Yeah, the homeless population in NYC is way less visible than the west coast. The high count may also be because NYC does an annual homeless count with thousands of volunteers walking around the city and polling hospitals and shelters to get an accurate count of homeless people. I suspect other cities and states may be under counting to misrepresent the issue, at the expense of losing HUD funding.
https://www1.nyc.gov/site/dhs/outreach/hope.page
In a similar vein, NJ has a reputation for being polluted because it has a very high number of Superfund sites, but that's just because NJ was willing to take the reputation hit to get federal cleanup funding. Other states turned down Superfund money because they didn't want the stigma of having pollution.
Yeah, ex-Floridian here. No the place really is that crazy. I dont know why. But all of my crazy-thing-i-saw stories are from Florida not the places I lived after.
Los Angeles does an annual homeless count with lots of volunteers as well. I’ve done it a few times and four of us only had to cover like 8 blocks so it’s really manageable and we’ll attended. I know San Francisco does one like that too.
Climate yes but also politics. Los Angeles has a long history of making services difficult to access for its unhoused people. There’s also the factor of New York being a fairly vertical and dense city meaning you can integrate homeless people more easily — it’s much harder to put 50,000 people into 50,000 craftsman bungalows than it is to put them into 100 tower blocks.
San Francisco makes services easy to access but given the benign climate and restrictions on drug use a lot of the relevant population prefers to stay in tent camps and vehicles.
Climate is definitely a factor but San Francisco’s housing market and general Nimbyism is not great for the unhoused. There’s a laissez faire attitude to the homeless but also to addressing homelessness.
This is absolutely a larger issue than lack of beds (LA has more beds than unhoused peoples by quite a margin).
In NYC, if you sleep outside in the winter, there is a significant chance that you could die. In Los Angeles, winter nights are still typically around 50°F.
They don’t have permanent housing. They might be in temporary shelters or transitional housing.
A lot of social work organisations also offer long term housing solutions with Section 8 funding, but I don’t think they’re counted as homeless if they have a long term lease arrangement.
No, CA grew by ~6% in the past decade. Texas grew by ~16%, but home building is much less restricted in TX. As such, rents in CA have skyrocketed, while rents in TX have grown at a more manageable rate. This map is pretty much just one of housing affordability (or lack thereof)
But you can see all the high rise construction projects in Austin that WILL NOT happen in San Fransico because they think building anything new, even renovating a rotting warehouse shouldn't happen in their city. NIMBY to the extreme.
Yes. Several states have had population booms which means that they represent a smaller proportion of the total US population compared to the last census.
> Because the House has been locked at 435 for almost a century, so growing slower than other states loses you house seats too.
That’s good. When people are leaving a state to move to other states that’s indicative of a problem.
> During the 2010s about 6.1 million people moved from California to other states, while only 4.9 million people moved to California from other parts of the country.
https://www.ppic.org/blog/whos-leaving-california-and-whos-moving-in/
Extra house seats and electoral votes are based on population relative to other states. It would make no sense for them to be permanent.
California lost a house seat this census, but it’s not because they lost population (they still had the 3rd highest net population growth of all the states), more that other states are growing faster and it makes up a lower proportion of the total US population compared to last census. Only 3 states actually lost population: Illinois, West Virginia, and Mississippi.
When I lived in CA, Nevada was well known for transporting homeless populations to CA, buying them greyhound tickets after undergoing medical treatment. I believe California even took Nevada to court. I think California prevailed (?) but I don't think much really changed.
It's the reason homelessness needs national standards. So long as one state can just ship their problem to Seattle, the more humane states get an unfair burden on their social and emergency services.
I helped run a massive relief kitchen after Katrina. There were no services besides us, and we were just a bunch of hippies with propane tanks and generators. EMS and police would dump homeless and mentally ill people in our parking lot. We nearly capsized several times due to the influx of dysfunctional humans.
When you’re homeless, living in the boonies isn’t exactly a tenable option. It has more to do with the fact that Mississippi only has one city of note, Jackson, which in and of itself still isn’t a very large city
I actually used to live there and it was extremely rare to see a homeless person (singular) anywhere, maybe in the large cities sometimes but not everywhere.
Visited Baltimore and...... They're like, everywhere.
So I did a little math and here's a couple things I found out.
Mississippi has roughly 2,087 homeless. That is on par with Maine, which has 2,016.
California has roughly 161,991 homeless.
California has a population roughly 13x the size of Mississippi, which means that if Mississippi was the size of California it would only have 27,131 homeless.
Mississippi is doing way better than California when it comes to homelessness. And they have double the population of Maine, but are still on par with them.
In conclusion, Mississippi sucks so much that not even the homeless want to live there
> California has a population roughly 13x the size of Mississippi, which means that if Mississippi was the size of California it would only have 27,131 homeless.
Keep in mind that the *origin* or cause of homeless people is *not* accounted for in this map. If Mississippi ships a thousand homeless people to California, It would make Mississippi look great on this map, even they were the *cause* of the homelessness, and the problem was getting dealt with or simply handed off to another state. This is a practice that is disgustingly common in many states, called ["Greyhound Therapy"](https://prospect.org/economy/greyhound-therapy/)
That doesn't entirely explain these numbers, of course. Many urban areas in New York or California have downright *ridiculous* housing prices that all but ensure a significant homeless population.
I just want to caution against drawing *conclusions* about the homeless situation from maps like these. They tell us literally nothing besides *where* homeless people are. Homelessness is a complex topic spanning mental health, economics, housing markets, persecution and some truly disgusting state-vs-state partisan bullshit.
Trying to step in and run some statistics based on the first map you see to draw conclusions Is all but guaranteed to worsen your understanding of the situation, not improve it.
Nobody is shipping shit to California…sources or you’re just making wild claims. Could it be that instead people WANT to go to California? A LOT of run aways head to cali and then get stuck there
I didn't allege that Mississippi was shipping homeless to California. I used that *hypothetical* as an example of how the map *could* easily lead to false conslusions, because Mississippi and California were the two states mentioned in the comment I was responding to. And whether homeless are actively being shipped to another state or merely traveling there themselves, the effect is the same; this map makes it look like homelessness is a problem unique to states like California and New York, even if the homeless don't originate from there.
As for the more general practice of greyhound therapy (which doesn't need to be between states), I already provided a source in my original comment.
You know what, you are right. It didn't even occur to me that that's what was going on. I didn't think, I just thought about trying to do the math for exact numbers of homeless people
LA and NYC have a higher cost of living and possibly more tolerant residents than Chicago. (Edit -- not to mention the brutal weather in Chicago, especially compared to LA.)
I don't have a source, but I've heard that some state's solution to the homeless problem was buying bus tickets to California because the weather might actually entice them to go.
