Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog

Gov. Gavin Newsom, newly inaugurated Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and legislative leaders are pledging decisive action on California’s homelessness crisis, which raises a pithy question: Why did it erupt during a period of strong economic growth?

The reasons often offered include a moderate climate, the availability of generous welfare benefits, mental health and drug abuse. However, a lengthy and meticulously sourced article in the current issue of Atlantic magazine demolishes all of those supposed causes.

Rather, the article argues persuasively, California and other left-leaning states tend to have the nation’s most egregious levels of homelessness because they have made it extraordinarily difficult to build enough housing to meet demands.

Author Jerusalem Demsas contends that the progressive politics of California and other states are “largely to blame for the homelessness crisis: A contradiction at the core of liberal ideology has precluded Democratic politicians, who run most of the cities where homelessness is most acute, from addressing the issue.

“Liberals have stated preferences that housing should be affordable, particularly for marginalized groups … But local politicians seeking to protect the interests of incumbent homeowners spawned a web of regulations, laws, and norms that has made blocking the development of new housing pitifully simple.”

Demsas singles out Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area as examples of how environmentalists, architectural preservationists, homeowner groups and left-leaning organizations joined hands to enact a thicket of difficult procedural hurdles that became “veto points” to thwart efforts to build the new housing needed in prosperous “superstar cities.”

While thriving economies drew workers to these regions, their lack of housing manifested itself in soaring rents and home prices that drove those on the lower rungs of the economy into homelessness.

(Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

I just came home today from a 4 day business trip in Austin. Homeless and drug addicts were everywhere. Girls looked like guys, guys looked like girls. In my hotel last night I was woken 3 times from separate bouts gunfire. What happened to this great city?

— Texaschick3 (@Texaschick311) December 8, 2022

(Hat tip: Dwight.)

Pawtners in crime..🐕🐾👧📺😅 pic.twitter.com/1eYFWvDeFY

— 𝕐o̴g̴ (@Yoda4ever) December 18, 2022

I want to know what song is playing on that TV…
(Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)