1317: Homelessness | Skeptical Sunday

24:08Okay. Big surprise. No surprise. Yeah. No, not at all. A third very large factor is felony criminal activity. In fact, release from prison and sex offender registration can count for as much as a third to 40 % of total homelessness. with sex offender registration topping out at 50 % in some states. This is according to Devin Kurtz from the Cicero Institute. He helped us a lot with this episode. There's also the problem of a lack of a support network, but this is probably very tied to the other factors that we mentioned, drug abuse, untreated mental illness, and felony conviction. What do you mean?

24:50How are they tied? So again, anecdotal, but this friend of mine that I talked about earlier, he's either going to be episodic or chronically homeless. I think probably chronically homeless at this point. He has some kind of severe untreated mental illness. I'm not a doctor. I'm not going to attempt to diagnose him. We've all seen homeless people who are like talking to themselves in the middle of a parking lot. Like you and I talked about pre-show. I was getting a haircut and I was like, hey, you know, there's a guy in the parking lot like stripping naked and yelling to himself. I mean, we've seen these kinds of people and I'm not making light of this just to be perfectly clear.

25:25These are the people who have untreated mental illness and or substance abuse issues. We've seen the Fentling people, you know, in tourist areas. My friend also has drug abuse issues. Yeah. So there are people, including a mutual friend of ours, who's one of my best friends in the whole world, who routinely offer him help on the condition that he start taking medication and stop doing drugs. Okay. He won't do it. In fact, he gets extremely hostile when you give him those conditions. This is a guy who has a support network, but having a support network does not mean that they are willing to uncritically allow a person to engage in self-destructive behavior.

26:08This guy, this friend of mine is homeless. He could be sleeping in a warm bed tonight if he gave up drugs and got treatment, but he won't do it. Another anecdotal aside, my friend who runs the Soup Kitchen, he says this is true of just about every homeless person he encounters. They will not take help from friends and family, or they will not take help from publicly funded resources because there's strings attached. So the strings are, hey, if you come and stay here, you can't do drugs and you have to take your doctor prescribed medication or something along those lines. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, there's maybe a whole debate to have about whether or not that is their choice and if they have the capacity to make decisions, which I think is kind of beyond the scope of this episode.

26:56But, you know, assume that this is a free choice, like choices come with consequences. It's true. But also, if we start saying they don't have the capacity to make these kinds of decisions, then it's like, OK, so what do we do? incarcerate them in a facility where they have to do things that are good for them, because the choice can't be, well, they don't have the capacity to make a choice, so we have to let them run around outside screaming at all hours, not taking care of themselves. This is a double sided coin here. If they can't make a choice, then we have to decide what to do with people who can't make a choice to take care of themselves.

27:30And if they do have a choice, then yes, those choices come with consequences. Namely, you can't just have public housing and also do fentanyl or drugs all day and, you know, break the law. Yeah. I mean, to the degree that they're able to make choices, which again, like I don't actually have an opinion about this. I've thought about it like it's outside the scope of the episode. It's almost like a philosophical medical question that we're just not qualified. Yeah, exactly. It's so outside the scope of this episode. But to the extent that they are making a choice, they've decided that the consequences of homelessness are preferable to getting treatment.

28:06Crashing on your buddy's couch at age 24 is not homelessness. That's called having a band or living in Brooklyn. But if times are tough for you, here are some deals and discounts on the fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Chime. You ever look at your bank statement and cringe at all the deductions for monthly fees, overdraft fees, ATM fees? It's like traditional banks are just constantly finding new ways to chip away at your money. My younger self definitely would have benefited from something like Chime. Chime is changing the way people bank because it's built to be more rewarding and a lot less annoying.

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30:32More routes coming soon. Thanks for listening. Don't forget about our newsletter, Wee Bit Wiser. Comes out every Wednesday. Two-minute read. Great companion to the show. Something very practical you can apply right away. JordanHarbinger.com slash news is where you can find it. Now, back to Skeptical Sunday. This is probably as good a time as any to talk about what kind of programs exist, either for the homeless or people in danger of becoming homeless, like besides homeless shelters. I have no clue what programs might exist because I've either never been in danger of being homeless or by previous definitions, I have been homeless and just didn't know about the programs that were involved.

