In recent years, the rate of homelessness in California has grown substantially. The Golden State now ranks first among the 50 states at 4.4 per 1,000 residents, with LA and San Francisco often hosting vast homeless encampments (or tent cities, as they’re also known). I say “often” because these encampments are frequently cleared away by police, only to reappear somewhere else.
Many have blamed California’s homelessness problem on the cost of housing there. One prominent dissenting voice is the activist Michael Shellenberger, who has argued – most famously in his book San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities – that it’s largely the result of untreated mental illness and addiction.
In June, Margot Kushel and colleagues at the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative at UC San Francisco published findings from “the largest representative study of homelessness in the United States since the mid-1990s”. They interviewed 3,200 homeless people across eight locations, with effort being made to achieve representativeness.
So, what were the findings?
Remarkably, 82% of the homeless people in their sample said they’d had a mental health condition, and almost 1 in 4 said they’d had hallucinations (which are indicative of serious conditions like schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder). By contrast, the lifetime prevalence of any mental condition in the general population is only 46%.
The researchers also asked participants whether they currently had a mental health condition, and 66% said they did.
As for addiction, 65% of homeless people in the sample said they’d abused drugs or alcohol at some point in their lives. And among that sub-sample, two thirds said they’d done so before their first episode of homelessness. Which means that homelessness cannot have caused them to start abusing drugs or alcohol (more plausibly, it was the other way around).
The lifetime prevalence of drug abuse in the U.S. is around 8%, while for alcohol abuse its around 18%. Assuming that drug and alcohol abuse are completely independent (which they probably aren’t) the life prevalence of either is 26%.
Overall, the survey confirms that people with mental health conditions and a history of substance abuse are massively overrepresented among the homeless in California – consistent with Shellenberger’s arguments.
However, there doesn’t seem to be much correlation between the rate of homelessness and the prevalence of mental illness or addiction across U.S. states – which is wholly inconsistent with Shellenberger’s arguments. California is neither the most mentally ill nor the most addicted state.
What’s more, there does seem to be an association between the cost of housing and the rate of homelessness (which is hardly surprising). Indeed, homelessness is most common in liberal states that tend to restrict housing development, notably California and New York.
Here’s what appears to be going on: mental illness and addiction can help to explain which individuals become homeless, but they can’t explain why some states have higher rates of homelessness than others. Why so much homelessness in California? As the conventional wisdom says, it’s the cost of housing.
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Indeed. The fake news. Paid off, bought long ago. Just an extension of the unDemocratic Communist party. A stolen election, 40 million vote fraud, the forever war, money laundering, showering with his daughter, sniffing children, a degenerate coke snorting idiot as a son laundering money for Daddy through the Uketopia, biolabs everywhere, the synthetic Wuhu-lab flu, the FBI and CIA as his personal Gestapo, calling half of Americans the enemy and terrorists, vomiting his love for Tranny’s when major mass killings were committed by these mentally ill halfwits at Christian schools etc etc.
On the other hand, Biden is the perfect emblem of the evil, stupidity and perversion which is the US empire.
Beautifully put , I remember the staged clip of the grinning cackle fest that is Kamala , dressed in her civvies ,Ear cupped with both hands , cell phone in-between as she cooed supposedly to her new Lord & Master , We Did it Joe , We did it Joe ! ! as news broke of Bidens victory against Trump & I was caught in disbelief that this totally unlikely pairing had pulled off what surely is the biggest of scams ever to win that election !
I read the whole article intently with one question constantly running through my mind, why? The author succinctly answers it with his last sentence.
Nearly all the British media are CIA controlled too. Remember the Russian sub nonsense that appeared on every front page after Biden blew up nordstream. Yeah Russia blew up their own pipeline! Similarly our politicians as an occupied vassal state since 1942 are essentially all Manchurian candidates.
Who did blow it up?
Maybe no-one. Leave a pipeline unpressurised with residual condensate for a while and it is quite likely to go bang, said someone in the industry.
Seriously guys, what’s with the down ticks? I/ we would like to know what you think.