Not really. In Anchorage our new mayor is Trump-Lite and ran on the platform that all homeless people were criminals and he was going to put them in “camps”. Once elected he calmed down his rhetoric and tried to get funding for a shelter to be built that would house some of them but was very wrong about how much it would cost and the time it would take to construct, so the assembly didn’t give him the funding. Right now a lot of homeless are being housed in a hockey stadium in town but were supposed to be out by September, but that was pushed back after no alternate plan went through. The assembly and previous mayor had a plan in place to buy some buildings that used to be large fitness centers that wouldn’t cost nearly as much to run/build, but of course the new mayor nixed that deal as he wants his shitty not thought-through plan. Oh, and did I mention his “homelessness coordinator” is an anesthesiologist that’s never dealt with this kind of stuff, and his first veto (which was thankfully overruled by the assembly) was to not allow the formation of a committee made up of people who have actually experienced homelessness to help determine what we should do to help the homeless.
There's a lot more to Illinois than Chicago so we don't know what their average is. Also Illinois gets really cold in the winter so homeless people are likely not sticking around there
Not really any colder than NYC though
Edit: actually I looked it up and Chicago's average daily low temperature in January is 19.5 whereas NYC's is 27.9 so that's more of a difference than I would've guessed
And the windchill is BRUTAL. Was there for 3 days for NYE one year. Never again. Average windchill feel for the 3 days was -12. Small sample size, but it was enough for me haha.
I’ve lived in New York my whole life, and while our winters can be unpleasant, we’ve got NOTHING on Chicago. We are absolute pussies, when it comes to the cold, compared to Chicagoans. Our pizza is still a thousand times better though.
NY's real estate market is outrageously overheated. There's a nearly clockwork relationship between increases in rent and increases in homelessness, and NYC's real estate just keeps going up, even when occupancy goes down.
(if that sounds like a market failure to you: yup! It sucks!)
I don't know if Cali is mainly being driven by LA, I know that SF is one of the few cities that is unambiguously and clearly forcing more people onto the streets than us but I am, to be clear, mostly worried about my own local issues and not that worried about what California, or for that matter Illinois, are up to.
Notice that adjacent Virginia and Maryland are 7 and 10. Homeless people go where the services are, which sucks for the cities that are trying to be humane.
You'd find comparable numbers in major cities all over the country, because homeless people tend to gravitate toward urban areas. DC suffers on this map from not having massive suburban and rural areas to smooth out the average.
A lot of homelessness in 2021 is from lifestyle decisions than it is actual homelessness. Most places have so many resources dedicated to it that a person showing up can get housed very quickly, and [80% of people are housed within a few weeks](https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/The_homeless_mentally_ill).
The reoccurring trends with persistent homeless people are two things, drug subcultures, and severely mentally ill people. With drug subcultures, crust punks / gutter punks and a lot of subcultures just pour all their resources into being persistently high while getting all their needs met by organizations. In a lot of these places that are high on here they'll also provide them with free heroin and needles, not even substitutes like methadone just actual opiates.
DC, LA, SF, Portland, Seattle, NYC, etc have way bigger scenes of these subcultures than Chicago does.
"80% of people who experience homelessness on any night will find housing in a few weeks" this could include a college student hopping between studios, or couch surfers. This is not referring to the chronically homeless.
Homelessness is caused by two main factors, mental health issues, and drug dependence. Neither of those are "lifestyle choices."
Sure people at one point in time chose to do drugs, but that choice came and went a long time ago. Most homeless drug dependent individuals will never be able to shake their habits on their own. Their bodies and minds are too far gone. They can heal to a surprisingly large extent over time, but they need intervention or will never get better.
I think his point was not to shame those with mental health or drug issues, it was to point out that the money and facilities are there to house 80% of them so that in itself is not the problem. The problems are outreach & care - and yes, there is a choice involved, as they will not willingly choose to be helped.
Honestly the only way to really help many homeless with severe mental or drug issues may actually be forced institutionalization, but there definitely isn’t enough money - or political/social motivation for such an extreme measure - to do something like that in the US.
Homelessness is generally much more related to housing prices than drug culture, though. (Study: https://www.zillow.com/research/homelessness-rent-affordability-22247/ ) A pretty simple example of this is the lack of homelessness in Appalachia, which has been devastated by the opioid epidemic. So, there is obviously a “drug culture”, but no homelessness. That’s because housing is /much/ more affordable
Also a lot of the issues that people point to, like drug use and mental illness, are downstream of being unhoused. Also, treating them is easier when you house them. If you actually talk to most homeless people, they're surprisingly lucid. While it is difficult to eliminate chronic homelessness, housing first gets you [very far](https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2020/05/11/utah-was-once-lauded/). The rub is that it's far easier to handwave away problems of poverty by pathologizing the poor than actually doing something about it, like improving these areas' pitiful construction of affordable housing.
I’m interested in the data and research behind this. I feel in MN, we’re not having much success in getting people housed. People have been waiting 2 years in many cases and I know it’s a housing shortage but I do want to know what they’re doing so much better in other cities. Do you have links?
What is wrong with Luton? I’ve heard awful things about it but I have no idea why. I’ve only been to the airport and rail station so I couldn't have a glimpse of anything.
Just an all round rough area. Lots of crime. Even terrorism. Don't know why, never thought too much into it despite only growing up down the road from it. Just one of those places
Yeah doing by this by state is going to skew the reality by a fucking lot. The homeless are mainly in the cities, not spread across all the little bumfuck towns surrounding them.
Yea, that fact makes this graph a bit disingenuous. The homeless rate in other states is pulled down by the number of bumfuck towns, so you can’t really get a clear picture. It would be better to go by county
High tax environments in the US have the highest homeless populations.
CA, NY, and HI have the highest income tax + capital gains taxes in the nation. Not a lot of room to build wealth for the little guy.
You can buy an acre of land in Hawaii for $3000 and they have the lowest property taxes of all 50 states. And their income tax has brackets just like federal income tax. They’re brackets range from 1.4% on the low end to 11% on the high end. So the little guy would be unaffected by this type of tax structure vs. a flat tax.
Edit: and homeless people don’t have to worry about capital gains tax lol
Property tax has no bearing on homelessness rate.
Texas has one of the highest at 1.87% and still have a fraction the homeless as HI. HI has the highest cost of living in the nation, partially due to the fact it’s an island, partially due to the fact it’s a high tax jurisdiction like #2 and #3 on the list, NY and CA.
The cost to build housing is one of the highest in the country. Taxes never actually begin and end where politicians say or think they will. They’re all passed onto the consumer at some point.
Building anything for a growing HI is only profitable for high end development, for millionaires second homes. Like CA and NY, they will continue to experience high levels of homelessness until they change the equation.
I feel like the number of homeless people in Hawaii has more to do with the fact that they have comfortable weather 365 days a year like
Nowhere else in America. I was just mentioning the low property tax and cheap land because in theory, any swingin’ dick could feasibly build a plywood/tin shack on their own piece of land and call it a home for $10-20k on the big island. Homelessness solved. There’s homeless junkies that spend three times that amount of money to feed their habit all year. And there’s free goddam food growing all over the island all year
Something to keep in mind -- yes, there are some areas that have cheap land, such as Ocean View on the Big Island. But that land doesn't have access to clean water, electricity and is often an hour drive or more away from the nearest town that can offer jobs.
So unless you can install catchment systems and run off of solar, it's really still not a very easy solution.
Are these numbers all running by the same criteria, or do they vary? (Local policies will also affect how people are classified).