31:07But there has to be something there, whether publicly funded or private, other than just like, hey, there's a homeless shelter where you can stand outside starting at 6 p.m. and see if there's a bed. Man, I was so surprised at how much there was out there. Because I didn't expect there. I thought it was. This is America. I thought we just let those people, you know, die outside with nothing like, oh, you want food? Sorry. Yeah, that was kind of what I thought, too. But no, there's a ton of programs and they are robustly funded. The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development has the Continuum of Care program, which does not directly fund housing, but does fund local nonprofit and government agencies.

31:45These agencies then provide both transitional and permanent housing and other support services. This individual program disperses over$3.6 billion, and it is specifically designed to keep people out of shelters. HUD also has housing vouchers for people at risk. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration hands out grants to states for people with mental health or substance abuse issues who are either homeless or at risk. These programs seem to be very broad. They reach out to homeless people on the street and offer emergency shelter and day services, transitional housing, rapid rehousing, and prevention.

32:34There's also specialized services. I mentioned mental health and substance abuse, but there's also support for veterans, youth, and families. What about nonprofits and private sector funded programs? There's tons of those too, I know, because that's who owns all those hotels in the Tenderloin. And because developers are always like, can we move these people? And the nonprofits are like, no, we own this. Go fly a kite. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of the same deal. There's a ton of them. They're very well funded. Some of the bigger ones are the Doe Fund, Family Promise, and the Salvation Army, as well as other faith-based programs.

33:05They might also receive funding from the federal programs we discussed earlier. So I guess the obvious question is how well used are these services? Because I certainly saw lines outside the homeless shelters in San Francisco when I lived in the city. How many people are they keeping from being homeless? HUD specifically helped 424 ,000 households avoid or exit homelessness in 2024. Wow. Okay. Yeah. So over half of the 700 ,000 plus figure we talked about earlier of like the alleged total number of homeless. Okay. That covers both prevention and actual homelessness. So getting people off the streets and keeping people in their houses.

33:44We should also note that the number is households. So in many cases, it might be an entire family. You talked earlier about people not using services because there are strings attached. Are there any statistics on that so we can drill down into something that's not just anecdotal? Yes. And I was once again, super shocked. In San Francisco in 2023, 60 % of street homeless declined shelter because they didn't like the rules. Wow. So what are the rules? You mentioned some of these places are faith-based, so they make you go to church or is it just like, hey, no doing drugs? The main rules are sobriety, curfews, mandatory counseling, no pets, no partners.

34:22Now, to be clear, if I'm homeless and they tell me that they have housing for me but not for my wife. Yeah. I'm staying on the street. Sure. Yeah. But it's worth noting most people on the street are single men over 40. Yeah. You're a literal beggar. Can you really be a chooser? Right. Situation. Isn't it better for people to just have regular housing, though? This is what Housing First is all about. Which is what? What is Housing First? Housing first is the philosophical notion that the most important thing is to get the homeless into a house no matter what. I agree. The homeless need housing.

34:55Sure. If you're hearing me say anything else, you're not hearing me. But I don't think that having housing magically solves their problems. And I don't see how only providing them with housing is sustainable. I see. I don't see any way that getting someone in active drug addiction with untreated mental illness is going to improve their lives in any sustainable way. Just giving them a house is not going to fix their problems. Right. They're going to end up back out on the street. Yeah. What does the data say about the concept of Housing First? I'd love to go to the numbers here. It's nuanced. Proponents will point to the success of the Housing First model by saying that it allegedly decreased homelessness by 88%.

35:38Wow. and increased housing stability by 41. This is according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, an American nonprofit organization, which I absolutely do not consider to be a wholly reliable source in as much as I would say they have a dog in this fight. What dog is in the fight here? Why don't we consider them that a totally reliable source? Because they're a housing first organization. What are they going to do? Return a bunch of data that says this sucks. Don't do it. I see. Okay. So they're not neutral. As you know, and because I know you've taken college statistics, it's not that statistics could say anything, but it certainly could be massaged.

