How California Turned Human Misery Into a Cash Cow [WATCH]

As California continues to grapple with a growing homelessness crisis, El Cajon Mayor Bill Wells is raising concerns about the amount of money spent on the issue and what he describes as a lack of measurable results.

During a recent exchange with Brian Glenn, Wells discussed what he characterized as the state’s ongoing pattern of increasing spending while homelessness figures continue to climb.

Glenn opened the discussion by referencing the state’s repeated funding efforts.

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“Kind of setting up the segment that the state keeps throwing money and more money and more money at homelessness, but it never gets any better.”

Wells responded by citing what he described as conservative estimates of total spending on homelessness in California.

“No, you know, conservative estimates are that we spent about $24 billion on homelessness. I My research really tells me it’s been more about $40 billion and this is for something that really gets worse and worse every year. You know, we’ve got a lot more housing, but we’ve got about 37% more people on the streets. You know, California has 188,000 homeless people, and that’s by design. California set it up this way because they’ve encouraged homelessness because, frankly, I used to think it was stupidity or just not understanding the problem, but I’ve come to believe that it’s really about the money. There’s just so much money, and it’s a great business model.”

According to Wells, despite expanded housing programs and increased funding streams, the number of people living on the streets has grown by 37 percent, with the statewide total now at 188,000 individuals.

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Glenn then asked Wells about his efforts to track where the funding has gone.

“It is a great business model. Okay, so when you started asking about the money, what did they tell you?”

Wells said he sought specific financial data from the County of San Diego but did not receive clear answers.

“Well, nothing. So, you know, I reached out to the County of San Diego, and I said, you know, I know that you get over a billion dollars, maybe a couple billion dollars a year in homelessness, but that’s part of the problem. We don’t really know. So can you tell me how much money you received in the last, say, five years and how much money you’ve spent now, if you had called, I’m mayor of a city, if you called my city and said, How much did you spend on, say, street repairs, I could tell you within an hour exactly the amount of dollars we spent as street pairs. But the county San Diego, they gave me some gobbledygook, some budget numbers that didn’t really mean anything.”

Wells said he then contacted the San Diego Coalition for Homelessness, which includes various non-governmental organizations.

“So then my next step was the San Diego Coalition for homelessness, and they’re a bunch of NGOs and non governmental organizations, and they get money. And what I found out was the people who sit on that board are actually the leaders of the non governmental organizations get the money. So the people that get the money are spending the money on themselves. And I sent them letters and said, hey, we’d like to know how much money you’ve spent, and we’ve got nothing, nothing back from them whatsoever, not even a return to our letter.”

Wells also referenced a homeless voucher program in his city.

He said that although El Cajon accounts for roughly three percent of San Diego County’s population, more than half of the program’s participants were placed in hotels within the city.

“Recently, we found that in my city, they ran a homeless voucher program. They stuff people in our hotels from all around the county, even though our city only makes about 3% of the population San Diego County, we had over 50% of the people in this voucher program in our hotels, and we found out that the NGO that ran that program made $11 million putting people in hotels, keeping in the in our hotels from somewhere between four to $8,000 a month.”

As California prepares for a gubernatorial race, Glenn asked which candidates were addressing homelessness as a priority.

“Okay, so you’ve got a big gubernatorial race coming up, or which candidate is kind of speaking out on this or who’s leading the messaging on this issue?”

Wells said he has heard limited engagement from candidates on the topic.

“Well, I think Steve Hilton really seems to be leading the message. Chad Bianco, I think would be sympathetic with that message as well. So, you know, those are the only two candidates I’m really hearing right now that have any interest in solving this problem whatsoever. Of course, all the Democrat candidates seem to be just ignoring the problem. They don’t want to engage, they don’t want to talk about it. And, you know, I think it’s just the same old playbook. If you just ignore it, maybe we’ll go away. We can keep this money flowing in.”

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