Tag: homelessness

Barack Obama Throws Gavin Newsom Under the Bus Over His Homelessness Scandal

Former President Barack Obama addressed the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles, describing the situation as a moral failure in a wealthy nation and calling for policies that combine compassion with practical solutions.

Speaking about conditions in the city, Obama said the issue demands both ethical clarity and political realism.

“The same would be true. Let’s say here in Los Angeles, around the homeless issue, I think morally, ethically speaking, it is an atrocity that in a country that’s wealthy, we have people just on the streets, and we should have a We should insist on policies that recognize their full humanity people who are houseless and be able to provide them the help and resources that they need,” Obama said.

He argued that efforts to address homelessness must acknowledge both the needs of those living on the streets and the concerns of the broader public.

“but we should also recognize that the average person doesn’t want to have to navigate around a tent city in the middle of downtown,” Obama said.

Obama suggested that public support for increased funding and services depends on presenting a strategy that balances compassion with visible order.

“and that we’re not going to be able to build a working majority and support for the resources that we need to help folks like that, whether it’s drug treatment or temporary housing or what have you, we’re not going to be able to generate support for it if we simply say, You know what, it’s not their fault, and so they should be able to do whatever they want, because that’s a losing political strategy,” he said.

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The Dark Question That Looms Over New York After Mamdani’s Failed Winter Storm Response

Don’t get Vickie Paladino started on New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The Republican councilwoman appeared on Katie Pavlich Tonight yesterday and took the man behind the barn over the disastrous snow removal operation following last month’s winter storm. It’s getting to the point where even Mamdani’s supporters are yelling outside Gracie Mansion. Besides mountains of snow and ice, there are piles of trash everywhere. It’s what you’d expect from a mayor who hasn’t run anything, doesn’t know anything, and, as a result, can’t do anything related to this job.

Paladino rightly called Mamdani a “media whore” who doesn’t know what he’s doing. Let the city workers, who have more experience than the mayor on many fronts, do their jobs. This winter storm was bad, but not unprecedented—the city has had some serious weather events. I hated Bill de Blasio, but even he was able to clear the roads and get this kind of work done.

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While Homeless New Yorkers Freeze, the NYT Wants Us to Know This About Mayor Mamdani

It must be nice to be a Democrat. Having that magical (D) after your name means you can say and do the most vile things, and govern with gross incompetence, and the media will run interference for you. Just look at how Vogue gushed over Gavin Newsom, completely ignoring how the guy has driven California into the ground.

In New York, not only are the streets piled with mountains of rat-infested garbage, but at least 18 homeless people have now died because of the cold.

The New York Post reports that the latest victim of Mamdani’s policies is an 86-year-old man named Charles Williams, who was found on a Bronx street Saturday. All Mamdani had to say about it was, “Each loss of life is a tragedy. We will continue to hold their families in our thoughts.”

As one X user pointed out, the media would be singing a different tune if someone else were living in Gracie Mansion right now.

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THE WARMTH OF COLLECTIVISM: New York City Homeless Death Toll Jumps to 18 Amid Freezing Temps

Zohran Mamdani has been Mayor of New York City for a little over a month and during that time, 18 homeless people in the city have died from exposure.

Mamdani policy forbids NYC police from dismantling homeless encampments and forcing homeless people indoors. That policy may sound good to leftists on paper but it is killing people.

This is the same reason that Mamdani has failed the tests of snow removal and trash pick-up. He does not want to do the ‘work’ parts of being mayor. He is too busy making videos about taxing the rich. That’s the fun part for him about being mayor, and what he thinks his real job is.

The New York Post reports:

NYC outdoor death toll climbs to 18 — as shelter worker recalls finding latest deep-freeze fatality: ‘I couldn’t help him’

The death toll from the city’s brutal cold spell climbed to 18 over the weekend — with a shell-shocked shelter worker stumbling upon the latest fatality of the historic freeze, he told The Post.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani confirmed the 18th outdoor death Monday morning, during an unrelated press conference celebrating the opening of the Shirley Chisholm Recreation Center in Brooklyn.

“Each loss of life is a tragedy. We will continue to hold their families in our thoughts,” he said.

The latest person to die was an 86-year-old homeless man, later identified as Charles Williams, according to sources and City Hall officials. His body was found just after 9 a.m. Saturday on the street at East Gun Hill Road and Seymour Avenue in The Bronx.

Adam Faad, 26, said he felt helpless after finding the unresponsive man on the sidewalk.

Faad, a security worker at a homeless shelter who was volunteering at one of the city’s “warming centers” on Saturday, said he spotted the man, who looked asleep, on the street while on his way to his mosque.

