More Than Half A Million People: America’s Homelessness Crisis Is Rapidly Exploding On Both Coasts

You mean outside California?

California has 1/4 of ALL the homeless in the USA, obviously they do not publish the statistics otherwise we could breakdown how many illegals are homeless in California it will be high.


The also have the highest unaccompanied child homeless rate in the US and child prostitution rates.

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/...ve-alone-many-end-up-homeless-in-chicago.html
6 years ago Obama era everyone knew what was happening BUT NO ONE CARED!

 

Modern electronic technology is largely responsible for advancing "globalism" around the world. The Internet is especially responsible. But the internet is helping all of us, regardless of domicile, to see each other as human beings in ways never available to humanity before. That's a gigantic positive. Plus, who among us would want to return to a world without internet? I wouldn't. Blaming "globalism" for the erosion of the middle class, is wrong. I think the form of capitalism we practice in our international trade, is responsible. It is completely funded & controlled by the super wealthy for the benefit of the super wealthy--not the middle & lower classes. The solution is to alter our capitalism or find a better system of economics that will allow the distribution of wealth to be more widespread. That would rebuild the middle classes and also assist the poor. The disparity between rich & poor is currently increasing, with only the wealthy winning. We must remain active participants in globalism, but change our economic systems to reward a wider range of classes--and in particular the middle classes--to make globalism a success, and the world a far better place without tribal frictions.

 

Open back up the mental institutions and invest the money into self supporting work farms. Problem solved.
Vacancy use to be a crime in this country. You'd go to jail if you were homeless outside a shelter and rightly so. Thats why Hobo's kept moving so they didn't get caught.
We use to have a church on every corner and low income housing that wasn't taken over by the HUD lobby for illegals.

 

Most of the homeless put themselves on the street trough alcohol and drug addiction

 

Well, it allowed it to expand, but it didn't drive it, as a sole cause. For the idea of using the labor from the poor of the world is not a new idea. But a very old one. Which is why our founders instituted tariffs to make up the difference between our labor costs and what one could find in other parts of the world. This protected american business and labor and allowed us to become the nation that could win ww2, by our ability to out produce, not one nation, but two, and at the same time.

The common sense of being as self sufficient as possible when it comes to providing goods and services(which gives your own people jobs and disposable income) has been handily and conveniently forgotten as only the price of a widget became important,(but more importantly this deal of maxing out profits for the people at the very top)

It is no secret that economic philosophy suffered a drastic change in the 80s, as it dismantled the system that FDR had put into place, to rescue capitalism from rich capitalists. And this change in economic philosophy is involved in the rise of economic globalism. Advancements in high tech communication just make it easier to max out the disparity in income in favor of the top, but that thinking that Friedman made popular was already there. What was not there was the restructuring of our economic model, but that began to really take off in the 80s, and continued on, with aid from the democrats, as they stopped representing the common man, the working american. It is quite a story and it can be stitched together very easily given those changes I talked about are in public record.

 

I think we're more in agreement than not. I suspect your definition of globalism may be different than mine, and that can cause some misunderstandings in itself. For me, globalism is simply seeing every human in the world as a compatriot and an equal, without consideration of their nationality, race, religious belief, gender, etc. In the full sense of the word, globalism means to me the undivided oneness of humanity as a global unit, undivided by any measure. It's like a nation state of one that includes the entirety of global humanity. It means working together with others instead of against others in constant conflict. It means concentrating more on cooperative efforts instead of competition. It means recognizing that every human has intrinsic value, and that we are all generally equal in value to those around us, and that we all share certain inalienable rights as human beings that can not be denied or taken away. My version of globalism is not based on economics, but humanity. But economics has had & continues having a massive & direct impact on the functioning of globalism as a new level of consciousness. But economics must give way and endure alterations to make it more compliant and comfortable with globalism as a social system. It must also serve more than the wealthy classes.

I would welcome reading your definition of globalism.

 

Actually, that has more to do with the rapidly and overinflated cost of housing caused by speculation. And it is mostly seen in selected areas (that also happen to be high population density). For example, when I lived in Alabama probably 2/3 of my friends 40 and under owned their own homes. Housing there was very affordable, with 3 bedroom 1.5 bath houses going for around $45-55k.

But here in California, almost nobody I know under 50 owns their own homes. With median home prices being driven by speculation, $600k is a base line for most homes.

The problem you are seeing is artificial, and created by speculation not the economy itself. During the last crash I saw lots of houses that had been repossessed and were in horrible shape still being sold at the $400k mark.