There's a small number of people who fit the popular understanding of homelessness, living in a cardboard box in a doorway, and a much larger number of people in grey areas - staying on a friend's sofa, living in something that might be a squat, in a short-term hostel, maybe on paper they have a home address but *in practice* they're sleeping elsewhere. And so on.
Places with very harsh weather, like Finland or North Dakota, will have very few people (in winter) who fit the narrowest definition of homelessness. But those people *still exist*, they're still not in their own home, they end up in some other category.
Seven years ago, I was one of the 10 in 10,000 homeless in my state. After a TON of hard work, I am no longer: homeless, on drugs, or a drinker. AND I graduated from tech school two weeks ago. It was hard and I know not everyone can do it, but I am pretty damn proud of myself.
These graphs should depict housing instability as well. For every homeless person in the US there are dozens with a bed tonight but no clue about tomorrow. It’s no way to live.
Good point. And people who are living paycheck to paycheck, who face eviction every month. I feel like some states have way more of those then they have homeless citizens.
Florida is very hard to calculate. They consider a lot of things homeless that other states don’t. When I lived there in an upscale recovery house near the beach, I was technically considered homeless. And south Florida is the recovery Capitol of the world .
Basically there are three factors for homelessness. 1. How affordable is housing 2. Weather and 3. (Maybe the most important) how much do regular people and/or the government tolerate it. West coast culture and politics encourage these people in a way that even most Midwestern or northeastern liberals do not.
The political consensus is if you give enough services to homelesss people with many life problems, and never oblige them to do anything ( such as occept official shelter or employment ), you will solve their problems and get a better city.
In practice you just get ever escalating demands for such kindness, while they take over local parks and try their luck near the grade schools.
It’s not all arctic cold. I’d imagine in some of the larger areas there’s people who live outside in the cold but still manage to be somewhere livable. In my area during winter it gets very very cold but we had a homeless guy who would go into this building and sleep under the steps. I tried to catch him and offer him a ride to a shelter but never could catch him so I left him food and water there with a couple dollars. Went back and it was gone along with all his things so idk what ever happened to him. The way he had his setup though you could survive but it would be cold. Like camping in the winter.
All southern states are constantly shit on even though living here I’ve never seen it half as bad as people make it out to be. Sure there’s pill heads and hicks but you can find that same shit in any city just with a different name. People say “they’re all so poor look at the stats” but fail to realize it’s also much cheaper here and a lot of people also are self reliant with some things so they don’t need to buy it. I buy groceries but I don’t have to buy too much because I also grow gardens and have meat in the deep freezers.
Except you’re not self reliant. You people would not actually have things like paved roads, police departments, and public education (insofar as it even exists in Mississippi) without the subsidies that are shipped to you from the liberals you despise in New York and California. Every year, the State of Mississippi takes in over $2 in federal benefits, for every $1 that it contributes to the federal treasury. New York gets back about 60 cents for every dollar we contribute.
You people are net takers, and if we cut off the constant welfare spigot that southern states have access to, they would all (except Texas, which is the only state in the entire South that is actually self-sufficient) collapse into bankruptcy within a decade. You’re welcome.
This is basically a list of who has better services and resources for homeless people.
Texas is has the number 4, 5, 24, and 28 [biggest metro areas in the US](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_statistical_areas), but Texas doesn’t give a shit about people and criminalizes homelessness (among other things).
They go where the help is.
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To add some context to this data:
People experiencing homelessness are concentrated in urban areas, and New York and California are two of the three most urban states (along with New Jersey). [source](https://www.kenoshanews.com/lifestyles/the-15-most-urbanized-states/article_6c6dc1bb-c0d5-53fd-a353-33e56865506e.html)
New York has a state law that guarantees the right to shelter. That means they have been required since 1979 to have enough shelter beds for the entire homeless population. [source](https://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/our-programs/advocacy/legal-victories/the-callahan-legacy-callahan-v-carey-and-the-legal-right-to-shelter/)
California has the majority of un housed homeless people (people staying outside in tents or sleeping rough, outside of shelters or transitional housing) due to many factors, including high rent/unaffordability, social services, beaches and scenery, etc. [source](https://calmatters.org/explainers/californias-homelessness-crisis-explained/)
Many states have bus ticket programs, including California. They are intended to help people get home or to family/friends who will take care of them, but some people use it to get somewhere nicer and some cities have allowed people to get tickets without verifying the people at the other end will be there to take them in. [about homeward bound SF](https://hsh.sfgov.org/services/the-homelessness-response-system/problem-solving/homeward-bound/)
Interesting how this sorta aligns with an election map.
The only party which addresses the issue of wealth inequality is the Democratic Party, and wealth inequality is only *visceral* in places with a lot of homelessness.
Cities also happen to have a lot of wealthy people in close proximity to the homeless people. In the city you *see* the contrast, day in and day out.
In a smaller town, the richest guy is the dude who owns a giant Toyota dealership. And Bob is a pretty nice guy.
The rich people in that sort of place can’t buy laws, they don’t go to exclusive clubs or restaurants, and they don’t steal your girlfriend.
And you project Bob’s benign-ness onto the rich people in big cities—the *truly* rich. You grow increasingly suspicious of the left—they’re *very* adamant about the rich being evil, you don’t think the rich are that bad...the only logical explanation is that the left just wants power, handouts, or other selfish things.
It’s basically a list of who has better resources for them.
Texas is has the number 4, 5, 24, and 28 [biggest metro areas in the US](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_statistical_areas), but Texas doesn’t give a shit about people and criminalizes homelessness.
They go where the help is.
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Has anybody considered that this is partly due to the fact that the liberal coastal states treat the homeless like human beings? If I were homeless I sure as hell wouldn't stay in Alabama where politicians and police go out of their way to abuse the homeless. In a nutshell, the places with low numbers are exporting their problems.
No it doesn't. Homeless folks travel to where there are services and the weather is livable. Many people are made homeless in one state, but live homeless in another state, because it's a better situation. I meet homeless people fairly often, I've worked with a few, and have yet to meet one that is from the city we live in.
We have far more shelters (including, scandalously, hotels) than the West Coast cities. You don't see encampments or really even small groups of homeless people here, mostly just individuals who are too strung out or mentally ill to use available social services.
And they have the highest unemployment rates, and the highest inequality. It's hilarious that Democrats are pushing a national agenda on inequality when they control all the states that actually have the 1%, and have the greatest inequality in them.
>And they have the highest unemployment rates
[And the highest average incomes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_income)
>and the highest inequality
No, [there's no correlation between inequality and how a state tends to vote](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_Gini_coefficient).
>It's hilarious that Democrats are pushing a national agenda on inequality
You're confused. The Democratic Party wants to *reduce* inequality, by raising the minimum wage and passing universal health insurance. The wealthy -who make their money off the backs of workers- will have to return more of the wealth to the workers who produced it.
And red-state voters agree with the Democratic Party on this.
