The nation of hope, hard work, wealth, and unlimited potential is reeling from a new Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) report that claims our priorities do not include the care of the most vulnerable of our society. During the season when charitable giving is on the minds of the people, the homeless population rates low on the humanitarian programs list.
The ironic and incredibly inconvenient truth is California leads the way, adding an implausible 16.4% of unsheltered families, veterans, and elder Americans attempting to survive on the streets. The report also highlights a boost of 21,306 homeless people in the Golden State compared to last year, which essentially renders the progress other states have worked diligently to achieve null and void. The unsheltered population decreased dramatically in 29 states – including Washington, D.C. It should’ve been a banner year to celebrate, but California skewed the curve.
HUD Secretary Ben Carson made no bones about his frustrations and the lack of success in getting citizens the help they need, off the street, and into some form of housing: “In fact, homelessness in California is at a crisis level and needs to be addressed by local and state leaders with crisis-like urgency.”
President Donald Trump has been on the warpath with what he reiterates is a humanitarian crisis. “What they are doing to our beautiful California is a disgrace to our country. It’s a shame the world is looking at it.” The rebuke came in a thunderous rally speech in late August, as the administration sent a fact-finding mission to the state to assess the situation on the ground.
Just this past week, Trump again criticized Governor Gavin Newsom for essentially miserably failing to curb homelessness in his state while playing at liberal politics. In a tweet, the president warned, “Governor Gavin N has done a really bad job on taking care of the homeless population in California. If he can’t fix the problem, the Federal Govt. will get involved!”
Obviously, the outlook is not promising.
Top of the Homeless Leaderboard
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) represent regions with the largest homeless populations, San Francisco and the Los Angeles area. These two politicians, with a bully pulpit to raise awareness and demand significant reforms from every level of government, instead have spent three years trying to unseat the duly-elected president of the United States, while mentally ill people defecate in grocery store aisles and sidewalks teem with folks shooting drugs into their veins.
Re-emerging are medieval diseases – typhus and typhoid fever, borne by fleas, body lice, and feces –tuberculosis, and staph, and public health officials are losing their collective minds, attempting to get the media and the most powerful woman in America to pay attention.
Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi
The Trump administration is calling on California to release the tight rein on housing construction and loosen restrictions on getting the working homeless into homes, encouraging the state to refocus its ultra-liberal policies on homeless camps, which proved the opposite of motivating folks to get back into the mainstream.
Newsom, of course, blames the federal government for not embracing and supporting his “Home First” program which would place people in homes first and potentially adding job-skills training or addiction services later.
The homeless scourge is a shame this nation has been woefully unable to replace with honor, despite the best intentions of our governments, corporate media, and wealthiest of citizens, who seem to have focused their combined efforts on one goal: ousting Trump. Per capita, San Francisco boasts more billionaires than anywhere else in the world, and Hollywood has a built-in platform of celebrity encouragement. And yet the homeless population continues to make us Third World worthy. On the same city block, one can dodge piles of human feces, vomit, and used syringes while stepping into a tricked-out Ferrari.
Are Madam Pelosi and Mr. Schiff as mortally embarrassed as the rest of America?
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Read more from Sarah Cowgill.
