Matt Van Swol on X - "🚨#BREAKING: Popular Democrat homeless activist in Charlotte NC, Cedric Dean, has just been raided by the FBI for allegedly: "Running a $14.5 MILLION DOLLAR health care fraud scheme by taking advantage of the homeless and submitting false claims to Medicaid...""
Mark Hemingway on X - "I think we need to start understanding that the reason the homeless population exploded in blue cities is that it enabled a massive illegal grift local pols benefited from."
The Meme Policeman | Facebook - "This is rich, as California recently passed a homeless funding package of $12B, 43X times more than was spent on the recall. And this is to deal with their estimated 160K homeless, of which ~114K are unsheltered. https://www.gov.ca.gov/.../governor-newsom-signs.../ https://www.usich.gov/homelessness-statistics/ca/ If $280M could really end homelessness for “tens of thousands” then the $12B CA is spending over the next 2 years should be able to end it for over a million, which is far more than their entire homeless population. Does anyone really think CA homelessness will disappear in 2 years? No, because the real problem with the CA homeless is mental illness and/or drug addiction. Even the LA Times admitted that 67% of LA’s unsheltered homeless suffered from at least one of these (after previously citing a bogus report that it was just 29%). https://www.latimes.com/.../homeless-population-mental... OD naively assumes in this meme that it only takes ~$10K/person and a homeless person’s issues disappear. Nonsense. There is no “ending homelessness” in CA without tackling the mental illness/drug addiction issue. Remember, CA has a unique homeless issue compared to the rest of the country, as they have by far the most unsheltered homeless, 51% of the entire US! These are, on average, a much different group than the sheltered homeless and require a different approach.
https://www.huduser.gov/.../files/pdf/2020-AHAR-Part-1.pdf"
On $280 million spent on a California supposedly being enough to end "homelessness for tens of thousands of Californians"
“There Is No Place for Us”: A Sympathetic, but Skewed, Portrait of the Working Homeless - "Goldstone’s sharply etched portrayals illustrate how hard it can be for poor families to confront these obstacles. Attentive readers will notice, however, that the families he chronicles are undone by a brutal combination of bad luck and bad choices. Goldstone emphasizes the first but ignores the second. Only one of the five families Goldstone follows involves a married couple. The other four are headed by single black women with 12 children between them. None of those kids’ fathers seems to provide consistent support. The narrative shows that one of the surest ways for a poor woman to become much poorer is to have multiple children out of wedlock—but Goldstone makes the point only accidentally. Nearly all the book’s protagonists could have been more discerning and self-protective. Celeste abruptly loses her Westover Drive home when a vengeful ex sets it ablaze. She gets kicked out of her next apartment after her godson accidentally discharges a pistol and its bullet goes through the floor, killing a 14-year-old pregnant girl. Another woman, Britt, is shocked when her landlord refuses to renew her lease. His objection? She’d let a recently incarcerated felon move in with her family, violating her rental agreement. Michelle abruptly quits a stable overnight job at the Salvation Army without having another position lined up. She then takes up with a volatile, unemployed pothead named Nick—whom her children and neighbors plainly despise—in her family’s cramped quarters. Turns out, everyone was right about Nick except Michelle. He beats her up and threatens to kill her—no idle threat considering that he is now in prison for murdering a different girlfriend. These and other passages remind one of a bad horror movie, where the dangers are obvious to everyone except the characters themselves. One way of narrating all this—Goldstone’s approach—suggests that the volatility in poor black communities arises understandably, and almost inevitably, due to stressors attributed to systemic racism. Another framing—less comforting—places greater weight on the shortcomings of the book’s protagonists. Goldstone holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from Duke, which serves him well here, but the book could use a firmer grounding in history. “Mass homelessness arose recently, within our lifetimes,” he claims. While it is true that the causes and nature of homelessness differ today, the problem was widespread and openly discussed as far back as the 1800s. Hobos, tramps, and “women adrift” numbered in the hundreds of thousands at a time when the national population was much smaller. And while Goldstone doesn’t mention it, the debate over who among the poor is “deserving” or “undeserving” is hardly new. It’s one of the most persistent throughlines in American history, and its lessons are sobering. One of the things I’ve learned through volunteering to help the homeless in Atlanta is that good-faith reformers repeatedly confront painful limits—not of compassion, but of what can be realistically achieved amid the complexities of human behavior. Goldstone casually assumes that various well-intentioned policies are sure to lead to positive results. He supports, for instance, “a public option for housing”—that is, taking some housing off the private market, “beyond the reach of speculators and profiteers.” What could go wrong? Quite a lot, in fact. Housing does not cease to become scarce when markets are sidelined; it merely gets rationed differently. Goldstone seems unaware of the legacy of U.S. public housing in the 1960s and 1970s—how it concentrated poverty, encouraged dependency, eroded community and family stability, worsened urban decline, and provoked backlash. I do not understand how someone can write about today’s housing crisis without knowing this history. It should not be hard to sympathize morally with the poor, and offer support, without sentimentalizing them or denying their agency. A powerful but unintended lesson of There Is No Place for Us is that bourgeois values matter—their absence can deepen misfortune."
