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Originally Posted by Chicano3000X
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https://www.salon.com/2015/11/28/the...ntrol_partner/
New York
San Francisco
Portland, OR
Seattle
Honolulu
Los Angeles
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"The housing crisis is insane": 6 cities where homelessness is out of control
Seven years after the Great Recession, 565,000 are living on the streets -- as many as a quarter of them children
In the early 2000s, cities around the country pledged to end homelessness within a decade, drafting ambitious 10-year plans to get all of their homeless people into stable, permanent housing. One Great Recession later and the number of homeless people stands at 565,000, a quarter of them children, according to data released Thursday (and that's a huge underestimate since the count is based on visibly homeless people and misses, say, anyone who happens to be couch-crashing at the time).
There have been some success stories. Homelessness among veterans dropped 33 percent between 2010 and 2014, and Salt Lake City shrunk its homeless population by 72 percent in nine years, just by giving homeless people apartments...
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Yes, I remember when Seattle gave all the drunks on the streets brand new apartments on Eastlake...and continued to allow them to drink while staying there. And their homeless population has exploded.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/05/us/05homeless.html
Oh, and as for Utah "reducing" it's homeless population by "72%" - weeeelllll, not so fast:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/think...eles_b_9380860
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So how has Utah apparently solved a problem that has defeated most other states? It gave homes to homeless people.
More precisely, Utah provided permanent housing and supportive services to chronically homeless individuals—those with lengthy periods of homelessness and mental health or substance abuse problems. Although overall homelessness has actually increased slightly over the past decade in Utah, such a large reduction in chronic homelessness is still an impressive achievement. But is it real?
Unfortunately, no. I spent some time studying Utah’s data and found that the miraculous 91 percent reduction in chronic homelessness appears to be driven by changes in how people were counted, rather than by how many there were.
The first problem with Utah’s numbers is shown in the graph below. Utah conducts a count of its homeless population on a single night each January. But instead of reporting this “point-in-time” count, Utah annualizes it first. That means that the actual count is adjusted upward to reflect the fact that some people who were homeless at some point throughout the year were not homeless on the night of the count.
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These liberal cities are showing this country what they will do if they get into power again. They are destroying people's lives, throwing money at things that aren't working, and will not deal with the reality of the situation. The elitist attitude (that I've seen on this forum from people in those very cities) displays a hypocrite behind the veil of "I care about the poor". No. They actually don't.
Did you know that it costs a lot less money to fix a problem when it's starting to get bad instead of waiting around and reacting to the problem when it's completely broken?
It's like car repairs. As soon as you notice a potential problem, you fix it instead of waiting until further damage occurs not only with the original part that needed to be replaced, but everything that it ruined in the meantime, costing so much more in the end.
But the left doesn't want to listen to anyone. They think that they can give free college, free healthcare, free housing, free food, and universal basic income when they can't even help the people in their own cities. Can't even run a city let alone a country.
(I specifically chose very liberal publications so we can avoid the useless whining about sources from those who like to deflect when they have nothing to say.)
We had plenty of time to come up with viable solutions:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/featu...richest-cities
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Homelessness first gained national attention in the 1980s, when declining incomes, cutbacks to social safety net programs, and a shrinking pool of affordable housing began tipping people into crisis. President Ronald Reagan dubiously argued that homelessness was a lifestyle choice. By the mid-2000s, though, the federal government was taking a more productive approach. George W. Bush’s administration pushed for a “housing first” model that prioritized getting people permanent shelter before helping them with drug addiction or mental illness. Barack Obama furthered the effort in his first term and, in 2010, vowed to end chronic and veteran homelessness in five years and child and family homelessness by 2020.
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You will see a lot of boomers, Reagan voters, both sides, left and right (he won votes from both parties, by a huge margin - the entire map was red) who still believe in "lifestyle choice", and in some cases, that is correct. But it is NOT the entire story.
Bush tried to fix things, and yes, as much as I despised, and still do, Obama, I have always said on this forum that what he did to help homeless veterans was a positive. I always gave him credit for that.
What we have is a 2 tiered problem.
One of those problems, the left cries and carries on about but they never seem to want to discuss the second part of the problem.
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The reason the situation has gotten worse is simple enough to understand, even if it defies easy solution: A toxic combo of slow wage growth and skyrocketing rents has put housing out of reach for a greater number of people.
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Wages have not gone up since at least 2000. For almost 20 years, they have either stayed the same, or the very same jobs are now paying less than they used to pay. But some people want to continue to bring in illegals and Visa holders to take jobs that they claim "Americans won't do", and when that happens, it drives wages down.
Then we had the bad number of years back in the mid 2000s when so many people were unemployed. The employers could be picky and give as little as possible in incentives - and they don't seem to want to let that go. Why should they? They can get illegals and Visa holders and pay them way less - putting more Americans out of jobs, driving wages down.
The second part of the issue is the insane rise in housing costs. My very first apartment in Seattle was very affordable for someone just starting out in life - making minimum wage, going to school - but now? You have to be upper middle class to afford the exact same apartment. The only thing they did was repaint the walls and put in new appliances since I lived there. Hardly what I would call worth the ridiculous increase, even going by cost of living in Seattle - it's overpriced. And that is not the only place like that.
We have a bunch of NIMBYs who don't want to allow anyone else into their neighborhood, more and more gated communities popping up, and fewer places that the blue collar person can afford...especially those on the lower end, economically. And yet, what do we see on this forum from those with elitist attitudes that live in the very cities listed above? They don't see the problem.
Los Angeles is not a conservative city. It's not even a conservative state. It's not even on a conservative coastline. The west coast is all liberal - and what they have done to the west coast is criminal.
I'm awaiting for these people to figure out that all of those liberal policies that they championed haven't actually worked out for them as they tuck in for another night in the backseat of their car - if they are lucky enough to have a car, and not live in some filthy tent city parked on the side of the freeway.