The problem with this is that there were only two contractors that met the requirement, and as a result they could charge whatever they wanted since it was practically a no-bid contract.
Los Angeles could've spent dramatically less, and housed more people, had they simply purchased housing on the open market with the money. These prices are pure graft.
Corruption deep on both sides of the aisle.
Yes, but “find a political cypher of a celebrity, run in an irregular election leveraging a crisis created by Republican state and federal policies, and appoint an listen to a lot of establishment Dems as advisers while ignoring Republican Party insiders and donors because you don't need them once you have the dual advantages of celebrity and incumbency and don't care about the party as such” isn't really a structurally-repeatable strategy.
Man those were some crazy times.
I don't think it was known, in advance, that this would be the resulting cost, assuming that figure is accurate. I don't think any rational person would put forward such a program and that $837,000 to build a single studio house seems insane to everyone, not just non-Californians.
I think the point OP is trying to make is that the skyrocketing cost is partly caused by a certain class of privileged Californian's continuing to fight the effort to build more housing.
That's not what is happening. Per the article:
14% of the units build exceeded $700,000 each, and one project in pre-development is estimated to cost almost $837,000 per unit.
Do you have any evidence of that?
> Spending $837,000 to build a single studio to house a single homeless person seems insane to most of the country.
That's not what is happening, in any meaningful way.
This is a totally valid question. Wouldn't the overwhelming liberal majority rule in California be evidence in and of itself? I guess there could be liberals in name who enact conservative policy (or maybe little policy at all), but I haven't seen evidence of that.
It's a very good point. I find it very disingenuous to claim republicans are at fault in a blue state like Claifornia. The null hypothesis should be democrats are responsible for the state (good or bad) of California. Anyone, who claims otherwise, should provide evidences for their claim.
Good points.
First, what do the outcomes depend on? Policies of California state and local government are only limited factors. They do not create the economy, migration, weather, real estate development, etc. etc. (though they some limited effect on all of them). There are many other powers in the world. The government's power to control events is pretty limited.
Second, do we see any correlation between California government and these outcomes? Homelessness has existed worldwide probably for all time. A fundamental question is, with what is increased homelessness correlated?
Third, we don't know what the outcomes would be without the policy or with other policies. Negative outcomes don't indicate bad decisions - things could be worse. If you are dying of terminal disease, you don't assume the doctor's decisions are the cause, and therefore we'd be better off without healthcare. We are dealing with a difficult problem.
Finally, not all decisions and policies are partisan; people and publics are not politically consistent anwyay, and make policies for all sorts of reasons. And California has had Republican government on and off for a long time, and anything effects of government policy you see now are the outcome of decades of governance.
You can find a nice graphic of homelessness by state here: https://www.usich.gov/tools-for-action/map/#fn[]=1300&fn[]=2...
States like CA and NY seem to have the most growth in homeless population. That might be considered supporting evidence.
"They do not create the economy, migration, weather, real estate development, etc. etc. (though they some limited effect on all of them). There are many other powers in the world. The government's power to control events is pretty limited." I disagree with this statement, look at all the shutdowns as of late. The government seems to have almost unlimited power which court systems are unwilling to check, they can literally shut entire sectors of the economy down and stop home showings, in direct contradiction to your statement. In normal times they hold enormous influence over these sectors with licensing requirements, regulatory schemes, and political corruption. The result is migration, which also as of late has resulted in net outflows in CA, NY, and IL.
> The result is migration, which also as of late has resulted in net outflows in CA, NY, and IL.
Those outflows began decades before Coronoavirus.