The City of San Diego and Mayor Gloria were recently showcased in the parody/ satirical website, the Onion, which has a readership of 11.7 million readers on Twitter – many more than our own San Diego Union-Tribune (which many San Diegans called “The Onion” over the decades, ironically).
Here it is:
New Initiative Decreases Stigma Against Homeless By Making Majority Of People Homeless
SAN DIEGO—In an effort to decrease the widespread social shaming often associated with being unhoused, a new city initiative unveiled Thursday reportedly aims to decrease stigma against the homeless by making the majority of people homeless.
“It’s our hope that we’ll see more empathy with our homeless population by making the vast majority of San Diegans homeless by 2025,” Mayor Todd Gloria said in a statement, outlining the city’s plan to make at least 900,000 of the city’s 1.4 million residents homeless through evictions, foreclosures, and the eventual bulldozing of much of the city’s housing stock.
“We’re going to make homelessness the new normal. Our consultants repeatedly emphasized to us that many people are unable to sympathize with the plight of the homeless because they’ve never experienced a lack of housing themselves, so we’re looking to remedy that by getting almost everyone out living on the streets. Ultimately, this is a situation that comes down to equity, and there’s no better way to decrease the inequity homelessness causes than by making everyone else homeless too.”
City officials confirmed the new initiative is part of a sweeping series of social reforms that also aims to decrease the stigma against the formerly incarcerated by arresting everyone and sending them to prison.
(Hat tip to Mat Wahlstrom)
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
So many people I shared this with thought it was real. You know things are bad when satire becomes indistinguishable from the truth.
But on the plus side, I have to think someone at The Onion reads the OB Rag, as I haven’t seen any other local media source calling out “the eventual bulldozing of much of the city’s housing stock.”
The author certainly captured Toddy’s style.
That was funny. Very clever. To make people laugh at absurdity like this is a hard thing to do, this made me laugh.