The idea to help the homeless occurred to me when I was having lunch with my dear friend, Diana Cosma, at Shutters By the Beach in Santa Monica, in April of 2024. If you’ve never had lunch outside by beach at Shutters, try it - very lovely and the food is excellent. Karen Bass had made it seem like she could solve the homeless problem when she ran for mayor. However, it was far from solved. I made some comment to Diana about how all it would take would be one billionaire to decide to fix the problem and homelessness would be eradicated. We debated as to why no one had done that. Tech billionaires have solved problems far more difficult than the homeless problem - why is it still there? Then I said to her, “I guess I’m going to have to solve it.” This remark was reminiscent of other similar remarks I have made in the past (see The Rise and Fall of Perfect 10), which showed more chutzpah than prescience or intelligence.
THE SOLUTION IS OBVIOUS
It seemed to me that the solution was obvious. It’s too expensive to build housing for homeless individuals in the heart of cities so the solution is to build thousands of ultra low-cost units in sparsely populated areas.
Also, a significant portion of the homeless population, for example, old folks sleeping on cardboard on the sidewalks, will never be able to support themselves. So the center should provide complete support for them - medical care, food, everything.
The solution advocated by the Lotfi Zadeh Foundation solves multiple problems that face homeless efforts today. First, our costs are vastly less. We can build units with full amenities for $5,000 per unit using prefabricated structures on flat land with water outside of populated areas. In contrast, cities are often paying around $500,000/unit. Second, we can care for the residents for far less, by feeding them and providing medical care in house. Third, the proposal removes what is frankly, an eyesore, from city streets. Current government efforts are effectively, “homeless Wack-A-Mole.” Cities simply move homeless folk from one location to another — no solution and highly disruptive. Fourth, we can make life so wonderful in our centers that there will be a line to be accepted and few if any will want to return to “normal” city life.
Residents would be screened to make sure they are not prone to violence. Drug addicts would be placed in centers designed specifically to help them overcome their addictions. The plan was to make our first center particularly peaceful and make the residents particularly happy, with all sorts of opportunities to learn, sound studios to compose music, land to grow crops, comedy stand up nights, cooking and scrabble competitions, you name it.
NO BRAINER, RIGHT?
Not quite.
The first problem I encountered was starting a charity. It turns out the government has made starting a charity particularly challenging. While the government should be spending more time regulating corporations, instead they have overregulated charities to such an extent as to discourage starting one. The obstacles are extreme while the potential rewards (other than the joy of helping people) are minimal.
Once you start a charity, you have to get donations from the government or from private sources. In order to get meaningful contributions from some private sources, you have to file a 1023 application to be tax-exempt. That can take up to six months. So I began approaching the government. You would think that the government would be very interested in my proposals, since I was offering to cut their construction costs by roughly 99%, and their yearly support costs by around 80%. No help. After sending out fifty-two emails to governors, mayors, city councilmembers, and house representatives in California, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York, Washington DC, and Washington state, I received three phone calls from assistants who tried to be helpful but in the end, were not. I did get a number of responses from HUD (Department of Housing and Urban Development) managers who referred me to other individuals, who then referred me to other individuals. In the end, I got the response that I dreaded. A HUD regional administrator in New York, Earleene Sealy, informed me that she was not aware of “any HUD programs that provide funding for this type of project.”
Co-founder Diana Cosma at Shutters By the Beach