Colorado has a very low unemployment rate and most people in the shelters are saying that they're coming for the work.
A shelter that was seeing an average of 75 more homeless people per night than usual, as cited by the Denver Post then, didn’t mean that people were flocking due to the state pot business, Radley Balko opined for the Washington Post at the time.
“[A]ccording to an informal survey, one in four of those 75 say they’re in Denver for reasons related to legal marijuana,” he wrote. “That’s about 19 people. At one shelter, 19 people self-reported that pot was a contributing factor to their homelessness. That hardly seems newsworthy, much less anything resembling a crisis.”
You now another state that's having a terrible problem with homelessness? North Dakota. (No legal pot there)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/11/us-homelessfinal-north-dakota-idUSBREA1A1OT20140211
It's the unemployment rate that's drawing people in. The housing shortages are preventing these workers from finding a place to live.
One of the cases profiled in a 'Colorado is attracting homeless people so they can get stoned' articles, focused on a man with terminal cancer. He had a job, but it wasn't enough to afford the fantastically overpriced apartments. He was on medical MJ and he was terminal.
A dying man who has a full-time job. Hardly the 'stoner' stereotype that people love to hate.
Whenever there's a 'boom' economy, it's the same story. People flock to where the money is. Local prices rise way out of proportion to the rest of the nation. Colorado's economy is doing better and they're attracting workers and the medical marijuana patients. Yes. I'm sure that legal pot has something to do with it, but a LOT of it is that legal pot is contributing to the economy. Many dispensaries have gone from 4 to more than 30 workers. That's a big jump.
Legal pot brings nothing but trouble no excuse for it what so ever medical marijuana patients is no better than real medicine it’s all a excuse to get high nothing else.