Hundreds of unsheltered people living in tent encampments in the blocks surrounding the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco have been forced to leave by city outreach workers and police as part of an attempted “clean up the house” ahead of this week’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation’s annual free trade conference.
The action, which housing advocates allege violated a court injunction, was celebrated by right-wing figures and the tech crowd, who have long been convinced that the city is in terminal decline because of an increase in encampments in the downtown area.
The X account End Wokness wrote that the displacement was proof the “government can easily fix our cities overnight. It just doesn’t want to” (the post received 77,000 likes). “Queer Eye but it’s just Xi visiting troubled US cities then they get a makeover,” joked Packy McCormick, the founder of Not Boring Capital and advisor to Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto VC team. The New York Post celebrated the action, saying that residents had “miraculously disappeared.”
How come the US has such a massive homelessness problem while having pretty much the cheapest real estate in the world (relative to income)? People in other developed countries can’t even dream about such low prices. The US government also has the world’s biggest budget - just house people for free for fucks sake! It’s literally pennies for the state.
P.S. Property to income ratio source - https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings_by_country.jsp
Don’t use California as a metric for American homelessness. California has made itself a veritable Mecca for homeless people by passing laws that allow them to set up camp virtually anywhere. Those laws, combined with its naturally temperate climate have resulted in 30% of America’s homeless population living in California. No other state in the U.S. has such a hard-on for homeless people and we have much more sensible laws that reflect that.
Ok. I don’t know much about America.
Yeah, but why would we do that when we could just tell them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps?
Look, I’m all for telling people to pull themselves up, but the US could rake some serious political prestige points worldwide for doing that. And also flex over China and other commies - look how great capitalism is! If I was Trump during his dumb economic war with China, I’d house all homeless in an instant just to show China who’s a real daddy here.
Much of the homelessness problem in America is really untreated mental health problems. A lot comes from not having universal healthcare.
Also, most jobs are in cities where housing is more expensive. We also have a shitty minimum wage, and a minimum wage job can’t buy a studio apartment and food in most areas where there are jobs.
Also, average and even median income is not a great measure of the wealth of the poor. The US Gino coefficient (a measure of income inequality) is poor compared to most other developed countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient
Ok, I see.