Homelessness in America
A friend of mine opined that homelessness in our large American cities was not a result of the democrat administrations of these cities as I had posited, but was apolitical and more endemic to socio-economic issues. I have now done a rather extensive survey of homelessness in America, and whilst I do not change my main conclusions about the ineffectiveness of democrat administrations vis-à-vis the deterioration of our cities, I have a more thorough grasp of the causative issues of homelessness.
The pertinent and repeatable mantra of homelessness and poverty across the country is affordable housing, unemployment, mental health, substance abuse, domestic violence, lack of education, racial discrimination and LGBTQ and gender issues.
There seems to be an emerging consensus that providing safe and affordable housing first goes a long way toward providing a basis from which to address many of the other issues. Though apparently successful in Utah, real estate is simply too highly priced in places like New York City or Los Angeles to make affordable housing to indigents readily viable. These large cities have programs addressing homelessness, but seemingly with that liberal democrat habit of “throwing money at it”, without proper administrative or fiscal responsibility or control.
Although this is somewhat anecdotal and not at all scientific, a look at democrat run cities New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, on the one hand, and republican run San Diego on the other hand, is enlightening.
Los Angeles, with democrat mayor Eric Garcetti, increased their homeless population by 18% to 59,000 last year. San Francisco, with democrat mayor London Breed, increased homelessness by 7% to 9,800. New York City, with democrat mayor Bill DeBlasio, increased homelessness by 3% to 62,400. Other large U.S. cities, Houston and Philadelphia, with democrat mayors, also increased homelessness last year.
San Diego, with REPUBLICAN mayor Kevin Faulconer, REDUCED HOMELESSNESS BY 11% last year. Also, San Diego have instituted a proactive $1.9 billion, 10-year program to house and rehabilitate their homeless.
So my original point stands. Democrat administrations in our largest cities are exacerbating, rather than ameliorating the homelessness issue, and it has reached alarming proportions, particularly in our socialistically oriented California cities (republican run San Diego excluded).
The solution seems to be – house the homeless first and create a relatively stable point from which to address the other societal issues. This may be easier said than done. Not only is real estate ridiculously expensive in our large cities, but also running through the literature is the fact that the homeless are reluctant in many cases, to move from the streets and public areas of these cities.
Once there is a roof and some stability as to immediate creature comforts, gainful employment is at least a possibility. So is the additional education possible that is required for most non-entry level jobs, if bridging type funding can be made available. All of this assumes that it is possible to break through the lethargy imposed by a life on the streets, and sufficient enthusiasm generated to work toward a productive life. Again, expert counselling seems called for.
Rehabilitation itself, although it is necessary in many cases, is not exactly straight forward. Substance abuse is a topic unto itself, involving 12th step programs and sometimes, medical and psychiatric facilities. Mental health issues are not always as simple as throwing a psycho-active drug at the individual with no control as to continued use of the proper dosage. Also, in-patient care has been deinstitutionalized by infrastructure cutbacks over the years. These latter comments pertain equally well to many homeless veterans’ issues, PTSD and other mental and psycho-physical illnesses.
Concerning racial, gender and LGBTQ issues, these have been part of the “woke” movement, loudly held to be very important by vociferous liberals in our ongoing culture wars. It seems that now is the time for those democrat administrations in LA and NYC and SF and other big cities to practice what their liberal cohorts have been preaching for the past 10 or so years. We Americans are a lot more tolerant than we once were, but bigotry and intolerance die slowly, and even more slowly if they are revived on our college campuses by the very liberals who champion equality for certain groups, but not for opposing views.
There is a long list of references that hopefully cover all (or most) sides of the very thorny homeless issue in our country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mayors_of_the_50_largest_cities_in_the_United_States
How to live on the streets: https://www.wikihow.com/Live-on-the-Street
Reasons for living on the streets: All 3 by Kylyssa Shay, Kylyssa Shay is a middle-aged American woman living with autism who enjoys sharing hard-earned life hacks with people who need them.
https://soapboxie.com/social-issues/Reasons_for_Homelessness
https://soapboxie.com/social-issues/why-homeless-people-dont-just-get-a-job
https://soapboxie.com/social-issues/homelessness-myths-misconceptions
Homelessness in Los Angeles by the not exactly liberal LA Times:
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-homeless-how-we-got-here-20180201-story.html
https://www.thebalance.com/deinstitutionalization-3306067
https://nlchp.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Homeless_Stats_Fact_Sheet.pdf
https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homelessness-statistics/state-of-homelessness-report/
https://invisiblepeople.tv/causes-of-homelessness/
https://www.reference.com/government-politics/causes-homelessness-united-states-508e26409e814f12
Interesting take – Teach ‘em to code (remotely)
https://medium.com/@_ericelliott/the-cure-for-homelessness-83ef0d621c71
https://www.useful-community-development.org/homelessness.html
The conservative approach
https://arizonadailyindependent.com/2019/02/05/homelessness-is-a-democrat-disease-heres-the-cure/
The Atlantic’s, somewhat liberal take – tax, federal involvement, etc.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/04/end-homelessness-us/479115/
A psychiatric take
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/beyond-schizophrenia/201608/homeless-mentally-ill-and-neglected
Services in Los Angeles & NYC – do they work?
https://www.lahsa.org/ces/about
https://www1.nyc.gov/site/hra/help/homebase.page
What Utah did – “housing first”
https://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic-homelessness-by-91-percent-heres-how
Los Angeles
https://laist.com/2019/06/04/los_angeles_homeless_rate_increase.php
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/us/los-angeles-homeless-population.html
https://ktla.com/2019/06/04/l-a-county-to-release-results-of-homeless-count-on-tuesday/
San Diego
https://www.sandiego.gov/mayor/priorities/homelessness
https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/nonprofits/three-big-myths-about-san-diegos-homeless-population/
https://www.kpbs.org/news/2019/oct/14/san-diego-city-council-approves-10-year-homelessne/
San Francisco
https://sf.curbed.com/2019/7/8/20686653/san-francisco-sf-homeless-count-number-population-2019
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/16/san-francisco-homeless-increase-tech-ipo
https://www.city-journal.org/san-francisco-homeless-problem
New York City
https://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/basic-facts-about-homelessness-new-york-city/
https://www.bowery.org/homelessness/
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/nyregion/homeless-nyc.html
Ray Gruszecki
November 8, 2019
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