Nerd Reich: The Sequel to Revenge of the Nerds That No One Wanted | Part Three

Letters to the Housed | September 8, 2026 | By Paul Asplund | Second Grace LA

They're counting on you believing your vote won't matter in November. This crowd disagrees — the ballot box is still ours. Trouble at the polls? 866-OUR-VOTE | Photo by Mike Newbry / Unsplash

Part Three: We Are On Our Own, But We're Not Alone

What HUD's funding fights have already cost Los Angeles, and where the ballot box, advocacy, and community power still hold the line.

Hello Neighbors,

Over the last two weeks I've tried to trace how we got here: an obscure blogger's philosophy, a billionaire's mentorship, RAGE becomes DOGE, a federal agency's staffing cuts, and a homeless count back on the rise. This week is about what we do with all of that.

We are on our own. And we're not alone.

On Our Own: The Cost, Plainly

You already know from Part One that a federal judge in Rhode Island vacated HUD's FY2026 Continuum of Care funding notice on August 7, the same notice that would have capped how much of LA's CoC money could go toward permanent housing. That ruling protects funding today. It doesn't undo the damage already done.

After two straight years of decline, homelessness in LA County is rising again. The city saw a 3.4% increase. Unsheltered homelessness in the city jumped 7.9%. Mayor Bass said plainly that federal and state funding cuts were behind it. And LA County's own statement on the count points to where the cuts hit hardest: the Time-Limited Subsidy program lost its funding, and thousands of households lost their housing support as a result.

It's impossible to prove causality, but we've traced how Curtis Yarvin's toxic worldview, bolstered through a documented chain of tech billionaires, mentorship, and policy, became the operating logic of the agency that funds this county's homeless services. The idea festered in a blog post for over a decade. Then reappeared as a chainsaw-wielding technocrat shredded several of our nation's basic institutions

Even Philanthropy Isn't Safe

The instinct to exit instead of reform isn't limited to government. It's reached philanthropy too. The Giving Pledge, Warren Buffett and the Gateses' 2010 effort to get billionaires to commit half their wealth to charity, has all but stalled. Signups have collapsed from 113 in its first five years to just four in 2024, and for the first time, people are actively leaving rather than joining. Peter Thiel has privately encouraged roughly a dozen signers to unsign, calling the Pledge an “Epstein-adjacent, fake Boomer club,” and telling Elon Musk his money would otherwise go to left-wing causes chosen by Bill Gates.

It's the same exit-not-reform philosophy, aimed at one of the best-known programs asking billionaires to give anything back at all.

Vote: Real Threat, Real Law, and a Reason Not to Panic

The usual way we counter a government that's stopped answering to us is the ballot box. That check is under real pressure heading into November. And while the federal government picks and chooses which laws to follow, the laws still exist, and they offer us some hope.

Trump ally Steve Bannon has said he wants ICE agents patrolling polling places this fall. Trump has talked about wanting to “take over the voting” in over a dozen Democratic-led cities. And while recent court decisions have turned against Trump, this remains a real threat. ICE acts with impunity and the harm they can do in one day will take years to work its way through the courts.

Understand, armed federal agents inside a polling place are illegal under federal law, a prohibition that's been on the books since the Civil War. But when asked directly, White House and DHS officials have given conflicting answers: former press secretary Karoline Leavitt declined to guarantee ICE won't be near polling locations, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has publicly defended the idea, and DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin wouldn't rule it out in his own confirmation testimony. A Votebeat survey of 37 election experts this spring found a clear majority, 27 of the 37, thought it was at least somewhat likely the federal government would deploy some form of military or law enforcement at or near polling places this fall.

The law is squarely on our side. The people currently running federal law enforcement have not been consistent about respecting it. Don't assume it will be enough on its own.

If you or anyone you know runs into trouble at the polls, the nonpartisan Election Protection hotline is 866-OUR-VOTE, and their website has state-by-state guides on your rights. The National Low Income Housing Coalition runs a nonpartisan campaign called Our Homes, Our Votes built specifically to help renters and people experiencing homelessness register and vote, because housing status shouldn't be a barrier to having a say in the policies that determine it.

Advocate: Levers You Can Actually Pull

The machine behind this series runs partly on people believing they have no lever to pull. Here are three.

Congress just returned from its August recess, and members are back in Washington for a fall session that will decide next year's HUD budget. The National Low Income Housing Coalition's advocacy toolkit has scripts and scheduling guidance for reaching your representative this month, recess or not.

Locally, LA County is considering an ordinance barring county property from being used to stage civil immigration enforcement. If you've read my piece on immigration enforcement and homelessness, you know why this matters to the people we serve every day. Push your city council to match it, and to go further than county property.

And support the organizations training staff on what to do if federal agents show up at a shelter, because that training is happening right now, out of necessity, not hypothetically.

On Our Own but not Alone: The Philosophy Behind Second Grace

In reality, the solution to all of this remains clear to me:

We are on our own. The institutions that are supposed to catch people before they hit the street continue to be deliberately weakened, and Gil Durán's book tells a story that's familiar to many of us by now. These most recent actors, these new Grotesques, don't make the actions any worse, but they show the moral depravity of this line of thinking. It's a kind of thinking we need to face down every few decades (e.g. Germany’s AfD), that some deserve to thrive and the rest deserve nothing. It's time, once again, to put this thinking behind us.

But we are not alone. I've spent a year writing about Second Grace and neighbors who show up for each other without waiting for a federal mandate to tell them to. That's the actual, working answer to “on our own,” and it's why I believe no one is better positioned to bring people back from the margins than the people already doing it, community by community, without asking permission.

The resource this ideology can't touch is us. Not the funding, not the agency, not the courts. Us, deciding to build something together anyway.

Next week, I want to introduce an idea I've advocated for over the past few years. Blending well-established models for community building with design-thinking principles. I hinted at it in my series on the Change Well projects design sessions for the new DHSH. I can't wait to talk about it.

Until then.
Paul

Homelessness Policy, Housing Justice, Los AngelesPaul AsplundEndHomelessness, HousingJustice, SystemicChange, RadicalHospitality, LosAngeles, HUD, Homelessness, HousingPolicy, VotingRights, NerdReich, housing justice, Homelessness Policy, Los AngelesComment