Why Homelessness in California is Worse Than In Other States
If you’ve wondered why homelessness in California seems so much worse than in other states, Siyamak Khorrami’s interview with El Dorado County District Attorney Vern Pierson for California Insider provides some answers:
Some takeaways:
“According to the latest report, California alone has one third of the U.S homeless population today.”
“What we have is you can be arrested or cited did over and over and over and over again, and there’s no consequences. And it’s just getting worse and worse.”
The same transients sprawling unconscious on city streets in LA and San Francisco are now found in San Diego.
“If you look at the people and look in their eyes, you see a lost [soul], almost like a post-apocalyptic look. It’s not somebody who’s lost their job or lost their housing, it’s someone who is addicted to drugs. In large part have fried their brains. They’re suffering from mental illness.”
“Stanford recently looked at it last year, their school of economics looked at it, and they found were over the last 10 years, most of the United States homelessness dropped by roughly 9%. In the same period here in the state of California, it went up by 43%.”
He says that other blue states aren’t having the same problem California is, but that’s slightly misleading. There are blue cities that are starting to see some of the same problems (Seattle, Portland, Austin) that are starting to have the same problems because they follow the same playbook. But they do touch on Seattle at the end of the interview.
“The most notable, unique difference is our decriminalizing hardcore drug use, and decriminalizing large or low-level property crimes.”
You can’t trust crime statistics, because people have just stopped reporting things. Auto thefts are still reported for insurance purposes. “Vehicle thefts here in the state of California have gone up significantly, so much so that on a per capita basis we are double the State of Florida.”
One Target accurately reporting thefts for a month doubled San Francisco theft statistics.
“Employees that don’t want to come to work and be exposed to that, because of being told don’t contact anyone.”
“Shoppers stop coming to stores. You just had Nordstrom’s in San Francisco close after 35 years. They’re one of their hallmark stores. That is a huge store in San Francisco closed because theft.”
“Every year more people leaving than are coming to the state because of poor public policy decisions.”
“The single dividing line between us and everywhere else in that regard is the legalization of hardcore drug use, or the decriminalization of hardcore drug use.”
“Harm reduction centers” just prevent people from dying on that particular day, and do nothing to keep drug users from gradually killing themselves over months and years. Those non-profits are “simply enabling them to continue to that that addiction and to use those drugs, knowing it will kill them.”
Pierson: HUD, uh, in 2015, 2016 decided…”Hey, we’re a housing entity. Why are we spending 60%, 70% percent of our resources on rehab for people? And so let’s get out of that business and go and do this other one.” I think that happened at a time which was critical in for California, to where we were already going down this housing housing first, or type in harm reduction type philosophy.
Khorrami: Then you exacerbate it by giving the homeless housing, and then you give them, let them use the drugs, and then you’re not really thinking about dealing with their addiction, right?
Pierson: Yeah, it’s absurd.
“We have based all of our policy on the slogan called ‘Housing First.’ What it says is, if you provide them housing and you provide this, provide some services to him, the person will stop using drugs.”
New York (which I personally would not point to as a model, it’s simply less of an obvious failure) has a ratio of one social worker to eight homeless people. California has a ratio of one to thirty-two.
“Compassion isn’t enough.”
“Compassion isn’t letting someone die in a ditch somewhere. Compassion isn’t letting someone lay on the street with a needle in their arm. That’s not compassion.”
“Enough is enough. You’ve tried this grand social experiment over the last eight or ten years. It didn’t work. We need a course correction, and we need to do something about it now.”
Seattle is an extreme example of what’s happening here in California. Everybody, the businesses are fleeing. The people who are living there that can leave are leaving. And it is very similar to what we’re doing, where open rampant hardcore drug use, little or no consequence for property crimes, and they also have a horrendous problem with law enforcement staffing. They simply can’t hire law enforcement officers because, frankly, the way they’ve treated them. It is a handful of really bad policy decisions that created this problem.
No one wants to work at Nordstrom’s because they know their car will be broken into while they work.
One flaw with the interview is that they did not discuss the role of the Homeless Industrial Complex in creating the situation. My working theory is that the appalling decisions we see being made on homelessness and crime are because the hard left is actively benefiting from the situation because it provides myriad ways to rake off graft and fraud. Ditto the lunacy of defunding the police.
You want to solve “homelessness”? Fire all the people enabling it, and zero out the budgets of all the agencies involved. The human wreckage making up the problem will either fix themselves, or end themselves, and that’s the only real solution. You keep paying for them to remain drugged-out wastes? They’ll remain such.