Is this what Mamdani meant by the warmth of collectivism?

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San Francisco Ends $5M-A-Year Program That Supplied Alcohol To Homeless Addicts

Sigh. It’s not parody. It’s San Francisco. The city is shutting down a controversial program that used millions in taxpayer funds to provide alcohol to homeless residents struggling with addiction, according to the NY Post.

Mayor Daniel Lurie said the city will end the Managed Alcohol Program, which cost about $5 million each year and began during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“For years, San Francisco was spending $5 million a year to provide alcohol to people who were struggling with homelessness and addiction — it doesn’t make sense, and we’re ending it,” Lurie told The California Post.

The program was launched in April 2020, when the city placed unhoused residents in hotels during lockdowns. Medical staff supplied controlled amounts of beer and liquor to prevent dangerous withdrawal symptoms while stores and bars were closed. Although intended as a temporary measure, it continued for nearly six years.

During its operation, the program served only 55 people, translating to an average cost of roughly $454,000 per client.

Now, Lurie says the city has fully pulled its support.

“We have ended every city contract for that program,” he said.

Community Forward, the nonprofit that managed the initiative in recent years, confirmed that the city has terminated its funding. Financial records show the group received millions in public money, much of it spent on staff salaries.

San Francisco’s program was the first of its kind in the United States, modeled loosely on similar efforts in Canada. Unlike other harm-reduction policies, such as needle exchanges, MAP directly supplied alcohol to people already dependent on it.

Since taking office last year, Lurie has moved away from long-standing harm-reduction policies. He has also ended the distribution of drug-use equipment and pushed for stricter enforcement of street drug activity.

“Under my administration, we made San Francisco a recovery-first city and ended the practice of handing out fentanyl smoking supplies so people couldn’t kill themselves on our streets,” Lurie said.

“We have work to do, but we have transformed the city’s response, and we are breaking the cycles of addiction, homelessness and government failure that have let down San Franciscans for too long.”

Last year, he warned open-air drug markets that enforcement would increase.

“If you do drugs on our streets, you will be arrested,” Lurie said. “And instead of sending you back out in crisis, we will give you a chance to stabilize and enter recovery.”

The Post writes that recovery advocates welcomed the decision to end MAP. Tom Wolf, a former homeless addict who now works in outreach, said the program wasted public funds.

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Proof Positive: CA’s Homeless Industrial Complex Is Just a Giant Money-Laundering Operation

Laura Ingraham and Bill Essayli detailed new developments in California’s Homelessness Fraud and Corruption Task Force during a recent exchange focused on the state’s handling of taxpayer-funded homeless services and a growing number of criminal cases tied to misuse of public money.

Ingraham opened the discussion by pointing to the origins of the task force and its narrow focus on homelessness programs, asking why those services became the priority of the investigation.

“Back in April, you launched this task force to investigate corruption in California. You focused on homeless services. Tell us why. This might be just the tip of the fraud iceberg here,” Ingraham said.

Essayli explained that his background as both a former prosecutor in Los Angeles and a former state legislator shaped his decision to examine homelessness spending, particularly given the scale of public investment and the lack of measurable improvement.

“Yeah, Laura, remember, before I was the prosecutor here in LA, I was in the legislature. Over the last five years, California spent $24 billion on homelessness, and it only got worse. So of course, the question is, where did the money go? What happened to 24 billion?” Essayli said.

He said those questions led directly to the creation of the Homelessness Fraud and Corruption Task Force. Essayli acknowledged that federal investigations require time, even as public frustration grows.

“So I launched this task force, and just quickly, I mean, federal investigations do take time. I know the public wants action. It takes time to put these cases together,” he said.

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California man arrested for allegedly stealing millions in homeless funds

California officials have arrested Alexander Soofer, who allegedly used tens-of-millions of taxpayer dollars meant to house and feed the homeless to fund his lavish lifestyle, Fox News has learned. 

Soofer was the executive director of the charity Abundant Blessings, which received government funding for its work.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli said in a news conference on Friday that Soofer has been charged with wire fraud, a felony that carries a maximum of 20 years in prison.

“I want to tell you a little bit about his organization, Abundant Blessings. It was a South Los Angeles-based charity whose purpose is to help house and properly feed the estimated 72,000 homeless people living in the greater Los Angeles area. His organization received more than $23 million in taxpayer funds for the purpose of housing and feeding the homeless,” Essayli said.

“California was pushing this money out quickly. A lot of money went out the door, with, frankly, very little vetting, very little checks and balances. And, he’s one of the individuals that got it in this organization,” he added.

