Councilmember Mike Jordan
Albeit disappointing, it comes as no surprise that Santa Barbara City Councilmember Mike Jordan’s answer to every government problem is “more money.”
In this case, it’s more money to solve the homeless problem by floating a bond or increasing sales tax.
Never has more money been spent to solve the homeless problem. Yet today, never has the homeless problem been worse. That would leave any reasonably intelligent person to conclude that money is not the answer.
I am tired of walking to work each day and stepping over homeless people sprawled out on the State Street sidewalks. Fed up with their trash on the ground two feet from a garbage container. Done with the hypodermic needles and human waste in the planters.
Yet some on our City Council want to again reach into the pockets of the productive citizens of this community to better accommodate and serve the homeless.
A few members of the City Council point to the Rose Garden Inn experiment as a rousing success. That’s where $2.8 million was spent to house 66 homeless in hotel rooms with 27 of the 66 returning to our streets and no long-term tracking of the other 39. Only in government-speak would that be considered a success.
James H. Smith
Santa Barbara
