The Outstater

January 8, 2026

Creating a Homeless Magnet

AGAIN, AS CITIES throughout the nation gear up to lure business away from New York City’s socialist mayor, my city is taking a different tact. We are striving to become as much like New York City as our meager resources permit — complete with a government grocery, a casino and upgraded homeless facilities.

I plan to write more about the grocery whenever the city makes the profit/loss records available, and the casino is still only a glint in the mayor’s eye, but here is my take on the homeless: By definition, a homeless person has demonstrated an indifference as to where he or she calls “home”; I would prefer, then, that they be homeless elsewhere.

Heartless? Many would say yes. It is a fact, though, that the homeless embrace lawlessness as a lifestyle — a result of mental illness, certainly, but also addiction and other sociopathologies, some at odds with public health and safety.

I wish there were a magic wand we could wave over the derelict and turn him into a productive citizen. Our mayor would have us believe she has such a wand — a well-funded bureaucratic one, an industry of sorts powered by misaligned empathy and the urge to feel magnanimous and superior simultaneously. She says it is her top priority.

That settled, my mid-sized Indiana city plans to fund through federal and state grants plus do-gooder donations and taxpayer cash a 24/7 “low barrier” homeless day shelter estimated to cost $3.8 million. This includes a full-time staff of a “homeless services manager,” housing “navigators,” “peer-support specialists,” plus security and maintenance personnel and legal aid. It will be operated by NGOs or Non Government Organizations (think Somali daycare).

In addition, there will be money for continued monitoring of the city’s homeless population, now at 2,000 but expected to grow as word gets to neighboring towns of the nifty services available at the new shelter. Additional per-capita funding will be justified.

Most interesting to my mind is the mayor’s definition of “barriers” to the homeless seeking help. One, she says, would be anything that includes a Christian component. Such aid, please know, is the only organized assistance with a history of effectively turning around social maladjustment in addicts or the otherwise destitute. Not allowed.

Now, on to the casinos and government grocery stores . . . — tcl

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