Clearly, the government needs to spend even more money to reduce homelessness
To left wingers, intentions are the same as results, which is why spending more money is always the solution
Appodlachia on X - "Cost to end homelessness in the U.S. is about $20-30 billion."
Devon Eriksen on X - "There are two separate list prices to end the "homeless" problem in America. One is the price if you are willing to call bums, tramps, and hobos what they are — bums, tramps, and hobos. That price is a lot less than $20 billion. The other is the price if you insist on calling bums "homeless". That price is infinity dollars. Because you can't solve a problem, no matter how much money you spend, until you understand what they problem is. If you call a guy "homeless", that means you think the problem is that he doesn't have a home. But the problem isn't THAT he doesn't have a home, it's WHY he doesn't have a home. He doesn't have a home because he is incapable of the basic life tasks you have to do so that you have one. So buying him a place to lay his head won't fix anything. It won't make him less addicted to heroin. Or less schizophrenic. Or less antisocial and unable to sustain the basic human relationships necessary to have a job or an income. The problem isn't that they don't have things. So you can't fix them by giving them things. It's that they can't do things. So what you have to do is stop giving them things so they have to fix themselves. And if they can't, you physically remove them from society so they can't bother functional people. And if you're not adult enough to be willing to do that, because you can't stand looking mean, then you're not adult enough to be trusted with $20 billion to "fix homelessness"."
The federal government alone spends $4 billion a year already, but sure, more money is always the answer
‘We’re Not Criminalizing the Unhoused’: How a Homeless Encampment and Drug Dealers Are Destroying a Local Condominium Complex and Turning Its Residents’ Lives Upside Down - "The sign outside the Marylander Condominiums, a 200-unit complex in Prince George’s County, Md., describes it as a "private community." But for members of a homeless encampment in the condo’s backyard, the complex also serves as a crackhouse, a bathroom, and the entrance to an open-air drug market, which has become a magnet for organized crime and caused millions in property damage. Transients break into buildings and smoke crack in the stairwells. Tenants traversing the property must navigate needles, feces, and sleeping bodies as addicts nap half-naked in the hallways and sprawl themselves like welcome mats outside residents’ doors. Half of the complex has gone without heat since Thanksgiving after vagrants allegedly vandalized the boiler room, causing pipes to burst in several buildings. Some units have lost electricity, too, due to the overuse of space heaters. Though the county instructed those without heat to "vacate immediately" in December, most have defied the order and tried to weather the cold. They say they have nowhere else to go. Outside the freezing halls, drug dealers drive high-end vehicles through a dilapidated parking lot—the Washington Free Beacon spotted a Cadillac on one nighttime visit—and park in the complex’s southeast corner. There they approach a hole in the property’s wrought iron fence, which separates the Marylander from what some residents call "the mountains": a homeless encampment that has encroached on its law-abiding neighbors since 2023, and which the county’s law enforcement officials have only recently sought to clear. Patrolled by masked men who appear to be part of a local gang, the encampment has become a haven for prostitutes—one of whom solicited this reporter just outside the camp—and for the AK-47s police say have been found in wooded areas. While it is not clear who stashed those guns, graffiti on nearby structures includes signs for MS-13. County police declined to comment on gang activity in the area. The squalor has sparked a smattering of local headlines and belated, but minimal, political action. At a town hall on Jan. 22, officials said they had taken several measures over the past two weeks to address an encampment that had festered for more than two years, evolving from a collection of tents into something that more closely resembles a shantytown, as the camp’s residents have built increasingly elaborate structures with materials that appear to have been stolen from nearby stores. One recently demolished shack included a generator and a makeshift smokestack.
Anarcho-tyranny strikes again!
