I spent many years involved in politics at the city level in Santa Cruz. The Homeless Industrial Complex is a thing. There isn’t a desire to make things better as that will lead to lost jobs.
Their insincerity becomes very obvious when you start pushing for accountability - like status reports / reports on progress and effectiveness - when entities get public funds. Another fun one is asking for a reduction in overlap when you have 2, 3, and 4 entities doing the same thing and all of them want public funds.
> Their insincerity becomes very obvious when you start pushing for accountability - like status reports / reports on progress and effectiveness - when entities get public funds.
I'm not sure what point you tried to make. I mean, this discussion is about identifying the root causes of a problem in order to actually fix it, but your comment focuses exclusively in organizations which, at worse, only work to mitigate it's impact while the problem is perpetuated.
Let's put it this way: homeless shelters do not fabricate homeless people out of thin air, nor do they spend their budget hiring extras or crisis actors to pretend there are homeless people in the city. At most, you're putting up a strawman to attack organizations that exist to take the edge off this problem.
What exactly do you believe would happen if suddenly all homeless shelters disappeared from the face of the earth? Do you believe homelessness would go away with that too?
If you are taking public money and come back the following year wanting more, there should be a plan and data showing why you deserve money. Specifically the effectiveness of what you are trying to do. Most of them want money without any accountability.
Most times when you apply for a grant, there is a proposal with a plan and expected outcome.
> If you are taking public money and come back the following year wanting more, there should be a plan and data showing why you deserve money. Specifically the effectiveness of what you are trying to do.
Do you understand that you are talking about funding homeless shelters?
The job of a homeless shelter is to provide homeless people with temporary shelter instead of having them living on the streets. It is not in their job description or responsibilities or power to mitigate or eliminate the socio-economic problems that lead people to become homeless. That requires local government to put in place policies that addresses the root causes, such as ensuring housing is affordable, or those struggling with mental problems can receive help.
The expected outcome could be "allow/convince homeless people to sleep in the shelter rather than on the streets".
Not every non-profit needs to solve every problem, but most of them should work to solve al least one of them; having that problem clearly specified helps in distinguishing efficient use of public money from inefficient use.
>The job of a homeless shelter is to provide homeless people with temporary shelter instead of having them living on the streets.
The job is more than just warehousing people. Its making sure that shelters are clean, safe, sanitary and efficiently operated. Here in New York homeless shelters are filthy, understaffed, overcrowded and filled with violent predators, leaving many homeless to feel safer sleeping on a sidewalk. Like San Fransisco, the problem certainly isn't from lack of funding - its from corruption and mismanagement.
There is more than just "homeless shelters" when it comes to working with the homeless. Also, it is usually the job of counties (due to having the office of County Health) to spearhead handling the issues around homelessness. However, there are cities like Santa Cruz (the county seat, but the city government) that take it upon themselves to try and handle things without coordination at the county level.
A lot of strife in our society today can be attributed to non-profits being incentivized to keep their raison d'être continuing in perpetuity.