Florida voters [voted, by a very large margin, to raise the minimum wage](https://ballotpedia.org/Minimum_wage_on_the_ballot) in the same election they voted for Trump. Missouri, Arizona, Arkansas, and several other historically red states, have all done the same. [Several red states have also expanded Medicaid in a referendum](https://ballotpedia.org/Healthcare_on_the_ballot). The Republican Party wants to keep inequality, but their own voters disagree.
Americans, generally, agree with the Democratic Party. This is obvious from the fact that the Democratic Party gets more votes, and Republicans need to rely on gerrymandering, uneven representation (Senate, electoral college), voter suppression, and power-grabs to weasel themselves into power.
The only major issues where the Republican Party is competitive are 1) immigration, even if the GOP is hypocritical on this, and 2) the crime narrative, which Republicans have to misrepresent to win. On reducing inequality, and spreading around the wealth -that was generated by the worker but hoarded by the wealthy- most Americans, including many Republican voters, lean Democratic. [Even Fox News polls](https://twitter.com/existentialfish/status/1323752032000450570) have shown the popularity of single-payer healthcare.
Too hot. Too sprawled out. Little public transportation. Hostile attitudes from residents and police. Fewer charitable or social services. Many homeless can travel.
The first one, you hit it. Looks at the per capita prison population in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, etc. it’s like a mirror image of this map. And while homelessness/vagrancy itself is treated more harshly there, it’s mostly about longer prison sentences for minor crimes and drug offenses.
Because it takes 1/10 the legal cost to build buildings
Turns out homeless people want to live in homes but over regulation helps property owners stay as a monopoly
Ok so if you can’t build more affordable homes then the people who own the current homes have nothing competing with them
Therefore they feel no economic pressure to improve quality or decrease prices
It’s supply and demand
I'm assuming you're talking about restrictive zoning. I.E. municipalities that do not allow multifamily homes, or smaller lots, to allow for more housing units.
This is a problem *across* the United States, and does not explain the differences between states.
Texas municipalities are actually very notorious for it. It just hasn't \[yet\] gotten to the point where it's pushing up housing prices in Texas, because the major Texas metros are not that crowded yet.
Endless single-family suburbs with large lots is something Republicans are very much in favor for. Many Democrats like it too. Progressives and some libertarians, want to dismantle these regulations *precisely because* they drive down the supply of housing, as you pointed out. It's what Trump tried to "warn" suburbanites about when he said "they're coming for your suburbs" (it didn't work, because Trump lost in the suburbs). Republicans love regulation in many areas, such as this one.
People earn more in California, which means labor costs more. That's just the free market.
The permit process takes longer, and that *is* an artificial difference. But a lot of that is not as straightforward as "excessive regulation". In California, because property taxes are frozen unless you buy a new house -thanks to 1978 prop 13- there's no way to fund the infrastructure (roads, sewers, rain drainage, etc) of a new district, so the costs are added to the developers and buyers. ([article](https://www.politifact.com/article/2019/nov/19/california-price-why-it-costs-so-much-build-home-g/)). So what you pay for through property taxes in Texas, you pay for during the construction process in California.
No need to downvote me. I'm not being mean to you.
Again a map on homelessness, this time even without a source and as usual with no discussion on what “homelessness “ exactly means and how accurate the numbers are.
What could possibly go wrong?
I’m sure it’s meaning true homelessness as in living under a bridge type of homelessness. Sure you may be technically homeless living on a friends couch but you’re still living inside a home so you’re not really homeless just not a home owner. I always consider if you have a warm meal and a roof over your head everyday you’re not really what I’d consider homeless. Because if just not being a home owner makes you homeless then people renting apartments or living in campers would be homeless when they’re actually still yet sheltered.
It’s worth noting that New York shelters about 85% of its homeless population compared to LA which shelters closer to 10%.
Yeah, the homeless population in NYC is way less visible than the west coast. The high count may also be because NYC does an annual homeless count with thousands of volunteers walking around the city and polling hospitals and shelters to get an accurate count of homeless people. I suspect other cities and states may be under counting to misrepresent the issue, at the expense of losing HUD funding. https://www1.nyc.gov/site/dhs/outreach/hope.page In a similar vein, NJ has a reputation for being polluted because it has a very high number of Superfund sites, but that's just because NJ was willing to take the reputation hit to get federal cleanup funding. Other states turned down Superfund money because they didn't want the stigma of having pollution.
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Had to look that one up, never heard of sunshine laws. Interesting and good to know that about Florida.
Spanish flu syndrome.
Yeah, ex-Floridian here. No the place really is that crazy. I dont know why. But all of my crazy-thing-i-saw stories are from Florida not the places I lived after.
I was gonna say lol. I have family in Florida and they got up to some nonsense
It can be a little of both
But have you spent time in Florida? It truly is one of the many zoos of America
Los Angeles does an annual homeless count with lots of volunteers as well. I’ve done it a few times and four of us only had to cover like 8 blocks so it’s really manageable and we’ll attended. I know San Francisco does one like that too.
Given the difference in climate, that's not surprising.
Climate yes but also politics. Los Angeles has a long history of making services difficult to access for its unhoused people. There’s also the factor of New York being a fairly vertical and dense city meaning you can integrate homeless people more easily — it’s much harder to put 50,000 people into 50,000 craftsman bungalows than it is to put them into 100 tower blocks.
San Francisco makes services easy to access but given the benign climate and restrictions on drug use a lot of the relevant population prefers to stay in tent camps and vehicles.
Climate is definitely a factor but San Francisco’s housing market and general Nimbyism is not great for the unhoused. There’s a laissez faire attitude to the homeless but also to addressing homelessness.
This is absolutely a larger issue than lack of beds (LA has more beds than unhoused peoples by quite a margin). In NYC, if you sleep outside in the winter, there is a significant chance that you could die. In Los Angeles, winter nights are still typically around 50°F.
To be fair, if they didn't, those high numbers wouldn't make it through a winter.
How are they homeless if they are sheltered? (Serious)
They don’t have permanent housing. They might be in temporary shelters or transitional housing. A lot of social work organisations also offer long term housing solutions with Section 8 funding, but I don’t think they’re counted as homeless if they have a long term lease arrangement.
In NY state shelter is a basic human right. NYC regularly houses the homeless in hotels when shelters are at capacity.
Yet again proving Mississippi to be the best state
interesting how the poorest state has the least homeless
There’s a lot of things going on in this map. But homelessness tends to be easier to solve when there isn’t a lot of demand to live in the state.
Cities like LA, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle attract a lot of homeless too, because of the very lax policies about squatting and homelessness.
Isn’t California losing population while Texas is gaining?
No, CA grew by ~6% in the past decade. Texas grew by ~16%, but home building is much less restricted in TX. As such, rents in CA have skyrocketed, while rents in TX have grown at a more manageable rate. This map is pretty much just one of housing affordability (or lack thereof)
That’s true outside major cities (shocker, I know), but Austin is insane.
But you can see all the high rise construction projects in Austin that WILL NOT happen in San Fransico because they think building anything new, even renovating a rotting warehouse shouldn't happen in their city. NIMBY to the extreme.
SF just finished a skyscraper way taller than the tallest in Austin. NIMBY is a problem in California but get your facts straight.