36:17Yes. You can say, hey, look, we decreased homelessness by 88%. Yes, as long as you consider people who just needed a place to stay that was free that cured their homelessness, or as long as you ignore the fact that they're able to do drugs in their house, like, I don't know. There's just ways to sort of stretch the definition of homeless so that you can say that you cured the problem by expanding it definitionally at first. Yeah. Okay. I see what you're saying. And there's nothing in the data, nothing I read suggests that people who have increased housing stability, whatever that might mean, are getting sober, gainfully employed, and off of assistance later.

36:53They're just experiencing increased housing stability. More objective evidence finds the thing that everyone hates hearing, that it works in helping some people get their lives together and it doesn't help other people. You know, you would expect that from any solution to a problem. Some people are helped by it. Some people are not. Some people need other solutions. There are also studies suggesting that housing first is a complete and total failure. There's ample evidence that it increases drug abuse and exacerbates mental illness. How does it do that? Well, because now you have a warm place to smoke crack.

37:31I mean, there was an Urban Institute Denver Social Impact Bond Housing First study that showed that Housing First clients had one and a half times the mortality rate of programs. Yikes. With substance abuse and other psychological conditions. So basically what we're saying is, hey, it's better than dying in the cold on the street because you're dying in an apartment building that's been provided for you. at 1.5x the rate? I don't know about that. Yeah, I mean, there's also, there was a study in Ottawa that found Housing First resulted in a greater death rate than street homelessness. That's just terrible, presumably because of an increased number of overdoses.

38:10I don't know what else having housing would do that would cause you to die. Yeah, you were talking about things that don't make sense. Housing First organizations don't count drug overdoses, death, as a negative outcome. They don't count that as a negative outcome. Death by drug overdose is not a negative outcome. Why? Because it has nothing to do with being homeless or something? Like, how do they get around? Yes, that's it. Oh, my God, I was joking. The only positive outcome is whether or not you have a house. Oh, man. That's the only metric that's used. You could OD in the house. Well, he had a house.

38:43You know, to me, the metric is how many people are dying. Yeah. I mentioned the Urban Institute Denver study. Housing First organizations also have lower uptake on services for mental health and substance abuse. A core claim of Housing First is that the voluntary services have higher utilization. This is false. They do not. So basically saying you have to come in order to get this is more effective than saying, please come and do this. Yes. If you want to. Yes. They're drug addicts. Well, yes, that makes complete sense. I'm not trying to dehumanize them. It's just like, this is why we have interventions.

39:22You are going to stop doing drugs. Yeah. I mean, it's why we have to incarcerate a lot of these people because they can't stop on their own. They have to be put in a place where they can't get drugs really easily all the time at all hours of the day and night. Although I bet you can still do that in prison, but whatever. That's another Skeptical Sunday episode, I suppose. I also think it's worth talking about the greater financial cost of these programs because I think, you know, you ask people, hey, do you want to see homeless people in homes? I think every normal person says yes. Of course. The thing is, though, the housing fairy does not come down out of the sky and wave her wand and make housing for people.

39:58There are costs involved. The costs are not trivial and they're footed by the taxpayer. In San Francisco, each unit costs up to$750 ,000. Wow. That's a mansion in my town, by the way. That is actually insane. I remember my friend, super rich kid, growing up lived in a really nice hilltop literal mansion. And I remember my parents being like, I heard that house cost$700 ,000. Now, granted, this is the 90s and things are different now, but how are you building an apartment for$750 ,000? What is going on there? I mean, yes, hashtag San Francisco, but holy crap, guys, what the heck? Well, listen to the upcoming housing crisis episode and that'll maybe answer some of that.

40:42But in Los Angeles, taxpayers were sold on a bond proposal costing$140 ,000. Per unit. Per unit. Still seems a little pricey to me, but maybe not for Los Angeles. But it ended up costing at least triple that per unit, often up to$700 ,000. Jeez. There is also significant evidence that landlords are making money off of this, along with third party for profit real estate management agencies. It is wildly inappropriate and totally makes sense, right? That you're going to I mean, I get why you have to pay a landlord to deal with something like this. But also, maybe the state should run these. Not that I know you're not a government guy, but like a nonprofit or something should run this, not a landlord who's making it as an investment.

