Elk Grove, a California city just south of Sacramento, has started paying its homeless to clean up their camps in the city, CNN reported.
The city bribes them with $20 grocery-store gift cards when the vagrants clean their tents.
The idea emerged from a police sergeant’s conversation with Elk Grove’s housing and public services manager, Sarah Bontrager.
Bontrager insisted that the policy of building relationships with vagrants will help solve the problem.
“We got together to talk about homelessness, and from my perspective I wanted to build better relationships with people who were experiencing homelessness, and he wanted to address some of the complaints that come to his officers,” Bontrager told CNN.
Though she may “build better relationships” with the homeless, Bontrager’s plan will continue to cost the city’s tax-paying residents, driving up their cost of living.
Elk Grove’s policy to pay comes amid an ongoing homeless crisis in California, which has only been worsened by Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom‘s unpopular lockdowns.
California officials have attempted to address the crisis, but their handout deliveries have led to failure.
For example, San Jose officials attempted to provide a “permanent housing solution,” giving vagrants a free place to live rather than asking anything of them.
Instead, the city spent $54,000 per person and only deepened the crisis.
Despite the worsening epidemic of homelessness in California, the foundering state’s soft approach has spread throughout the nation.
Cities like Seattle have seen a particularly drastic rise in homelessness, especially since COVID-19 lockdowns began.
Unfortunately for Elk Grove, the city may have set itself up for a similar failure.