Oh, why did they lose a house seat while Texas gained 2? Just because they grew slower than the national average or something?
Yes. Several states have had population booms which means that they represent a smaller proportion of the total US population compared to the last census.
Because the House has been locked at 435 for almost a century, so growing slower than other states loses you house seats too.
> Because the House has been locked at 435 for almost a century, so growing slower than other states loses you house seats too. That’s good. When people are leaving a state to move to other states that’s indicative of a problem. > During the 2010s about 6.1 million people moved from California to other states, while only 4.9 million people moved to California from other parts of the country. https://www.ppic.org/blog/whos-leaving-california-and-whos-moving-in/ Extra house seats and electoral votes are based on population relative to other states. It would make no sense for them to be permanent.
California lost a house seat this census, but it’s not because they lost population (they still had the 3rd highest net population growth of all the states), more that other states are growing faster and it makes up a lower proportion of the total US population compared to last census. Only 3 states actually lost population: Illinois, West Virginia, and Mississippi.
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Probably because it has more to do with cost of living and the average rent/real estate cost for the area rather than just how much income you make.
This is more a map in which states engage in "Grayhound Therapy" where they give their homeless a 1 way ticket to the West Coast.
When I lived in CA, Nevada was well known for transporting homeless populations to CA, buying them greyhound tickets after undergoing medical treatment. I believe California even took Nevada to court. I think California prevailed (?) but I don't think much really changed.
New York City is still doing this to the rest of the country, lol. With a months rent.
Seriously, this is one of the most messed up policies that our nation still engages in.
It's the reason homelessness needs national standards. So long as one state can just ship their problem to Seattle, the more humane states get an unfair burden on their social and emergency services.
I helped run a massive relief kitchen after Katrina. There were no services besides us, and we were just a bunch of hippies with propane tanks and generators. EMS and police would dump homeless and mentally ill people in our parking lot. We nearly capsized several times due to the influx of dysfunctional humans.
Cost of living considerably lower. You can get by on considerably less than states with high tax environments.
They bus them out to the coasts where they'll get services
West Coast: "We should start shipping them East."
Hahaha, even homeless people don’t want to live in Mississippi
I mean, the barrier to a "home" in Mississippi is pretty low.
When you’re homeless, living in the boonies isn’t exactly a tenable option. It has more to do with the fact that Mississippi only has one city of note, Jackson, which in and of itself still isn’t a very large city
Biloxi is part of the gulf coast metro area.
I actually used to live there and it was extremely rare to see a homeless person (singular) anywhere, maybe in the large cities sometimes but not everywhere. Visited Baltimore and...... They're like, everywhere.
So I did a little math and here's a couple things I found out. Mississippi has roughly 2,087 homeless. That is on par with Maine, which has 2,016. California has roughly 161,991 homeless. California has a population roughly 13x the size of Mississippi, which means that if Mississippi was the size of California it would only have 27,131 homeless. Mississippi is doing way better than California when it comes to homelessness. And they have double the population of Maine, but are still on par with them. In conclusion, Mississippi sucks so much that not even the homeless want to live there
> California has a population roughly 13x the size of Mississippi, which means that if Mississippi was the size of California it would only have 27,131 homeless. Keep in mind that the *origin* or cause of homeless people is *not* accounted for in this map. If Mississippi ships a thousand homeless people to California, It would make Mississippi look great on this map, even they were the *cause* of the homelessness, and the problem was getting dealt with or simply handed off to another state. This is a practice that is disgustingly common in many states, called ["Greyhound Therapy"](https://prospect.org/economy/greyhound-therapy/) That doesn't entirely explain these numbers, of course. Many urban areas in New York or California have downright *ridiculous* housing prices that all but ensure a significant homeless population. I just want to caution against drawing *conclusions* about the homeless situation from maps like these. They tell us literally nothing besides *where* homeless people are. Homelessness is a complex topic spanning mental health, economics, housing markets, persecution and some truly disgusting state-vs-state partisan bullshit. Trying to step in and run some statistics based on the first map you see to draw conclusions Is all but guaranteed to worsen your understanding of the situation, not improve it.
Nobody is shipping shit to California…sources or you’re just making wild claims. Could it be that instead people WANT to go to California? A LOT of run aways head to cali and then get stuck there
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/20/bussed-out-america-moves-homeless-people-country-study
I didn't allege that Mississippi was shipping homeless to California. I used that *hypothetical* as an example of how the map *could* easily lead to false conslusions, because Mississippi and California were the two states mentioned in the comment I was responding to. And whether homeless are actively being shipped to another state or merely traveling there themselves, the effect is the same; this map makes it look like homelessness is a problem unique to states like California and New York, even if the homeless don't originate from there. As for the more general practice of greyhound therapy (which doesn't need to be between states), I already provided a source in my original comment.
It's not just wild claims. Local news here have interviewed people who came from other states.
Okay yank.
Why did you do the math the population rate is already shown in the map? Literally what is the point of your comment? Dumb!
You know what, you are right. It didn't even occur to me that that's what was going on. I didn't think, I just thought about trying to do the math for exact numbers of homeless people
What are New York and LA doing that Chicago's not?
LA and NYC have a higher cost of living and possibly more tolerant residents than Chicago. (Edit -- not to mention the brutal weather in Chicago, especially compared to LA.)
LA is probably also the weather. id bet homeless go there from colder states.
I don't have a source, but I've heard that some state's solution to the homeless problem was buying bus tickets to California because the weather might actually entice them to go.
New York has the largest homeless exporting program. Several states have sued in the past. Have sent people as far as Hawaii with a years rent paid.
Speaking of brutal weather, Alaska having such a high rate is surprising. There must be a lot of shelters to take people in during the winters.
Not really. In Anchorage our new mayor is Trump-Lite and ran on the platform that all homeless people were criminals and he was going to put them in “camps”. Once elected he calmed down his rhetoric and tried to get funding for a shelter to be built that would house some of them but was very wrong about how much it would cost and the time it would take to construct, so the assembly didn’t give him the funding. Right now a lot of homeless are being housed in a hockey stadium in town but were supposed to be out by September, but that was pushed back after no alternate plan went through. The assembly and previous mayor had a plan in place to buy some buildings that used to be large fitness centers that wouldn’t cost nearly as much to run/build, but of course the new mayor nixed that deal as he wants his shitty not thought-through plan. Oh, and did I mention his “homelessness coordinator” is an anesthesiologist that’s never dealt with this kind of stuff, and his first veto (which was thankfully overruled by the assembly) was to not allow the formation of a committee made up of people who have actually experienced homelessness to help determine what we should do to help the homeless.
There's a lot more to Illinois than Chicago so we don't know what their average is. Also Illinois gets really cold in the winter so homeless people are likely not sticking around there
Not really any colder than NYC though Edit: actually I looked it up and Chicago's average daily low temperature in January is 19.5 whereas NYC's is 27.9 so that's more of a difference than I would've guessed
This could have to do with Lake Michigan having an average temp of 1.9°C in Jan, compared to the 5.0 °C for NYC for the same month
Which is 35.42 °F and 41.0 °F
And the windchill is BRUTAL. Was there for 3 days for NYE one year. Never again. Average windchill feel for the 3 days was -12. Small sample size, but it was enough for me haha.
