Federal Homeless Official Tours Santa Barbara Housing

Why am I working so hard - I would be much better off in this town if I was homeless or illegal. I am going to become homeless so I can live in a real house... I now get to pay for houses for the homeless while paying a king's ransom for a mobile home so I can afford to pay the taxes so the homeless can have a house. They need more than a house - chances are they need mental help drug and alcohol addiction help - what is wrong with the Rescue Mission? Not good enough for them I guess. I can't wait to see the condition of the houses we buy for them after a few years of no maintenance.. something like the projects I guess. and there are the usual suspects Das, Helene, Marty signing on with glee as they continue to rob from the middle class to give to the poor, as yet another conman breezes through town with an open wallet.

Just wait until word gets out about this through the underground homeless network - Santa Barbara will cease being a tourist destination and will quickly become even more of a homeless destination for every homeless person in America. As the working and professional class is forced out by taxes and high mortgages who is going to be left to foot the bill? Our leaders continue to attempt to solve poverty by making sure EVERYONE is equally poor. Goodbye middle class, all that is left will be the poor welfare recipients and those who already have it made. Oprah types. Hey all you homeless and illegals, come to socialist Santa Barbara land of free homes in paradise! Nobody has to work, just bang the drum and smoke all day in the sun. How does the song go? I don't want to work, I just want to bang on the drum all day...

Classic photo by the way... download it to your hard drive to remind yourself just who not to re-elect.

Check out the smirk on Manganos - face - you can almost hear him thinking "suckers"....

Look at the picture again and imagine the checks they are signing using your checkbook. The gleeful expressions are perfect as they use your money in an attempt to get the homeless monkey off their backs. They did the same thing to try to get the gang monkey off their backs - USED YOUR CHECKBOOK.

Hellooo .. it's awfully quiet in here, was it something I said?

The problem that doesn't get discussed is WHY housing is so ridiculously expensive. All we hear about is the mentally ill homeless that harrass people and curse at lampposts. We don't address the those forced into this lifestyle by circumstance and then sleeping in one's vehicle becomes a crime. (That'll solve the problem)

What were we doing as a society in decades past BEFORE this became a mainstream issue? Obviously we're doing SOMETHING wrong.

This is like the gang problem in the sense that while individual cases can be dealt with the underlying cause must be addressed.

I am always mystified when people who should know better, don't. They buy into all the garbage they are spoon-fed by the media and government, and instead of doing some research and learning what's REALLY going on, they kick the cat instead.

This has happened everywhere, throughout history. When the economy starts to slide, we get scared, then we get angry, then we look for someone to blame. It could be a specific race, or religion or socioeconomic status we train our sights on. Right now, it happens to be the homeless.

They are the easiest cats to kick; they can't hire high priced lawyers to help them fight back, they have to live with the misconceptions the media, government and assorted poverty pimp organizations shovel into the gullible public's heads, they are beaten down and worn out.

So people like RForsyth, who are frustrated, broke, and dancing as fast as they can to keep up with gas prices, soaring costs of housing, shrinking paychecks, and just barely making it, see an easy target in the homeless. It's too hard to go after the actual causes of their problems, and since they've been told that it's the homeless who are the cause of their grief, and the homeless are pretty defenseless, they go after them.

Kicking homeless people is like kicking the cat or beating up on a toddler; they can't really defend themselves all that well. They can make a lot of noise and scream when they get hurt, but they can't really hurt you back. For a frightened, frustrated person who has been told over and over that this target is the cause of their problems, it probably feels good to kick SOMEBODY.

After all, they can't kick the government, big bizznizz, or any of the other sources of poor money and resource management who have put us all in the position we are in.

So he kicks the cat.

People like this are more to be pitied than anything else. They don't have the information in hand. They see their dollar buying less every minute and they know they are still working hard, paying the bills and doing everything as they have always done...yet why are they struggling so hard...for so much less?

Why do we keep feeding that pig called government? How about the pigs called the Military and the School System? These organizations NEVER have enough of our money, and they keep demanding more and more. Meanwhile, we have no affordable health care, kids are being mowed down in Iraq like errant blades of grass in a bloody yard, and Johnny still can't read.

Let's start just with those three BIG pigs, and go from there.

What would no doubt help would be if everyone woke up, pulled the wool off of their eyes, and saw the truth and realized that for one thing, homeless and poor people are just the first line of casualties who can't keep up. We're next. Anyone who believes that the average working and middle class person is immune from losing everything is living in a fools paradise. But that's exactly what government and big business want us to think as we are funneled into the chute towards the slaughterhouse.

We're next. Stop blaming the pile of dead bodies stinking up your fools paradise. They aren't to blame for our misfortunes. WE are. Wake up before it's too late.

While all this is happening, the American electorate keeps choosing status quo politicians and God forbid that when someone votes for anything other than what the two-party duopoly offers they get accused of "wasting their vote".

Did anyone notice that yesterday the argument Barack has offered per the war has now shifted? Now he's saying that we need to focus on putting troops in Aghanistan as opposed to Iraq. There it is people, the Poltically Correct Progressive candidate is now on board with the ongoing War Machine and the untold billions we are spending to solve the problems in the Muslim world.

Yes, then there are the schools. Always telling us how if we just spend more $$$ it "will go a long way" (as our politicians love to tell us) in solving their problems but when they get the money they still complain that their walls are crumbling. Where does all the money go?

