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Speaker 1: Hundreds of homeless people, and Grant's Pass began setting up

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Speaker 1: encampments in public parks. In twenty thirteen, the city stepped

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Speaker 1: up its enforcement of anti camping laws, banning anyone from

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Speaker 1: sleeping outside with any kind of betting. Penalties included fines

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Speaker 1: starting at two hundred ninety five dollars or thirty days

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Speaker 1: in prison for repeat offenders, but with extremely limited public shelter.

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Speaker 2: Space in Grant's Pass.

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Speaker 1: The people affected by the fines sued, saying the tickets

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Speaker 1: violated their Eighth Amendment rights against cruel and unusual punishment.

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Speaker 1: The lower courts agreed, blocking the city from enforcing the law. Now,

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Speaker 1: the decision is in the hands of the US Supreme Court,

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Speaker 1: and the court's ruling could impact how cities across the

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Speaker 1: country handle the homelessness crisis. The US Supreme Court is

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Speaker 1: expected to make a decision in this case by late June.

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Speaker 2: Wow.

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Speaker 3: So that ruling is in great part responsible for the

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Speaker 3: explosion of drug addicts laying about everywhere in a lot

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Speaker 3: of blue cities and states.

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Speaker 2: One hundred percent. Yeah, yeah, And as we discussed earlier

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Speaker 2: in the show, I'm a little troubled that's the Supreme

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Speaker 2: Court seemed to be asking the question, do grants pass

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Speaker 2: his policies help the homeless as opposed to does grants

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Speaker 2: pass in every other city in America have the right

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Speaker 2: to crack down on criminal behavior if it affects the

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Speaker 2: quality of life and you know, the health and safety

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Speaker 2: of everyone who lives in that town. That's what we're

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Speaker 2: trying to decide.

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Speaker 3: Meanwhile, with that law in place, cities and states have

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Speaker 3: spent billions upon billions of dollars on the whole homeless situation,

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Speaker 3: and it's only gotten worse. So as I always say,

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Speaker 3: show me a program that's going to make it better,

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Speaker 3: because so far they've all made them worse.

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Speaker 2: Well, many, many of those billions of dollars have been

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Speaker 2: spent in the state of cal Unicornia, home to half

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Speaker 2: of the bums and junkies in America, and Assemblyman Josh Hoover,

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Speaker 2: who represents the seventh District of California, joins us. He

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Speaker 2: has has requested an audit on homelessness spending in California

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Speaker 2: and the results have been almost hilarious. Josh, mister Assemblyman,

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Speaker 2: how are you, hey, guys.

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Speaker 4: How you doing? Thanks for having me on. I know

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Speaker 4: you love hearing this, but I started listening to you

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Speaker 4: guys in high school a little over twenty years ago.

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Speaker 2: Thanks for that. And you're now sixty seven years old

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Speaker 2: and have eleven grandchildren. Yeah. Thanks, that's a great story. Well, hey,

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Speaker 2: we appreciate it. We truly do it. And look at you.

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Speaker 2: Look at you trying to lead the state, a small minority,

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Speaker 2: a Republican in the state House. But nonetheless, so what

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Speaker 2: motivated you to request this audit? And what'd you find out? So?

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Speaker 4: Look, California is now home to forty nine percent of

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Speaker 4: the nation's unsheltered homeless. When I got elected a couple

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Speaker 4: years ago, I saw we were spending billions of dollars

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Speaker 4: and I wanted to know where the money was going,

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Speaker 4: and so I put forward this request to audit homelessness

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Speaker 4: spending in California. Turns out we have spent nearly twenty

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Speaker 4: billion taxpayer dollars to solve this problem, and it has

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Speaker 4: grown statewide by over thirty two percent during that same

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Speaker 4: period of time, our homeless population, and so absolutely devastating results.

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Speaker 4: And what's worse is we don't even know where any

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Speaker 4: of the money is going. I was hoping we would

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Speaker 4: find maybe some places we could you know, improve our

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Speaker 4: investments and send money to programs that are actually working,

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Speaker 4: But instead we found that we don't even know where

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Speaker 4: any of the money is going.

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Speaker 2: You want to improve our investments. That's hilarious.

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Speaker 3: I mean like I've I invested in some stock and

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Speaker 3: not only did it not go up, I lost other

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Speaker 3: money that I came into my account and took arb

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Speaker 3: my money.