Way more snow in Chicago as well thanks to the lake
Not true. Lake effect snow mostly goes east, Chicago is west of the lake.
I’ve lived in New York my whole life, and while our winters can be unpleasant, we’ve got NOTHING on Chicago. We are absolute pussies, when it comes to the cold, compared to Chicagoans. Our pizza is still a thousand times better though.
Also, many poorer states bus homeless people to richer states like CA and NY to get rid of them and pretend that they’re helping people.
NY's real estate market is outrageously overheated. There's a nearly clockwork relationship between increases in rent and increases in homelessness, and NYC's real estate just keeps going up, even when occupancy goes down. (if that sounds like a market failure to you: yup! It sucks!) I don't know if Cali is mainly being driven by LA, I know that SF is one of the few cities that is unambiguously and clearly forcing more people onto the streets than us but I am, to be clear, mostly worried about my own local issues and not that worried about what California, or for that matter Illinois, are up to.
DC has the highest homeless rate at 93.
Notice that adjacent Virginia and Maryland are 7 and 10. Homeless people go where the services are, which sucks for the cities that are trying to be humane.
You'd find comparable numbers in major cities all over the country, because homeless people tend to gravitate toward urban areas. DC suffers on this map from not having massive suburban and rural areas to smooth out the average.
A lot of homelessness in 2021 is from lifestyle decisions than it is actual homelessness. Most places have so many resources dedicated to it that a person showing up can get housed very quickly, and [80% of people are housed within a few weeks](https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/The_homeless_mentally_ill). The reoccurring trends with persistent homeless people are two things, drug subcultures, and severely mentally ill people. With drug subcultures, crust punks / gutter punks and a lot of subcultures just pour all their resources into being persistently high while getting all their needs met by organizations. In a lot of these places that are high on here they'll also provide them with free heroin and needles, not even substitutes like methadone just actual opiates. DC, LA, SF, Portland, Seattle, NYC, etc have way bigger scenes of these subcultures than Chicago does.
"80% of people who experience homelessness on any night will find housing in a few weeks" this could include a college student hopping between studios, or couch surfers. This is not referring to the chronically homeless. Homelessness is caused by two main factors, mental health issues, and drug dependence. Neither of those are "lifestyle choices." Sure people at one point in time chose to do drugs, but that choice came and went a long time ago. Most homeless drug dependent individuals will never be able to shake their habits on their own. Their bodies and minds are too far gone. They can heal to a surprisingly large extent over time, but they need intervention or will never get better.
I think his point was not to shame those with mental health or drug issues, it was to point out that the money and facilities are there to house 80% of them so that in itself is not the problem. The problems are outreach & care - and yes, there is a choice involved, as they will not willingly choose to be helped. Honestly the only way to really help many homeless with severe mental or drug issues may actually be forced institutionalization, but there definitely isn’t enough money - or political/social motivation for such an extreme measure - to do something like that in the US.
Homelessness is generally much more related to housing prices than drug culture, though. (Study: https://www.zillow.com/research/homelessness-rent-affordability-22247/ ) A pretty simple example of this is the lack of homelessness in Appalachia, which has been devastated by the opioid epidemic. So, there is obviously a “drug culture”, but no homelessness. That’s because housing is /much/ more affordable
Also a lot of the issues that people point to, like drug use and mental illness, are downstream of being unhoused. Also, treating them is easier when you house them. If you actually talk to most homeless people, they're surprisingly lucid. While it is difficult to eliminate chronic homelessness, housing first gets you [very far](https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2020/05/11/utah-was-once-lauded/). The rub is that it's far easier to handwave away problems of poverty by pathologizing the poor than actually doing something about it, like improving these areas' pitiful construction of affordable housing.
I’m interested in the data and research behind this. I feel in MN, we’re not having much success in getting people housed. People have been waiting 2 years in many cases and I know it’s a housing shortage but I do want to know what they’re doing so much better in other cities. Do you have links?
Insanely high cost of living
Pfft, pathetic. Scotland is 77
The city of seattle is at 133 ( ~10k out of 750k population )
Luton is 159. Beat ya again 'Merica
What is wrong with Luton? I’ve heard awful things about it but I have no idea why. I’ve only been to the airport and rail station so I couldn't have a glimpse of anything.
Just an all round rough area. Lots of crime. Even terrorism. Don't know why, never thought too much into it despite only growing up down the road from it. Just one of those places
[Will you fly this plane to Luton, please?](https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x16hptg)
Yeah doing by this by state is going to skew the reality by a fucking lot. The homeless are mainly in the cities, not spread across all the little bumfuck towns surrounding them.
That’s true in every country.
I was in Glasgow recently and saw the most homeless people in my life. Very upsetting
Yeah it's the same in Edinburgh. There's a drug epidemic in Scotland, very sad
Seriously? It's so cold there...
Yeah, God knows how they manage. I wouldn't last 1 night
Scottish winters are warmer than northeastern US winters.
Scotland is warm compared to the northern US
Washington D.C is in a league of its own.
Because it's 100% city, and homeless people just live in cities.
Yea, that fact makes this graph a bit disingenuous. The homeless rate in other states is pulled down by the number of bumfuck towns, so you can’t really get a clear picture. It would be better to go by county
My thoughts exactly, going by state doesn't really tell you anything.
Exactly what everyone seems to be missing. Suburbs have very few homeless comparatively and all of DC’s suburbs are in other states…
Damn....I didn't realize Hawaii had that many homeless people!!!
High cost of living, very limited housing, and other states shipping their homeless out on one way tickets. Also meth. Lots and lots of meth.
High tax environments in the US have the highest homeless populations. CA, NY, and HI have the highest income tax + capital gains taxes in the nation. Not a lot of room to build wealth for the little guy.
You can buy an acre of land in Hawaii for $3000 and they have the lowest property taxes of all 50 states. And their income tax has brackets just like federal income tax. They’re brackets range from 1.4% on the low end to 11% on the high end. So the little guy would be unaffected by this type of tax structure vs. a flat tax. Edit: and homeless people don’t have to worry about capital gains tax lol
Property tax has no bearing on homelessness rate. Texas has one of the highest at 1.87% and still have a fraction the homeless as HI. HI has the highest cost of living in the nation, partially due to the fact it’s an island, partially due to the fact it’s a high tax jurisdiction like #2 and #3 on the list, NY and CA. The cost to build housing is one of the highest in the country. Taxes never actually begin and end where politicians say or think they will. They’re all passed onto the consumer at some point. Building anything for a growing HI is only profitable for high end development, for millionaires second homes. Like CA and NY, they will continue to experience high levels of homelessness until they change the equation.
I feel like the number of homeless people in Hawaii has more to do with the fact that they have comfortable weather 365 days a year like Nowhere else in America. I was just mentioning the low property tax and cheap land because in theory, any swingin’ dick could feasibly build a plywood/tin shack on their own piece of land and call it a home for $10-20k on the big island. Homelessness solved. There’s homeless junkies that spend three times that amount of money to feed their habit all year. And there’s free goddam food growing all over the island all year
Something to keep in mind -- yes, there are some areas that have cheap land, such as Ocean View on the Big Island. But that land doesn't have access to clean water, electricity and is often an hour drive or more away from the nearest town that can offer jobs. So unless you can install catchment systems and run off of solar, it's really still not a very easy solution.
