Let's indulge in a brief thought exercise.

The problem: How much would you presume it would cost the taxpayers to house one homeless person? One would assume that it wouldn't be a small fortune; a deposit and first month's rent on a small apartment, kick in a little for utilities, and viola, a homeless person is homed. How much could that be? Even in California? Even in Los Angeles? A couple of grand, at most? Well, you'd be wrong. It is a small fortune. A small fortune, indeed, for which the bill is footed (as usual) by the taxpayers. The City of Los Angeles, under the direction of Mayor Karen Bass, has spent about $67 million on the problem and has housed a total of 255 people in their own residences out of a homeless population of roughly 46,000. That's an expenditure of Los Angeles taxpayer dollars of $262,745 per homeless person un-homelessed.

You know what happens when you assume.

She (Mayor Bass) kicked off the program shortly after taking office in December 2022, making it a main component of her agenda for the city. As of February 2023—just a month after Inside Safe first launched—Bass made headlines for clearing six homeless encampments across L.A. The highlight of the campaign at the time was the removal of an encampment in South L.A. located at 87th Street and Western Avenue, which previously spanned an entire block.

At the time, her efforts looked to signify an upcoming era of change for the city. In just one month, she had relocated 247 unhoused people to temporary shelters, with 40 of them eventually being moved into permanent housing.

Let's crunch those numbers while we're at it: Assuming a homeless population in Los Angeles of 46,000, which number, incidentally, comes from this same article, in one month, Mayor Bass's program housed 247. To complete the task, then, would require 187 months (rounded up to ensure completion of this Herculean task) or a little short of 16 years.

Just for fun, let's take the results to date and apply that cost to the remnant of LA's homeless population:

46,000 (homeless population) - 255 (housed to date) = 45,745 (homeless remaining.)

45,745 (homeless remaining) x $262,745 (cost of each homed to date) = $12,019,270,025. (Holy moley!)

Yes, you saw it here first: Fixing Los Angeles' homeless problem on the current trajectory would cost over $12 billion. And that's assuming there are no additions to the current homeless population between now and the end of the task, which is, to indulge in an understatement the size of Mt. Everest, unlikely.

While this sort of number-crunching is entertaining, it's important to remember that it's not very realistic. In all candor, the city would, as the program went on, doubtlessly find ways to streamline the process, to cut steps, to lower the cost per individual housed. And there may even be some savings as things get cleaned up, and money may be able to be spent on other, adjacent issues; they could always copy San Francisco and start producing poop maps.

So, things may yet work out. Or will they? Mayor Bass seems doubtful.

She (Bass) cites issues with an overwhelming amount of work for the city's caseworkers as a possible reason for the low numbers.

"We have worked them beyond their capacity. They never had to work at this volume before, so they basically cannot manage it," Bass told NBC4.

They cannot manage it. So, whatever has happened to date, is going to be as good as it gets?

Is Los Angeles past the point of no return here?

Here's the thing: This homeless mess isn't just a Los Angeles problem. It's a California problem. It's a national problem, in fact; even Alaska's own largest city, with its frigid winters, has a problem with homeless street people. And San Francisco, former home to the impeccably-coiffed Governor Gavin Newsom, who was once mayor of that city and who is now frantically searching for the remnants of his butt, which was just handed to him by Florida's own Ron DeSantis, is arguably worse. California's and San Francisco's own "leadership" has recently demonstrated they can clear away their feces-clogged streets for a visiting Communist dictator but not for their own people. It's just not funny anymore. To paraphrase Mencken’s famous quote, the people of Los Angeles and the other jurisdictions named are getting what they voted for – good and hard — and until those voting patterns change, nothing else will, and big-city mayors will continue to unapologetically throw millions of taxpayer dollars at housing handfuls of people.

Los Angeles and other cities like it are facing a real no-(insert name of substance often found on Bay Area streets) problem, and these hapless solutions from big-city mayors like Karen Bass are just prolonging it. It's time for a change; the residents of these cities, if they really want things cleaned up and some semblance of sanity returned to their communities, may have to steel themselves to drastic action — like voting for Republicans.