 Homelessness. We've talked about this before. I presented my thesis a while back that homelessness is driven by the cost of housing and indeed the solution of homelessness is simple straightforward increase the quantity of housing available and and Homelessness is a problem really would go away and There's a lot of skepticism about this a lot of people said no, it's a mental health issue No, it's a it's a drug issue and and so on and so I was I was particularly pleased this morning to see a Substack on a no up no opinion Substack from Aaron Carr who is an expert on on homelessness Basically making the same point. I made a while back a few weeks ago a few months ago I can't even tell regarding homelessness and basically saying The title is everything you know about homelessness is wrong. It's housing people And he goes through all of this so he says, you know Claim, you know, there's a claim out there and this is I'm reading from Noah's and Noah has this guest writer Andrew Aaron Carr Who is writing about this so so he he says homelessness is you know, people say homelessness is a is a mental health problem Well, the problem is that it doesn't there's no evidence of this A vast majority of homeless people don't have severe mental health issues it's less than one third of the people I know a Schellenberg the guy who ran it ran for Governor of California, who's very good on energy issues was making the point about mental health and the state He needs to provide mental health facilities and it's all a problem mental health. That's just not true the Reality is that a hundred percent of homeless people can't afford housing But less than a third of them have mental health issues In and there's just no relationship between the two things if you look at mental health issues There are States in the Union where mental health issues are Significantly more acute. Let's say California in New York where there's a homeless problem like Mississippi Which has probably the worst health care system in the America has real problems of mental health But has the lowest homelessness rate in the country So there's just no relationship That you can find in the data in actual data between homelessness and mental health There was there was this idea that de institutional Institutionalization that happened in the 1980s or the late 1970s caused homelessness But this theory is largely being discredited. It's just again not based on facts It's kind of seems Attractive and seems kind of intuitive, but it just didn't happen at the time particularly in the 1970s a lot of the People these de institutionalized found cheap housing Because there was loss of it Homelessness is directly correlated with the decline in affordable housing decline in cheap housing And I gave the reasons why there's no cheap housing On the show I did about homelessness So No, it's true that some people might become homeless Partially because of mental illness or or they don't have a job Partially because of mental illness or they can't make enough income partially as a consequence of mental illness, but ultimately They can't afford a home and the question really is why can't they afford home and part of the problem might be that they can't get a job But then you know the United States is unbelievably generous in terms of welfare The challenge is not the mental health issue the challenge is is the cost of housing or There's the claim that homelessness is primarily a drug problem But again only 20 to 40 percent of homeless people suffer from substance abuse issues drugs or alcohol and Yet it's not clear if they take drugs alcohol If taking drugs and alcohol causes them to be homeless or whether being homeless Causes them to use drugs and alcohol There is plenty of evidence That homelessness is indeed the reason they take drugs So while some people become homeless partially due to drug addiction many others develop drug addiction as the result of becoming homeless and Again, the statistics go do not suggest that drug abuse is what causes people to be homeless claim three is homelessness is primarily a poverty problem again It just doesn't stand scrutiny for a state in the union is Mississippi not a lot of homeless people in Mississippi Relatively rich states where there are a lot of homeless people Give you some examples Detroit is a high poverty city 31.8% of the population lives in poverty But they have among the lowest homeless rates in America San Francisco on the other hand very few people live in poverty about 10% But they have the highest Among the highest rates of homelessness in America. So there's just no correlation. There's no relationship between rates of poverty and homelessness or Maybe it's a weather issue. You know it's warm outside So what the hell why not be homeless? But California has always been warm and they never used to have a homeless problem and Indeed, there's a big homeless problem in New York. There's a big homeless problem in Vermont and Massachusetts all places that are not Particularly warm and again. They are places that are pretty warm. I don't know Mississippi, Alabama Georgia Not no homeless problems. I don't think there's a big homeless problem in Arizona So but but what can you say about those states, Mississippi? Arizona, Alabama Homes are cheap lot of cheap holding a lot of cheap housing Or maybe it's blue cities the problem is blue cities all these Progressive policies causing homelessness. Well, if you look at blue cities like Detroit and Chicago they have very low homeless rates very low homeless rates and Cities like San Francisco, New York. It's also blue have high homeless rates, but what's different is The Detroit and Chicago have Lots of housing and cheap San Francisco, New York have a shortage of housing and expensive So the conclusion that he comes to in the sub stack Homelessness is primarily a housing problem Unlike poverty and mental illness and drug abuse and weather and welfare benefits and other factors the places that have the highest Housing costs and the least housing supply have the largest homeless population so I Told you this a few months ago It's nice to see some of my ideas and and my idea was an original I picked it off from an essay from decades ago and And you know, it's nice to see kind of a mainstream Noah is a center-left Economist it's nice to see Kind of a mainstream economist picking up on this You know, here's a quote from the economist Quote a few Americans lived on the streets in the early post-war period because housing was cheaper Back then only one in four tenants spent more than 30% of their income on rent Compared with one in two today 30% of their income the best evidence suggests that a 10% rise in housing costs in a pricey city Promotes promotes an 8% jump in homelessness And by the way by building more homes by increasing home supply Atlanta has reduced homelessness by 40% Houston is reduced it by 63% Finland has reduced it by 75% Tokyo has reduced it by 80% You didn't know that Tokyo had a homeless problem, but they did when When housing prices went through the roof all right So if you want to solve the homeless problem as I think all of us want because Having homeless people in the streets is a very unpleasant thing. The solution is simple Deregulate housing deregulate zoning allow builders to build You'd probably also have to increase immigration. So you bring in of of low-skilled labor So you can bring in construction workers because they're not enough workers in the United States and build build build build homes Build homes of all kinds. It doesn't have to be low-income homes Because that's if you build high-income homes people move into high-income homes and there's this chain reaction where people vacate Lower lower lower quality homes and basically you create low-income housing. So It just build build build that is the solution By the way You know as Colleen says Colleen says it seems like It seems like mental health drug and poverty all play into the issue a little But if there was a cheap home solution, these people would be cared for And housed by charities. Yeah, and exactly it's much easier to deal with the issue of mental health Drugs and even poverty Once somebody lives in a home once they have that stability of having a roof above they had once enough roaming the streets And again roaming the streets is likely to create depression roaming the streets is likely to create drug abuse So the way to deal with the drug abuse and the if you're gonna help people Get them into a home Not by giving them a free home like they do in Los Angeles, but we're creating a supply of Low-income houses and get them working Plenty of jobs in the United States still today as you know until we go into a recession They're gonna continue to be plenty of jobs and get them a job get them producing income get them living in a home And and sustaining themselves then if they need help through charities you can provide help with the drug abuse You can provide help with With the with a mental health Okay, just wanted to pat myself on the back in a sense that Great confirmation for a thesis I presented And again nice to see these ideas Being advocated by mainstream people because then maybe there's a chance that You know that these ideas that some of these solutions get implemented and You know and there's there is now a movement among primarily among I'd say Center left center right people called yes in my backyard a lot of the building stoppages Right stoppages You know a consequence of that not in my backyard now There's a movement of yes in my backyard which has the potential of really increasing the supply of housing and Solving much of this problem. 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