Fox & Friends guest says California needs to put homeless people in government facilities: “We have people that are thinking it is OK to just live on the street”
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From the September 19 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
STEVE DOOCY (CO-HOST): President Trump threatening to take action if California state lawmakers do not try to fix the growing homeless crisis out west.
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DOOCY: Right now, more than 36,000 are homeless in Los Angeles and more than 8,000 are homeless in San Francisco. Here to react is the founder and president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education and a California resident, Star Parker. Star, good morning to you.
STAR PARKER (PRESIDENT, CENTER FOR URBAN RENEWAL AND EDUCATION): Good morning.
DOOCY: All right, the president is reminding people that California is all messed up right now in this department.
PARKER: Well it is all messed up in this department. It has been for a long time. I work in Washington, D.C., but my residency is still in California, and we ignore a lot of problems. When people say we're la-la land, we are la-la land to a certain extent. And this is one of the problems that has been ignored. And what the liberals have done is thought that they could solve this as a housing crises and we've just done nothing but throw money at it, including the federal government. We're up to about $4 billion a year that we're throwing at this challenge and yet we're not going to solve the problem, because the first thing we shouldn't do is think that it's a housing crises. People's lives have broken down. And they have broken down in the homeless population in five different categories. So the only thing we're going to do to fix this, is to at least start at the first question, what has caused this? How do we then fix it?
DOOCY: Well, and Star, you know, a lot of it is mental health, a lot of it is drugs. And so you're right, you know, if you just say OK, we've got a place for you to live without addressing the other issues, that is a problem. But you know the West Coast lawmakers. They want more of Washington's money. Would you suggest that Washington give California more?
PARKER: Absolutely not. And in fact I'm so thankful that the president has weighed in on this because what's happening in California is really a national phenomenon. We have people that are thinking that it's OK just to live on the street. It's not just those that are mentally ill, and/or those that are drug-addicted. We have those that are alcohol-addicted, and their behaviors are different. We have those that are really in economic distress. Their behaviors are different. And then we have those that are disabled. So homelessness is breaking down in five different categories. And I think that what is being proposed, or at least thought about, to maybe we should have some type of compulsory engagement with these folks. Let's get them out to government facilities and let's fix what's broken down in their lives in these five different categories.