Liberals blame broken systems. Conservatives blame broken behavior. The real answer is more complicated — and the only standard that should matter is whether people actually get off the streets.
Progressives have controlled the what has turned into the Homelessness Industrial Complex for years. It is disingenuous to say that the problem is multi-ideological (basically blaming everyone). The more money that has been spent by Progressives, the worse the outcome. Occam's Razor would put the the majority of the blame on those who have control of the resources and those who have largely chosen the homeless lifestyle. I'll exempt the mentally ill. Leaving them on the streets is beyond cruel. Shutting mental health facilities without providing any reasonable support led to tragedy for the mentally ill - this was bipartisan and the one area for joint blame. Every society in human history has had marginalized people who disregard the social contract and engage in destructive behavior (to others and themselves). Society should be protected from these individuals. Public intoxication used to be treated as a crime - we had far less problems when the law was enforced. Likewise with public "camping" on city streets and parks. How is this not a seizure of property from the community? Homeless encampments are an enormous public health and safety hazard - fire risks, breeding medieval diseases, harboring criminals (who prey on the defenseless homeless people). Current public policy actually. enables homelessness - the NGO staff's compensation depends on perpetuation of the problem. The only real solution is to get people out of encampments and into mandatory rehab which leads to employment or jail, medical treatment for the ill, mental institutions for the mentally damaged. These are not a happy alternatives, but the enabling has clearly failed.
All five states with highest homeless rate: DC, NY, Oregon, VT and CA are run by so called progressives. At least 40% of homeless are drug or alcohol addicts.
The article is right. Homelessness is not a liberal or conservative issue. It is a human issue. There are many reasons homelessness in Oakland and America has grown out of propotion, including the homeless industrial complex which keeps people homeless and makes money. This includes many non-profits and city leadership relationships.This is a big and complex system itself. To the solution we need treatment for drug addication and mental health. Even if it means permeant care for those who are too destroyed. We need apprentice programs to train those who can work for skilled jobs. In Oaklad this means bringing back business, construction and industry to create jobs for those who can work. It will take a leadership that will shut down the open air drug markets and drug cartels out of Oakland and our cities. Every homesless person is a human being, and must be treated as such. Doing what Oakland is currently doing, just sweeping encampments away is destructive. We can solve the homeless problem only with a real and good leadership. Mindy Pechenuk for Oakland Mayor 2026
Excellent article that begs the question: What can reasonable, centrist citizens do to force both extreme political camps to stop using homelessness to ‘prove’ their political ideology and focus instead on practical solutions? Political polarization now threatens to destroy our democracy while homelessness provides the most dramatic example of how it destroys lives that could be saved.
Centrism only creates Band-Aid solutions that please no one. Either the conservatives are right and the liberals are wrong, or vice versa. But let’s face one overriding fact: Republican-run cities are largely free of homelessness. What does that tell you about solutions?
You have every right to your beliefs, but the data conflicts.
Dallas is heavily Democratic but has about 3,000 homeless.
Lexington Kentucky is Republican and has about 1000, a higher percentage of the population.
There are much more variables involved in US cities than your two, homelessness and D or R. Coastal cities, cities with mixed D and R governments, cities with more access to immigrants, cities with harsher weather, etc. And State government plays a role in many cities' approach and funding.
If only the homelessness problem was as simple as D or R.
I work in the nonprofit affordable housing field. Our housing retention rate for unhoused moving into our Permanent Supportive Housing is 98%. We are not alone in that success rate. Nor am I naive about people who are not ready to live independently, who can be a danger to themselves and others. I do think homelessness is largely a systemic problem, and I recognize that people are at different levels of readiness for independent living. One thing I don't see discussed much is how mental health issue and substance use issues existed before the homelessness crises, but housing was more available and affordable. Rates of mental illness and substance use remain relatively similar across the country, but per-capita homelessness spikes dramatically in regions with high housing costs compared to impoverished areas with cheap housing.
You could look up housing retention rates generally for housing first and permanent supportive housing. They are generally quite good. Stability Rates by Program Type
• ✅ Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH): Up to 98% retention rate after one year for chronically homeless individuals.
• ✅ Rapid Re-Housing (RRH): Between 75% and 91% retention rate for short-term assistance models.
• ✅ Comparative Success: Systematic reviews show Housing First improves housing stability by 41% to 54% more than traditional "Treatment First" or abstinence-mandated programs.
• ✅ Long-Term Retention: Landmark studies (such as Pathways to Housing) demonstrate that 79% remain housed at 6 months, and up to 88% remain stably housed at 5 years.