41:27and why is a third-party for-profit real estate management company managing a state-run service like this for people who are a vulnerable population? What could go wrong? At profit. Yes, exactly. Unbelievable. One thing I never understood is why these people, this is going to sound so terrible, and I apologize in advance because there's no sort of non-callous way to say this, but one thing I never quite wrapped my head around is why these folks have to slash get to live in some of the most expensive markets in the world. We're talking about San Francisco. We're talking about L.A. These are expensive cities.

42:00Why are we stuffing entire city blocks in the heart of downtown San Francisco with homeless people living in residential hotels on public assistance? They could literally live anywhere. That's the idea. They don't have anything to commute to. They don't have responsibilities most of the time. Nothing. Why are they living in the middle of Union Square in a residential hotel? And I know that developers have tried to buy these places and they're like, look, we'll give you a ton of money, you can rebuild this somewhere else. And right now we can build a high rise here and everybody makes money. And this nonprofits are like, no, these people have a right to live here.

42:33And I'm like, what? What? No, no, they don't. I mean, maybe they do. But like, also, no, that's ridiculous. I don't know. Again, I know I sound like a terrible person. You're a terrible person, Jordan. Nobody's surprised by this. That's the thing, though, is I just I don't it's not even economic. It doesn't even make economic sense. Like, I know it's a holdover. Like, if you lived in Times Square when it was terrible in the 80s and it was all crackheads and you had a housing project there and you still live there because that thing is still there. Okay, I get it. But it just seems like you could shuffle these people around.

43:04And the advocates always say things like you're demolishing the community. And I'm thinking there's not much of a community here. It's loaded with gangs. It's loaded with people who are sort of like unmedicated and need to be and drug addicts. This is not like a bunch of kids running around playing pickup basketball together. These are like actually people who need treatment in a proper facility. They're just being paid to live in a residential hotel instead. None of it makes sense to me. None of it makes sense to me. All right. But let's say like, I don't care. I just want people in houses. I don't care where, what, when and why.

43:36Just get these people housed. Come on. Yeah, that's cool. That's a beautiful, beautiful impulse you have. Yes. There's any number of charities that you can donate to. I do not want to pay$750 ,000 for someone else's house when mine would cost a fraction of that. The last thing I want to note about housing first is it's not unreasonable to assume that the successes they do see are coming from the people who accept treatment, in which case, what's the difference? If that's the part that's working, why not restrict the limited supply of housing to people who it might actually help in the long term?

44:12This is not like a deserving and undeserving poor thing. This is just like, why are we not allocating resources for people who actually want the help? So this is where I hopefully qualify as a not terrible person. I do not want a situation in which a single mom who can't afford a place to live for her kids and her can't get housing because I'm or has to live in the middle of absolutely BFE because it's like Jordan and all the big wigs pushed everybody out of the city. So now she's got a 45 minute commute by bus to get her kid to school, another three hours to get to work and back. Like, I don't want a situation where that happens.

44:49What I'm talking about is certainly there's a way to separate the people who are like, hey, I've fallen on hard times and I work two jobs and I have two kids and this is really tough versus the person who's like, I want to sit around and do drugs all day. Oh, cool. You're going to give me a free place to live downtown. Guess I'll take that too. There's got to be a way to separate these two people, these two types of people into buckets where some of them are actually going to make their lives better and the other ones are just waiting to kill themselves. Sorry, that's maybe there goes my Jordan's not a bad person qualification.

45:18But come on, like if you're doing a bunch of dangerous drugs all day until you die, you're not in the same bucket as the single mom who's trying to raise her kids. You're just not. What's really crazy is that some of the housing first places might actually have the same types of strings as other forms of aid. How is that possible? If they're housing first, how do they have the same rules as other types of programs. Isn't that the opposite of what we were just talking about? Because people figure out the rules of the game and they game them for the grants, for the money that are reserved for the housing first aid.

45:50So how bad is homelessness now in America as opposed to in the past? I don't mean the recent past. I mean, I went back to L.A. and I didn't even recognize areas in my old neighborhood because you couldn't see off the bridge because there was a tent city on both sides. They're like, you couldn't. I was like, what street is this? this can't be, you know, whatever is vine. And it was like, there was just a tent city on the other side of the road. I couldn't identify where I was. Yeah. Hollywood's a mess. Yeah. I think that if we look at deinstitutionalization, that's a good starting point. People like to blame Reagan for that, but it's actually a lot more complicated.

46:24Deinstitutionalization, people leaving asylums that starts in the mid fifties and actually doesn't really end until the early 1990s, but let's use Reagan. Why not? Uh, 81 ish. The problem though, is that it's almost impossible to quantify because the definition of homeless has changed, which if you're like, how's that possible? Well, you've, if you've made it this far in the episode, I would think it would be clear how the definition of homelessness can be used as football. I think it's probably safe to assume that not all of the people who got turned on out on the street when the asylums were emptied are currently housed and leading a productive life to say nothing of people who might be in asylums today if that were still a thing.

47:11That's speculative, but I'm following the logic. And in the absence of good data, I kind of think that's fair. What kind of programs were in place for those people who were led out of asylums during deinstitutionalization? Did they just get thrown out into the street? There wasn't a lot. I mean, I know like I lived in a town in college that used to have an asylum them in it. And there was just like, there was tons of street people, but they like slept in a house at night. Like they were in some kind of care and they just got turned out for the day and let back in at night. Okay. Yikes. Some people will argue that it was the way it was carried out rather than deinstitutionalization as such.

47:48There's one study on this. It's in the show notes in general. I think there's a type of person that it doesn't matter what programs they're offered. Like, you can't legislate people out of making stupid choices, some people anyway, and a non-trivial number of people. That said, one of the biggest problems we have in evaluating the subject, there's just not a solid count at all of how many homeless people there were in 1981. Why is it so difficult to count, though? I mean, I think that homeless is homeless is homeless. I mean, I know that that's not the case because of the shifting definitions now.

48:21But back then, how was that not just people who live on the street? When words were not defined for political ends, yes. Yeah. Yeah, it never existed. Prior to 1987, there's no uniform definition at all. So what you have are these kind of ad hoc counts. They're mostly from advocacy groups. They're mostly at the local level. They include unsheltered, sheltered, marginally housed. The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act is the first time we get an actual uniform definition of what counts as homeless. That's great. Still no way of counting at that point. In the 1990s, they start counting via the program we talked about earlier, Continuum of Care.

49:03But this is just counting surveys from providers. It's not hitting the streets and counting people like it's a census. Most modern counting starts in 2007. That's called the point-in-time method. That means who is homeless tonight? We also start getting breakdowns about who's sheltered and who's not. So basically, our only real semi-reliable counts start in 2007. That's crazy to me. Now, before I get canceled for this episode, let's hear from what's left of our sponsors. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Momentus. Most people, when they're trying to get healthier, immediately start piling on supplements or adjusting their routine.

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51:39Don't risk your business on unreliable lenders. Go to nerdwallet.com slash Jordan to find the funding you deserve. Fundera Inc. NMLS ID number 1240038. If you want an audience for how angry you are at me about this episode, Reddit is the place to do that. There's a Jordan Harbinger subreddit. You can discuss any episode, post resources or other takes for or from the show. It's a great place to have a conversation with other show fans, as well as my team with Gabriel and Bob in there. That's all on Reddit at the Jordan Harbinger subreddit. Now for the rest of Skeptical Sunday. Other than costs, why are there not more homeless shelters and other low-income housing for people who need them?

52:17Not in my backyard. I see. So NIMBYism. I guess that makes sense. I also wouldn't want one to spring up next to my house either. Yeah, they built transitional housing on Route 66, like right by my house. And the first thing I did was call my county supervisor, who I know from the gym, and be like, hey, I don't know how this got built across the street from an elementary school, but like, can we make sure the cops are keeping an eye on this place? I don't care if they build a homeless shelter or transitional housing, but I sure care if it's in my residential family neighborhood and next to an elementary school.

52:54The problem is everybody's got a real good reason why it shouldn't be in my neighborhood. What are the concerns? I mean, I can see property value, I guess, but you rent, so. Well, real quick before we get into that, I just want people to know I'm putting some research about NIMBY attitudes with respect to building housing and shelter in the show notes. But first of all, there's mountains of evidence that property values will be impacted and that it is significant. These stats are all specific to Manhattan that I'm about to share, but they are worth sharing. If your home is within 500 feet of an adult homeless shelter, you just took a 7.1 % haircut on the value of your home.

