Much to my regret, I am not one of those lucky types to whom flashes of brilliance or those exciting 'a-HA!' moments so often depicted in movies occur. I kind of rumble through life and am often surprised to find out things I later realize I probably should have known.
Being a relatively easy-going sort, I don't resent it - my general obtuseness...much.
To quote a legendary man of the sea, 'I yam what I yam and dat's all that I yam.'
No pretensions to genius.
Every once in a while, though, the proverbial lightbulb goes on, and that happened this morning thanks to two gentle nudges, which then started a cascade of 'Hey, yeah' recalls in my head.
The second was a Spencer Pratt interview with the amazing Adam Carolla.
At :50 into it, Spencer talks about his plans for the section of the city they're talking about. Once the streets are clear of the homeless and the drugs, he's going to take those ten or twenty blocks of abandoned buildings, bulldoze them, and do that high-density housing the communists want to put near schools and residential neighborhoods now.
It’s hard to comprehend just how disgusting they let Los Angeles become. pic.twitter.com/fRCe5b2Q7s
— The Adam Carolla Show (@AdamCarollaShow) May 15, 2026
The first one was from the estimable Francis Menton, aka The Manhattan Contrarian. His column today revisits San Francisco and that city's spending on its homeless issues. It only caught my eye while scanning through the gazillion piles of crap in my inbox because of the title.
The Homeless Industrial Complex Eats San Francisco For Lunch
After watching Spencer, I went back looking for it. I wanted to know more, as those two together reminded me of another (since deleted) Pratt video, which had been an absolute rant about the cost of homeless housing in one Los Angeles County Commissioner's district.
As a 2026 Los Angeles mayoral candidate, Spencer Pratt is criticizing city officials, specifically targeting a reported \(\$16\) million, 64-bed interim housing project. He claims this expenditure equals a cost of \(\$250,000\) per bed, calling it a waste of taxpayer money and pledging to audit homelessness spending if elected.
As of a 2025 count, there are 44, 000 or so homeless people within the Los Angeles city limits proper, and over 72K in the LA metro/county area.
That's a buttload of misery and problems at $250,000 *gulp* per bed.
Obviously, the piecemeal effort isn't sustainable.
So, I went back to the San Francisco article, figuring that while the climate there isn't as conducive to sleeping outside, the numbers would still be proportionally close. How was San Fran handling it there?
It’s been a long time since I have done an update on the homelessness situation in San Francisco. The reason is that I have avoided the issue until sufficient evidence had accumulated to make the obvious conclusion completely definitive and undeniable.
It was all the way back in 2018 that some of San Francisco’s foremost do-gooders, led by billionaire Salesforce founder Marc Benioff, organized a referendum to implement a new payroll tax to raise the revenue to solve the homelessness problem once and for all. The referendum was designed to raise some $300 million per year, on top of San Fran’s already generous homelessness spending. All of the new spending was to be dedicated to the task of ending the homelessness crisis. On October 24, 2018 — just a few days before the referendum was scheduled to take place — Benioff got an op-ed published in the New York Times advocating for its passage. The gist of the op-ed was that it was time for San Francisco’s business community to step up and get this done. It was the classic appeal to progressive guilt:
Ah, progressive guilt trips. Always expensive. And this one got a new tax passed with almost 2/3 of the vote and raised some big money, starting in 2021.
What was shocking to me was not the hundreds of millions it raised - it was meant to.
No, it was the number of homeless - for all the cha-CHING, San Francisco has only about 8000 people they count as homeless. The number hasn't changed.
VURT DA FURK?
...However, the bottom line is completely unambiguous. Following the 2018 referendum, the number of people counted as homeless promptly went up, from under 7,000 to about 8,000, and has remained at about the 8,000 level, or more, ever since. The additional funding provided by the new voter-approved payroll tax has not made the slightest dent in the problem, and if anything has had a negative effect. Sadly, it is as I predicted.
But meanwhile the spending has soared. San Francisco has a Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, known as HSH, that administers to the homelessness situation. Here is a page from sf.gov detailing the budget of that Department for the two-year period 2025-27. The budget allocation for the Department is stated to be $785.6 million for FY 2025-26, and $705.2 million for FY 2026-27. Of the two year budget of close to $1.5 billion, some $665.3 million is said to come from what they call the “Our City, Our Home” fund, that is, the dedicated dollars from the special payroll tax passed in the 2018 referendum.
With 7,973 people counted as homeless in the latest PIT survey, the current level of spending comes to just under $100,000 per homeless person per year. As a point of comparison, a family of four with an annual income of $400,000 would be just below the top 2% of the income distribution in the U.S.
And then Francis asks and answers the obvious question:
WHERE DOES ALL THE MONEY GO?
...So if the spending never reduces the level of homelessness, where does all the money go? The answer is that it disappears into the homelessness industrial complex, a blob that finds ways to spend any given level of budget on itself without ever reducing, or even making a dent in, the supposed problem at hand. That’s how it works.