Man sues McDonald's after wife was dragged out of car and killed by 'vagrant' at drive-thru - "A grieving widower has launched a lawsuit against McDonald's after his wife was fatally attacked by a 'vagrant' while getting food in the drive-thru of a California store. Jose Juan Rangel filed the complaint in Los Angeles Superior Court last week, almost two years on from the tragic death of his 58-year-old wife Maria Vargas Luna in March, 2024. In the lawsuit, Rangel has named McDonald's Corp. and two franchise holders as he argues a case of wrongful death and negligence. He is seeking unspecified financial damages for Luna's death. 'Employees watched the assault unfold through the drive-thru window and on live video feeds and still chose not to call 911 or activate any emergency response,' he alleged in the complaint. 'Their total inaction in the face of heightened risk directly contributed to the injuries and the death described in this complaint.' Rangel claimed staff at the McDonald's allowed the man, identified as Charles Cornelius Green Jr., to 'approach' vehicles for upwards of 10 minutes, soliciting money from customers before he targeted Rangel and his wife... 'Without warning, Green lunged at [Rangel] and struck him repeatedly in the face through the open driver-side window.' According to the lawsuit, Luna rushed to her husband's defense and Green allegedly pushed her to the ground, where her head struck the asphalt. She suffered a severe head trauma which sent her into cardiac arrest, causing permanent brain damage. Luna spent several months on life support before ultimately succumbing to her injuries. The lawsuit states the defendants' employees all had 'sufficient time to observe Green's conduct, recognize the danger, and intervene before the assault.' Green was initially charged with one felony count of battery and a misdemeanor count, but the felony charge was later dropped. 'He's a free man,' Luna's stepdaughter Veronica Rangel told local KTLA at the time. 'My father's wife, our stepmother is dying or pretty much dead, and where's the justice? There was no justice at all.' Green was allegedly known to frequent the McDonald's, and Rangel's lawsuit states the fast food franchise should have employed security personnel or implemented safety measures for the wellbeing of paying customers. 'Defendants had the means and responsibility to prevent this tragedy, but this business location is notorious in the community for ignoring the safety of its paying customers,' he argued. In the four years leading up to the fatal tragedy, the Los Angeles Police Department had responded to 132 calls at the McDonald's location, the complaint stated. These complaints ranged from assault and battery to robbery and weapons-related threats."
What a heartless monster. He needs to have more "empathy" and not to criminalise all homeless people.
Woman brutally beaten at MacArthur Park while feeding homeless - "A woman known for feeding the homeless each week in MacArthur Park was savagely attacked with a metal pipe while serving meals, leaving her with a shattered jaw and six teeth knocked out, according to a fundraiser created to help cover her mounting medical bills. The GoFundMe page, organized by Catherine Schetina on behalf of longtime volunteer Eva Woods, says the violent attack happened during the group’s regular Sunday lunch service in the park in late February... “This woman, and this incident, are not representative of the culture of MacArthur Park and the community we serve there,” Schetina wrote. “She is not someone we’ve met in the past, and others in the park weren’t familiar with her. This was absolutely a bizarre one-off.” But the attack unfolded in a park long tied to a relentless stream of emergency calls. The California Post recently reported that areas such as Skid Row and MacArthur Park generate a staggering number of 911 calls as first responders grapple with the city’s spiraling homelessness and mental health crisis. Roughly one-third of all calls to the Los Angeles Police Department, about 40 calls every hour, involve someone suffering a mental health crisis, LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell told The Post."
Peachy Keenan on X - "The beatings will continue until liberal white women improve"
Damn cruel society! It needs to be held accountable for letting her be homeless! "Patriarchy" is also to blame for a woman attacking another woman
Jonathan Choe on X - "#BREAKING: Multiple sources tell me this past Friday's inferno in a problematic homeless encampment along I-5 in downtown #Seattle was related to a DRUG TURF WAR. Apparently, two fellas living in the camp were selling drugs out of tents. They got into a beef and then one of them retaliated by throwing an "accelerant," which set off the propane tanks. Notorious graffiti vandal Casey Cain, who also goes by EAGR, was badly injured in the fire. Unclear if he was directly involved in this dispute. Seattle Police Dept Arson Bomb Squad investigating."
Clearly, the solution ot homelessness is to give all the homeless homes. Then when they burn down, blame the landlords for poor maintenance
Charlie Smirkley on X - "NYC spends more per homeless person than the median NYC household earns. $81,705 per person in FY2025. And $81,705 is a floor. It excludes supportive housing (~$500M/yr), mental health response teams, and NYPD encampment costs. The city projects ~$97K per person in FY2026.
Spending per homeless person since 2019: NYC +187%, SF +190%, PDX +430%, LA +480%. Average: +320 Floor estimates. Homeless pop over same period: +13% Spending up ~320%. Problem up ~13%."
Mike Bird on X - "Absolutely astounding figures from the NY state comptroller: spending on services for the NYC street homeless population ran to $81,705 per person last year, up from $28,428 pp 6yrs ago. Figures do not include all kinds of other spending, supportive housing, policing costs etc."