Ah. I see the way it is.
One of the best and honest summaries in the British media I’ve read. Well done.
Both President Biden and Vice President Harris are violating their Oath of Office–
they both solemnly swore they would “bear true faith and allegiance” to the Constitution and that they would “faithfully discharge the duties of the office.”
They stopped doing that a long time ago, probably the moment after they took this oath.
Yeah but as Obama said “The constitution is a document of neagtive liberties. It says what the government cannot do for you but does not say what the government CAN do for you”———-very clever wording —-So the government CAN take away all your fossil fuels eg because they are doing something FOR you.
Obama was mistaken, but it served his purposes.
I think you might want to take a second read of the Constitution, and if you need explanations, start with the “Federalist Papers”.
No I don’t need to read it. ————I strongly disagree with everything coming out of the mouth of Democrats. I hope you did not interpret my remarks as agreeing with Obama.
The purpose of any constitution is to restrain Government, to ensure the Government cannot do anything FOR you, because it cannot possibly know what best to do FOR each individual, and so will do what is best FOR itself.
As Reagan said, Government is the problem, not the solution.
Obama on the other hand was an idiot.
The purpose of the Constitution is (was) to define the roles and responsibilities the States granted to the Federal Govt, to create a gov’t with enough power to act on a national level but without so much power that fundamental rights would be at risk It replaced the Articles of Confederation which was a first try, but failed. The Constitution took a while to create, write, and ratify.
This absolutely personifies the contempt that the Democrat Party holds for its voters, and indeed for the very land of the USA. They will and have literally said, and done anything and everything to hold on to power at the cost of the welfare and well being of the American citizens, even to the extent of encouraging war as opposed to brokering peace. They will stop at nothing toachieve this aim, and for what? so that they can enrich themselves and their already grotesquely wealthy backers. If the American people who were Democrat voters cannot see this, or just choose to ignore it then they really have themselves to blame for the dreadful conclusion to what they are allowing to continue.
Sounds like the Conservatives here.
There’s another important point to be made about Biden. Anyone with at least two brain cells can see that he is suffering from quite advanced dementia, and has been for some time. This is a very ill elderly man who would normally receive sympathy and not hostility. But the ‘caring’ left, in the form of the Democrats, have used this ill elderly man and have now hung him out to dry. They will do anything to advance a socialist agenda; it doesn’t matter who is harmed, maimed or killed in the process. This is what we’re up against.
They’ll just lever in Michelle Obama and win again, you’ll never hear about Biden, or the home he goes to ever again, as if he never existed!
I still think a Biden assassination is on the cards and of course it will be a Trump supporter wot dun it.
Biden has said that only the Lord will prevent him from standing. America’s churches are now full of people praying that he is given just a few months more, as a Harris candidacy is probably impossible to bear.
At least with Biden we will know when AI replaces him, as he will finally become coherent.
Biden is a 4 handicap golfer, part time brain surgeon with a degree in Algebra and speaks 12 languages fluently and once gave a 12 minute speech in Ancient Greek without notes. ——-eh excuse me I was thinking of my old University Professor James Biden. —-Sorry about that. I was getting a bit mixed up.
There were those who thought Trump had made a yuge mistake by agreeing to the debate conditions clearly favourable to Biden and unfavourable to him, but Trump is smart – too many people don’t understand this because they don’t like him.
He knew what state Biden was in and all it would take was to get Biden on a public platform with no teleprompter. Trump could have said nothing and still won.
Why Biden’s handlers didn’t see that indicates their conceit.
The whole thing was a Globalist set-up to prepare the public for Biden standing down for the Cackler.
It could also be that Biden is just acting. He always planned to stand down, in order to enable the Unelectable Kackling Kamala to cackle her way into the White House. All set up by the Globalists, who want to put Ethnic African or Indian females into leadership positions in every western nation, as part of the “Global Goddess Religion”.
Indeed. However it is not true that “his delegates (over 90%) have to vote for him on a first ballot at the Democratic Convention in August”. They have no legal obligation to do so, except in some States.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector