Monday, May 14, 2018

Homelessness and State Politics: Just a Coincidence

HUD 2017 Annual Homelessness Assessment: Total homeless pop. on Jan. 2017 was 553,742.
Additional color on California's "skyrocketing" growth in homelessness is provided by excerpts from Politifact's post in March: [bold added]
A December 2017 report by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is considered the authority on state-by-state homeless counts....

California’s homeless numbers jumped nearly 14 percent in 2017 as nationwide levels remained nearly flat...

Meanwhile, the report showed two other states, Hawaii and New York, have a higher per capita homeless rate than California’s.

Finally, it shows California, indeed, has the highest total homeless population at 134,278, far more than second place New York.
The states with the highest homelessness rate per 10,000 people are: 1) Hawaii - 51; 2) New York - 45; 3) California - 34.

The Democratic Party has a hammerlock on all Statewide political offices (Governor, Senators, Attorney General, etc.) in all three states.

I suppose that truth-seeking journalists and academics would have investigated this perfect correlation between homelessness and party politics, so the whole thing must just be a coincidence.

Update: the District of Columbia homelessness rate is 110 per 10,000 people, more than double the rate of the worst state, Hawaii. The three elective offices of DC--the Mayor, Attorney General, and District Council Chair--have always been Democrats throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Just another puzzling coincidence.

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