53:32Big deal. Yeah. For family shelters, it's 6.4%. If there are two or more shelters within a thousand feet, that is a 17.4 % drop on top of the original cut from the single shelter. Wow. Okay. So you're losing significant value. That's a lot of value. It impacts everybody. If you're wealthy, it's a big chunk of money. If you're not wealthy, it's a significant chunk of your net worth. It's the biggest investment most people have. They don't want to see it tank by 20%. The main dispute for these numbers, where people kind of push back on them is, well, they're getting built bad neighborhoods anyway, so who cares?

54:16It's gross. It's a gross attitude. I hate this attitude that the poors have to absorb the consequences of the altruism of their supposed betters. I hate it. What about quality of life issues? I mean, look, I hate to say this because I don't really know, But if you have a homeless shelter near you, are you actually experiencing something bad other than losing value in your home? Or is it just like, ew, I live near homeless people. Like, I don't like that attitude either. Really? I agree. And I also would maybe push back a little and saying losing value in your home is a real issue. No, that is a real issue.

54:49But I mean, are you day to day like, oh, my gosh, look, this place used to be so nice. And now there's crime everywhere. Like, you know, that's if a gang moves into your neighborhood, you're experiencing a real decrease in quality of life. But if a homeless shelter pops up, does that same thing happen or is it just like where my house value is lower? Again, your house value being lower is a big deal. But it's not a quality of life issue on a day to day basis. Sure. Yes. Is the short version. OK, we have one study that shows a 56 percent increase in property crime around newly constructed emergency winter shelters in Vancouver, British Columbia, which is an excellent place to look at where more liberal approaches are being used and how they're working.

55:32Yeah. This was mostly burglaries, vehicle thefts, and vandalism. That sucks. This was all within 100 meters of the shelter. That's about 300 feet for people from countries with flags on the moon. Okay. All right. The effect didn't dissipate entirely until 400 meters are about 1 ,200 feet. I mean, that's, think, four city blocks to 12 city blocks. That's basically, even if you live nowhere near this thing, you live too close to this thing. That sucks. Yeah, it does. A Los Angeles study found a significant increase in arrests for drug dealing and drug use. I think drugs should be legal, but I do not think people have a right to smoke crack in a public park where I want to take my kids.

56:16Yeah, if people who are in active drug addiction are not allowed to use drugs in transitional housing or shelters, there's a good chance they're just going to go outside and do it when getting clean isn't a requirement of having housing. They don't have drug. You can't do drugs on the property, but we're not drug testing you. Okay, well, I'm going to go defend the park. There's a study outside of Portland, Oregon, showing a moderate decline in some crimes, but we did see a 53 % increase in drug and weapon crimes, which are conflated together. So we don't know how much of that is drugs, how much of that's weapons.

56:52I think one of the things to keep in mind is that Portland is one of these cities that simply decided that, you know, crime is legal here. And surprise of surprises, your crime problem disappears when you stop enforcing the law. Without getting too far afield, what do you mean by that? Because obviously Portland did not legalize crime, actually. No, they kind of did, though. Portland dramatically reduced its police force by 25%, which, you know, no cops around to catch people doing crimes. No crimes get reported. But somewhat more important, the Multnomah County District Attorney, which is the county in which Portland is the county seat of, announced that it would decline to prosecute a number of crimes such as disorderly conduct and trespass unless there was violence.

57:46or serious damage. So yes, it is now effectively legal in the city of Portland to get drunk and hassle people or hang out in someone's backyard. That seems like a pretty big asterisk to put over all the stats coming out of Portland. In fact, there's a whole discussion to be had around the issue of law enforcement. Let's talk about the homeless camps. Yeah. Wow. I feel like this is what I'm talking about when I say that homelessness or visible homelessness has exploded over the last five or 10 years. But again, anecdotal, I go up to the city of San Francisco and I'm like, dang, what's going on here?