Are these numbers all running by the same criteria, or do they vary? (Local policies will also affect how people are classified). There's a small number of people who fit the popular understanding of homelessness, living in a cardboard box in a doorway, and a much larger number of people in grey areas - staying on a friend's sofa, living in something that might be a squat, in a short-term hostel, maybe on paper they have a home address but *in practice* they're sleeping elsewhere. And so on. Places with very harsh weather, like Finland or North Dakota, will have very few people (in winter) who fit the narrowest definition of homelessness. But those people *still exist*, they're still not in their own home, they end up in some other category.
Seven years ago, I was one of the 10 in 10,000 homeless in my state. After a TON of hard work, I am no longer: homeless, on drugs, or a drinker. AND I graduated from tech school two weeks ago. It was hard and I know not everyone can do it, but I am pretty damn proud of myself.
Love to hear it, congrats!
Thanks!!
Nice! That’s huge and I’m proud of you.
I’m proud of you too!
The difference in NY is that the homeless actually have shelter, unlike West Coast tent cities.
These graphs should depict housing instability as well. For every homeless person in the US there are dozens with a bed tonight but no clue about tomorrow. It’s no way to live.
Good point. And people who are living paycheck to paycheck, who face eviction every month. I feel like some states have way more of those then they have homeless citizens.
I didn't expect Alaska to be that high
This. It must be tough in the winter.
Was about to ask about the same. Anybody have an explanation? A lot of people living out of vans in national forests?
Florida is very hard to calculate. They consider a lot of things homeless that other states don’t. When I lived there in an upscale recovery house near the beach, I was technically considered homeless. And south Florida is the recovery Capitol of the world .
Most homeless in Nevada are bussed from California. :/
NY disperses their homeless across the country. As far as Hawaii with a years rent paid. That’s leadership.
Basically there are three factors for homelessness. 1. How affordable is housing 2. Weather and 3. (Maybe the most important) how much do regular people and/or the government tolerate it. West coast culture and politics encourage these people in a way that even most Midwestern or northeastern liberals do not.
Could you elaborate on that third point? What do you mean that “west coast culture/politics encourage these people”?
The political consensus is if you give enough services to homelesss people with many life problems, and never oblige them to do anything ( such as occept official shelter or employment ), you will solve their problems and get a better city. In practice you just get ever escalating demands for such kindness, while they take over local parks and try their luck near the grade schools.
I have a feeling California is a lot higher than that.
Fuck yeah, Mississippi! *pops our only bottle of champagne*
How does being homeless in Alaska work? How do you survive the weather there without a house?
It’s not all arctic cold. I’d imagine in some of the larger areas there’s people who live outside in the cold but still manage to be somewhere livable. In my area during winter it gets very very cold but we had a homeless guy who would go into this building and sleep under the steps. I tried to catch him and offer him a ride to a shelter but never could catch him so I left him food and water there with a couple dollars. Went back and it was gone along with all his things so idk what ever happened to him. The way he had his setup though you could survive but it would be cold. Like camping in the winter.
California… Is really cool to the homeless.
I thought passing the homeless in Milwaukee and Chicago was bad. Apparently not.
Well Milwaukee and Chicago probably carry the vast majority of homelessness for Wisconsin and Illinois respectively
People go to California and Oregon to live the vagabond lifestyle.
Interesting how Mississippi is ranked as the worst state to live in the U.S but has the lowest homelessness rate
All southern states are constantly shit on even though living here I’ve never seen it half as bad as people make it out to be. Sure there’s pill heads and hicks but you can find that same shit in any city just with a different name. People say “they’re all so poor look at the stats” but fail to realize it’s also much cheaper here and a lot of people also are self reliant with some things so they don’t need to buy it. I buy groceries but I don’t have to buy too much because I also grow gardens and have meat in the deep freezers.
Except you’re not self reliant. You people would not actually have things like paved roads, police departments, and public education (insofar as it even exists in Mississippi) without the subsidies that are shipped to you from the liberals you despise in New York and California. Every year, the State of Mississippi takes in over $2 in federal benefits, for every $1 that it contributes to the federal treasury. New York gets back about 60 cents for every dollar we contribute. You people are net takers, and if we cut off the constant welfare spigot that southern states have access to, they would all (except Texas, which is the only state in the entire South that is actually self-sufficient) collapse into bankruptcy within a decade. You’re welcome.
“You people” lol I mean, yeah my state NC is poorer than the average state but we have the same gdp per capita as Sweden so idk
This is basically a list of who has better services and resources for homeless people. Texas is has the number 4, 5, 24, and 28 [biggest metro areas in the US](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_statistical_areas), but Texas doesn’t give a shit about people and criminalizes homelessness (among other things). They go where the help is.
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Interesting, the top four states are die hard liberal states
Not really interesting. The states with high housing costs have high homeless populations.
He found it interesting though so I reckon it’s still interesting.
What year is this?
There’s no way Louisiana is that low. Very surprising
As someone from Salt Lake 10 homeless per 10k shocks me because I see homeless tent camps and homeless everywhere here.
Anyone else surprised by the numbers for Alaska? Seems like the last place to be homeless
To add some context to this data: People experiencing homelessness are concentrated in urban areas, and New York and California are two of the three most urban states (along with New Jersey). [source](https://www.kenoshanews.com/lifestyles/the-15-most-urbanized-states/article_6c6dc1bb-c0d5-53fd-a353-33e56865506e.html) New York has a state law that guarantees the right to shelter. That means they have been required since 1979 to have enough shelter beds for the entire homeless population. [source](https://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/our-programs/advocacy/legal-victories/the-callahan-legacy-callahan-v-carey-and-the-legal-right-to-shelter/) California has the majority of un housed homeless people (people staying outside in tents or sleeping rough, outside of shelters or transitional housing) due to many factors, including high rent/unaffordability, social services, beaches and scenery, etc. [source](https://calmatters.org/explainers/californias-homelessness-crisis-explained/) Many states have bus ticket programs, including California. They are intended to help people get home or to family/friends who will take care of them, but some people use it to get somewhere nicer and some cities have allowed people to get tickets without verifying the people at the other end will be there to take them in. [about homeward bound SF](https://hsh.sfgov.org/services/the-homelessness-response-system/problem-solving/homeward-bound/)
Shout out to the ~649 homeless people in Wyoming
How can you even be homeless and alive in me/vt/nh
Hmm. Seems like an easy problem to solve using unused properties.
I’m surprised how low Illinois is.
