A Million Reasons Why Los Angeles Could End Homelessness

We are the epitome of the first world clashing with the third. European luxury cars cruise by people sleeping under a lean-to, as if it is morally justified to drive a car worth more than a house where that sleeping person could inhabit.
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We are the land where it never rains. Well, our temperate weather is pleasantly sunny most of the time, not some drought-stricken desolate desert.

We are a land that worships cars. Those ultimate driving machines that give us the ability to cruise our convertibles along our beautiful coastlines, while the rest of the country is digging out from under the snow.

We are a city filled with angels. At least that is the definition of our name.

We are Los Angeles, California -- a land that includes 126,000 millionaires. Where the President helicopters in, blocking Westside traffic for hours, to host a million dollar fundraiser for his political party. Where political candidates from all political persuasions, frequent regularly to shake down this city's money trees.

Sadly, we are also the land with the most unsheltered people in the whole country. We have 58,000 people who have no homes, and two-thirds are living on the streets.

Such irony. A city with 126,000 millionaires also possesses 58,000 people without homes.

We are the epitome of the first world clashing with the third. European luxury cars cruise by people sleeping under a lean-to, as if it is morally justified to drive a car worth more than a house where that sleeping person could inhabit.

Luxury lofts are built in our city center directly overlooking a land of homelessness that most of the country refers to as skid row. Such a paradox.

But there is a solution. With twice as many millionaires than persons who are homeless, the solution to this city's homelessness is within our grasp.

Sure, those of us working to end homelessness beg the federal government for additional rental assistance vouchers. We knock on the doors of private foundations, in hopes that more proceeds from their stock portfolio will fund additional innovative service programs.

We host meetings after meetings, discussing new ways to approach this old problem. We rally together to push for changes in policies and additions to public funding. Or, at the very least, we promote coordination of existing resources.

But the answer to homelessness in this angelic city is staring in front of us. We simply assign two millionaires to every one homeless person, and we are done. We can call it the "Two-For-One" program.

They can pay for a person's mental health care, pay for the cost of rehab, provide the means to get a job, cover the tab of an apartment security deposit and pay $1,000 per month for a tiny apartment.

The two millionaires could split the costs in half, or alternate months of paying the rent. I know they are busy making money, or skiing in Aspen, or watching new films in Cannes or whatever millionaires are busy doing. So alternating the responsibility would fit their lifestyle.

And with a "Two-For-One" solution, the rest of us in the homeless services and housing world could simply shut down our operations.

Because homelessness would be solved.

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