Clearly, the problem is that they don't spend enough
Left wingers claim that homelessness is expensive (ignoring that this is because the homeless-industrial complex jacks costs up) so it's cheaper to just house people. Maybe this is their roundabout way of getting free houses for everyone. Too bad they don't consider what happens when homeless people ruin the houses
Houman David Hemmati, MD, PhD on X - "🔥You can't make this up. Homeless people lit a fire (very common in encampments) that destroyed an apartment building in a low-income area, creating... even more homeless people. The Supreme Court recently allowed cities to clear homeless encampments -- where's @KarenBassLA ?"
Sheel Mohnot on X - "In San Francisco, we have 30 freestanding toilets that are available for free public use. They cost the city $14M last year, and recorded 750,000 visits, ~$19 per visit."
M. Nolan Gray 🥑 on X - "The trouble is, no public service can be available, free/affordable, and pleasant as long as every other public service is meant to backfill for our refusal to end the homelessness crisis."
Daniel Friedman on X - "Homeless people aren’t just people without housing. You could rent every one of them a market rate one-bedroom apartment in a nice neighborhood for a fraction of what is being spent on them by taxpayers. These are people who are incredibly destructive, unable to adhere to social norms and they’re often violent. If you put them in apartments, they make the buildings uninhabitable for everyone else. Most of them have committed lots of crime and should be in prison, and governments that pursue noncarceral responses to these populations and the crimes they commit are making a decision to tolerate the assaults and murders these people will commit when they are set free. For the benefit of these people, we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars cleaning up the messes they make in public spaces, like the bathrooms in San Francisco. We tolerate terrifying encounters with them on the street and on public transit. We tolerate the property crime — often petty but sometimes serious — they commit. Sometimes, they kill us. When they overdose, we spend tens of thousands of dollars on medical treatment so they can go right back to their tents to do more fentanyl."
I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 on X - "Welcome to a taxpayer-funded Section 8 apartment in LA. This guy just got his 8th violation notice. He’s trashed the place and is throwing drug-fueled parties with his buddies. If you know anyone who is still confused about why people are against government handouts, show them this video."
Hunter Ash on X - "Homelessness is not a housing problem. When you “just give them houses, bro” this is what happens. The response is generally “oh yeah, you also need to give them addiction treatment (that you don’t force them to comply with), doctors, therapists, spending money, etc etc” And the truth is, in many cases, nothing will fix these people. They were born with defects we don’t know how to fix. But even if the progressive plan would work, at some point we have to consider the astronomical cost and whether it’s worth it. You need to be able to answer the question “how much is it worth paying to treat someone whose best-case outcome is being a cashier?” The answer cannot be “whatever it takes.” That’s civilization-destroying lunacy. A bleeding heart is not a substitute for calculation, and usually impedes it."
If you're not for unlimited social spending, you're a terrible person who lacks "empathy"
Supervisor Jim Desmond on X - "We can't prevent every fire, but we know nearly 50% start in homeless encampments. Yesterday, my Board Letter received unanimous approval, marking a big step forward for public safety! This initiative directs County staff to explore emergency encampment removals during red flag warnings, focusing on protecting our communities and the vulnerable individuals living in these dangerous conditions. It also pushes for collaboration with all jurisdictions to adopt similar fire prevention measures."
Amy Reichert on X - "Proud to have sounded the alarm early on the real cause of these fires. If not for the ability to report live on @X —exposing the origins of these fires at homeless encampments and sharing fire department sources who told me that the fires were caused by homeless people—the local media would’ve let Mayor @ToddGloria blame “climate change.” The Friars Fire, which destroyed two homes, was actually started by a homeless man using a Bunsen burner to do drugs."
Gross: Concerning trend continues at Renton homeless hotels - "Officials with the Renton Regional Fire Authority (RRFA) confirmed that a small fire, sparked from unidentified drug use, occurred Tuesday evening at a homeless hotel in Renton... Wherever issues of homelessness and drug use go, generally, fires follow. Encampment fire statistics are truly staggering. The City of Seattle is on pace to see over 1,000 fires for a third straight year. King County Executive Dow Constantine will continue to say this is purely a “housing problem.” It is said to be the compassionate approach — getting people off the streets"
Jason Rantz on Seattle Red on X - "Oh hey. Another homeless hotel fire started by a drug addict who doesn’t get treatment because there are no requirements for drug treatment before getting free housing for life."
