Dori: Mayor Durkan’s homeless plan is just more of the same

Mayor Jenny Durkan made a speech Wednesday about how the city intends to get thousands of homeless people off the streets.

Do we have to get the homeless off the streets? Absolutely. And for those who want help, I want all the help available — drug treatment, mental health treatment, job counseling.

RELATED: Dori asks why homeless camps are not checking for warrants

The thing is, I’m not seeing enough about getting people clean and getting people jobs. I’m afraid we’re going to have this permanent class of people that is beholden to government and dependent on government for everything in their lives.

I also want to hear what we’re going to do about the taxpaying, property-owning or property-renting citizens, the people who are having their cars and houses broken into. Those people living near the encampments who are seeing their lives get turned upside-down.

Down in Portland, a 25-year-old homeless guy was on the property of a man in his 60s. The property owner asked the homeless man to leave his property. The homeless man stabbed the property owner 17 times, and now the victim is fighting for his life. All because he didn’t want a presumably drug-addicted vagrant living on his property. There is such an entitlement mentality fostered by the government’s approach to all this.

The idea of plunging a knife into a human being 17 times is horrifying. It’s a level of barbarism that is unimaginable. Why is it that the citizens have to clear away their property? Why can’t the cops do so? It’s because the cops’ hands are tied by the government.

Here’s the part that nobody has answered in city government — we already spend more money on homelessness than any city and county in America on a per capita basis. We spend $200 million per year. And what no one in the homeless industrial crisis has answered is: Why do we have the fastest-growing crisis in the country if we spend more money than anyone else?

Durkan did not say one thing about enforcing drug laws on the people who will not accept help. She talked about the two new tiny house villages the city is building, though I’m sure she wouldn’t want one of those in her neighborhood.

She mentions data, data, data. It’s like yada, yada, yada. If you tried to play a drinking game every time she mentions the word “data,” you’d be hammered. They don’t have any proof that their system works. The only real data they have is that these encampments increase crime.

Follow @http://www.twitter.com/dorimonson