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Speaker 2: Right right, You got to laugh to keep from crying,

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Speaker 2: So you know, it's funny. I so would love to

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Speaker 2: sit down with the Supreme Court justices and say, look,

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Speaker 2: this is primarily a junkie problem. The junkies go where

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Speaker 2: the benefits are the best and the hassling from the

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Speaker 2: police is the least. And you could make the argument, Josh,

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Speaker 2: I've had this discussion.

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Speaker 5: Second, that flies in defiance of the fact that it's

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Speaker 5: a housing problem. It's the cost of housing. California has

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Speaker 5: the most expensive rent in housing. Joe Getty does not

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Speaker 5: understand this. That is why these people are homeless. Joe

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Speaker 5: is claiming that they're coming to California. What can't possibly

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Speaker 5: be true because.

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Speaker 2: Our rents are too high. Yeah, well, certainly within California,

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Speaker 2: people are coming to wherever it's the cushiest. But I've

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Speaker 2: had this discussion with my wife before. We call it

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Speaker 2: the the aspirin paradox. Where somebody has a headache, you

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Speaker 2: take some aspirin. Did it help? Nope, I still have

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Speaker 2: the headache. It could have been twice as bad though,

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Speaker 2: if you didn't have the if you didn't take the aspirin.

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Speaker 2: You don't know that, And so you could argue, well,

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Speaker 2: the homelessness wouldn't have grown by a third after spending

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Speaker 2: all that money, it would have grown by two thirds.

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Speaker 2: Except that's not been the experience of virtually any their state.

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Speaker 2: Josh has it.

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Speaker 4: No, No, California is by far the worst when it

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Speaker 4: comes to this problem. And you know, it's interesting. When

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Speaker 4: I was talking to the auditor directly, he told me,

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Speaker 4: you know, the big problem at the local level is

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Speaker 4: the focus is on getting these dollars out the door,

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Speaker 4: meeting spending deadlines. They don't care if the programs are

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Speaker 4: actually working. And we have seen tens of millions of

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Speaker 4: dollars go to outside service providers at the local level

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Speaker 4: with zero accountabilities, zero expectations that they report back on

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Speaker 4: their results. And this is the problems that we're now

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Speaker 4: seeing because of it.

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Speaker 2: Well.

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Speaker 3: One one problem with this as a topic, and you

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Speaker 3: know this if you've been listening to us for years,

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Speaker 3: is practically all government programs do this. They don't keep

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Speaker 3: track of whether or not the education spending is doing

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Speaker 3: any good either. So that's just you know, the way

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Speaker 3: government works kind of in general, and it can get

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Speaker 3: worse and they keep throwing more money at it, so

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Speaker 3: that this is not the only time this has ever happened.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So Josh, help us picture that here on here

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Speaker 2: in you know, any town California, we get a grant

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Speaker 2: ten million dollars to feed the homeless and and whatever else,

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Speaker 2: get them job training. So you're saying that like local

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Speaker 2: entities are hired, but then nobody ever asks whether anybody

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Speaker 2: got fed.

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Speaker 5: Correct.

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Speaker 4: So the governor this week, you know, came out and said,

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Speaker 4: I'm tired of funding failure. That's what he came out

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Speaker 4: and said this week, he said, had some really strong

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Speaker 4: words about increasing accountability. But the reality is is that

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Speaker 4: his whole plan, his whole metric for success, has been

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Speaker 4: how many dollars are we spending? So he's you know,

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Speaker 4: sent out billions of dollars. It gets flowed down to

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Speaker 4: the county levels to the city levels. That generally goes

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Speaker 4: out to nonprofits and other service providers, and nobody asked

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Speaker 4: the question where is the money going. We've got some

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Speaker 4: legislation up in the Housing Committee tomorrow to require, you know,

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Speaker 4: that information to be collected. But the reality is is

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Speaker 4: that we should have been doing it all along.

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Speaker 3: I don't want to hit you. I'm not trying to

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Speaker 3: hit you with gotcha questions. You know, off your top

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Speaker 3: of your head, what the raw number is how many

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Speaker 3: homeless people we have?

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Speaker 4: It's about one hundred and eighty thousand, a little over

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Speaker 4: one hundred and eighty thousand homeless in California today.

