You can visit a city like Helsinki: and yet, there’s barely any homeless people around (of course, homeless people still exist) while comparing that to Los Angeles, it’s a fucking joke. It’s because they prioritize housing for everyone indifferent to their circumstances (even those addicted to drugs or with mental health issues are also sheltered) as they recognize that housing is a human right.
The housing is managed by the state, while Finns pay A TON in taxes at least it’s heading to cover expenses for getting people off the streets. It’s because the Finnish government is on board with putting them into housing while American government demonizes their existence as a whole not even considering them as human beings at all, like WTF is wrong with their mindset?
You can’t talk about homelessness in America without talking about Ronald Reagan.
When Reagan was elected Governor of California, the state had a large number of mental hospitals in place. They weren’t perfect, but treatment was available. reagan thought these places were a waste of tax payer money and had them closed. California now had a lot of homeless folks. They annoyed the locals, so the state had to hire more cops and build more jails.
This worked so well that Reagan did exactly the same when he became President.
My family lived in New York during that era. We went from a few homeless folks down on the Bowery to literally thousands. Every park was full.
Woah - there was good reason to get rid of those ‘mental hospitals’. There were terriballp abusive. On the streets was more human for most.