The homeless NGO industrial complex.
That $16M, 64/$250K a piece modular bed facility that Pratt ranted about above?
Oh, yeah, built with state and federal grants - aka TAXPAYER DOLLARS - and now guess what?
Karen Bass is knocking it down and building something new at the same time.
Mayor Karen Bass broke ground on a new tiny home village for the homeless on Thursday — just weeks after the city announced plans to tear down a 74-bed development they’ve already spent $16 million on.
On Thursday, the mayor’s office blasted an email with glossy photos of Bass breaking ground alongside fellow DSA Councilmember, Hugo Soto-Martinez.
The announcement praised a new 50-bed East Hollywood tiny home village, a project expected to cost taxpayers about $33 million by the time it is completed.
But across the city in Tarzana, officials are preparing to tear down a different tiny home village with 74 beds after taxpayers already poured roughly $16 million into building and operating the site.
It is one of several temporary homeless housing sites now slated for shutdown across Los Angeles.
The City Council’s Homelessness and Housing Committee, chaired by socialist mayoral hopeful Nithya Raman, voted in late April to spend another $1.7 million tearing the property down.
Independent candidate for mayor Spencer Pratt blasted the spending and the decision to demolish the site.
...Now, just five years later, the city is dismantling the site entirely, adding yet another multimillion-dollar price tag to a homelessness system facing growing scrutiny over runaway spending, poor outcomes and whether the city’s temporary housing strategy can survive long term.
This, on top of putting homeless people up in apartments for $1.5M a piece.
And, yes - that's million with an 'M.'
Los Angeles homeless people are being put up in brand new apartments in ritzy neighborhoods that cost taxpayers up to $1.5 million per room, the California Post can reveal.
At least $2.6 billion of taxpayers cash has been spent buying and renovating hotels, motels and dorms for the huge unhoused population in the city and county since 2020.
The properties were all purchased with $1.3 billion from Governor Gavin Newsom’s Homekey initiative, which then renovated with another $1.3 billion in funding from the city and county of Los Angeles.
Some of the suites, which are staggered across neighborhoods such as West Hollywood, Cheviot Hills and Venice Beach, even come fitted with private balconies, in-unit laundry and gated parking.
Experts are demanding an investigation and blasted the spending spree — as Los Angeles grapples with a housing crisis, draconian building restrictions and a budget deficit.
Studio apartments for 'the homeless' in Nithya Raman's district are being built in a rehabbed motor inn that the city overpaid for by almost twice as much, and, when finished, are going to cost taxpayers $744,000 a piece.
THREE QUARTERS OF A MILLION BUCKS A PIECE
...Pratt took to social media the next morning and zeroed in on a single target. The Oak Tree Inn in Raman’s district. A battered roadside motel now being flipped into transitional housing through California’s Homekey program.
“As I promised in the debate, here’s the ludicrous $10M boondoggle in Nithya Raman’s district,” his post on X read. He attached records tied to the Oak Tree Inn to back it up.
Those documents show the site was assessed at roughly $4.6 million, yet the city moved forward with a purchase price of about $7.3 million, with no clear public explanation for the gap.
The city is now rehabbing the property, adding roughly another $10 million so far and pushing the total past $17 million. That brings the price to about $774,000 per unit, with each unit classified as a studio apartment.
“The public has every right to question the return on investment and their safety,” he said.
That sucking sound you hear is not only the politicians when they open their mouths - it's also the great black hole of homeless NGO grifting pulling your hard-earned dollars into a vortex of fraud and abuse, never to be seen again. All the while leaving the wrteched souls it's stolen in the name of in squalor on the sidewalk.
Or living in what was supposed to be the kids' playground that your money also paid for.
Watch those needles in the sand - they'll stick.
I’m so glad to see Spencer Pratt Exposing the WOKE BS happening in LA! Here Spencer Pratt posts a video of what he calls a cartel-run children’s playground in Los Angeles and fentanyl needles that is used as a homeless encampment.
— Johnny Midnight ⚡️ (@its_The_Dr) May 14, 2026
Between Gavin Nad Karen Bass they are Turning Los… pic.twitter.com/24uEJxMkCC
And, who cares - it's only money.
You can always get more.
🚨WTF? Despite a massive history of FRAUD, LA Mayor Karen Bass just announced $360,000,000 for NGOs to "prevent homelessness":
— Morse Report (@MorseReport) April 10, 2026
These NGOs will just get even richer while NOTHING happens to the homeless crisis.
Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass should RESIGN!pic.twitter.com/6OYhOX2X6U https://t.co/yvGzTykC0i
So that was my lightbulb moment, slick as I am.
What if they couldn't get more money?
What if every last superfluous cent dried up?
Someone should try that.
And quick.