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CA Mayor Drops a Bombshell On the NGO Scheme Defrauding Americans

El Cajon Mayor Bill Wells appeared in an interview with Real America’s Voice host Dan Ball to criticize California’s homeless funding structure, arguing that billions of dollars intended to address homelessness are being allocated without input from local governments most affected by the crisis.

Wells said cities like El Cajon, which he said have absorbed a disproportionate share of San Diego County’s homeless population, are excluded from decisions about how homelessness funds are distributed.

He placed blame on the California Homeless Task Force and county leadership, saying elected local officials are sidelined while non-governmental organizations control the money.

“The County board says we have no idea how much is spent. To make matters worse. They’re in conjunction with a homeless Task Force, that they’re the people who are on that homeless Task Force decide where all the money goes,” Wells said.

“Well, guess who serves on that homeless Task Force. All the heads of the NGOs. So the NGO’s get to make the decisions about where the money is spent and guess where they spend it?”

Ball interrupted Wells to clarify his point, comparing the structure to allowing those who benefit from the funds to control their distribution.

“I’m sorry to interrupt you, but are you telling me that’s like letting the inmates run a prison, so the people that get to say where the money goes. Are the people that are getting the money in the nonprofit groups,” Ball asked.

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Crime and Homelessness, the Debate over Involuntary Civil Commitment

President Trump’s recent executive order, Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets, has reopened a long-standing debate over involuntary civil commitment of adults into psychiatric care facilities. The executive order frames homelessness as a public safety crisis driven primarily by drug addiction and serious mental illness, citing record levels of street homelessness during the previous administration and arguing that existing federal and state programs have failed because they do not address root causes.

It asserts that widespread vagrancy, open drug use, and disorder have made cities unsafe and that shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings through civil commitment is both humane and necessary to restore public order.

Support for President Trump’s approach comes from numerous high-profile cases involving individuals with documented mental illness and extensive criminal histories who were repeatedly released back onto the streets before committing violent crimes.

In California in 2025, Jordan Murray committed a fatal stabbing in Fair Oaks. Murray had previously been diagnosed with a mental disorder and had committed multiple robberies in 2024. He was released through California’s Mental Health Diversion program with no oversight or accountability. Sacramento County Sheriff Jim Cooper later stated that jail would have been the safest option.

In August 2025 in North Carolina, Decarlos Dejuan Brown Jr. fatally stabbed Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee, on a Charlotte light rail train. Brown had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, had a lengthy criminal history, and had previously been denied extended involuntary commitment despite family requests. He was released with no ongoing supervision. The case led to the passage of House Bill 307, known as Iryna’s Law.

In November 2025 in Chicago, Illinois, Lawrence Reed set Bethany MaGee, a 26-year-old woman, on fire on a CTA Blue Line train. Reed had more than 70 prior arrests, multiple felony convictions, and a long history of mental illness. He had violated probation and electronic monitoring conditions before the attack and had been released after earlier violent incidents. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson later stated that Reed was a danger to himself and others and that the system had failed to intervene. Reed was charged with federal terrorism on a mass transportation system and faces life in prison.

These cases share clear patterns. The perpetrators had extensive criminal histories, documented mental illness often combined with substance abuse, and were repeatedly released despite escalating violence. System failures occurred at multiple points, including premature hospital discharges, courts declining involuntary commitment absent proof of immediate dangerousness, ignored probation violations, and ineffective electronic monitoring. The result was a revolving door of arrest, brief hospitalization, release, and reoffense.

The victims were strangers targeted in random public attacks. After each incident, officials acknowledged that the system had failed, that the individuals involved should not have been on the streets, and that the tragedies could have been prevented.

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Fed prosecutor warns more arrests coming after ‘massive’ fraud found in California homeless services: ‘We followed the money’

A federal prosecutor probing corruption in California’s homeless services promised that more arrests are coming after two real estate executives were busted for allegedly bilking taxpayers out of millions.

First Assistant US Attorney Bill Essayli told The Post a coalition of federal agencies has uncovered wrongdoing on a staggering scale as he blasted Democrats as “colossal failures” for letting corruption fester for years.

“We followed the money and very quickly we uncovered massive amounts of fraud,” Essayli said.

The recent indictments of housing executives Cody Holmes and Steven Taylor were just the tip of the iceberg, as the duo face accusations that they pocketed state funds intended for homeless housing, the prosecutor said.

“That’s just beginning to scratch the surface,” Essayli said. “We have dozens of other investigations ongoing and we expect to bring more charges this year, and perhaps this month.”

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