Some facts about homelessness in America

[memphis]

Not shocked, still very saddened. What's worse is that nothing is being done about homelessness but somehow giving more money to the rich is a priority

That's obviously not true and offensive to the thousands of people working hard to make the numbers better.  Why do you hate social workers?

Fact 1-homelessness has declined 6.8% since 2007

Fact 2-Chronic homelessness has declined by 19.3 percent since 2007

Fact 3-Homelessness among veterans has declined by 7.2 percent since 2011 and by 17.2 percent since 2009

cite=HUD

and HUD's budget (by itself, not counting what the VA or the Dep of Health is doing) is $47B.  Maybe it should be more, but it's a lot more than nothing.  I'm not saying we're perfect.  I'm not saying we shouldn't strive to do more or that it's not an important issue, but come on.  We don't have a national crisis on our hands.

I was totally with you until the last sentence. The country has a bad problem. We're making progress, even though things are still far from perfect. You even get a gold star for precise stats and having a link. I wish more posters were as diligent. And then you said it wasn't a crisis...It's hard to think of a bigger crisis than that many people without a home.

[memphis]

I was totally with you until the last sentence. The country has a bad problem. We're making progress, even though things are still far from perfect. You even get a gold star for precise stats and having a link. I wish more posters were as diligent. And then you said it wasn't a crisis...It's hard to think of a bigger crisis than that many people without a home.

0.5% of the population...most of which go in and out of homelessness, many of which chose the lifestyle and for others it's better than the alternative.  For it to be a crisis it would need to be more than 0.5% of the population.

On the other hand, we have 5 times more empty houses than we do homeless people.  It would be nice if we could put the two together easily, but ya know, laws.  Perhaps the govt could buy some empty houses from the banks that own them (ideally at a low low price) and put some homeless in them....but aren't they already doing that?  Maybe not to the extent we'd like nor in that exact way.

but my point is, it's not a crisis.  Sure, for many of the people involved it is, but not for America at large.

Perhaps we just define crisis differently. As for SF, their weather ensures a higher homeless population than most of the country. There's a reason homeless people would rather live there than Minneapolis.