Spencer Pratt is right to blast Los Angeles leadership for spending $40 million to redesign MacArthur Park while addicts overdose on the sidewalks outside it.
But MacArthur Park is not the problem. It is the warning sign. Let’s be clear, California doesn’t have a homelessness problem. It has a leadership problem.
As a Marine Corps veteran who has spent years working directly on California’s streets with the homeless, veterans in crisis, and those battling addiction, I’ve seen firsthand what MacArthur Park represents.
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Veterans are sleeping in tents. Families no longer feel safe bringing their children to public parks. Crime, fentanyl, untreated mental illness, and human suffering have taken over MacArthur Park and entire neighborhoods across the state — yet city leaders decided the priority was a taxpayer-funded facelift.
Politicians need to fix the actual problems destroying California’s public spaces instead of slapping taxpayer-funded lipstick on a pig so they can campaign on flashy, meaningless projects.
MacArthur Park isn’t an isolated LA embarrassment. It’s the final stage of addiction, untreated mental illness, broken families, loss of purpose, and the total collapse of accountability, all enabled by leaders who confuse tolerance with compassion.
The same chaos plagues San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento, Venice Beach, Skid Row, and beyond, and I’m ready to meet Pratt anytime, anywhere to show him that it isn’t a simple housing shortage, as radical California politicians love to pretend. It’s a model failure at scale. If we want to fix it, we have to truly understand it. I know from experience that you cannot solve this crisis from a press conference. You have to walk the streets.
Since 2019, the state has poured $24 to $37 billion into housing and homelessness programs, including $6.9 billion in a single year. The 2023-24 budget alone included $3.3 billion for homeless housing programs, with $1.1 billion earmarked for the Homeless Housing, Assistance, and Prevention Program and another $400 million for Encampment Resolution Grants. You’d think that after pouring so many billions into the problem, maybe we’d notice some semblance of improvement. But no.
We now have more than 181,000 homeless people statewide — roughly one-third of the nation’s total and nearly half of all categorically unsheltered people — including close to 10,000 homeless veterans. Instead of addressing the underlying problems with solution-oriented initiatives, we’ve built a homelessness industry that excels at funneling taxpayer money to opportunistic activist organizations who produce only social failures to dress up for campaign soundbites.
In 2025, roughly $418 million went to homeless “services” in LA, with only about 10% of that amount being used to effectively transition people off the streets. Mayor Karen Bass’s “Inside Safe” program burned through more than $300 million to move just 5,800 people into interim housing, only for 40% of them (so far) to return to the streets. That’s almost $52,000 taxpayer dollars per person, just in LA, for a problem that Bass didn’t even fix.
The simple “Housing First” approach — throwing money at constructing quantifiable housing units before facilitating sobriety, treatment, or accountability — has been a disaster, especially for those deep in addiction or desperately struggling with mental illness. State audits show most individuals who are simply relocated to interim housing don’t transition successfully to permanent homes, and many cycle right back to the streets.
I’ve explained before that we don’t need more temporary beds, park redesigns, or conversations. We need basecamps: structured, secure, drug-free environments with clear rules, community expectations, worthwhile services, personal accountability, workforce pathways, and real restoration of purpose. We need the law to be enforced and every dollar to be tied to measurable results, not just good intentions. We need to equip our homeless neighbors with the tools for meaningful, long-term transition back into our communities as both contributors to and beneficiaries of a healthier society.
Because the underlying causes of the California homelessness epidemic aren’t fixed just by shoving 64 people into a $1 million taxpayer-funded modular home, despite generating great campaign talking points. Even Former President Barack Obama called California’s homeless crisis an “atrocity.” This isn’t a partisan attack — it’s an observable reality.
Nowhere are these atrocities more painful than with our veterans. Our once-great state tragically claims about 28% of the country’s homeless veterans, the highest in the nation. Considering our massive military communities such as San Diego County (nearly 250,000 veterans and over 100,000 active-duty), and the incredible sacrifices these brave men and women have already made on our behalf, this is inexcusable.
Fentanyl represents yet another lethal battle they have to fight, with recent data showing 278 of 334 veteran opioid deaths in California tied directly to the deadly drug flooding our streets. We trained these men and women for discipline and mission; now the system offers endless lip service and empty promises with little structure or purpose. The state has the capacity to act: now we must choose to do so.
Pratt has good instincts and is right to call this out, but exposing the problem is only step one. I’ve seen firsthand how badly California has failed the very people it claims to help. California doesn’t need another ribbon-cutting. It needs leadership willing to confront addiction, enforce the law, and restore order. This is not just a fight for MacArthur Park. It is a race to save California and her people.
Kate Monroe is a USMC Veteran, Author of Race to Save California,” and CEO of Vetcomms.