Discussing deaths of homeless people, Fox guest says that providing housing would just make the problem worse
Dennis Prager: “The more you spend, the more homeless you will produce. ... More people will come to Los Angeles, you will have more fecal matter in the streets.”
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From the December 6, 2019, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): All right, the homeless crisis in California continuing to spiral out of control. More than 1,000 homeless people died in Los Angeles county just last year.
AINSLEY EARHARDT (CO-HOST): Well, hoping to curb the epidemic, Los Angeles voters approved a $1.2 billion program to build housing for the homeless back in 2016. But, by the end of this year, only 1% of those apartments will be ready to use.
PETE HEGSETH (GUEST CO-HOST): Joining us now to react, radio talk show host and founder of PragerU, Dennis Prager. Dennis, thank you so much for joining us this morning, always love having you. So, $1 billion spent, but it's not ready. Any of this surprise you?
DANNIS PRAGER (PRAGERU FOUNDER): Well, it's not just that it's not ready, it's not a good idea. The more you spend, the more homeless you will produce. That is the point here. And unfortunately, what we have here is what Thomas Sowell, the great economic thinker, conservative thinker, pointed out many years ago: First stage thinking, that characterizes all left-wing thinking. They never ask what will our good intentions produce? And very often they produce terrible things. So, if you build more places for homeless people to stay, $600,000, $500,000, $400,000 apartments, more people will come to Los Angeles, you will have more fecal matter in the streets, and, in fact, one man, a head of a mission there, had his leg amputated helping the homeless because he stepped into some of this fecal matter and got a staph infection. I mean, it's beyond belief that this is happening in the United States of America at this time.
KILMEADE: And it's not really unbelievable, because a lot of the liberal policies seem to be popular to the homeless. If you look at the major cities in San Francisco, Los Angeles, we're seeing it in Austin, Texas, too. If you welcome it, they will come. So in 2019, there was 59,936 homeless. That's up from 2018 significantly, where there was 52,765. So it's proving your point exactly.