According to a December 2018 article in Forbes, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has found that just under 553,000 people are homeless, with approximately 65% staying in sheltered accommodation. Half of all people experiencing homelessness are in one of five states – California (129,972 people), New York (91,897), Florida (31,030), Texas (25,310) and Washington (22,304). Nearly a quarter of all people sleeping rough [on the streets or in abandoned buildings] did so in either New York or Los Angeles. In Los Angeles, 75% of homeless people were found in unsheltered locations.
New York led the top 10 U.S. cities with 78,676 homeless people followed by Los Angeles city and county with 49,955 and Seattle/King County with 12, 112. San Francisco came in seventh with 6,857. The other cities in the top ten were San Diego, San Jose/Santa Clara, California, District of Columbia, Phoenix, Mesa/Maricopa County, Boston and Las Vegas. Surprisingly, Chicago and Houston did not make the cut, while opulent Las Vegas did. In Chicago, it’s maybe because the streets are not safe with the southside gangbangers shooting up the place.
In 2018 there were 25,310 homeless people in Texas. According to the Coalition for the Homeless, Harris County had 1,528 homeless living unsheltered and 2,271 in temporary shelters.
Many of the unsheltered homeless are mentally ill people, alcoholics or drug addicts.
Quite a number of the homeless in San Francisco and Los Angeles hold down a steady job but cannot afford the high cost of housing. For instance, many people who work in Los Angeles have bought homes in Temecula and other nearby Riverside County communities because the cost of housing there is much lower than in L.A. But it is a 3-1/2 hour commute from Temecula to their job in L.A., that is if wrecks on the freeways don’t slow them down. That’s at least seven aggravating hours fighting traffic in a car while commuting to and from their jobs. Others choose not to make that commute or they cannot even afford to buy or rent a home in Riverside County. They live in their car or on the streets.
In L.A. the situation has gotten so bad that business and home owners have barricaded the sidewalks with obstacles of one kind or another to keep the homeless from setting up camps. One business owner has set up some makeshift planter boxes containing prickly plants to keep the homeless from camping and shitting in front of his business.
Homelessness rose 16% in L.A. over the past year to more than 36,000 people, according to a June report by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. Across L.A. County, including the city, the count increased 12%, to nearly 59,000 people.
L.A. Police Chief Michel Moore says “This is a humanitarian crisis of our generation. This matches any other calamity that this city or this region or this country has seen. It is, I believe, a social emergency.”
Chief Moore is correct. Yet the Democrat-loving, Trump-hating media wants Americans to believe that the humanitarian crisis of our generation is the inhumane detention of illegal immigrants rather than homelessness, and that Trump is to blame for that. If the truth be told, the plight of the detainees is not the fault of the Border Patrol or the Trump administration … it is the fault of the illegals themselves!
Enticed by activists in Mexico, encouraged by far-left politicians and demonstrators in our country who favor open-borders, and hoping to reach a sanctuary city, the illegals have been sneaking across our border in overwhelming numbers. And once they’ve set foot in this country, the Border Patrol can’t just dump them back across the border. The law requires they must go through legal proceedings before they can be deported. The detention centers are badly overcrowded because the immigration courts are overwhelmed by the massive number of illegals, and because in many cases, civil rights attorneys employ their usual delaying tactics.
For the homeless, the streets of America are not paved with gold. Rather, it’s more like the streets and sidewalks are paved with shit. The homeless defecate on the streets, on sidewalks, in parks and on private premises. In San Francisco people used to complain about homosexuals engaging openly in sexual acts in the city’s public parks. Now people are complaining about the homeless shitting on the grounds of their once beautiful parks.
Daily, week on end, the Trump-hating media has bombarded the public with hysterical reports of children being mistreated in illegal immigrant facilities. Because the camps are badly overcrowded, there is a shortage of toilets and bathing facilities. Vice President Pence visited an adult detention center in McAllen, Texas and became conscious of a strong BO stench. AOC compared the centers to concentration camps and reported that a detainee told her they had to drink out of toilets, something you can bet your life on as being untrue.
As bad as the conditions are, and they are bad, there is running water at the detention centers and the detainees are being fed more than just baloney sandwiches as some media reports had it. On the other hand, the homeless have no running water and many of them would be most grateful if someone gave them a baloney sandwich. But because the homeless are mostly in cities like San Francisco, L.A. and New York that are controlled by the Democrats, the media all but ignores their plight. About the only time the media reports on the homeless is during times they will be facing freezing weather.
Since we are experiencing good economic times, the media cannot blame Trump for the plight of the homeless. The homeless problem is largely a Democrat problem. So, the media tries to pick Trump apart by focusing on the plight of illegal immigrants and blaming that on him.
