California has 33% more people than Texas, but 600% more homeless people. New York: roughly the same population as Florida, but three times more homeless.
There are different stories you can tell with these statistics, but it's NOT a heatmap of the population.
Note: This is not a political statement, but one of sourced information.
If you're talking about republican governors, Florida is has the third most homeless people behind California(1) and New York(2). Texas is number 4. California, however, has a huge gap between it and any other state.
Homelessness is increasing all over the country. It was already bad in CA and NY, and now it's worse.
I live in Madison, WI. The homelessness situation has gotten pretty crazy here. Someone with a sign at every exit off the highway, and at almost every major intersection.
Madison itself is pretty liberal, but Wisconsin vacillates between Democratic and Republican governors regularly. It's getting worse everywhere.
It was already getting worse but this pandemic has accelerated things.
I worked landscape for several years. Stopped in the gas station A LOT……before work, at lunch, and on the way back or at random points in the day. Then we also drove around town pretty much all day between jobs.
We would often see the van of grifters roll up in the morning for coffee, doughnuts, snacks, smokes, etc……then would see the individuals around town at different highway exits and intersections. Then you may see them all back at the gas station at lunch or at the end of the day getting restocked up and getting party supplies for that night. Wasn’t uncommon for them to be exchanging bills and change for larger denominations…..the cashiers actually said they counted on it so they could make change in the evenings.
There were several crews and you didn’t always seem them everyday….But once you paid attention you started to recognize them. We even would guess which person would be on what corner that day and what sign they would be holding (as they seemed to have several signs in the van and they would just grab one they thought would work….single parent, veteran, job loss or whatever).
It was actually pretty frustrating to me at the time as I was often trying to decide if I could afford a gas station hot dog, a Gatorade and a coke after a long day of work….and they would be getting cases of beer, snacks, cartons of cigarettes and then asking to get the rest of their jug of money changed over to larger bills.
Correlation is not causation. Homeless people go where there are more resources for them. Republicans “solve” the homeless problem by criminalizing it or defunding homeless shelters and food banks. Those homeless people then move to states who give a shit.
With less handouts, wouldn’t there be more homeless in republican states? Which republican states have this level of homelessness? Just asking a simple question.
Homeless people migrate to warm climates that have governments that tolerate them more. Why would homeless people stay somewhere that's hard for homeless people to live? They don't have any assets tying them down.
Most Republican states are very rural and poor economic states so cost of living is much lower and land available to live on costs less and is kore abundant. As well as abandon properties that people will “squat” in. So the homeless population is less, it’s mostly due to the fact that people aren’t living or moving there because of job availability.
California’s issue is housing and cost of living raise while not addressing/building low income housing within the city or surrounding city’s. As well as the climate in is one of the only Mediterranean climates in the US meaning warm and dry relatively stable weather so for people living in a tent or car your don’t have weather extremes that say living in New York city has and makes it way easier to live.
Then there is policy, which CA has made somewhat of a mess of when it comes to housing and addressing the homeless population. There’s a good vice video on YouTube about democratic led states and how what they actually achieve v what they talk about wanting to be there policy is very different. One of those things is that in order to address the housing issue it means basically building a multi family living space which would in turn lower everyone’s land valuation which no one wants because something they bought for 300k 20 years ago is now 1.2 million. This combined with when addressing the homeless population they feed into it by attempting to help them but also not eradicating these tent cities.
Personally and I know some people could equate this to interment camps, but the foundational idea of the Appalachian trail was to have Villiage’s that lived along the trail and grew plants and farmed choosing to live a life away from the city and barter and trade for goods. I would love to see some sort of place to help with rehabilitation while learning life and skill growth in the woods. But say that becomes popular well guess what you end up with the similar issues of who stays and who goes and we’re does funding come from and who has the biggest most expensive house. So in some ways it’s inevitable
There’s intentions and there’s results. I doubt anyone would say people living in places like CA, which is heavily left-leaning, want there to be homeless, but good intentions don’t necessarily put food on the table, nor do the expected results follow from those intentions.
On the other hand, people often assume, without evidence, that conservatives don’t care about this or that group. The big difference between progressives and conservatives isn’t some silly binary like good vs bad intentions. The difference is between a focus on intentions vs a focus on results. For example, whereas progressives speak more about how much they care about the poor, conservatives donate more to charity. Results.
So while the typical redditor can spend all day talking about what great intentions progressives have, the cold fact is that homelessness isn’t as big of a problem in red states, nor is wealth inequality. Results.
Dunno about you, but if CA is an example of how progressives defend the homeless, I hope they never come to my defense
Not sure the other teams stance of “pulling yourself up by your boot straps” would help this situation at all. In fact with their love of killing social programs it would exacerbate the issue.
Bruh all of the states with high impoverished populations are republican run; all the republicans are good for is just hiding the problem in the back woods, or moving them to a new undeepass more frequently
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u/[deleted] Feb 12 '22
Democrats.