Today’s topic: progressives wreck homelessness!
Seemed like a great idea at the time — to progressives, anyway. Housing First — put the “homeless” into taxpayer-supported housing, no questions asked. Get the alcoholics, mentally ill, and criminally inclined off the heating grates. Put them under a roof. Hope they seek treatment. If not, no worries. Be not judgmental!
The City of Madison spent $20.6 million of taxpayer money on two such housing projects, 60-unit Rethke Terrace on the east side and 45-unit Tree Lane on the west side. Then the predictable happened. “A staggering 3,681 police calls” since their construction in 2016 and 2018, according to the excellent account from reporter Dean Mosiman of the WI State Journal. So many that the police set up permanent shop there.
So dysfunctional that Mayor Satya’s city government declared both places chronic nuisances. (Can we get that designation for the Common Council?)
Now the company hired to manage Rethke Terrace and Tree Lane is kaputt. Who knows the real cost of surrounding neighborhoods ruined?
Blaska’s Bottom Line #1: Lack of shelter is not the problem — only the result of the problem, which is behavior of the self-destructive sort. Real help would put these troubled folks (we are sympathetic) into a sheltered workshop environment where they could be housed, fed, and monitored. Yes, a secured-access and -egress facility. Needed: Legislation to establish adjudicatory procedures that are not cumbersome but still protect some rights.
America once had chronic vagrancy laws.
No comment, he explained
We do not pile on here at the Werkes. So let us be the exception who praises Tim LeMonds, spokes guy for the Madison Metropolitan School District. He has always answered our questions promptly. The Head Groundskeeper hereabouts told Tim that he’s got the toughest job in town: flacking for Madison’s public schools. Hellz bellz, when Blaska was in the same line of work during the Thompson/McCallum administrations, we hated reporters, too! And we used to be one ourselves!
Blaska’s Bottom Line #2: We suggest that Mr. LeMonds is not the problem. MMSD is more opaque than Kim Jung-un’s North Korea. That is ultimately the responsibility of our elected school board, as long as we are speaking of dysfunction.
The right kind of hate — Don’t especially mind that Tony Evers is raising the gay flag over the State Capitol. Again. But did he have to play the Village People’s YMCA during the ceremony? In any event, we’ve already Budlighted the Democrat(ic) governor. Unlike the Los Angeles Dodgers, Jah Tony appears not to have invited the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Blaska hereby pledges not to attend a Dodger game played at Chavez Ravine for the remainder of the year!
Blaska’s Bottom Line #3: The message is this: hate is O.K. if you hate the right people; in their case, the Catholic Church.
Congratulations to Wisconsin champion Aiden Wijeyakulasuriya of Middleton who placed #21 in the Scripps National Spelling Bee. With that name, he should be a champion speller! Finishing first was 14 year old named Dev Shah from Florida. He is the 22nd champion in the last 24 years from Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, or Cambodia.
Blaska’s Bottom Line #4: Why, do you suppose, is that? Have you seen their language? Completely different from English!
When Joe Biden falls off the podium at next year’s Democrat(ic) convention,
who succeeds him?
(Blaska could beat Kamala Harris! Gavin Newsom, the former mayor of San Francisco?
Not after promoting billion of dollars in race-based reparations!)
14 responses to “Progressivism is a chronic nuisance”
[…] This post originally appeared at https://davidblaska.com/2023/06/02/progressivism-is-a-chronic-nuisance/ […]
In this house, we believe the housing projects are working.
Just keep them out of our neighborhoods. Also:
NO NEW STADIUM !!!!
Great! But can that kid spell Drump’s new word. “syllabolic”?
The 76 year-old, laughably illiterate Lazy @$$ Blogge Idiot TROLT, who can neither spell nor punctuate properly, questioning someone else’s English usage?
Priceless!
The Gotch
look it up mr tedious.
Saw the article too. Had to chuckle at the “chronically homeless singles and veterans.” I want to know exactly how many veterans are actually living in both of those buildings. My guess is none.
Rethke is all studios and 25 of the sixty units are reserved for veterans, almost all single men referred by the VA.
Tree Lane is for families and has no service contract with the VA.
A detail from the article you neglected to mention was the high vacancy rate in these progressive-built slums. Even people desperate for affordable housing in Madison (a sizeable chunk of the population) refuse to live there. Oh, and if you’re expecting the overpaid bureaucrats responsible for this boondoggle to say something like, “Sorry we got this wrong. Let’s try something else,” you’re in for a long wait.
This is a classic case of all carrot, no stick, i.e., the progressives’ favorite tactic and the result of a profound misunderstanding of human nature. I commend the Squire’s note of sympathy for the homeless, but I’d be more inclined to show sympathy if we didn’t live in a city where every social service under the sun is available free for the asking. If you can’t make even a minimal effort to improve your lot, you deserve to suffer the consequences–oh, wait, there are none, at least in Madison. And there’s the problem.
A female family friend was going thru the drive-thru at Walgreens’ across the street from the Tree Lane building when a loitering minority male carjacked her at noon time.
Also, the beauty salon facing the apartments had a lot of trouble with hangers on chatting up the women coming and going, plus trying to use their washrooms.
“…a loitering minority male carjacked her at noon time.”
Perhaps his needs weren’t being met…?
C’mon mm; these poor, poor, pitiful victimhoodied souls embrace no personal agency (acting White) due to Institutionalized Structurally Systemic Intersectional Fragility or some such phuque-witted, despicable Lefty bull$#!t excuse.
The Gotch
-do you want to explain your point without all the cute, STOOPID word play that makes you sound like a MORON.
Pitiably pathetic 76 year-old illiterate Lazy @$$ Blogge Idiot TROLT has less-than-nothing-to-say, yet still stumble/mumble/bumbles out an incoherent slobbering?
Priceless!
And eminently deserving of a Gotchie
The Gotch
“We suggest that Mr. LeMonds is not the problem.”
A Gathering Storm begs to differ; per the State Journal Editorial Board (no Righties, they!):
Our View: FIRE TIM LEMONDS For The Sake Of Madison’s Schools
The Gotch
Panhandlers have set up a canopy on highway 30 off ramp at highway 51. It looks like they have a whole family there. Maybe The City can put up permanent shelters to help the panhandlers. Mayor Soglin and the City Council was so wrong for passing the anti panhandler ordinance.