Housing First is a disaster. I saw Sacramento’s homeless chaos firsthand

This post was originally published on this site.

Spencer Pratt blasts failed Democrats on crime, homelessness

Spencer Pratt, Los Angeles mayoral candidate, criticizes current policies by ‘failed’ Democrats on �Friends.’ He discusses his campaign focus on rooting out crime, addressing homelessness with mandatory treatment and rebuilding the city.

America’shomelessness crisis is routinely framedas a housing crisis.

It is not.

It is a crisis born from the collapse of accountability at every level of the system.Nowhere are the consequences of that collapse more visible than inCalifornia— and especially in its capital city, Sacramento.

In 2016, California became the only state in the nation to formally adopt the federal government’s Housing First mandate as its sole taxpayer-funded approach to homelessness, directingbillions in state and federaldollars toward subsidized-for-life apartments with no accountability for sobriety, treatment, or work — ever.

WHY BLUE STATE POLICIES ARE CAUSING EVEN MORE HOMELESSNESS IN AMERICA

Sacramento County followed in 2017, embracing the housing-only model, despite repeated warnings from frontline providers that housing alone would never adequately address theaddiction, mental illness, trauma or behavioral health challenges that so often accompany homelessness.

Those warnings proved tragically accurate.

The problem was never simply homelessness and the solution was never simply apartments.

Under this mandate, homelessness rose nearly 35% nationally.In California, it surged 40%.In Sacramento County, the homeless population more than doubled.

NEWSOM JUST MADE A CATASTROPHIC MISTAKE ON CALIFORNIA’S HOMELESSNESS DISASTER

But even more alarming than the numbers was what society increasingly learned to tolerate: human deterioration, environmental destruction,exploding encampments and escalating publicdisorder, all while accountability and expectations were systematically stripped from the system itself.

That’s because the problem was never simply homelessness, and the solution was never simply apartments.

Waterways, parks and sidewalks did not become wastelands because of a lack of housing.They were devastated by a policy framework that systematically removed recovery, restoration and accountability from the center of homelessness policy.

NEWSOM JUST TOOK A PAGE FROM TRUMP.BUT THERE’S MORE TO DO TO KEEP CALIFORNIA A GOLDEN STATE

What followed was entirely predictable: tens of thousands of needles and shopping carts strewn across rivers, canals and public spaces asencampments became government-sanctioned waiting roomsfor permanent housing that often never comes.

As vulnerable human beings are left idle for years without treatment or purpose, social decay takes root — and what should shock the public conscience becomes normalized.

Most heartbreaking of all was our time walking Sacramento’s streets, where we saw human beings visibly deteriorate physically, mentally and spiritually while passersby barely looked up — no shock, no outrage, no gasp.

This is what we saw in Sacramento last week, as a colleague and I spent one day there working with the River City Waterway Alliance — a volunteer group made up largely of retirees who have quietly become one of the last lines of defense protecting Sacramento’s waterways from environmental collapse.We spent another day working with the Sacramento County Sheriff’s HOT Team, which removed an estimated 5,000 pounds of waste from a canal that the team had fully cleared just one month earlier.

LA COUNTY HOMELESS SPENDING UNDER THE MICROSCOPE OF NEWLY APPOINTED US ATTORNEY

One conclusion became impossible to escape: America’s homelessness crisis is, at its core, a crisis of zero accountability — and Sacramento is the telltale sign of what happens when accountability collapses, ideology replaces outcomes, and leadersrefuse to confront the consequencesof their own policies.

An aerial view of the California State Capitol on February 01, 2023 in Sacramento, California.(Justin Sullivan/Justin Sullivan)

Realities in Sacramento alone paint a staggering picture:

Over the past three years, Alliance volunteers removed nearly 4 million pounds of waste from Sacramento waterways — including 29,000 needles, 19,000 shopping carts and more than 70,000 batteries.

CALIFORNIA IS BROKE, BUT IT’S NOT TOO LATE FOR THE REST OF US

Meanwhile, the death rate among the homeless population more than doubled over that same period.

In one year, Sacramento County’s Sheriff’s HOT Team visited nearly 4,600 camps, closed over 1,300 of them, and cleared 3 million pounds of trash from homeless encampments.

Yet as volunteers andlaw enforcementstruggle to contain the fallout, Sacramento’s homeless population grew by another 13% last year alone — an additional 1,000 individuals — further compounding a crisis the region was already failing to keep pace with.

SEC SCOTT TURNER: BLAME DRUGS AND MENTAL ILLNESS, NOT PRESIDENT TRUMP, FOR THE CHAOS GRIPPING OUR STREETS

The deterioration is accelerating far faster than it can be contained, and the sheer scale of the destruction is almost impossible to comprehend unless you witness it firsthand.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom with two American flags in the background.

California Gov.Gavin Newsom looks on during a bill signing event related to redrawing the state’s congressional maps on Aug.21, 2025, in Sacramento, California. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

But most heartbreaking of all was our time walking Sacramento’s streets, where we saw human beings visibly deteriorate physically, mentally and spiritually while passersby barely looked up — no shock, no outrage, no gasp.In Sacramento, this level of suffering and societal breakdown is now tolerated.

Yet none of this was inevitable.

THIS IS HOW WE’LL KNOW IF CALIFORNIA GOV.GAVIN NEWSOM’S EPIPHANY ON ‘LIBERAL GOVERNANCE’ IS REAL

For years, volunteers with the River City Waterway Alliance begged local and state leaders to confront the accelerating environmental destruction unfolding across Sacramento’s waterways.At the very same time, Gov.Gavin Newsomvetoed legislation that would have created a sober living housing set-aside — despite pleas from individuals struggling with addiction, frontline providers and mayors across California who warned the state desperately needed more recovery-focused options within its homelessness system.

To their credit, the city and county are now responding.But repeated pleas to the governor, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Wildlife Conservation Board, and even the Sacramento chapter of the Sierra Club — organizations with real power and publicly stated missions tied directly to these issues — were met with silence.

Crickets.

At the very same time, the Sheriff’s HOT Team, which is actively containing the destruction, now faces the chopping block as county leaders grapple with a $100 millionbudget deficit.

That tells you everything you need to know about the priorities of the current system and the elected officials leading it.

Today, Sacramento stands as a warning to the rest of the nation about what happens whenaccountability is stripped away, whenleaders refuse to confront the consequences of their own failed policies, and when voters continue returning those same leaders to power even as human suffering, environmental destruction, public disorder and societal collapse accelerate in plain sight.

That is the real crisis.Not simply homelessness.Not simply housing.

onelink.me/xLDS?pid=AppArticleLink&af_web_dp=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.

It’s the collapse of accountability itself.

Michele Steeb is the founder of Free Up Foundation and author of “Answers Behind the RED DOOR: Battling the Homeless Epidemic,” based on her 13 years as CEO of Northern California’s largest program for homeless women and children.She is a visiting fellow with the Discovery Institute’s Fix Homelessness Initiative.Follow them on Twitter: @DiscoveryCWP and @SteebMichele.