Analysis Episode #7 - HomelessnessSupport the show on Patreon and get the news in text form early, as well as an audio version of each episode: https://patre...
Lack of affordable housing certainly seems like a contributing factor. Drug addiction and mental illness complicates the problem though. Virtually no one will rent to, or rent to for long, someone living that life without treatment.
In the last ~4 years, the homeless population seems to have exploded. Shanty towns and zombie RVs everywhere. Trash everywhere.
Personal and commercial property vandalism and crime seems more prevalent, though I don’t have numbers to back up that anecdote.
Open air drug use has also become unsettlingly normalized.
All this to say, homelessness certainly seems epidemic, at the very least on the west coast.
But the question is “WHY is there a homeless epidemic?”
Oh, sorry.
Everyone on the west coast would be inclined to say, “it’s a complicated issue” and then continue to do virtually nothing.
Seems to me like the usual suspects. Financial hardship, drug abuse, and mental illness. All intertwined.
Lack of housing supply resulting from zoning laws that are far too strict.
Lack of affordable housing certainly seems like a contributing factor. Drug addiction and mental illness complicates the problem though. Virtually no one will rent to, or rent to for long, someone living that life without treatment.