Lauren Chen on X - "At some point around 20 years ago, progressives decided the worst thing we could do as a society was be mean to homeless people Every major western city has since gotten worse as a result of that Now we have to deal with violent, addicted homeless people, needles & tents everywhere, and in some cities, even human feces on the street And we can't demand the homeless move or go into treatment facilities, because apparently that's "inhumane," and now EVERYONE is worse off for it Including the homeless people! It's not "compassionate" to enable people to live in squalor and engage in self-destructive behavior Policies toward the homeless are just another one of the ways that progressives actively destroy countless people's lives while thinking they have the moral high ground"
@psalmicwitch on Tumblr - "To put it bluntly, the only way to end homelessness is to house people or kill them. That's it. Those are your options. Homelessness doesn't go away based on "crime crackdowns." You will imprison the unhoused, and when they are free, they will be unhoused again. Or they will die in prison. When you burn encampments or force people out without their stuff, they remain unhoused or freeze to death. After working with the unhoused, it's become abundantly clear that those who don't want to support them instead want them dead. There is blood on the hands of every government and organization that controls the homeless population with force instead of compassion. #usually these are the same people as the “pro life” crowd but I'll shut up#if it was not obvious this was in response to turmp's deployment of the national guard to DC"
Left wingers love false dichotomies to bully people with their smug sense of moral superiority. Of course treating homeless people's problems is not a solution because it violates their human rights so you need to give them endless houses to wreck instead or you're a bad person who wants them dead
Kat Rosenfield on X - "Connecticut appears to be on the verge of passing a bill that forces cities to permit homeless people to panhandle and put up tents (in the form of "protection from the elements") in public spaces and I have a lot of questions, perhaps first and foremost, "who wants this""
National Homelessness Law Center on X - "BREAKING: Louisiana has advanced one of the cruelest anti-homeless bills in the country. It would force homeless people to choose between jail and involuntary treatment, make them pay for it, and if they can't pay, force them to perform unpaid labor."
Andrew Beck on X - ""Cruel" = it works. "Anti" = it works. "…would force them" = it works. "…involuntary" = it works. This is all code for "it works.""
Cardinal Curmudgeon on X - "As a former Public Defender who has represented hundreds of homeless clients I support laws like this 100%! I will be showing this bill to several state legislators I know here in Missouri and offer to testify in support of such a bill if submitted in the Legislature."
The homeless-industrial complex feels threatened
Thread by @aaronsibarium on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "NEW: A disabled woman is suing homeless services in Portland, Oregon, after she was denied rent relief due to her low score on the city's race-based prioritization rubric, which awards more points for requesting "culturally specific services" than for having a disability.🧵
Michele Mei, a white woman with cerebrovascular disease, filed the lawsuit after she was told that she did not meet the cutoff for housing assistance, Fox 12 Oregon reported last month.Portland (Multnomah County) uses a points-based rubric to prioritize applicants for housing assistance. Under the rubric, obtained exclusively by the Free Beacon, having a disability only counts for 1 point, whereas "interest in culturally specific services" counts for 2. Though the rubric awards extra points when the disability impacts access to housing, it awards even more to gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender people who speak English as a second language, meaning that identity factors can outweigh disability status. Mei, who is suing under the Americans with Disabilities Act, is an example of the costs of that system. Though her lawsuit does not allege racial discrimination, she would have had better odds of obtaining rent relief had she been black, LGBT, or a non-native English speaker. The case illustrates how, in a zero-sum competition for resources, prioritizing one group necessarily comes at the expense of others, pitting protected classes against one another. "Adding points for race may seem politically savvy, but it harms people—labeling them by immutable characteristics instead of assessing individual need," said Caitlyn Kinard, an attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation. "The result: people with disabilities in Multnomah County are now finding it harder to access resources." A spokeswoman for Multnomah County, Denise Theriault, said that the county "complies with all Fair Housing Act and anti-discrimination laws." Multnomah County, you may recall, has numerous apartments that provide "culturally specific housing" to "BIPOC" residents. Placements in those buildings are determined by Multnomah's coordinated access process, the same system Mei used. Redesigned in 2024 in order to "promote equity," the process prioritizes "BIPOC households, LGBTQIA2S+, [and] people with disabilities." But Mei says the housing department refused to meet with her for an in-person assessment, making it difficult for her to navigate the process. Mei, who says she has been on the brink of homelessness since she fled an abusive marriage in 2018, added that rent relief would have spared her years of instability. "I wouldn't have had to move a whole bunch of times," she said. "I wouldn't feel the threat of eviction."
Tldr: The race-based allocation of homeless services isn't just an affront to the rule of law. It also makes it harder for disabled people to receive housing, insofar as they must compete with minorities for priority."
