Posted on 03/11/2020 5:20:57 AM PDT by karpov
In recent years, discussion about homelessness has been circumscribed around a set of premises acceptable to progressive opinion. The homeless were thrown onto the streets, we’re told, because of rising rents, heartless landlords, and a lack of economic opportunity. Activists, journalists, and political leaders have perpetuated this line of reasoning and, following it to its conclusion, have proposed investing billions in subsidized housing to solve homelessness.
But new data are undermining this narrative. As residents of West Coast cities witness the disorder associated with homeless encampments, they have found it harder to accept the progressive consensus—especially in the context of the coronavirus epidemic, which has all Americans worried about contagion. An emerging body of evidence confirms what people see plainly on the streets: homelessness is deeply connected to addiction, mental illness, and crime.
Homeless advocates argue that substance abuse is a small contributor to the problem, and that no more than 20 percent of the homeless population abuses drugs. Last year, when I suggested that homelessness is primarily an addiction crisis—citing Seattle and King County data that suggested half of homeless individuals suffered from opioid addiction—activists denounced me on social media and wrote letters to the editor demanding a retraction. But according to a recent Los Angeles Times investigation, 46 percent of the homeless and 75 percent of the unsheltered homeless have a substance-abuse disorder—more than three times higher than official estimates from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.
In the interest of preventing “stigmatization,” progressives downplay the connection between schizophrenia, severe bipolar disorder, and homelessness. In general, cities have claimed that roughly 25 percent to 39 percent of the homeless suffer from mental-health disorders.
(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...
for later..
Finally
Yeah but they'll still vote that way. Truth is the really hard one for them to swallow.
The democrats made sure all the state mental hospitals were closed. This was a plan to disrupt the country. It’s a Marxist plot.
Open the bug houses back up. 80-90 of the homeless belong there.
Now we import than from around the world.
Captain Obvious will be appearing on this thread shortly. I’m old enough to remember when the leftist first begin closing down the loony bins in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The street people which resulted were not quite as bat$#*+ crazy as those today and most were addicted to booze rather than drugs.
Yeah. That’s the other Marxist plot.
It was unfair to keep the incurable mentally ill in hospitals, the progressives claimed. It violated their rights and was an unconstitutional incarceration without due process, they said. So the mentally ill were thrown out on the streets to fend for themselves.
We should reopen the mental hospitals, but the left is unlikely to ever go for that: they never admit to being wrong, and homelessness has been too powerful a tool to use against conservatives for them to give it up. The fact that the homeless are suffering under misguided leftist policies means nothing to the left, as long as they have the issue to use.
I was working second shift at a state mental institutions to pay my way through college in the late 60s. Not long after I quit that they started to close. Calling it a Marxist plot is an understatement. Slimy commie bastages are too cowardly for a straight up fight. They slink around in the shadows. Time to fight back in the open
On another, more salient, “progressive” topic-—education. Back then the progs decided “everybody” should be educated.
The doors of academia were thrown open. Every numbskull could now get a degree.......
......like the math bereft Brian Williams and NY Times Board member who cant even do third grade long division.
From my reading of why any leader would want the homelessness I believe that Democrats want the warm bodies for their votes. Same reason they want the illegal aliens, votes. These are some SICK leaders!
“homelessness” has always been about progressive voter fraud.
If they’re living in mental hospitals they can be accurately counted and they don’t vote
IMHO most “progressive” electoral victories since the 1960’s involve voter fraud
This pretty well sums it up. “An emerging body of evidence confirms what people see plainly on the streets: homelessness is deeply connected to addiction, mental illness, and crime.”
I volunteer at a shelter and have seen it first hand.
btt
A typhus crisis can be leveraged into a national emergency that they insist forces the Federal government to take over all things medical and health related. Wuhan Flu, not so much.
For the good of the people, Comrade.
Homeless people often get a government check- instead of using it for housing and food, they use it for drugs.
I’ve seen this before- NEVER give a needy person a check. Always give it to the place they need... for example if they need a home, pay the landlord directly- if they need food pay the grocer.
My brother owned a house in a poor neighborhood- 4 people moved in, paid their first month, and never paid again- so he threw them out.
When the 5th person moved in he thought he would show up when the mailman arrived to get his money right away... the first 4 tenants were lined up waiting for the mailman too- they were STILL collecting a government welfare check for that place.
My brother turned them in, so they burned his house down.
There are few things as stupid, and as stupidly run, as a government program.
Holy crap!
Here, though, the Marxists has help from crony capitalists like Romney Sr. who sold the lie that meds (their med, of course, bought with your money) could be used to de-institutionalize the crazies.
And loonie bins didn’t make anyone rich.
A real trifecta of the swamp.
I think the best take on homelessness comes from a rather snide comment that was made by the late Peter Worthington, in one of his Toronto Sun columns in the eighties, when he referred to the “Homelessness Industry” that, just like any other industry, had no *real* and/or tangible interest in truly effective efforts at getting people off the street.
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