwelling, than none at all. Like all progressive presumptions, the idea that the poor must be "protected" from "slumlords", is based not in reality, but in arrogance and ignorance. Garrison Keilor's "bigger hammer" acted out in real time: no one even considers this obvious path out, but blue jurisdictions just pour more money into the homeless industrial complex that always fails, as illustrated.; 12/24/23, 3:23 PM
Goldenpause said...: This result was as predictable as the sun rising in the east tomorrow. Only “progressives” are surprised by this result.; 12/24/23, 5:03 PM
Rusty said...: Josephbleau said...
In Chicago all new developments must include low income percentages. The idea is that minorities will be improved by being near white people.

But what results is that Blacks are being shot in communities that are 200 yards from wealthy white developments. Whities select condos based on line of sight for random 9 mm rounds.

Whities feel safe but, carjacking by 13 year olds can reduce your lifespan. "I Am a Chicago Lib that Eats Vegan and Exercises to live forever, But I was killed by a kid who wanted my BMW-7"

At least in Cabrini Green you knew where the shots were coming from.; 12/24/23, 5:11 PM
hawkeyedjb said...: Alu Toloa does a good job of explaining why most affordable housing is unaffordable. Truly affordable housing for bums and junkies is what would be crap housing for most sober people. Once the homeless industry and the Caring Karens get involved, you get $750,000 per unit bum housing, as Los Angeles has shown. How much of that can we afford? Not nearly enough for all the bums. But the homeless-industrial complex would rather have tents than SRO's.; 12/24/23, 5:54 PM
Interested Bystander said...: How many $billions do we waste before our “leaders” recognize it’s not a lack of housing? Answer: there aren’t enough $billions out there.; 12/24/23, 11:12 PM
Interested Bystander said...: In 3 or so years during WWII the US built barracks to hour over 6 million soldiers. Was it plush and comfortable? Nope. Was ther such a thing as privacy or dignity? Nope.

Somehow our soldiers made do and lived through the crappy barracked experience. Why should people who choose drugs over a job and making a decent life for themselves expect any more than our brave soldiers did? Answer: Because there’s a lot of money in it for the crooked lazy a_holes funding “homelessness.”; 12/24/23, 11:17 PM