At about a $million a unit to build or buy housing in Alameda County, for example, and approximately 9000 homeless, it would cost more than the entire County budget to build housing for all the homeless. Therefore, since the Housing First position is fundamentally unachievable, treatment is the preferable alternative.
What should be said but rarely is, is that the cities and states that spend the most on homeless services, attract the most homeless. There is an industry that thrives from homelessness.
I have to provide this information to our funders all the time but I don't know if I can show it in a way in this thread that would be meaningful to you. And I can't share confidential household data. We track extensive details about residents including length of residency, lease violations, move-outs and move-out reasons, participation in services, etc. I could show a screen shot of our housing stability dashboard tracker which would show the percentage but I don't see a way of doing that in this thread.
I'm not sure why high housing retention rates is considered to be such a good thing when it comes to homelessness. What it means is that the homeless continue to live in expensive subsidized housing for a really long time, often untreated.
It is demonstrably unachievable for the majority of the homeless because it would require too much money. All local government's financial resources would have to go to just to this one function.
A preferable metric of success would be people becoming clean and functional, and moving out of subsidized housing. Treatment First is the only feasible approach.
The cities in the United States that are free of homelessness or nearly free of it, are run by Republicans. Liberal Democrats created homelessness, expanded it, and are milking it. Those cities are ALL run by Democrats.
Conservatives are right. Liberals are wrong. Period.
Rates of mental health issues and substance use issues are relatively consistent across the country but rates of homelessness among that population are highest where housing costs are highest. California (under both Democratic and Republican governors) is among the most expensive places to live in terms of housing costs in the country and has a severe housing shortage. You will find that those factors exist where ever homelessness is highest. One could argue that is because people prefer to live in these places, which creates a housing shortage and drives up housing prices. But that would be overly simplistic.
Your analysis is brilliant by its neutrality. It is nearly impossible to find balanced view in "Homelessness" reports, stats and opinions publicly available. However, I was expecting a more definitive recommendation. It is a problem of "how to eat an elephant?" It is evident that causes, effects and perpetuation of this phenomenon is quite varied and therefore, solutions cannot be universal. It is extremely important to divide the entire Homeless population in a given area into five or so categories. 1)Family with children, 2)Temp. down on luck, 3)old/disabled/sick, 4)substance abuser and 5) mental cases. There would be overlaps in some instances. Now, these should be prioritized as follows: 1,3,2,5,4. Solutions will be different for each group and expectations will also be defined and demanded from each. Settlement areas for each group must be separated and only as expensive as absolutely necessary. Non-profit groups must be utilized within this framework but only with proper coordination. Graduation from one group to another will be encouraged as possible and some sort of incentive structure formulated. At the end of this, advocates must have cooperative not adversarial attitude to be associated.
This is a limited argument. If poverty was the only issue, if you gave a homeless person enough money to live in an average unit, it would not solve the problem. Many of these folk have challenges in adapting to society which will not be fixed by a place to live. Meanwhile, systems to help broken people are funneled down through agencies which have provided no real measures of success. Conservatives could have used resources to cut this off at the pass; very intense, very early intervention with education and mental health for our youth, but they passed on it, and now the people not supported in their formative years have turned against societal norms. The first issue is, are these Oakland residents or Oakland migrants? The next issue is there any amount of income which can be reduced to which they can afford housing? It is unfair to anticipate that Oakland becomes the reservoir for underserved throughout the region. It is morally wrong to allow broken people to live on the streets unattended, having to find their own way. The realities are, the Bay Area, especially Oakland, is a long term 'goldilocks' environmental haven with the ravages of climate change. No homeless want to survive Chicago in the winter or Phoenix in the summer, so this will get worse, not better unless we have a strategic plan. Our plans should not be designed to benefit the homeless, the nonprofits which serve them either. Our plans need to be focused on the sustainable needs of the Oakland residents, because if the average age on the street is 48, there is a sickness in our politicians to demand that others pay to sustain that person for the next 25 years.
