Little Rock, AR – Little Rock, Arkansas, is testing a program to allow its homeless population to get their lives back on track.
The Canvas Community Church runs Bridge to Work. The pilot program pays homeless persons $9.25 per hour to clean up trash in the city.
In the first five months of the program, workers removed 2,056 bags of trash over 1,821 hours. Those numbers work out to an approximate cost of $8.19 per bag of trash. It seems like a reasonable cost while providing the opportunity for the homeless population to get back to work.
Participants also receive access to health services and mental health. They gain access to help with job interviews and temporary housing assistance. According to reports, the program appears to provide an opportunity for motivated people to get back on their feet.
A Stark Contrast
Little Rock’s program is a stark contrast to proposals in Colorado. Senator Brittany Pettersen (D-Jefferson), who is currently facing a recall effort, wants to enable drug addiction through taxpayer-funded heroin injection centers. The recall effort began in July and will end September 16th.
Pettersen is not the only advocate for enabling addiction. Attorney General Phil Weiser wants them, and Democrats in the House struck down an amendment in the 2019 session barring the funding of such sites.
Another statistic from the Bridge to Work program demonstrates its effectiveness versus enabling drug addictions. When cleaning groups went on duty in Little Rock, they always left a position open to offer panhandlers a job. Of the 158 encountered, only 44 accepted the opportunity to work.
This statistic demonstrates that some people do not want to work to improve their lives. Unfortunately, until they find that desire, there is only so much we can do to help.
Please do not misunderstand. We need to find a way to help these people (preferably through private charities). Enabling their addictions is not the solution, but the Bridge to Work program may be onto something.
We are not endorsing the program, but think it is an option to consider, especially being a privately operated program as opposed to government-run enablement.
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Oh just end the prohibition already. If people want to throw their lives away, restore their liberty to do so in the privacy of their own homes and friendly locations. The government is just creating another problem with supervised use centers, to answer the previous problems created with unnecessary prohibition. Half of those people would not be tied into high strength deadly substances if they could still get simple codeine in cough syrup off the shelf, kratom, that sort of thing. What’s next, supervised brothels? “Um sir, you’re doing it wrong…” All forms of government regulation and oversight seem to make us less safe rather than more lately. Allow the legalization, limit the use to private property out of sight out of mind, and stop throwing public taxpayer funds away policing and protecting people from themselves. People live. People die. Trading liberty for security means we all end up with neither.