As for student loans, that is their own fault. There are lots of ways to get an education without getting student loans. That is just another form of speculation, and most of those that loose got degrees that have little real world application in the workplace.

One relative of mine moans that she has been unable to get a job in the 6 years since she graduated. Well, maybe if she had gotten a degree in something other than music theater, she would be having better luck in the job market. She has since had to get another student loan, and now does massage therapy. At least that has given her a decent job.

Quite a lot of those I hear bitching about not being able to pay back loans got essentially garbage degrees. While the workplace is starving for STEM, they get liberal arts papers that are essentially worthless in the real world.

 

I would add an * to that comment.

A lot of people end up homeless at one time or another. The difference though is that the majority get themselves out of it within 3-6 months. Almost all of us have had a friend crash on the couch for a few weeks or stay in a spare room for a few months. That is also homeless.

However, the group you talk about is the majority of the "Homeless Problem". They are chronically homeless, and also chronically jobless. And it is not that there are no jobs or homes available, they are either unable to work, or unwilling to work.

And that is not my problem, short of paying for institutionalization for the mentally ill and rehabilitation for the addicts. A price I am willing to pay if it gets them off of the street.

 

While this is true of the poster,

Not so sure about this one ... what do you mean "Caused by immorality" .. more info por favor ?

 

It isn't just speculation, and all areas of this nation in regards to owning a home does not fall into the San Francisco paradigm. There is much more to this than what we see in San Francisco and speculation. My daughter bought her first home here in Ms. last year, and as an RN it was affordable for her. She is a millennial, and not many of her peers are buying homes, as compared to my generation, the Boomer generation. And this is common across this nation.

On education, you act as if all millennials who have a degree got that degree in useless fields. Quite a blanket you are throwing over this...ha ha.

So, what happens to the feller who gets a degree in some high tech field, gets a job in that field, and then gets let go, to make room for an indian who is imported in using an HB1 visa? Once he trained the indian to do his job? We had Gates I think, lying to congress in regards to this issue, where he was stating he could not get enough americans to employ and had to go outside or america, using HB1s to fill slots. It is a ploy to get around supply and demand on domestic labor. And that is the way business operates in the real world, outside of an ideological driven view of reality.

I don't know of any of my daughter's peers holding degrees in medieval literature or women studies. This has been used to dismiss real problems in regards to the millenials, IMO. What I do see, from my alma mater, is an engineering school that is filled with foreign students, because they have a need for say, mechanical engineers and since our deindustrialization our need for such engineers is non existent, compared to earlier times. Hell, even STEM grads have no guarantee for a job once they finish school. You know where there is demand? Finance, given the financialization of our economy.

We also suffered from decades of our education system pushing the kids into higher education, college, while the various fields in regards to learning a trade, electrical work, plumbing, air conditioning, and so on, was frowned upon. Fields where at least one used to be able to make a middle class living. Perhaps this explains why where we once had technical schools, trade schools, all over my state, most of them are long gone. And to even get into the welding school here, as my grandson's friend tried to do, this now demands a score on the ACT that would also qualify one to enter into a university! ha ha. Why in the hell does a person need a college entry ACT score to learn how to weld? Most people who used to go into a trade did so because they were not college material. Imagine that!! Not all people are college material, but these days you must exhibit that in order to learn how to weld!

One would think that given the supposed demand for various trades, that supply and demand would have pushed up wages to attract more people into those fields! That did not happen here in the South, I can tell you that. My father made more as a welder in the 60s, compared to today. For if you adjust up wages just for inflation welding would be paying much more today than it is, on average. So, we see the same thing with trade wages as with the min wage.

 

And more on the way.

http://www.news4europe.eu/6350_worl...grants-reach-us-mexico-border-in-tijuana.html

 

First try to claim I am wrong, then you validate my claim by giving an example of somebody (who is an RN) buying a house in Mississippi. Yea, exactly what I had been saying. In areas of the country like that, you can still get a house for less than the price of a new car.

And yes, a lot of people today are not buying homes because it no longer suits their lifestyle. They tend to get married later than we did, and have kids later. Things like owning a home are not as important as it once was.

Not all, but far to many do. And even worse, far to many get degrees that are not needed. I can't tell you the number of times I have met guys with IT degrees, who work in more entry level positions because there are simply not enough openings for them. Or they had a sub-specialty (say C++ or Pascal) where the industry wanted a different specialty (Chrome or Python).

Wow, paranoid of immigrants much?