Progressives have controlled the what has turned into the Homelessness Industrial Complex for years. It is disingenuous to say that the problem is multi-ideological (basically blaming everyone). The more money that has been spent by Progressives, the worse the outcome. Occam's Razor would put the the majority of the blame on those who have control of the resources and those who have largely chosen the homeless lifestyle. I'll exempt the mentally ill. Leaving them on the streets is beyond cruel. Shutting mental health facilities without providing any reasonable support led to tragedy for the mentally ill - this was bipartisan and the one area for joint blame. Every society in human history has had marginalized people who disregard the social contract and engage in destructive behavior (to others and themselves). Society should be protected from these individuals. Public intoxication used to be treated as a crime - we had far less problems when the law was enforced. Likewise with public "camping" on city streets and parks. How is this not a seizure of property from the community? Homeless encampments are an enormous public health and safety hazard - fire risks, breeding medieval diseases, harboring criminals (who prey on the defenseless homeless people). Current public policy actually. enables homelessness - the NGO staff's compensation depends on perpetuation of the problem. The only real solution is to get people out of encampments and into mandatory rehab which leads to employment or jail, medical treatment for the ill, mental institutions for the mentally damaged. These are not a happy alternatives, but the enabling has clearly failed.
All five states with highest homeless rate: DC, NY, Oregon, VT and CA are run by so called progressives. At least 40% of homeless are drug or alcohol addicts.
The article is right. Homelessness is not a liberal or conservative issue. It is a human issue. There are many reasons homelessness in Oakland and America has grown out of propotion, including the homeless industrial complex which keeps people homeless and makes money. This includes many non-profits and city leadership relationships.This is a big and complex system itself. To the solution we need treatment for drug addication and mental health. Even if it means permeant care for those who are too destroyed. We need apprentice programs to train those who can work for skilled jobs. In Oaklad this means bringing back business, construction and industry to create jobs for those who can work. It will take a leadership that will shut down the open air drug markets and drug cartels out of Oakland and our cities. Every homesless person is a human being, and must be treated as such. Doing what Oakland is currently doing, just sweeping encampments away is destructive. We can solve the homeless problem only with a real and good leadership. Mindy Pechenuk for Oakland Mayor 2026
An unusually good article with real knowledge, real heart, and real thinking.
Solutions take patience.
Excellent article that begs the question: What can reasonable, centrist citizens do to force both extreme political camps to stop using homelessness to ‘prove’ their political ideology and focus instead on practical solutions? Political polarization now threatens to destroy our democracy while homelessness provides the most dramatic example of how it destroys lives that could be saved.
Centrism only creates Band-Aid solutions that please no one. Either the conservatives are right and the liberals are wrong, or vice versa. But let’s face one overriding fact: Republican-run cities are largely free of homelessness. What does that tell you about solutions?
Want to name some Republican-run cities?
Happy to:
Fort Worth
Oklahoma City
Lexington, Kentucky
San Antonio
All of which have minimal to no homeless problems. Shall I name more?
Now your turn. Name any Democrat/progressive run city that DOESNT have major homeless problems.
We’ll wait…..
Sorry, Rex, your ideology is all over your posts.
You have every right to your beliefs, but the data conflicts.
Dallas is heavily Democratic but has about 3,000 homeless.
Lexington Kentucky is Republican and has about 1000, a higher percentage of the population.
There are much more variables involved in US cities than your two, homelessness and D or R. Coastal cities, cities with mixed D and R governments, cities with more access to immigrants, cities with harsher weather, etc. And State government plays a role in many cities' approach and funding.
If only the homelessness problem was as simple as D or R.
But it's clearly not.
This explains it all very simply. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DeCblz0CYbk/?stkn=MXNjMnYwZDFtbDV6Zw==
I work in the nonprofit affordable housing field. Our housing retention rate for unhoused moving into our Permanent Supportive Housing is 98%. We are not alone in that success rate. Nor am I naive about people who are not ready to live independently, who can be a danger to themselves and others. I do think homelessness is largely a systemic problem, and I recognize that people are at different levels of readiness for independent living. One thing I don't see discussed much is how mental health issue and substance use issues existed before the homelessness crises, but housing was more available and affordable. Rates of mental illness and substance use remain relatively similar across the country, but per-capita homelessness spikes dramatically in regions with high housing costs compared to impoverished areas with cheap housing.
Can you provide data showing this 98% success rate?
You could look up housing retention rates generally for housing first and permanent supportive housing. They are generally quite good. Stability Rates by Program Type
• ✅ Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH): Up to 98% retention rate after one year for chronically homeless individuals.
• ✅ Rapid Re-Housing (RRH): Between 75% and 91% retention rate for short-term assistance models.
• ✅ Comparative Success: Systematic reviews show Housing First improves housing stability by 41% to 54% more than traditional "Treatment First" or abstinence-mandated programs.
• ✅ Long-Term Retention: Landmark studies (such as Pathways to Housing) demonstrate that 79% remain housed at 6 months, and up to 88% remain stably housed at 5 years.
