SUPERVISOR HOPEFUL TO SOLVE HOMELESSNESS... WITH MORE BUREAUCRACY?

It seems a certain District 5 supervisor hopeful, Ricardo Valencia, is promising to tackle Santa Barbara County's burgeoning homeless crisis and lack of 'affordable' housing, which is a bit like promising to put out a fire by dousing it with gasoline. While the Santa Maria Times reported this groundbreaking strategy with all the critical analysis of a third-grade book report, the astute observer (i.e., anyone not on the county payroll) knows this song and dance by heart.

Valencia's campaign, we're told, centers on more 'services' and 'protections' for working families. Because nothing says 'solving a crisis' like expanding the very government apparatus that created the crisis in the first place, all while making housing more expensive through regulation and driving up costs with endless layers of taxpayer-funded programs. It’s a classic progressive bait-and-switch: identify a problem, then propose a solution that grows government power and taxpayer dependency, leaving the actual problem untouched, if not exacerbated.

What the local papers, in their tireless quest to avoid actual reporting, conveniently miss is how decades of restrictive zoning, environmental extremism, and a county planning department run by mandarins with a penchant for paperwork have artificially choked off housing supply. You can throw all the 'services' you want at the homeless, but until you stop making it illegal and impossible to build simple, affordable homes without navigating a bureaucratic labyrinth, you're just managing the problem, not solving it. This isn't about 'compassion'; it's about control, and ensuring the gravy train of federal and state grants keeps rolling into favored non-profits and county departments.