STUDENT HOMELESSNESS? TRY 'EDUCATIONAL MOBILITY' AS PARENTS FLEE BLUE STATE FEES

KSBY News, in its never-ending quest to discover new categories of 'marginalized' populations, recently wrung its hands over nearly 10,000 Santa Barbara County students experiencing 'housing instability.' While the progressive pieties practically drip from the screen, The Whipping Post can’t help but notice the missing link in this sob story: the decades of progressive policies that have rendered our once-affordable county a playground for the wealthy and a burden for everyone else. Perhaps 'housing instability' is just the latest euphemism for middle-class parents fleeing the crushing taxes, endless regulations, and skyrocketing cost-of-living imposed by our 'enlightened' local leaders.

They wring their hands about students without permanent addresses, but never connect the dots to the stifling environmental mandates that drive up housing costs, the punitive business regulations that crush job growth, or the ever-expanding bureaucratic bloat that demands more and more taxpayer dollars. It's not 'homelessness,' it's 'economic displacement' orchestrated by the very politicians and special interest groups who then lament the consequences of their own actions. Of course, rather than addressing the root causes – like, say, building more homes without 10,000 layers of red tape – they’ll likely propose another taxpayer-funded program that funnels cash to 'consultants' and 'non-profits' while the problem persists, or more likely, worsens.

The real scandal isn't that some families are moving around to find a better economic footing; it's that California's blue-state governance has turned the 'Golden State' into a gilded cage where the only affordable option for many is to leave. These 'unhoused' students aren't victims of circumstance, they're often the children of parents making rational decisions to escape a system designed to extract wealth and redistribute it to favored constituencies. Perhaps if our local officials spent less time on virtue signaling and more time on fiscal sanity, we wouldn't have so many 'educationally mobile' families. But then, what would KSBY have to report on, besides actual good news?