The LA city council would like to force local hotels into giving up their unrented rooms to the homeless. Every day the hotels are to report to the city the number of vacancies they have and allow the homeless to take over the room. It seems like some dream of authoritarian control over private property for the public concerns is budding in the sunshine state.
Mind you the hotelier will be paid. But everyone knows that the complexity of homelessness is not a billable problem, it is a social problem. What is really happening here is an attempt to externalize the caregiving of a disenfranchised segment of the population onto small business people.
Where else do we see political muscle transferring duties between groups?
- The rent control measures in St. Paul come to mind. The risk of market fluctuations in rental prices is transferred from the lessee to the lessor, from those who do not own real estate to those who do.
- The student loan debt release plan transfers the private debt of past and present students to the US taxpayers.
- Our city adopted a new model for firefighters where all are paid and none are volunteers. The duties change direction here as the transfer is from the public to the private job market.
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