The price tag for a 'first-class' high-rise for the homeless and drug addicts in the utopian progressive hellhole neighborhood of Skid Row, located in downtown Los Angeles, has topped nearly $600k per unit. The building comprises 228 studios and 50 one-bedroom apartments, with the total project costing taxpayers $165 million. This project was financed by state housing funds and $56 million in state tax credits.
Taxpayers are funding essentially a 'Hilton' for the homeless, equipped with a soundproofed music room, art room, gym, TV lounge, computer room/library, six balconies, ground-floor cafe, and a two-story glass wall facing a courtyard.
According to the LA Times, the 278-unit tower will open later this month. The project aims to remove homeless residents from city streets and encampments.
"We're trying to make our little corner of the world look and feel a little better," Kevin Murray, president and chief executive of Weingart Center Assn., who leads the project, told the local paper.
Murray, a former state senator and head of Weingart since 2011, is betting big on Skid Row's future. He plans to open a second tower with 302 units within the next 18 months and is already planning a third tower with 104 units.
Pete White, executive director of the Skid Row advocacy group Los Angeles Community Action Network, said the towers are "one important feature of what a stabilized Skid Row can look like. We 100% need more housing in Skid Row."
"I see the tower as providing a great need, a great housing need in Skid Row and a design that says poor residents are worthy," White said.
We must ask the hard question: How can this be the most efficient use of public funds?
One LA Times user wrote, "This is an outrageous waste of our money, money that is going straight into developers' pockets. And the politicians to whom they donate."
"I hope they have heavy duty plumbing fixtures, utility outlets, fireproofed the entire place, concrete walls, metal doors, so serious vandalism can be minimized," another LA Times user said.
Only progressives reward the drug-addicted homeless population with luxury housing and free services on the dime of the taxpayer, while the majority of Americans are struggling to pay rent in the era of failed Bidenomics.
