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Mf actually trying to monetize the homeless ๐
(hexbear.net)
The camps are managed by Urban Alchemy, the San Francisco-based nonprofit that has rapidly grown into a multimillion-dollar street services enterprise and embodies an elastic philosophy of shelter.
Aggressive marketing aligned with rising public discontent over homelessness made for a winning strategy. By 2021 it reported $51 million in revenue primarily from contracts for street outreach and shelter operations in San Francisco; Austin, Texas; Portland, Ore.; and Los Angeles.
There is another for profit company running a shelter in my town....as a service provider I fucking hate it, but they (the county) literally open places up like this, throw a bid at already overburdened/underpaid front line workers and hope they come in and create a whole fucking new program from the ground up. And it's usually the ACTUAL Frontline workers who do this, not like middle management or whatever. At least in my case. Then these for profits swoop in instead. It's fucking weird
Idk if it says in the article, but Ted Wheeler agreed to work with them without any stakeholder input from the community, non profits, or actual houseless people. Disgusting
Edit for more context, I need to slow down when typing lol
Shelter services being run through half a dozen different agencies, each with their own overhead and inconsistent policies and levels of service. It sucks as a shelter worker, must suck even more as a houseless person trying to receive services.
Also the site in the picture is nightmarish. I've worked at some pretty nice outside shelters/tinyhome villages, but that looks like it combines all the worst parts of living outside and living in a congregate shelter.
(we should just give people homes, of course)
Oh my god I know. It's the worst when agencies are hostile towards eachother, too. Like we have a greater purpose to work towards here, y'all.
There are safe sleep camps operated by an agency in town and at least when I've gone to them they've been pretty nice for what they are. People can lock their doors and have pets and have at most 16 people living there. AND the huts only cost 2k whereas these tents cost like 10k for some reason?! They have to be embezzling money because there ain't no way...
Someone posted about how Houston actually uses a housing first model, and has all agencies work together in the continuum of care but they must all have a housing first objective, and they've decreased homelessness by 90 percent. In HOUSTON!! Housing first has been proven time and time again in the U.S. and all over the world that it works but god forbid you give someone a place to live for free when I have to pay money for it!!!