I saw a statistic recently as follows: An estimated 40% of homeless people in the U.S. have full-time jobs. If this is true – and frankly I don’t doubt it – it says a lot about how the cost of housing is so dramatically off-kilter with current wages.
This is the issue addressed by an NPR article on the causal agents of homelessness. In a piece entitled “Why can’t we stop homelessness?” by Jennifer Ludden, she pinpoints four reasons why “there’s no end in sight” to the crisis. According to Ludden:
- High housing costs not only prevent people from being housed; but just as bad, many who were previously housed become homeless when their circumstances change (increased rent, job loss, etc.). In other words, more people than ever are being housed, but an even higher number are falling into homelessness.
- Rents are out of reach for many, and millions of affordable places have disappeared.
- Zoning laws and local opposition make it hard to build housing for low-income renters.
- Pandemic aid programs that helped keep many people housed are winding down.
“Of course, there are other reasons,” writes Ludden. “Some 19% of those surveyed in the UCSF study became homeless after leaving institutions such as prison, and finding employment and housing with a criminal record is difficult. Advocates say there’s also need for more addiction and mental health treatment, though it’s most effective once someone is safely housed. But again, the overriding problem, they say, is the dire lack of places low-income people can afford to live.”
Unquestionably homelessness is most prevalent in expensive cities where housing costs are through the roof. Rents have skyrocketed in the last few years, but wages have not kept pace. It’s no wonder people who work in low-wage jobs can’t afford a place to live.
But is this all there is to the homeless crisis? Of course not. What Ludden conveniently omits is the rampant drug abuse and its correlation to homelessness. Whether drug abuse causes homelessness, or homeless people are more likely to abuse drugs, is a question for another column.
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Nor does Ludden mention the progressive policies that make drugs as easily available as candy. These policies are advanced by the left as either compassionate or politically expedient, including a refusal to prosecute drug dealers and wide-open borders through which fentanyl is pouring like a tidal wave into our country.
In places where homelessness is most severe, a stroll down the street shows wretched people who are mere shells of human beings, literal zombies. Even the far-left journal The Atlantic admits as much. In a sobering piece entitled “What Happened When Oregon Decriminalized Hard Drugs,” journalist Jim Hinch walks readers through the repercussions of passing, in 2020, ballot Measure 110, “which eliminated criminal penalties for possessing small amounts of any drug, including cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine.”
The legislation was hailed as a victory for leftists who have long argued that America’s drug problems would be solved if only drugs were decriminalized. Rather than prosecution, Oregonians would take a more compassionate approach by sharply reducing the role of law enforcement. “The new approach emphasizes reducing overdoses, stopping the spread of infectious disease, and providing drug users with the resources they need – counseling, housing, transportation – to stabilize their lives and gain control over their drug use,” Hinch writes.
The result, to put it mildly, has been a tragic failure: “In a nonpartisan statewide poll earlier this year, more than 60 percent of respondents blamed Measure 110 for making drug addiction, homelessness, and crime worse. A majority, including a majority of Democrats, said they supported bringing back criminal penalties for drug possession.”
“Oakland and San Francisco have become the promised land of milk and fentanyl, and people are coming here,” says Seneca Scott, founder of Neighbors Together Oakland. “People who are homeless in Oakland now typically are not from here. They’re drug tourists.”
But advocates aren’t giving up. “We tried the War on Drugs for 50 years, and it didn’t work,” said Haven Wheelock, a program supervisor at a homeless-services provider in Portland who helped put Measure 110 on the ballot. “It hurts my heart every time someone says we need to repeal this before we even give it a chance.”
Meanwhile, “Drug addicts living on the streets in San Francisco say they cannot break their habits of drug abuse, despite the availability of city-run treatment centers, according to the San Francisco Standard,” reports the Daily Caller. “Some addicts have said that they have no reason to get treatment due to being homeless, while others have welcomed the idea of receiving treatment but have failed to enroll in a program. … ‘Why am I going to get clean when I’m homeless,’ Maycie Stamps reportedly told the San Francisco Standard. ‘Drugs are helping me not to go crazy.’”
More drugs = more homelessness. More homelessness = more drug use. Additionally, since nature abhors a vacuum, drug dealers moved in to provide their services to a vastly wider clientele among an atmosphere of reduced law enforcement. Indeed, street corners in some cities are becoming “no go” zones because they’re controlled by drug cartels. Open-air drug markets are common, driving out retail businesses and worsening the “doom loop” so many progressive cities are undergoing.
Meanwhile fentanyl is flooding over our borders in a tsunami of death, yet the current administration will not close it down for any reason. “This is Biden’s America,” writes Sam Faddis. “Our border is wide open. Drugs flood in and kill our people in numbers that are almost inconceivable. Close to twice as many Americans die every year from fentanyl as died in the entire Vietnam War, and the man who claims to be president doesn’t lift a finger to address the problem. The logic behind all of this appears to be ‘judgment-free’ assistance. We don’t have the right to step in, arrest people and compel them to seek help. We are – it appears instead – required to continue to perpetuate the hell in which they live, allow them to destroy a great city [Philadelphia] and in the process commit what amounts to a particularly hellish form of slow-motion suicide.”
It’s clear the progressive approach to drugs is contributing massively to the homeless crisis, despite the billions of dollars being poured into programs that do no good whatever.
Can the homeless crisis be solved? I don’t know. Neither do you. But one thing is certain: All the affordable housing in the world won’t solve the issue if drugs aren’t curtailed. Think about it.