In the end, what’s the incentive for any of these people to “solve” the problem? If the agencies do it, they lose their funding; if their employees succeed, they lose their jobs; if the supposed “homeless” fix their own problems, then they have to work for a living like everyone else. Which, they don’t want to do…
The only people here who have an interest in solving the problem are the normies whose lives are being ruined because of the rising crime and literal shit on the streets. Talk to the business owners of Seattle, who can’t get people to come in because of the homeless. The showroom we used to use for tile and flooring? Surrounded by “homeless” vagrants and bums; the clients drove to the appointment, took one look at the area, and didn’t even stop. Probably lost 20,000-30,000 in sales for that showroom, just from those clients. The whole thing is insane… Seattle will be a ghost town by about 2028, if not sooner. Then where will the money come from?
Enforce vagrancy laws (ha!) and put them all in same-sex concentration camps with two options: either detox or all the drug of choice you want until you overdose and die. Either way the problem gets resolved.
Won’t happen of course. I don’t know how bad it’s going to have to get for anything effective to be done, but it’s obviously not bad enough yet.
[…] MATTER: Why Homelessness in California is Worse Than In Other States. “Stanford recently looked at it last year, their school of economics looked at it, and they found […]
What I don’t understand is when we decided as a country that we cannot use violence to protect property? I don’t believe that was the default assumption in the 80’s, but I’m not sure when it changed.
The successful homeless programs I support require addiction theraphy and work. If you enforce these steps, you don’t need more police. So freebie handouts have to be eliminated.
Government claims a monopoly on the use of legal violence to compel behavior – Use it on the VAGRANTS!
Paddy Wagon patrols scooping up anyone sleeping on the streets or squatting. Do not use kid gloves handling them. They’re criminals who refuse to be self sufficient and force the rest of us to spend on their care.
Day after pick up, release anyone who can prove they have a long standing legal residence + legal income and were just passed out drunk
Take the vagrants out to a VERY uncomfortable fenced “camp” in the desert (swamp or other land with little viable use). Graded dirt and barbed wire fence. No buildings or tents. Just tarps and sleeping bags. Let the inmates figure out a way to use them….or not.
Their choice. Their consequences.
Give them a sleeping bag, a shovel to dig latrine and access to a clean water pipe and drain. NO HVAC. They’ll live rough in the local weather which may be very hot or cold. Tough.
Lock’em up for 3 weeks with no access to anything but basic food (oatmeal, rice or bread) and water.
Take biometrics before releasing them sober at the end of 3 weeks. If they get picked up a second time, keep them 13 weeks.
Kate Brown is the prototypical “feels” kind of idiot we’ve put in charge of social policy. She has nothing but “feelings” for the criminal, and zero regard for the victims, the normal people that make up the rest of society.
I have no idea why these mentally-deficient types think and behave the way they do; I can only observe the effect that they have on society, and marvel at the way they keep getting away with it again and again and again, all the while garnering nothing but approbation and positive reactions from their constituency. Who should, in my view, treat these morons with the contempt they deserve, and put them the hell out of office and public life.
I think the details of Pat’s proposal are a bit harsh, but I support the concept.
One thing I’ve never understood is why all the homeless “services” are in the middle of downtowns. The people who work there have cars to commute to/from just about anywhere. The people being served have no homes to commute from. Put the services out in the middle of nowhere so that the homeless don’t bother the normies.
The really remarkable thing about the phenomenon is the self-assured way that the people responsible for it are so certain of their moral superiority and rectitude over what they’ve done to our cities and civil life. It’s like they’re blind to the consequences of their actions, and are unable to connect their coddling of the drug-addicted with the rise in crime and incivility.
Our forebears would have no problem dealing with this; the majority of these street creatures would likely be either dead or locked up safely away from the public, and we’d be able to walk our feces-free streets in safety. Yet, we’re assured that those rank primitives were horrible, insensitive people that mistreated all these poor downtrodden types that are so prevalent today.
I’m really not too sure which is the more uncivilized age; that which you could walk the sidewalks and not have to worry about stepping in human feces, or today’s enlightened age wherein you have to have a smartphone app to tell you how to avoid the areas where it’s reported…
A must-watch that changed my mind. The three-step plan for addiction is intervention, treatment, recovery. CA is doing none of those things. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nSBmftZ1qU
A California county with a white male DA?! I’m shocked I tell you, just shocked!
You want to solve “homelessness”? Fire all the people enabling it, and zero out the budgets of all the agencies involved. The human wreckage making up the problem will either fix themselves, or end themselves, and that’s the only real solution. You keep paying for them to remain drugged-out wastes? They’ll remain such.