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Speaker 3: Jeez, that's a lot of people, and it's half the

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Speaker 3: homeless people in the country. But has anybody done the

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Speaker 3: quick math on the how many billion dollars it is

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Speaker 3: divided by that? Just to see how much we would

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Speaker 3: have if we just cut them all a check.

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Speaker 4: I don't have the number off the top of my head,

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Speaker 4: but you would be astounded.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it would be a lot. Yeah, I think we

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Speaker 2: could do that math easily. I think they would be

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Speaker 2: instantly quite well off. So, Josh, I'm struck. Josh Hoover's

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Speaker 2: on the line, he's a California assemblyman who's trying to

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Speaker 2: figure out where the billions of dollars spent on the

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Speaker 2: so called homeless programs are going and whether they're doing

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Speaker 2: any good if you're just doing in. But Josh, I'm

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Speaker 2: struck that. For instance, the Seattle City attorney wrote a

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Speaker 2: Friend of the Court brief to the Grant's pass case

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Speaker 2: to the Supreme Court saying, Hey, we've got to be

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Speaker 2: able to enforce local ordinances or we're going to descend

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Speaker 2: into chaos and filth and misery. So a city like

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Speaker 2: Seattle is saying, oh my gosh, this has gone too far.

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Speaker 2: We've seen Portland turns somewhat to the right. Do you

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Speaker 2: feel like there's any energy in the incredibly one sided

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Speaker 2: California Assembly to actually get serious about bums and junkies

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Speaker 2: and decaying cities.

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Speaker 4: Well, I think people are waking up to it. So

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Speaker 4: Governor Gavin Newsom even urged the Supreme Court to take

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Speaker 4: this case. And the reason he did that is because

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Speaker 4: I think he sees this as a serious electoral ish.

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Speaker 4: Sure absolutely continues to, you know, to grow in California,

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Speaker 4: and eventually it's going to hurt, you know, his leadership

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Speaker 4: and his party. I think that's probably his main motivation.

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Speaker 4: But Jack, you also hit on an important point earlier.

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Speaker 4: We have to acknowledge this is not just a housing

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Speaker 4: crisis in California. This is a drug abuse crisis. This

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Speaker 4: is a mental health crisis, and we have refused to

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Speaker 4: do that. Our state says that it's just housing and

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Speaker 4: all of our all actually require housing first methodologies.

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Speaker 3: The fact that they still lean on it being a

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Speaker 3: housing thing and not a drug thing is so crazy.

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Speaker 2: Oh, you've probably heard this, Josh, if you've been listening

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Speaker 2: to the show. We've talked to multiple folks who've spent

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Speaker 2: time on the streets and we've asked them what percentage

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Speaker 2: of people in the various junkie camps are on drugs,

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Speaker 2: and the number we get is usually somewhe around eighty

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Speaker 2: five percent, eighty five ninety percent. And to pretend that

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Speaker 2: it's not a drug addicts who don't want to work

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Speaker 2: and like living outdoors situation is insane because, as we've

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Speaker 2: said a million times, if you separate those people out,

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Speaker 2: I think you're going to be surprised how many it is,

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Speaker 2: what a high percentage it is. But if you can

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Speaker 2: separate that out and then deal with the people who

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Speaker 2: came into the situation with a mental illness who don't

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Speaker 2: have the intellectual capacity to take care of themselves, are

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Speaker 2: trying hard but just don't have money. Then you can

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Speaker 2: minister to those people. But until you recognize that the

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Speaker 2: bulk of it is just a bunch of tweakers and

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Speaker 2: soon to be dead sentinyl addicts, you're just not going

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Speaker 2: to get anywhere.

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Speaker 4: Correct. And I've got some programs in my district that

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Speaker 4: are getting amazing results, getting people's lives back on track.

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Speaker 4: They don't qualify for a dime of state funding. Why

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Speaker 4: because they require sobriety as a prerequisite for participation, and

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Speaker 4: we don't fund those programs in California.

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Speaker 2: That's amazing. Josh Hoover is an assemblyman in the seventh District,

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Speaker 2: California in the Sacramento area. Josh, keep fighting the good fights.

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Speaker 2: Let us know how we can help you. Great to

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Speaker 2: talk to you.

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Speaker 4: We'll do Thanks guys, nice job, Armstrong and Getty