We all know that homelessness is a big problem in the US. Seeing homeless people on the streets of the rich cities we wonder what wrong with America. I just found a site which rates countries by number of homeless people per 10 thousand and I was surprised to find that the homelessness in countries like China, Czech Republic, Netherland, Sweden, Canada, France or United Kingdom is worse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_homeless_population
There is more homelessness in the US than there used to be. It started around the 2007 Housing Crash. Before that, the US had not had that level of homelessness since the decade following the start of the Great Depression (let's say 1929 to 1939). There is also much more homelessness in other White English-speaking and Western European countries than there used to be. (I suspect that has to do with their immigration policies starting in the early 2000s, but that could be another discussion) If anyone went to Western Europe in the early 1990s, homelessness was almost non-existent. Today that is not the case. We have had numerous threads about this topic in this forum in the past. Homelessness seems to be an issue most common people in society want to ignore. It's uncomfortable to think about, and there are no simple solutions. Psychologically, it's easier for people just not to think about. Typically they'll come up with some easy simple excuse for not thinking about. Things like "It's their own fault", or "If only we elect a Socialist these type of problems will go away". These are easy ways of just dismissing the problem and not having to think or deal about it. The media usually avoids the issue as well. The viewers mostly don't want to hear about issues like that, the show might lose ratings, and the news station has nothing politically to gain by showing it.
In the US, the areas on the West Coast seem to have the worst homeless problems. Many people debate why that is. That could be another long discussion topic. (The West Coast region contains 16% of the country's total population)
I think what really drove up homelessness is the house-flipping movement. Buy up all the cheap property make cosmetic changes then sell them at high prices. People have been priced out of the market! As for homelessness on the street, we can't save everyone. We don't have the housing and money for that. Most places have, in the past, when the homeless population reaches the point of bothering the neighborhood, they send in the police to clear them out. Where they go doesn't matter, just so long as it isn't there. There are also rumors of white vans that make homeless people disappear.
The homeless people I see every day tend to have issues with substance abuse. Or mental illness. Or they seem to accept the lifestyle which is free of responsibilities and they have a social community. We have a program in my city which offers daily work, daily cash and if wanted, access to rehab and the support to help them gain work and home. It hasn't gone well. Often the workers that get on the van stop working, leave or they don't even show up. It's frustrating to the volunteers that work this program. Ultimately we should offer a hand up to those people that have lost everything and need help. But some people don't want the help.
More or less. It just depends. A lot of people bounce into homelessness out of jail/prison as well. There are also people in toxic relationships that use homeless shelters as free lodging until they decide to return for Round 125 of their toxic relationship.
Why do we think that everyone must follow along with the average Joe and work a 9-5, own cars, TVs, and a house. If they don’t bother us, why bother them if that’s their choice? seems we are prejudice against homeless.
Driven by investment speculation in the housing market. Hedge funds and corps are now heavily invested in speculative real restate. That's a death knoll for the young generations.
Excessive population and housing shortages makes it easier for that to happen, and probably drives up levels of speculation. Typically people do not speculate on things when there's a drastic oversupply relative to demand. We talked about in another thread how because many big city areas are so overcrowded and home options limited, many people are forced to rent even though they don't want to, if they want to live in or near that city. With people forced to rent, why wouldn't investors come in there and buy up the homes to rent them out?
Here is the thing, demand drives supply unless government steps in and builds affordable housing. That's just simple economics. Infrastructure has it's benefits to the country.
The problem is, in many areas that housing is limited by available building space. I also won't waste the time here doing so, but I've shown in many other discussions how it's more expensive to build new homes than use old ones that already exist. If new homes have to be built, home prices will necessarily rise. It also gets exponentially more expensive to build higher than two levels, so it's not always just such a simple matter of building up. In the past I've suggested it might be cheaper to build homeless villages in outlying lower cost areas where land prices are lower, and then provide buses for the homeless to be able to commute back and forth to city areas. But I guess most people running cities don't have that type of common sense.
The wealthy cities enforce vagrancy laws. There are no tent cities in Beverly Hills. I took my dog for a walk through my old stomping grounds. The Sepuldeva Basin is lined with tents. As I walked through, I noticed people wearing clean clothes, playing music, having BBQs, lots of beer bottles and the smell of marijuana. When I go camping, I end up paying $75 per night to live like that!
What is it that we are supposed to be voting on? I can imagine that we all 'get' the idea that if you have no money that, yes, you may very well end up being homeless. It's not a shocking concept....
A while back I was watching something, I think it was 60 minutes, about the homeless not being just unemployed men, but families. It centered around a father living in his car with his two kids. At first, I felt bad for them. Then I started thinking that, if I was suddenly homeless by no fault of my own, I could, right off the top of my head, count a dozen people, family and friends, who would take me in temporarily. And I'm not even social! So, why does this person have no one? And then it hit me that most of these folks have exhausted all of their personal assistance by behavior (stealing from their benefactors, using drugs in their homes, refusing to take a job when it's offered, etc. etc.) Maybe there are a few who were unlucky and ALL their family and friends are dead, but I would bet that's not many. At that point, my sympathy took a nose dive.
Thank you for your comment - it forced me to check this site again and I think I need to change my glasses - it looks that leftist policies are the solution, it looks that China, Czech Republic, Netherland, Sweden, Canada are better than the US. Here is the part of this table sorted by homeless/10,000
LOL. Leftist policies are the solution? Really? The most US homeless are in California and New York. Seems like you need to check your glasses yet again.
We need to build no-frills 'homeless compounds' for them out in the middle of federally-owned lands in Nevada and let them live there for free, forever -- but they must stay OUT of the cities and towns.
What's wrong? The government is probably housing illegals and Afghans, but ignoring their own people. It's happening in the UK too.
