Re:Miami advances plan to move homeless onto island
by ajross on Saturday August 20, 2022 @08:41AM
(#32531619)
> Homeless epidemics are really
The "homeless epidemic" is basically a fiction. The US homeless population tracks the broader economy a bit, but on the whole tends to be quite stable. Here are some numbers from Statista: https://www.statista.com/statistics/555795/estimated-number-...
The reason people feel like it's getting worse (beyond simple politics) is that there's been a general shift in public sentiment away from the kinds of policies in the linked article. Where we used to use law enforcement to force the homeless out of core public areas, now we generally tolerate them in most urban environments. They do, after all, have to sleep somewhere.
But that creates backlash, which leads to impressions like yours about a problem ("failed cities" ... really?) that really doesn't exist.
But the core point is that they were always there. You just couldn't see them.
The "homeless epidemic" is basically a fiction. The US homeless population tracks the broader economy a bit, but on the whole tends to be quite stable. Here are some numbers from Statista: https://www.statista.com/statistics/555795/estimated-number-...
The reason people feel like it's getting worse (beyond simple politics) is that there's been a general shift in public sentiment away from the kinds of policies in the linked article. Where we used to use law enforcement to force the homeless out of core public areas, now we generally tolerate them in most urban environments. They do, after all, have to sleep somewhere.
But that creates backlash, which leads to impressions like yours about a problem ("failed cities" ... really?) that really doesn't exist.
But the core point is that they were always there. You just couldn't see them.