At about a $million a unit to build or buy housing in Alameda County, for example, and approximately 9000 homeless, it would cost more than the entire County budget to build housing for all the homeless. Therefore, since the Housing First position is fundamentally unachievable, treatment is the preferable alternative.
What should be said but rarely is, is that the cities and states that spend the most on homeless services, attract the most homeless. There is an industry that thrives from homelessness.
I have to provide this information to our funders all the time but I don't know if I can show it in a way in this thread that would be meaningful to you. And I can't share confidential household data. We track extensive details about residents including length of residency, lease violations, move-outs and move-out reasons, participation in services, etc. I could show a screen shot of our housing stability dashboard tracker which would show the percentage but I don't see a way of doing that in this thread.
I'm not sure why high housing retention rates is considered to be such a good thing when it comes to homelessness. What it means is that the homeless continue to live in expensive subsidized housing for a really long time, often untreated.
It is demonstrably unachievable for the majority of the homeless because it would require too much money. All local government's financial resources would have to go to just to this one function.
A preferable metric of success would be people becoming clean and functional, and moving out of subsidized housing. Treatment First is the only feasible approach.
The cities in the United States that are free of homelessness or nearly free of it, are run by Republicans. Liberal Democrats created homelessness, expanded it, and are milking it. Those cities are ALL run by Democrats.
Conservatives are right. Liberals are wrong. Period.
Rates of mental health issues and substance use issues are relatively consistent across the country but rates of homelessness among that population are highest where housing costs are highest. California (under both Democratic and Republican governors) is among the most expensive places to live in terms of housing costs in the country and has a severe housing shortage. You will find that those factors exist where ever homelessness is highest. One could argue that is because people prefer to live in these places, which creates a housing shortage and drives up housing prices. But that would be overly simplistic.
Your analysis is brilliant by its neutrality. It is nearly impossible to find balanced view in "Homelessness" reports, stats and opinions publicly available. However, I was expecting a more definitive recommendation. It is a problem of "how to eat an elephant?" It is evident that causes, effects and perpetuation of this phenomenon is quite varied and therefore, solutions cannot be universal. It is extremely important to divide the entire Homeless population in a given area into five or so categories. 1)Family with children, 2)Temp. down on luck, 3)old/disabled/sick, 4)substance abuser and 5) mental cases. There would be overlaps in some instances. Now, these should be prioritized as follows: 1,3,2,5,4. Solutions will be different for each group and expectations will also be defined and demanded from each. Settlement areas for each group must be separated and only as expensive as absolutely necessary. Non-profit groups must be utilized within this framework but only with proper coordination. Graduation from one group to another will be encouraged as possible and some sort of incentive structure formulated. At the end of this, advocates must have cooperative not adversarial attitude to be associated.
Now let’s turn our attention to the major cities with the WORST and longest running homeless problems.
And ALL run by Democrat/Progressive mayors and city councils:
OAKLAND
SAN FRANCISCO
BERKELEY
SAN JOSE
STOCKTON
SACRAMENTO
LOS ANGELES
DENVER
PORTLAND
SEATTLE
CHICAGO
NEW ORLEANS
GARY
YOUNGSTOWN
CLEVELAND
DETROIT
PHILADELPHIA
NEW YORK
BOSTON
NEWARK
BALTIMORE
*Shall I continue?
This is a limited argument. If poverty was the only issue, if you gave a homeless person enough money to live in an average unit, it would not solve the problem. Many of these folk have challenges in adapting to society which will not be fixed by a place to live. Meanwhile, systems to help broken people are funneled down through agencies which have provided no real measures of success. Conservatives could have used resources to cut this off at the pass; very intense, very early intervention with education and mental health for our youth, but they passed on it, and now the people not supported in their formative years have turned against societal norms. The first issue is, are these Oakland residents or Oakland migrants? The next issue is there any amount of income which can be reduced to which they can afford housing? It is unfair to anticipate that Oakland becomes the reservoir for underserved throughout the region. It is morally wrong to allow broken people to live on the streets unattended, having to find their own way. The realities are, the Bay Area, especially Oakland, is a long term 'goldilocks' environmental haven with the ravages of climate change. No homeless want to survive Chicago in the winter or Phoenix in the summer, so this will get worse, not better unless we have a strategic plan. Our plans should not be designed to benefit the homeless, the nonprofits which serve them either. Our plans need to be focused on the sustainable needs of the Oakland residents, because if the average age on the street is 48, there is a sickness in our politicians to demand that others pay to sustain that person for the next 25 years.
Amen and amen!