{"id":36345,"date":"2019-06-16T19:58:30","date_gmt":"2019-06-16T23:58:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=36345"},"modified":"2019-06-16T19:58:30","modified_gmt":"2019-06-16T23:58:30","slug":"an-interesting-perspective-on-homelessness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=36345","title":{"rendered":"An Interesting Perspective On Homelessness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christopher F. Rufo posted an article in The City Journal<\/a> about the homelessness that has become so prevalent on the west coast of America. The title of the article is, “An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis.” Please follow the link above to read the entire article; it is very insightful.<\/p>\n

The article states:<\/p>\n

By latest count, some 109,089 men and women are sleeping on the streets<\/a>\u00a0of major cities in California, Oregon, and Washington. The homelessness crisis in these cities has generated headlines<\/a> and speculation about \u201croot causes.\u201d Progressive political activists allege that tech companies have inflated housing costs and forced middle-class people onto the streets. Declaring that \u201cno two people living on Skid Row . . . ended up there for the same reasons,\u201d Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti, for his part, blames a housing shortage, stagnant wages, cuts to mental health services, domestic and sexual abuse, shortcomings in criminal justice, and a lack of resources for veterans. These factors may all have played a role, but the most pervasive cause of West Coast homelessness is clear: heroin, fentanyl, and synthetic opioids.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Homelessness is an addiction crisis disguised as a housing crisis. In Seattle, prosecutors and law enforcement recently estimated<\/a> that the majority of the region\u2019s homeless population is hooked on opioids, including heroin and fentanyl. If this figure holds constant throughout the West Coast, then at least<\/a> 11,000 homeless opioid addicts live in Washington, 7,000 live in Oregon, and 65,000 live in California (concentrated mostly in San Francisco and Los Angeles). For the unsheltered population inhabiting tents, cars, and RVs, the opioid-addiction percentages are even higher\u2014the City of Seattle\u2019s homeless-outreach team estimates that 80 percent of the unsheltered population has a substance-abuse<\/a> disorder. Officers must clean up used needles in almost all the homeless encampments.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The article reminds us that drug-dealing is a lucrative industry for the cartels:<\/p>\n

For drug cartels and low-level street dealers, the business of supplying homeless addicts with heroin, fentanyl, and other synthetic opioids is extremely lucrative. According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the average heavy-opioid<\/a> user consumes $1,834 in drugs per month. Holding rates constant, we can project that the total business of supplying heroin and other opioids to the West Coast\u2019s homeless population is more than $1.8 billion per year. In effect, Mexican cartels, Chinese fentanyl suppliers, and local criminal networks profit off the misery of the homeless and offload the consequences onto local governments struggling to get people off the streets.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The article concludes:<\/p>\n

No matter how much local governments pour into affordable-housing projects, homeless opioid addicts\u2014nearly all unemployed<\/a>\u2014will never be able to afford the rent in expensive West Coast cities. The first step in solving these intractable issues is to address the real problem: addiction is the common denominator for most of the homeless and must be confronted honestly if we have any hope of solving it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Part of the problem here is that some cities and states are moving toward legalizing recreational drug use. Obviously not all of that drug use will lead to further problems, but a percentage of it will–adding to the homeless problem. The other problem is that treating a drug addict will not be successful unless the addict desires to be free of drugs. You can lock up an addict until he is clean, but there are no guarantees that he will stay clean once he is out on the street again.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christopher F. Rufo posted an article in The City Journal about the homelessness that has become so prevalent on the west coast of America. The title of the article is, “An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis.” Please follow … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12161,7278,2039,6997,11613,5274,3970,4824,11902,2520,1431,5053,11078],"class_list":["post-36345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cartels","tag-chinese","tag-city-journal","tag-drugs","tag-fentanyl","tag-homelessness","tag-los-angeles","tag-mental-health","tag-opioids","tag-oregon","tag-san-francisco","tag-seattle","tag-the-city-journal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36345"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36346,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36345\/revisions\/36346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}