58:19I go to LA, dang, what's going on here? Could you find any data on that? Because these homeless encampments, some of them are just huge. There's no specific data I could find on camps, but we do know the total number of homeless and we know that 36 % of them are what are called unsheltered. That doesn't mean they're all in camps. Some of them just sleep rough, others are in cars, still others squat empty buildings, but it does give us a bit of insight as to how many people might be in camps. The other issue driving increased homeless camps is that it's now, or was, basically illegal to disperse homeless camps in some places.

58:55We have Martin v. City of Boise, which found that enforcing anti-camping or public sleeping ordinances against unhoused individuals, that's their euphemism, not mine, violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment if those individuals have no access to adequate shelter. Now, this only applied in California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, and Nevada, but there's a lot of homeless people there. And that is what was driving the normalization of homeless camps, particularly in Western states. So what are cities doing now, just letting the homeless camps sit? Because I can totally believe that based on what I see, again, in California, but I have a hard time believing this flies where you live in Arizona, for example.

59:41Yeah, specifically where I live, which is like in 80 % Trump County. Like there's not homeless camps here. You do see homeless, but there's no camps that I'm aware of. I mean, there might be in like weird off to the side parts of town. It's funny, though, you mentioned California because San Francisco responded by having areas where camps were allowed. That cost$5 ,000 per tent per month for a total budget of$12 million. Bro, I had a nice apartment in San Francisco. I was not paying$5 ,000 a month to live there. Yeah. $5 ,000 per tent per month. Yeah. San Francisco, get your shit together. What are you talking about?

1:00:18What are you doing? What are you doing? In Arizona, they still perform sweeps, but they go in 72 hours before and they offer people some kind of shelter. I'm stuck on this. 5K per tent per month. That is a luxury apartment in any major city on planet Earth that could easily house the amount of people living in any size tent, period. You can get a solid broom closet in a basement in Manhattan for$5 ,000 a month. Yeah. You can still actually for five grand get a literal luxury apartment that includes a toilet and running water and probably has a freaking squash court downstairs for$5 ,000. Like, this is what I'm talking about.

1:00:54Where is that money going? So is this just like, oh,$5 ,000 per 10, but Jordan, you need to look into this because that includes like drug counseling and full on social services. because if that's the case, that's still way too much money, but also makes some sense. But if it's just like, nope, we have a park that has water access in a bathroom. It's just that it's a million dollars a month to run. That is just peak California somehow. That's insane to me. I don't know what it includes. Probably more than just running water in tents, but probably not$5 ,000 worth of stuff. There's other responses like using health codes and sanitation or environmental or fire codes to clear the camps because the ruling only said that you can't target people on the basis of homelessness, but you can enforce general safety and sanitation laws.

1:01:44Some states that aren't impacted by the decision have responded by drafting tougher laws. Texas did a statewide ban on camping under penalty of losing state funding. Tennessee made camping on state property a Class E felony, but it also built more shelters in advance of enforcement. Florida's Public Spaces Protection Act allows the clearing of camps if they're within 50 miles of available shelter. Even in San Diego, in California, which is one of the states impacted by Martin, they passed the unsafe camping ordinance, which bans camping within two blocks of schools, parks, and transit stops. Police will pair citations with immediate shelter referrals.

1:02:27Refusal to accept the referral will result in arrest. Federal judges allowed it, citing the documented availability of shelter. Las Vegas bans sleeping on public sidewalks downtown when shelters have space. The city maintains real-time shelter bed tracking to prove compliance, and that was built explicitly around Martin. So none of these states are arresting people or even issuing citations without also offering them shelter. That seems reasonable. It's nice to say that once during an episode. Correct, but all of this is kind of moot because the Supreme Court overturned Martin in its ruling on City of Grants Pass v.

1:03:03Johnson, where they found that clearing camps targets conduct and not status, and thus is not cruel and unusual punishment. Okay. And I think this is, like, worth highlighting that the Martin decision, like, created, it's like there's this new category of person, and they're called a homeless person. Right, like it's an immutable quality. Yeah, this is immutable quality. Yeah, they're homeless and there's nothing anybody can do about it. So we can't tell them to pack up the park across the street from the kids' elementary school because that would be cruel. Yeah, I can see why people would argue something like that, but it also really screws up everything and is also like just a weird construct so that you can allow crazy conduct to just fly because you don't have a better solution.