What do they do? Why, they get another job. If they are any good they should not have to much of a problem getting another one. Heck, in IT if you are talking about a position like that most even pay moving expenses and a hiring bonus for a qualified candidate. And I worked in the high tech sector for many years, I can honestly say I have never seen that happen.

And it rarely does happen. There are only 65,000 H-1B (not HB1) visas given every year, and they are only given to those who hold a Master's degree or higher. And since those visas are only good for 5 years, that means at most there are a grand total of 325,000 H-1B visa holders in the entire country. Out of a workforce of over 160 million people, that is not even 1%.

Oh, and H-1B visa holders are not "imported". To qualify they have to have gotten their degree at a US university. In other words, they have already been here for 4-6+ years. They simply convert their student visa for a work visa, and essentially work out their internship. The majority of them do their 4-5 years then return home with their education and work experience.

Well yea, because she has a STEM degree. Same way in the military I did not associate or know many Lawyers, or OBGYN specialists, or tank engine mechanics. But I know they were out there. I simply did not associate with them.

And engineers are not needed in the US? What planet are you from? The US has been starving for STEM degrees for decades now, and the need is growing every year. The very statement "since our deindustrialization our need for such engineers is non existent" is incredulous in the extreme. Yes, we no longer manufacture as much as we did, but we are still the #1 design powerhouse in the world.

The last High Tech company I worked at had a staff of 5 engineers who designed telephony products. Yes we exported most of the assembly to China, but the products were 100% designed and tested here in the US. Even the prototypes were made here, only the mass production part was exported. That requires engineers here.

And that there is the very issue.

"Blue collar work" is frowned upon, even though that is the very basis of the middle class. Auto mechanics, linemen, HVAC technicians, building trades, electricians, none of those require college degrees. That is the backbone of the middle class. But more and more today the youth think they need a degree in order to make it.

Want to wonder where the middle class has gone, and why the upper class is growing? It is because the youth today see such manual work as "below them", and they are pushing to join the upper class themselves. And the tech schools are shrinking every year. One of the largest went bankrupt 2 years ago.

ITT Tech started in 1969 by International Telephone & Telegraph to address the shortage of linemen and other workers for their communication network. When they closed they were the largest private tech school company in the country, with 130 campuses in 38 states. Where they taught everything from drafting, computer networking, and forensic sciences to secretarial work, bookkeeping and medical records.

Vocational Education and Technical Schools in the US have fallen drastically in the last 20 years. Once the bedrock of about half the High School graduates, now those who can not afford college largely have to go to retail or other minimal skill service industries. And as you said, the few tech and voc-ed schools left now generally charge college level tuition, with college level entrance requirements.

Heck, even the local school system is not much of a help anymore. 20 years ago I took at Lotus 1-2-3 from a local High School here in California as part of their adult education program. $25 plus book (another $25). $50 total for a 3 month course held 2 nights a week. Today a similar course (Microsoft Outlook) costs $350 at the AE program in my town. There is no way in hell the cost to the school district is $350 per student for a course held for 6 weeks 2 nights a week for 90 minutes. The catalog listed the capacity of the class at 50 students. That means they collect $17,500 for 3 hours a week for 6 weeks.

Unless they are paying that instructor $972 an hour, they are making a killing for that course.

 

Well, you cannot buy a house here for less than the price of a new car. ha ha. But besides that my main point was supposed to be that just speculation isn't the primary cause for millennials being the first generation not to buy homes as a percentage. Sure, it has an affect in particular areas, no doubt. The position this generation and others are in, in regards to where they are economically has several observable causes, so it isn't just one factor. I think the change in our economic model is one of the primary drivers. The primary driver with other factors coming from that, with some related to the change of models and some not related.

 

1) I'm a socialist, actually. Meantime, we always live in an economy which will be difficult for some, and not for others. If you don't like having difficulty, do something about it. Or stop complaining. They're your choices.

2) Being provided with the tools for success (free universal public education, public libraries, and enough food to stay alive) is ALL we need. How we use those things is PERSONAL CHOICE. You cannot force people to be successful. And no one is 'left out'. Everyone has access to the three tools. No one is 'not allowed' to enjoy wealth. Hard to believe that you're willing to pitch such an absurdity, actually.

3) Assistance programs for who? Who are these special people? And how have they been prevented from 'accessing' free education and libraries etc? How are they prevented from taking opportunities (which are opportunities, not personal opinions .. ie, available to anyone willing to work for them).