While there are surely some illegal immigrants among the homeless, the overwhelming majority are American citizens. There can be no doubt that we should be concerned about the bad conditions under which the migrants are being held. But the homeless who live on the street or in abandoned buildings and those who live in temporary shelters should concern Americans much more than the plight of children held in overcrowded illegal immigrant detention facilities.
Maybe we could actually be concerned about both? And its my hunch that a lot more of the homeless are homeless because of choices they made, than kids are in detention centers because of choices they made.
Jerry, you’re right. Of course we should be concerned about both the homeless and the children. And some of the homeless are homeless because they chose to live on the streets. And others have made bad choices by doing drugs which has made them homeless. But as a cop, I’ve been around quite a few homeless people and I can assure you most of them did not want to be homeless. There are the mentally ill, and lots of them, who were dumped out on the street by the hospitals when they maxed out their health insurance. Yes Jerry, I have met some people who desired to live on the streets for one reason or another, but they constitute a very small minority of the homeless.
As for the migrant children, there are teens among them who made the choice for themselves to sneak into this country. Of course, then there are also the little children who came here with one or both parents. The detention facilities where the children are kept are not nearly as bad as those where the adult illegals are kept. In both cases, the media has chosen to show us only the worst of the overcrowded facilities and not the better ones.
Kids did not make the decision. Mama and daddy made the decision.
But didn’t you notice in the article that Harris County/Houston is so low. Probably most of the homeless are all around Midtown near the Greyhound Bus Station. Or I-69 near the old Sears Store. Mostly mentally ill and druggies. Reason why not so many…….
Harris county/Houston does not restrict development.
Once people arrive here in Houston, lots of work. Once paychecks come thru, then they can get cheap apartment( plentiful) and get a roof over their head. Allow developers to “Develop” and they will make housing they can sell and make money from. Thus, keep housing plentiful and fairly cheap. Same policy in regards to energy. Let Oil/Gas people drill drill drill.
Result, cheap energy and not expensive to get around.
Now can we get Democrats to do that on a national basis……? No.
You realize that the homeless people also have kids, right?
Some Homeless have kids. Most are single. And they are single men.
Choices they made with bribes for the assist.
Step One: Two days of shooting the invaders stops illegal entry by the third day.
Step Two: Cut the increases in subsidies we saw explode during the 8 years of Obama. Don’t feed the animals.
“Animals that are fed lose…their ability to forage on their own. They often become overly aggressive and completely dependent on handouts. They start to look skinny and sickly and develop begging behaviors, which exacerbates the cycle further as visitors feel sorry for them….Fed animals tend to congregate near roadways and are at a high risk for being killed by vehicles.”
Let the National Park Service (quoted) run the USDA, which is 80% welfare and 20% agriculture.
Lessons from one goverment agency don’t go over to another agency.
Humans are….animals. Make them forage on their own and not depend of handouts. Agree with the observation.
The “homeless crisis” is rapidly turning into a “public health crisis.” The overwhelming number of homeless people have huge substance abuse or mental health issues and often both. Right now federal law and case law protect their “life style” from “unreasonable” interference. Unfortunately the big cities – SF, LA, Seattle, NY, Chicago – with this problem are, according to public health professionals, about to have a MAJOR public health issue directly caused by homeless people and homeless “encampments” being a major vector for disease. There is already a typhus outbreak in LA. They are expecting Typhoid and even Plague in the very near future. Our political ruling class lacks the political will to deal effectively with the issue and won’t do much about it until an unacceptable number of the homeless or a significant number of innocent citizens start dropping dead in the streets from diseases that were virtually extinct 20 years ago. Please note that all these homeless meccas in SF, LA, Seattle, NY and Chicago are the result of long-term, single-party Democrat rule.
You know why Harris County is so low? Cheap housing. Republicans who run Harris County ( or who used to run the county ) made a policy of encouraging development. In San Francisco County in California, there is no, let me repeat that, NO DEVELOPMENT.
Thus new low cost housing is not being built by developers. Townhomes, houses, or condos for under $100,000 ( plentiful in Harris County ) not gonna happen in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Seattle. And don’t think there are not people coming to Houston. I work right across from the Greyhound Bus Station in Downtown. Lots of people coming. Get picked up by friends, family or go to the nearest homeless shelter. Once they get a job, they can get a place to live. Harris County and Houston are really not that expensive.
And the people who are walking the streets of downtown around the Greyhound Bus Station are mostly mentally ill and druggies. Having worked and lived for almost 25 years across from Greyhound, I know each of those mentally ill and druggies by face and some by their first name. Same faces for the last 20 years.