Spencer Pratt’s Plan To Help Homeless Is Modeled After Red State Veteran Training Center

Former MTV reality television star Spencer Pratt is the first to admit that he has no political experience — but he says he does have a plan to help the homeless in Los Angeles if he’s elected mayor, and it’s modeled on a veteran training center in Arkansas.

Pratt, speaking with CNN’s Elex Michaelson, said that he wanted to build a rehabilitation center for homeless addicts — a move that he argues would swiftly and dramatically cut down the number of homeless in L.A. — similar to a training center for military veterans operating in Bentonville, Arkansas.

“You don’t get off these drugs with beds,” Pratt said, digging at incumbent Democratic Mayor Karen Bass, whose plan was to throw more money, clean needles, and shelters at the problem. “You need support. You need a real solution. And what’s happening? We’ve done it now, what, for 10 years. Their plan does not work. Their experience is complete failure. This is not Spencer saying this. This is every single person with eyeballs driving around L.A.”

Instead, Pratt argues that the treatment should be mandatory and that those in treatment should be pushed not just toward recovery but toward the skills and discipline that will help them succeed.

“If they want to come back to the city, we have a job for them — not just a bed off Skid Row,” Pratt explained. “They’re sober off fentanyl for two days, they go into a bed, they come out right back on to where all the drugs [are]. We need to actually help these people and get that back into society.”

The model is the University of Health and Performance (UHP), a 19-day immersive training program designed to help veterans transition from military to civilian life. Tuition, meals, health and fitness instruction, and lodging are all free — and veterans leave with the confidence and skills to build a new civilian life.

Pratt told Michaelson he was eyeing property in “beautiful nature” and had already approached several people about helping fund the project. In addition, he said he wanted to bring in “top doctors” to make sure he was doing things the right way, because he wanted the center to become “a shining light of hope.”

“You need to offer people a chance,” he said. “It’s going to be somewhere where people will go, and they will say, ‘Thank God for Spencer.'”

Pratt squared off with his opponents during a recent televised debate, arguing that Bass had done little to solve the problem and that Democratic socialist Councilwoman Nithya Raman’s offer of help was likely to be met by violence from addicts just looking for another fix.

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