In the end, what’s the incentive for any of these people to “solve” the problem? If the agencies do it, they lose their funding; if their employees succeed, they lose their jobs; if the supposed “homeless” fix their own problems, then they have to work for a living like everyone else. Which, they don’t want to do…
The only people here who have an interest in solving the problem are the normies whose lives are being ruined because of the rising crime and literal shit on the streets. Talk to the business owners of Seattle, who can’t get people to come in because of the homeless. The showroom we used to use for tile and flooring? Surrounded by “homeless” vagrants and bums; the clients drove to the appointment, took one look at the area, and didn’t even stop. Probably lost 20,000-30,000 in sales for that showroom, just from those clients. The whole thing is insane… Seattle will be a ghost town by about 2028, if not sooner. Then where will the money come from?
Enforce vagrancy laws (ha!) and put them all in same-sex concentration camps with two options: either detox or all the drug of choice you want until you overdose and die. Either way the problem gets resolved.
Won’t happen of course. I don’t know how bad it’s going to have to get for anything effective to be done, but it’s obviously not bad enough yet.
Glad I don’t live in a blue city.
If you pay them, they’ll come. California pays the homeless to come, so they come. It also help that our winter is much milder than Montana.
[…] MATTER: Why Homelessness in California is Worse Than In Other States. “Stanford recently looked at it last year, their school of economics looked at it, and they found […]
What I don’t understand is when we decided as a country that we cannot use violence to protect property? I don’t believe that was the default assumption in the 80’s, but I’m not sure when it changed.
It’s not the default now, except where it’s been imposed in deep blue cities by Soros-backed DAs infected with #SocialJustice.
The successful homeless programs I support require addiction theraphy and work. If you enforce these steps, you don’t need more police. So freebie handouts have to be eliminated.
Government claims a monopoly on the use of legal violence to compel behavior – Use it on the VAGRANTS!
Paddy Wagon patrols scooping up anyone sleeping on the streets or squatting. Do not use kid gloves handling them. They’re criminals who refuse to be self sufficient and force the rest of us to spend on their care.
Day after pick up, release anyone who can prove they have a long standing legal residence + legal income and were just passed out drunk
Take the vagrants out to a VERY uncomfortable fenced “camp” in the desert (swamp or other land with little viable use). Graded dirt and barbed wire fence. No buildings or tents. Just tarps and sleeping bags. Let the inmates figure out a way to use them….or not.
Their choice. Their consequences.
Give them a sleeping bag, a shovel to dig latrine and access to a clean water pipe and drain. NO HVAC. They’ll live rough in the local weather which may be very hot or cold. Tough.
Lock’em up for 3 weeks with no access to anything but basic food (oatmeal, rice or bread) and water.
Take biometrics before releasing them sober at the end of 3 weeks. If they get picked up a second time, keep them 13 weeks.
3rd offense? 6 months in the camp.
End state where this is going:
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2023/07/18/portland-has-an-apparent-serial-killer-his-accomplice-may-be-the-governor-who-freed-him-early-from-prison-n1711354
Kate Brown is the prototypical “feels” kind of idiot we’ve put in charge of social policy. She has nothing but “feelings” for the criminal, and zero regard for the victims, the normal people that make up the rest of society.
I have no idea why these mentally-deficient types think and behave the way they do; I can only observe the effect that they have on society, and marvel at the way they keep getting away with it again and again and again, all the while garnering nothing but approbation and positive reactions from their constituency. Who should, in my view, treat these morons with the contempt they deserve, and put them the hell out of office and public life.
[…] Why Homelessness in California is Worse Than In Other States — BattleSwarm […]
I think the details of Pat’s proposal are a bit harsh, but I support the concept.
One thing I’ve never understood is why all the homeless “services” are in the middle of downtowns. The people who work there have cars to commute to/from just about anywhere. The people being served have no homes to commute from. Put the services out in the middle of nowhere so that the homeless don’t bother the normies.
The really remarkable thing about the phenomenon is the self-assured way that the people responsible for it are so certain of their moral superiority and rectitude over what they’ve done to our cities and civil life. It’s like they’re blind to the consequences of their actions, and are unable to connect their coddling of the drug-addicted with the rise in crime and incivility.
Our forebears would have no problem dealing with this; the majority of these street creatures would likely be either dead or locked up safely away from the public, and we’d be able to walk our feces-free streets in safety. Yet, we’re assured that those rank primitives were horrible, insensitive people that mistreated all these poor downtrodden types that are so prevalent today.
I’m really not too sure which is the more uncivilized age; that which you could walk the sidewalks and not have to worry about stepping in human feces, or today’s enlightened age wherein you have to have a smartphone app to tell you how to avoid the areas where it’s reported…
A must-watch that changed my mind. The three-step plan for addiction is intervention, treatment, recovery. CA is doing none of those things. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nSBmftZ1qU