Fox 23 has a touching story about the concern among Maine’s homeless advocates after President Trump signed an order, “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets.”
Endemic vagrancy, disorderly behavior, sudden confrontations, and violent attacks have made our cities unsafe. The number of individuals living on the streets in the United States on a single night during the last year of the previous administration — 274,224 — was the highest ever recorded. The overwhelming majority of these individuals are addicted to drugs, have a mental health condition, or both.
Mr. Trump claims that states and cities have spent billions, and the problem has only worsened, so it is time to step in and address it. The Fox23 article quotes a handful of “concerned” so-called human interest groups.
“Street crime, homelessness, mental illness and substance use are all real issues in our communities,” Rowles said. “They can only be solved using evidence-based approaches.”
Advocates are concerned that Trump’s order threatens some of those approaches. The order directs the federal government to explore defunding safe injection sites and housing-first programs.
Curren Rowles is the Executive Director of ACLU Maine. They have receipts of $ 3.3 million and assets totaling $ 7.5 million. The ED in 2024 earned a total compensation of roughly $ 150,000. They’ve been active since 1980.
“Institutionalizing people under the guise of humane treatment is a false narrative designed to stigmatize and isolate,” Disability Rights Maine wrote in a statement. “Forced institutionalization is often violent, harmful and expensive.”
Disability Rights Maine shows receipts of $ 4.5 million and assets of $ 3.6 million. Their Executive Director earns compensation of roughly $180,000 a year. They’ve been active since 1979.
Another group, 3i Housing Maine, which, among other claims, works with marginalized and under-housed populations …through a combination of advocacy, policy, and investment. Gross receipts of 4.6 million and assets of 7.5 million. Their CEO earned $81,500 in compensation in 2023 (no data available for 2024 yet). They were formed in 2020..
Homelessness may not be the only thing they claim to advocate for, but those three (though I’m sure there are more) report combined net receipts of 12.4 million dollars and assets totaling 18.6 million. Between them, they’ve got 96 years of service during which one of the things they claim to advocate for has gotten exponentially worse
Is it a stretch to suggest that they exist to make money from the homeless crisis?”
Trump’s order targeted what I call the homelessness-industrial complex— the sprawling, grift-heavy patchwork of programs that have done everything except reduce homelessness. Those include so-called “harm reduction” efforts that hand out free syringes, fentanyl test strips, and even federally-funded crack pipes.
Progressive government exists to create problems, it then uses more government and newly aligned NGOs to “address.” The laundromat utilizes government grants and other laundered funds to enrich favored partisan assets on the ground, which can never seem to get a handle on the problem they exist to solve.
It always gets worse, resulting in more resources for the problem, whose advocates increase in number to match the funds made available.
All of these groups benefit from the cascade of drug addiction, homelessness, or mental health issues that follow, so when they object to someone doing something different in the wake of years of well-funded failure, take a look at who is complaining and how much they benefit from the problem and not a solution.
