“While the rest of the country experienced a combined decrease in homelessness in 2019, significant increases in unsheltered and chronic homelessness on the West Coast, particularly California and Oregon, offset those nationwide decreases, causing an overall increase in homelessness of 2.7 percent in 2019,” HUD said in a statement. “Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia reported declines in homelessness between 2018 and 2019, while 21 states reported increases in the number of persons experiencing homelessness. Homelessness in California increased by 21,306 people, or 16.4 percent, which is more than the total national increase of every other state combined.” [The Daily Wire]
Let’s be clear: Government — state or federal — has no right to enslave its citizens by forcing them to take care of the homeless. Slavery was outlawed in the 19th century. Whether you’re coerced to labor on a plantation or coerced to labor all or part of your day to take care of the poor, coercion and slavery are NOT freedom.
Nevertheless, it IS the responsibility of a state government not to enable and foster homelessness. The best way for government not to do that? By staying out of the economy. By letting economic growth occur, by upholding contracts and property rights, but otherwise leaving the economy the hell alone.
California imposes some of the highest taxes and most onerous regulations on its citizens in the country. California is what the national Democratic Party wants the entire USA to become. Witness the results. If California did a better job of leaving its most productive citizens the hell alone — free to make a profit and in the process create jobs and prosperity for everyone — the state would not be experiencing rising homelessness while the rest of the country experiences a reduction in homelessness.
The other problem has to do with virtue-signaling. It’s an ethical and psychological problem. Leftists who dominate state government in California want to be SEEN as being virtuous. For reasons many of us will never comprehend, they SEE it as VIRTUOUS to leave homeless people on the street. It gives them an opportunity to say, “Look at me. I’m not being mean to a homeless person. I’m letting him sleep on the sidewalk”. The politicians and highly wealthy are not exposed to the homelessness the way middle class and most other people are; so to them, the problem is tolerable, and they get to be seen as “holier than thou” because of it.
Homelessness is mostly due to substance abuse. Substance abuse is a sad problem. But it’s not the fault of the people being forced to walk around the homeless people on the street. At some point, you have to blame the people who are living on the street for letting their lives go in the first place. The amazing thing is that we make the use of certain substances illegal. Yet when people abuse those substances to the point of being addicted to them, to the point where they live on the streets and no longer even care — well, it’s somehow not virtuous to judge or hold them accountable in any way. We demand their right to live, defecate and urinate on the street … property owned by the government, by the way.
So those are the two basic problems with homelessness. Virtue-signaling and government strangulation of the economy, especially in places like California. Will Californians EVER make a change? It seems doubtful. But I suppose time will tell.
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