PS: I come from poor stock, and lived in poverty as a child. I worked my way out of that as a young adult. I CHOSE not to have 'difficulty', and did what needed to be done to avoid it. I didn't sit at home eating cheeseburgers and complaining about how unfair the world is.

 

And once again that is due to the ever-increasing urbanization of the country. Urbanization which has fueled ever increasing home costs and speculation. I speculate that you live in an urban or urban metro area if you make a statement like that.

Good example, my parents owned their first house in the San Fernando Valley in the late 1960's. They bought it for around $25,000 in 1968, and sold it for $35,000 in 1975, But that $10k was not only increase in housing but in improvements they had done as they owned the house. Repairs, landscaping, new paint, installing an AC unit, new carpets, and things like that. It was in original "Post-war 2 bedroom bungalow" condition when they bought it, they sold it in much better condition.

And in the late 1980's, the prices started to go insane. I even looked to rent it in 1994, and the new owners had bought it as an investment at $49k. Those same owners still own that house, it is the one I grew up in. And I have followed the value of it for decades now. Today, that 779 square foot 2 bedroom bungalow is valued at $650k. Prior to the housing crash in 2007, it had reached $1,025,000. Yes, over $1 million. Today, the estimated rent should be $2,500 a month. Hell, the mobile home I own and live in has more square footage than that, and I spent less than 1 year rent on that to buy the thing.

The problem with home ownership is that in urban areas, nobody can afford it anymore. Mortgage companies generally work off of a simple formula, 1/3 of your income should go to rent or mortgage. And in areas like LA, people paying 1/2 of their income to rent is the standard. The norm in California (remember this is state wide) is renters paying 54% of their income to rent, and even owners paying 38.8% of their income to mortgage.

https://calbudgetcenter.org/resources/californians-parts-state-pay-can-afford-housing/

This is exactly what caused the sub-prime meltdown a decade ago. Owners who had bought to much house that they could not afford, in the hopes that their income would grow faster than the balloon payments. And when they did not, millions lost everything.

This is one major reason why my wife and I gave up living in the "big city" 4 years ago and moved to a rural area. Yes, we have been living in smoke for the last week and are still prepared to evacuate the fire (which should hint at the area we live in), but it is affordable compared to the rest of the state with housing starting at under $200k. And yes we make less money here, but we are paying only about 25% of our income to housing instead of 48% like most of the state.

Urbanization is the largest cause of high housing. In the 1960's it was 69%. When we started to see the costs rise in the 1970s it was 74%. Today, the urbanization is 81% and increasing. This means that housing costs are only going to increase even more, as more and more people try to live ion urban areas, which are expanding every year.

When my parents bought their house in 1968, the San Fernando Valley was the main "LA suburb" (17 miles from downtown). By the mid 1970's it was Simi Valley (30 miles). By the mid-1980's it was Santa Clarita (45 miles). By the early 1990's it was Lancaster-Palmdale (62 miles). I used to do that commute, 60 miles each way from home to work every day. And now housing is going up and up because people are not willing to commute any longer than that.

Until people decide to stop living in the big cities and move to more rural areas, that will not change and costs will continue to go up. My wife and I have a goal now, within 5 years to leave California entirely and move to a remote area far away from the "big city". The trade-off of higher income for higher costs is just no longer worth it to us. We would rather make less money and be happy with it than to pay huge amounts for housing just to make a bigger paycheck.

 

We can easily agree that what you laid out is indeed one of the factors affecting people being homeless. My point has always been there is much more than a single factor that has created it. But, a very good and informative post! Yet if what you presented could be addressed and solved, it is doubtful that would fix this problem, given other factors are involved.

I never knew of any homeless people here in my area in earlier times. I knew of vast amounts of poor people, whites and blacks, but non were actually homeless, having to live on the streets, fields and woods. I heard many stories about homeless people during the great depression but I was born after that great depression.

 

Part of that is due to the huge population growth in places like California. The population of California in 1968 was about 19 million, now it is approaching 40 million. With all the environmental restrictions in California, it is nearly impossible and extremely expensive to build a new home and has been for over 20 years. It is all part of the equation that has driven California housing through the roof.

I was transferred to Ca. in the 90s. I bought a house for 820K. Three years later when I was transferred again, I got a million two for it.

 

Short-term homelessness has always been around, and there is not much you can do about it. Most people fall into this category, and are not homeless after 3-6 months. Affordable housing has little to do with this group.

As for the long-term chronically homeless also has little to nothing to do with housing cost. They are the addicts, the mentally ill, the bums who have not worked in years and would avoid work at any cost. They live off of selling their bodies or food stamps, or just stealing so they can get enough for their next high.

