A troubling trend is unfolding in central Wisconsin, where winters are cold and the people are usually plainspoken. Stevens Point, Wis., a city of fewer than 30,000 residents, is adopting the same muddled, ineffective policies on homelessness that have plagued America’s largest liberal towns.
What used to be a community of common sense is now sliding into a fog of academic jargon, bureaucratic red tape, and ideological posturing that does far more for headlines than for human beings.
It’s as if someone shipped a box of San Francisco’s worst ideas to Portage County and said, “Try these on for size.”
From Concrete to Catchphrases: “Unhoused” in the Heartland
The first sign of the shift is the language. No longer are people “homeless.” Now they are “unhoused individuals.” They are not addicts or mentally ill; they are “behaviorally vulnerable.” They’re not sleeping in a bus stop because they refused shelter; they’re “housing insecure.”
You might think this linguistic softening was confined to the coasts, but Stevens Point has fully absorbed it. What began in elite university towns has leaked into small-town governance, and now, even here in rural Wisconsin, suffering is being redefined out of existence.
This trend isn’t limited to housing. Consider other modern euphemisms: “birthing person” instead of mother. “Justice-involved individual” instead of criminal. “Food-insecure” instead of hungry. These phrases sound sterile, as if plucked from a policy paper written by someone who has never missed a meal, never begged for shelter, and never walked past someone shivering on a sidewalk without feeling shame.
Comparing Numbers: Stevens Point Versus California’s Catastrophe
Let’s be clear: Stevens Point is not San Francisco. The scale is different, but the mindset is alarmingly similar.
California, the poster child of progressive failure on homelessness, now accounts for roughly 28% of all homeless people in the United States, despite representing just 12% of the population. According to the 2024 HUD Point-in-Time count, California has over 187,000 homeless individuals. Of those, over 67% are unsheltered, meaning they sleep in tents, cars, or directly on the street.
San Francisco alone has over 7,700 homeless individuals, a number that has remained stubborn despite more than $20 billion spent statewide between 2018 and 2023. These aren’t just numbers. They are an indictment. A receipt. Proof that compassion without structure creates chaos, and throwing money at a moral crisis does not absolve you from fixing it.
Wisconsin, by comparison, recorded 5,037 homeless individuals in 2024. In Portage County, home to Stevens Point, the numbers are in the dozens, not thousands. But even on a smaller scale, the same problems exist. People are slipping through the cracks. Shelters are overwhelmed. And the city’s response mimics policies that have already failed elsewhere.
Why would Stevens Point import a broken model?
The Downtown Breaking Point
It wasn’t the city council, the mayor’s office, or the university that rang the alarm. It was small business owners on Main Street who endured months of panhandling, loitering, public urination, and even verbal abuse. Some shop owners reported losing customers, and others locked their doors during business hours.
Finally, when their collective voice could no longer be ignored, the city floated a proposal: a no-camping ordinance. In other words, a policy should be implemented to discourage overnight encampments in public parks and business districts.
It’s a start, but a feeble one. Not because it lacks merit, but because it lacks conviction. It came only after public pressure, not from a moral imperative.
It’s reactive, not proactive.
And it signals a disturbing truth: in Stevens Point, the discomfort of shopkeepers moves the needle faster than the suffering of the people on the ground.
The Mayor’s Tiny Idea
Mayor Mike Wiza has floated a familiar progressive solution: tiny homes. After visiting Oshkosh and attending Urban Alliance meetings, he suggested that Stevens Point could consider a similar model. The idea is not without merit. Tiny home villages have helped in some cities, offering dignity and transitional shelter.
But the pattern is the same. There is no site, funding, timeline, or urgency.
This is how politics works when symbolism outruns substance. Good ideas are floated, headlines are earned, and then everything stalls.
The Academic Fog of the Housing Taskforce Report
The city’s official Housing Taskforce Report reads like it was written by someone more interested in language than results. Terms like “strategic alignment,” “data-informed frameworks,” and “collaborative pathways to housing equity” dominate the document. What is glaringly absent are concrete timelines, enforceable action steps, or honest acknowledgement that some individuals reject help altogether.
If a man sleeps behind the post office, he doesn’t care about your “framework.” He needs a blanket, a bed, and a pathway that includes compassion and accountability. Liberal cities often falter in that last part, accountability. And now, Stevens Point is beginning to echo the same weakness.
Refusing Shelter: The Truth No One Wants to Say
In April 2024, SP Metro Wire published a revealing piece about a reality few city officials dare to confront: some homeless individuals in Stevens Point have refused help. Not all of them are waiting for help. Some have been offered it and turned it down.
They may be dealing with untreated mental illness. They may be addicted. They may simply have decided to live outside the system.
This doesn’t make them monsters — it makes them human. But it also complicates the problem more than just “building more homes.”
Pretending otherwise is dishonest. A solution is not a solution if it does not account for noncompliance; it is a press release.
Rent Ready: Quiet Competence Amid the Noise
While the city talks, a local nonprofit called Rent Ready quietly goes to work. In three years, they’ve helped over 100 families find housing, navigate applications, and stay afloat. They mentor people, handle the ugly stuff, and follow up.
They are proof that action matters more than optics.
But like most nonprofits, Rent Ready is underfunded and underappreciated. While city leaders attend task force meetings and draft “narrative transformation” plans, Rent Ready is scraping together resources to keep families from freezing.
That is not just ironic. It is immoral.
The Influence of the University
The presence of UW-Stevens Point plays no minor role in how the city discusses homelessness. The university environment often promotes the language of sensitivity and inclusion. But this intellectual environment can become a trap. Theory replaces pragmatism. Good intentions become a substitute for follow-through.
At some point, genuine leaders must decide whether to govern a city or moderate a classroom discussion.
Lessons from San Francisco: The Future We Don’t Want
It took years of denial in San Francisco before the consequences became too large to ignore. Business districts decayed, tourist traffic collapsed, crime rose, and families fled. City officials reversed course only after the economy felt the pain.
They started clearing encampments and reinstating enforcement, but the damage was deep by then. The trust between residents and the government had frayed.
Stevens Point still has time. But only if it stops copying failure.
Final Plea: A Small Town, a Bigger Warning
Stevens Point is not just a case study in small-town mismanagement. It is a warning shot.
What used to be isolated to the coasts is now trickling into the heartland: big-city thinking repackaged in small-town charm. Homelessness is reframed as housing insecurity. Vagrancy is dressed up as a vulnerability. Refusing treatment is spun as autonomy. All of it is wrapped in bureaucratic buzzwords and framed as compassion.
But compassion without results is not a virtue. It is vanity.
We used to expect this ideological detour from San Francisco or Portland. But Stevens Point? A working-class, central Wisconsin town built on lumber, labor, and common sense? This should have been the last place to fall for soft language and empty policies. And yet, here it is — floating tiny home proposals without plans, holding listening sessions while people sleep in stairwells, and using language so sterilized it erases the urgency.
The lesson is not limited to one ZIP code. This is how the national problem creeps in: one well-meaning town at a time. One university’s language guide. One city council task force. One resolution to rename reality. And before you know it, the same hands-off, optics-driven homelessness crisis that crippled California is knocking on every town square in the country.
The rest of the country would be wise to pay attention. If it happens in Stevens Point, Wis., it can happen anywhere.
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