SUPERVISORS BLAME 'TRENDS' FOR HOMELESS CRISIS, NOT THEIR OWN POLICIES

Your humble servants at KEYT NewsChannel 3-12 dutifully reported this week that the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors received an "Update Report On Homelessness Trends." One imagines this groundbreaking document revealed that, indeed, the county still has people living on the streets, a phenomenon that has apparently continued its 'trend' unabated under the Supervisors' watchful (and expensive) eye. It's almost as if showering 'community services' departments with taxpayer cash without addressing the root causes – like, say, the cost of living driven sky-high by overregulation and an anti-housing lobby – has led to, well, more homelessness.

The 'report' likely included vital insights such as 'homeless people are often unhoused' and 'housing is expensive in Santa Barbara County.' For these earth-shattering revelations, we can be sure consultants were paid handsomely, and a new 'ad-hoc committee on sustained prevalence' will soon be formed to study the obvious even harder. Meanwhile, the county's endless cycle of 'reports,' 'updates,' and 'studies' continues to line the pockets of the bureaucracy while actual solutions remain as elusive as an affordable apartment without a waitlist longer than the I-5. Perhaps the next report could detail the 'trend' of taxpayer patience running thin.

What KEYT’s earnest reporting might have missed, of course, is the quiet nod-and-wink behind the scenes. Every 'trend' report is a goldmine for justifying another tranche of public funds for 'programs' and 'initiatives' that often seem to benefit the administrators more than the actual people they're ostensibly designed to help. It's a classic progressive playbook: identify a problem, spend big on a bureaucracy to 'manage' it, and then blame externalities when the problem persists. The real trend here, folks, is the continued fleecing of taxpayers for political posturing masquerading as public service.