City scuttles "Housing First" for "Housing Twenty-Third"

The Sacramento City Council announced last week, from their gurneys with the morphine-drip, that they have embraced a new, stunning, colossal, vibrant, plan to help the homeless – called Housing Twenty-Third.

"We’ve scuttled Housing-First, you see, for Housing Twenty-Third because it’s 23 times better!" exclaimed Councilmember A, “We've determined that rushing to give homeless people things was making us queasy, so we decided, instead, to greatly slow things down to one-tenth of a snail’s pace, which is as much as we can handle.”

“The public shouldn’t worry though,” said Councilmember B, “We still intend to often mention really, really high numbers with dollar-signs in front of them to keep homeless do-this-or-that charities’ administrators assured that they can keep up with their mortgage payments on their homes in Granite Bay or Wilton or Rocklin."

“Instead of going off on a lark and working ourselves silly,” said Councilmember C, “we are beginning a program to help weary police-men and –women and jail employees with a new Right2Rest in Jail program for the homeless. This will keep our brave police officers and jail guards employed without them having to worry about any reduction in real crime.”

"Meantime, we’ve suspended our interest in housing and are, instead, going to stuff more beds into existing shelters, and keep them open 24/7, making shelters more like jails," said Councilmember D, gleefully. "These are structured places where homeless people are ordered to do arbitrary time-wasting things – something they are accustomed to. It’s homey for them without that unfamiliar being-at-home and in-charge-of-your-life feel. The shelter will also keep homeless people off the streets where they might be hit by cars or breathe fresh air or feel any pesky sense of independence."

"Also, our Triage program that is always in the works is something we want to assure people we will always be tinkering with in advance of it never being implemented," said Councilmember F.

"The housing that we will pursue will come in the future," said Councilmember G, "for the progeny of today’s homeless people. Homeless people of the current day can stand proud knowing that the City Council will be seeking real honest-to-gosh housing for their great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren."

"This is something where the ragged, smelly citizens of Sacramento have our sacred word," said Councilmember H. "Long after the homeless of today are totally gone and completely forgotten, the City Council of Sacramento will be doing the same thing it’s doing today: keeping our noses to the grindstone and never, ever looking up such to know what’s really happening. Honest injun."