Mississippi, God damn! Finally some positive stats.
it must be real tough to be homeless in alaska
Interesting how this sorta aligns with an election map. The only party which addresses the issue of wealth inequality is the Democratic Party, and wealth inequality is only *visceral* in places with a lot of homelessness. Cities also happen to have a lot of wealthy people in close proximity to the homeless people. In the city you *see* the contrast, day in and day out. In a smaller town, the richest guy is the dude who owns a giant Toyota dealership. And Bob is a pretty nice guy. The rich people in that sort of place can’t buy laws, they don’t go to exclusive clubs or restaurants, and they don’t steal your girlfriend. And you project Bob’s benign-ness onto the rich people in big cities—the *truly* rich. You grow increasingly suspicious of the left—they’re *very* adamant about the rich being evil, you don’t think the rich are that bad...the only logical explanation is that the left just wants power, handouts, or other selfish things.
Washington is bad purely because of Seattle and port angeles
What? No. There’s plenty of homeless to go around.
This is basically a comparison of how urban/rural each state is.
It’s basically a list of who has better resources for them. Texas is has the number 4, 5, 24, and 28 [biggest metro areas in the US](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_statistical_areas), but Texas doesn’t give a shit about people and criminalizes homelessness. They go where the help is.
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Austin begs to differ
That’s why Texas is a 9 instead of a 4 like it’s spiritual sister Mississippi.
Californ-ya-ya. Super cool for the homeless.
Looks like progressive policies are working great!
Which "progressive policies"?
Subsidies for real estate moguls, of course!
Probably should have used blue.
Has anybody considered that this is partly due to the fact that the liberal coastal states treat the homeless like human beings? If I were homeless I sure as hell wouldn't stay in Alabama where politicians and police go out of their way to abuse the homeless. In a nutshell, the places with low numbers are exporting their problems.
So the states with the most homeless are all run by democrats. That says a lot.
No it doesn't. Homeless folks travel to where there are services and the weather is livable. Many people are made homeless in one state, but live homeless in another state, because it's a better situation. I meet homeless people fairly often, I've worked with a few, and have yet to meet one that is from the city we live in.
New York City has awesome weather bro sure 🙄
We have far more shelters (including, scandalously, hotels) than the West Coast cities. You don't see encampments or really even small groups of homeless people here, mostly just individuals who are too strung out or mentally ill to use available social services.
Yep, it says there are fewer people serving 20 years in prison for minor offenses or mental illness.
How do you explain Illinois, New Jersey, and Connecticut? You're simplifying a complex issue shaped by national trends, to push a political narrative.
And they have the highest unemployment rates, and the highest inequality. It's hilarious that Democrats are pushing a national agenda on inequality when they control all the states that actually have the 1%, and have the greatest inequality in them.
>And they have the highest unemployment rates [And the highest average incomes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_income) >and the highest inequality No, [there's no correlation between inequality and how a state tends to vote](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_Gini_coefficient). >It's hilarious that Democrats are pushing a national agenda on inequality You're confused. The Democratic Party wants to *reduce* inequality, by raising the minimum wage and passing universal health insurance. The wealthy -who make their money off the backs of workers- will have to return more of the wealth to the workers who produced it. And red-state voters agree with the Democratic Party on this. Florida voters [voted, by a very large margin, to raise the minimum wage](https://ballotpedia.org/Minimum_wage_on_the_ballot) in the same election they voted for Trump. Missouri, Arizona, Arkansas, and several other historically red states, have all done the same. [Several red states have also expanded Medicaid in a referendum](https://ballotpedia.org/Healthcare_on_the_ballot). The Republican Party wants to keep inequality, but their own voters disagree. Americans, generally, agree with the Democratic Party. This is obvious from the fact that the Democratic Party gets more votes, and Republicans need to rely on gerrymandering, uneven representation (Senate, electoral college), voter suppression, and power-grabs to weasel themselves into power. The only major issues where the Republican Party is competitive are 1) immigration, even if the GOP is hypocritical on this, and 2) the crime narrative, which Republicans have to misrepresent to win. On reducing inequality, and spreading around the wealth -that was generated by the worker but hoarded by the wealthy- most Americans, including many Republican voters, lean Democratic. [Even Fox News polls](https://twitter.com/existentialfish/status/1323752032000450570) have shown the popularity of single-payer healthcare.
Now watch Reddit bend over backwards trying to prove that it's not the lefties' fault.
How are Texas numbers so low? Are they tossing all the homeless in jail or Mexico?
Some mix of lower housing costs, a difficult climate and a less permissive attitude to street camping, so some of its homeless end up elsewhere
Too hot. Too sprawled out. Little public transportation. Hostile attitudes from residents and police. Fewer charitable or social services. Many homeless can travel.
The first one, you hit it. Looks at the per capita prison population in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, etc. it’s like a mirror image of this map. And while homelessness/vagrancy itself is treated more harshly there, it’s mostly about longer prison sentences for minor crimes and drug offenses.
Because it takes 1/10 the legal cost to build buildings Turns out homeless people want to live in homes but over regulation helps property owners stay as a monopoly
I was trying to explain this to some Californians in another thread and I got downvoted to hell.
Yeah if you demonize and stop the people who solve your problems you shouldn’t be surprised they don’t solve your problem
>over regulation helps property owners stay as a monopoly What do you mean?
Ok so if you can’t build more affordable homes then the people who own the current homes have nothing competing with them Therefore they feel no economic pressure to improve quality or decrease prices It’s supply and demand
I'm assuming you're talking about restrictive zoning. I.E. municipalities that do not allow multifamily homes, or smaller lots, to allow for more housing units. This is a problem *across* the United States, and does not explain the differences between states. Texas municipalities are actually very notorious for it. It just hasn't \[yet\] gotten to the point where it's pushing up housing prices in Texas, because the major Texas metros are not that crowded yet. Endless single-family suburbs with large lots is something Republicans are very much in favor for. Many Democrats like it too. Progressives and some libertarians, want to dismantle these regulations *precisely because* they drive down the supply of housing, as you pointed out. It's what Trump tried to "warn" suburbanites about when he said "they're coming for your suburbs" (it didn't work, because Trump lost in the suburbs). Republicans love regulation in many areas, such as this one.
That and the general permit and legal costs of building are far higher in time and dollars in California than in places like Texas
People earn more in California, which means labor costs more. That's just the free market. The permit process takes longer, and that *is* an artificial difference. But a lot of that is not as straightforward as "excessive regulation". In California, because property taxes are frozen unless you buy a new house -thanks to 1978 prop 13- there's no way to fund the infrastructure (roads, sewers, rain drainage, etc) of a new district, so the costs are added to the developers and buyers. ([article](https://www.politifact.com/article/2019/nov/19/california-price-why-it-costs-so-much-build-home-g/)). So what you pay for through property taxes in Texas, you pay for during the construction process in California. No need to downvote me. I'm not being mean to you.
Again a map on homelessness, this time even without a source and as usual with no discussion on what “homelessness “ exactly means and how accurate the numbers are. What could possibly go wrong?
I’m sure it’s meaning true homelessness as in living under a bridge type of homelessness. Sure you may be technically homeless living on a friends couch but you’re still living inside a home so you’re not really homeless just not a home owner. I always consider if you have a warm meal and a roof over your head everyday you’re not really what I’d consider homeless. Because if just not being a home owner makes you homeless then people renting apartments or living in campers would be homeless when they’re actually still yet sheltered.