Progressive Compassion Finds Everything Except an Exit Strategy
Los Angeles locates funding, consultants, meals, modular rooms and specialized vocabulary, but remains unable to find the door marked "independence."
A Very Thorough Search That Missed One Thing
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA — Progressive compassion has completed another exhaustive search of Los Angeles and successfully located systemic injustice, historical trauma, nonprofit salaries, conference travel, discarded dinners and at least one expensive stolen electric bicycle.
The only item still missing is an exit strategy.
A former employee of a homeless shelter near MacArthur Park described entering the job as a committed leftist who believed additional redistribution would resolve street homelessness. After working inside the facility, he said he encountered routine overdoses, drug use, violence, theft, rejected housing and management unwilling to impose meaningful expectations, a trajectory not unlike the "housing first without accountability" critiques found in Manhattan Institute homelessness research.
City officials responded by explaining that expectations are among the leading causes of disappointment.
Affirming Every Stage of Decline
"When you tell someone to stop injecting drugs, stealing bicycles or threatening staff, you are imposing an external definition of success," said Compassion Systems Coordinator Paloma Greene. "Our role is not to direct people toward a healthier life. Our role is to affirm every stage of decline using respectful terminology."
Greene unveiled a revised progression model for shelter residents.
The traditional sequence once moved from emergency shelter to treatment, employment and permanent housing — the same continuum still promoted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The updated Los Angeles model moves from intake to assessment, reassessment, case review, interdisciplinary reassessment, grant renewal and a commemorative tote bag.
There is no final stage.
"Completion creates hierarchy," Greene explained. "It suggests that one condition is preferable to another."
A Mobile Health Partnership
The former shelter worker reported seeing residents inject drugs inside the facility and described wellness checks designed partly to ensure that no one had died from an overdose. He also said police officers and paramedics were frequent visitors.
Greene argued that the emergency traffic demonstrated robust interagency cooperation.
"You see an ambulance," she said. "We see a mobile health partnership."
Seventy Dinners, Half Discarded
Shelter cook Raymond Watkins said he watched unopened meals go directly into the garbage while residents later requested different food.
"We had chicken, vegetables, rice and fruit," Watkins said. "Half went into the trash. At midnight, somebody wanted chips. Management said denying chips could recreate food insecurity. I said throwing away seventy dinners looked fairly insecure too."
The shelter account states that only about half the delivered meals were typically eaten. The city has since proposed replacing meals with restaurant gift cards, which consultants predict residents may trade for cash with greater dignity.
Not Vulnerable Enough to Own a Cash Register
Neighborhood shopkeeper Alejandra Ruiz said the word "compassion" had become a municipal permission slip.
"My windows get broken, merchandise disappears and customers stop coming," Ruiz said. "Then someone from an office explains that enforcement would harm the person harming everyone else. Apparently, I am not vulnerable because I own a cash register."
The Unlicensed Bicycle Cooperative
A resident reportedly showed the former employee a costly electric bicycle and described participating in bicycle thefts with other shelter residents. A large collection of bicycles accumulated at the facility, while staff members said they could not stop the activity.
The Department of Inclusive Mobility has proposed recognizing the operation as an unlicensed community bicycle cooperative.
"Ownership is complicated," Greene said. "Particularly when the owner is several miles away filing a police report."
Compassion Without a Verb
Local philosopher Martin Delgado said compassion had been separated from responsibility because responsibility produces measurable obligations.
"Compassion originally meant suffering with another person," Delgado said. "In Los Angeles, it increasingly means watching someone suffer while ensuring no employee uses a verb."
Professor Alan Nafzger said the policy resembled a parent who gives an addicted child money every morning, removes every household rule and then boasts about preserving the relationship.
"Compassion without boundaries is often cowardice wearing comfortable shoes," Nafzger said. "It avoids confrontation today and sends the bill to the victim tomorrow."
The Exit Strategy Discovery Committee
A citywide poll found that most residents supported shelter, treatment and food for people in genuine need, but also wanted laws enforced and dangerous behavior interrupted. Officials dismissed the result as an example of voters combining ideas that municipal politics prefers to keep in separate departments.
Comedian Lila Brooks summarized the dilemma during a performance downtown.
"Los Angeles has an exit strategy for movie stars, businesses and middle-class families," Brooks said. "It just cannot find one for homelessness."
Greene confirmed that the city would continue searching.
"We have formed an Exit Strategy Discovery Committee," she said. "Its first task is to determine whether the word 'exit' unfairly privileges people who know where they are going."
The committee will meet monthly for four years in a hotel conference room. Transportation, breakfast and consultant parking will be fully reimbursed.
Humorous Observations
- Half the dinners get trashed while midnight chips remain non-negotiable.
- An ambulance visit is now branded a mobile health partnership.
- A shopkeeper is told her cash register disqualifies her from sympathy.
- Stolen bikes get rebranded as an unlicensed cooperative.
- The word "exit" is under committee review for privilege.
- Consultant parking gets reimbursed before any resident gets housed.
Disclaimer: This article is satire aimed at policies that confuse tolerance with treatment and administrative language with human progress. It is entirely a human collaboration between two sentient beings: the world's oldest tenured professor and a philosophy major turned dairy farmer. https://bohiney.com/progressive-compassion/
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