They have not rented anything more then a motel room in years, and mostly move from location to location. In the last 5 years they have flocked to California, where the laws are non-existent and you pretty much have to shoot anybody before you do any real time in jail.

Most of what people think of as homeless are chronically homeless. You can make housing fixed at 1/3 of whatever their income is, and they will still not get jobs and move off the street. You are simply seeing this concentrated in urban areas because that is where the shelters-handouts-drugs are located.

I live in a very small town, and we have a lot of homeless here. Only a couple are locals, all addicts. The vast majority come here from other places. A lot are "exported" here from Chico or Sacramento. When I lived in Palmdale-Lancaster we used to joke that we exported our homeless to Los Angeles. And that was quite literally the truth.

After they get warned a few times, eventually the Sheriff Deputies would get tired of them and pick them up on some minor charge. Loitering, public intoxication, and shopping cart theft were common charges. They would then get sentenced to 31 days in jail. In LA County, any sentence over 30 days is served at the main jail in Downtown LA. So in most cases they are shipped off Downtown where 10 days or so later they are kicked out there, a short walk from Skid Row.

Most never make the 90 mile trip back to Lancaster after that, and just settle in to their new home.

And Skid Row has been the homeless mecca of LA for over 70 years now. And it got worse after in 1987 the city council passed a resolution ordering the LA to not arrest people for sleeping in the street or setting up tents there until they can all be found housing.

Well, that was over 30 years ago. And the population of Skid Row has now swelled to over 8,000 and shows no sign of slowing. But they do throw in some bandaids on occasion, like Star Apartments. 102 units dedicated to helping the homeless. Residents when they get in pay 30% of their income or government assistance. But there are no requirements for counseling, rehabilitation, or mental health or drug abatement so the problems of the street just continue. But the waiting list is 3-5 years for this and other projects.

You could literally give every one of them a home, and it will never solve the problem. The homeless will remain primarily drug addicts and the mentally ill. The solution is helping the people, not just doing a kumbaya over a cheap house and thinking the problem is solved.

 

You cannot help people determined not to be helped.

What is this obsession with forcing people to respond to your (GY) interventions in a predetermined way? What happened to freedom of choice?

 

Then they do not get help.

But throwing huge amounts of money at a group that does not want help to me is foolish. If they want to live on the street and use drugs until their brains rot away, that is fine by me. Just do not expect me to pay for it.

I am more than willing to pay for them to get the help they need. But if they do not want to get cleaned up, so be it. I see no reason to waste resources on individuals like that.

 

Common refrain here is to blame the homeless for homelessness and the poor for poverty. It is much more complex than this:

https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2081&context=jssw

Keep in mind also that it is far cheaper for the tax-payer to have supportive housing and social programs than it is to have police, health workers and hospitals on the front line of dealing with social problems like mental health and addiction. More and more Housing First initiatives are popping up with a goal of reducing the social costs of homelessness:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/opinion-jino-distasio-homelessness-housing-first-1.4341552

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4679128/

Blaming people for their own mental health or addiction problems is simplistic and does not address the real costs or problems of homelessness.

 

There seems to be a concentration of homeless people in areas of Ca. And these are the homeless usually seen in MSM. Yet I never saw a homeless person in my life until beginning in the 90s here in my area. And it has only gotten worse over the years. South of me a big town has started providing land for tent cities and its always full. It is a nationwide problem. I would love for someone to find out the stories of these people, why they are homeless? Is it mainly due to drug addiction? What percentage? For there are reasons for this and unless we know the reasons, and there is probably more than just one single reason for homelessness, then perhaps that might help in find the answers that would minimize it.

 

We could turn the homeless into tyres

 

Govt does not have the time or resources to weed out individual 'reasons', and respond to them accordingly. Even WERE such people actually looking to improve themselves - and 99.9% are not. All govt can do is what it already does ... provide the tools for life improvement (de-tox, education, etc). Anything more tailored than that is our families' and friends' responsibility. The Village, IOW.

 

Actually, it's not complex. Produce a dysfunctional human, and that human will live a dysfunctional life. There is zero complexity in that. Insisting that something is complex is a feint used to garner attention for something which requires none. It's also an avoidance tactic. That is, the avoidance of an inconvenient truth. In this case, the bolded sentence above.

But you're right. In some cases, we can most certainly blame someone other than the homeless person. The very young, and the physiologically disabled or brain injured etc. In all such cases, the families involved are 100% responsible for the person's homelessness.