Billions of taxpayer dollars meant to help the homeless are instead being funneled to politically motivated advocacy organizations, Michele Steeb, visiting fellow with the Discovery Institute's Fix Homelessness Initiative, told Newsmax on Wednesday.
Appearing on "National Report," Steeb said that a new report, titled "Infiltrated: The Ideological Capture of Homelessness Advocacy," reveals a massive redirection of funds away from those in need and toward organizations engaged in radical, anti-American political activism.
"What the report found is that instead of that money going to the homeless, we have seen homeless advocacy organizations funnel that money into anti-American radical political involvement," Steeb said.
Steeb traced the problem back to a major policy shift in 2013 by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) — the nation's largest funder of homelessness programs.
HUD promised at the time that its new approach would end homelessness within a decade. Instead, Steeb said, spending has skyrocketed while homelessness has only worsened.
"Despite a 300% increase in public spending, we're at the highest point ever in our nation's history — almost a 35% increase," she said.
"We built a system that is devoid of accountability — at the individual level, at the nonprofit level, at the government level, and, as this report points out, at the homeless advocacy organization level."
Steeb argued that when the 2013 policy change occurred, advocacy groups seized control of the national conversation, reframing homelessness as a matter of "housing rights" and "racial injustice," allowing them to expand their political influence while diverting funds.
"They began reframing it as an issue of racial oppression or racial injustice. And that allowed these advocacy organizations to really dig their tentacles in deeply and start to use the system to their advantage," she said.
According to the report, 700 advocacy organizations collectively took in $2.9 billion in public funding — money Steeb says is lining their pockets instead of helping get people off the streets.
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