So the question that I don't hear ANY elected poltician ask is this: How did housing become so out of reach that so many people can't afford it? Only when we address WHY this is the case, can we actually arrive at a solution.

Clearly, the so-called liberal/progressive leaders of S.B. won't dig to the bottom of what is happening, or perhaps they would have to look at their own way of governance and change things. Either way, like the gang problem, road rage, and other ills that were not mainstream problems in decades past, we need to ask ourselves what we were doing differently as a society back when it wasn't a problem. Homeless shelters can keep some of the people warm, but they alone don't stop the problem from getting worse.

Umm Holly ... if you reread my comments I hope it is clear that I am not kicking the homeless, I am kicking the government "pig" as you describe it, for chasing after these problems with OUR checkbook, instead of looking for the cause and solving it. I think we are on the same page. How is us buying them houses going to solve their multiple problems? It isn't necessarily just the lack of a house that keeps people down in the spin cycle. And yes, we are next if the federal and local politicians keep spending our money in this wreckless way, just to get the homeless and gang monkeys off of their backs in order to appear to be doing something constructive to stay in office. We keep buying them houses and all it does is attract more homeless to the area. How many homes do we buy before everybody is broke and homeless and the whole Titanic sinks? Let's instead address the problems that are keeping them homeless in the first place rather than putting a bandaid on the symptom using OPM (other people's money). Look at their glee as they think this burden will be removed by writing a check from your checkbook.

Speaking of addressing the symptom instead of the cause, have a look at:

Mental Health Budget Slashed After All
http://www.independent.com/news/2008/jul...

So during times of a tight County budget, the City decides to spend money buying people houses, some of whom likely should be getting mental health attention instead is that how it works? Does any of this make sense? There seems to be too big of a wall between the County and City Leaders and no coordination. Maybe the Citys surplus should be spent on mental health instead of houses for the locos? Just a thought - my prediction is that after spending all this money, the problem will still increase, much like the way the gang issue was addressed by the City.

Well, Well. I guess I know where to move to when I finally give-up on being a productive member of society.
With FREE housing in an Expensive City, I can move back as soon as those homes are built.
I will follow the stream of dope-heads, illiterate, illegals, drunks and all other made-to-be-homeless people just like in the Eighties and early Nineties when we had East Coast people coming to Santa Barbara, Ca. to live off of the Heart renching, hand-ringing, bleeding heart librals who provided free money and shelter to who ever stumbled into the City.
Every since I moved to the East Coast, I have viewed Santa Barbara, as my Retiring destination.
I can have a beautiful plac to live, shelter, food, any female with dementional illussions to couple with and recieve three pay-checks (SSI, Disablity and Dependency).
Dependency: is where the State was alotting a check per month to those (99%) who were dependent on a drug of choice (Dope, Booze or Other) to attend counseling for said dependency but NO one ever did or will. The only counseling done is to buy more drugs from the local Latino gangs and Booze from the liquor store on lower State and Haley Street.
Thank you, Bleeding hearts, your providing me with a future retirement home, cost free.

Dou4now

Don't forget WIC (Women Infant and Children) the new stealth name for welfare for single parent illegal immigrants. I saw one the other day at the grocery store buying food with WIC coupons and then followed her out and watched her jump into her boyfriend's brand new Ford F250...wish I could afford one, I guess I'm working too hard and being foolish enough to pay for my own groceries and mortgage. We reward people now for being homeless, having more children out of wedlock...and wonder why we have the resulting problems and what we should do about it?

The problem with sucking the middle class dry by the way doesn't just affect the middle class, if it isn't obvious to some of our liberal progressive friends. If robbing from the rich to give to the poor sounds like a good idea, it isn't. It causes greater separation of classes and we go from poverty stricken people with HOPE to poverty stricken people without a chance. Tell that to Obama the next time he wants to talk about HOPE.

"Tell that to Obama the next time he wants to talk about HOPE."
RForsyth: Are you referring to the same Obama whose supporters think he's going to end the war yet talks about shifting the troops from Iraq to Afghanistan instead of bringing them home? (Which I saw on the news the other day) Is this also the same Obama who disowned his pastor (Jerimiah Wright) only after the press got wind of Wright's comments despite the fact that Obama had sat in the pulpit of that pastor's church for the previous 20 years?

Sure, just like Obama will end the war, he'll solve the homeless problem!

I wonder if these folks actually read the article before commenting? Ranting about liberals, saying that services should be provided instead of housing alone, complaining that this will cost more money. For heaven's sake, if they had carefully read the article, they'd realize:

1. Mangano is a Bush appointee, not a liberal.

2. He is not promoting housing INSTEAD of treatment for substance abuse and mental disability, but rather housing WITH those services.

3. The idea is to SAVE taxpayer money. Direct quote from article: "Studies recently completed in 65 cities and counties around the nation calculated that on average, a chronically homeless person on the streets costs taxpayers between $35,000 and $150,000 annually. To provide stable housing costs $13,000 to $25,000, which includes mental health and other support services" (e.g. jail, psych ward, etc.) As Mangano says, you don't have to be Warren Buffet to see the better investment.

Treedom asks an important question:

"I wonder if these folks actually read the article before commenting?"

Such a well-considered query demands an equally weighed and measured response:

"No."