1:03:47It's also kind of a gross way to look at people who are homeless. Like you're you're just you're a homeless person. Like what's there to be? It's like the wind blowing. Right. What is there to be done about it? You have to put that little cast mark on your head that shows that you are an untouchable and you were never going to change. You can't get no upward mobility for you. That doesn't make sense to me. But I still even though Martin was overturned, I think it's worth talking about the response because it does show like municipalities are willing to take measures to find shelter for people.

1:04:14they're not just demanding that the homeless kick on down the road, but the camps remained, which says a lot because people are being offered shelter and still choosing not to take it. I mean, they directly have someone coming to their camp and telling them, hey, you can move or you can go to a shelter. And people are saying, yeah, I think I'll move on down the road. I think there's something to be said about how people don't always make the best decisions when they're in active drug addiction slash mental illness. Yeah, I don't disagree. But again, like why am I on the hook for the primary and secondary costs of these things and all the externalities that go along with them like I agree they're grown-ups with agency the degree to which they have it is a philosophical question that's outside the scope of this episode but this is what they're choosing and like fine but when you make it my problem it's now my problem yeah that is our my problem slash our problem to solve with policy and legislation and law enforcement People will try and justify the lack of utilization of the shelters by saying that they're unsafe.

1:05:19And I know that there's out there probably a lot of people are saying, well, the shelters aren't safe. Well, safety is relative. Shelters are probably less safe than your neighborhood. They're probably even less safe than my neighborhood in poor Arizona. But yeah, they are definitely more safe than sleeping on the street. They have one third the mortality rate of street sleeping. That's 300 % safer because people don't freeze to death. Women's shelters and family shelters are reasonably safe. And when you enforce zero tolerance on crime, people will flock to them. This happened in Utah. I feel like the big thing missing from all this are the more structural factors.

1:06:05Stagnant wages, increased cost of housing, general rising cost of living. I'm not saying that's the main cause. I'm just saying we haven't addressed that yet, right? People just not being able to afford stuff at all at this point. And I think it's worth bringing that up. But it's again, it's kind of outside the scope. It's not really an issue for the chronic homeless or the, you know, the episodic on homeless. It's more of an issue for the transitional homeless. That makes sense. Right. Because those are the people with careers who were like, how am I not getting paid more? I can't afford rent in the area where I work versus people who are like, I've lived on the street for three years and haven't had a job.

1:06:37Yes. Yeah. And for people who are, you know, for lack of a better word, normal and basically have their life together, there are resources for the schizophrenic crackhead who prefers sleeping under a bridge to getting clean. Yeah. There's not a lot of resources for that guy. I am aware that it is harder for people to get by than it maybe was in the past. But what I'm saying is that for those people, there are tons of programs to help people. And even for the chronic homeless, there are tons of programs, but there's also tons of people who don't utilize them because they think it cramps their style.

1:07:15And it's hard for me to have a lot of sympathy for those people, especially if they're harassing people on the street or doing drugs in a park or aggressively panhandling. And you know what? I don't think we're helping anybody by making it easier for them to continue to make bad choices. I don't consider that a form of helping people. No, I agree with you. I think the structural part is important. It's probably a whole show in itself. Obviously, if wages are stagnant while the cost of living is going up, it's going to be harder to keep your head above water. But at the same time, there are lots of programs out there for people who need them.

1:07:50It's a complicated topic, not a lot of easy answers, and pretending it's all one thing or all the other just does not get us anywhere. Homelessness is not caused by a single villain or solved by a single type of intervention. It's a patchwork of economic forces, personal choices, public policy, addiction, mental health, and sometimes just plain bad luck. And that means the solutions have to be just as multi-layered. More shelter capacity helps, more mental health care helps, smarter enforcement helps, more housing helps, but none of them on their own are going to be a magic bullet for this. So as we wrap up, remember, the point is not to oversimplify a very messy problem.

1:08:28Thanks again to Nick Pell for helping us sort the survival stories from the sanctified slogans. And thanks to you all for listening. Topic suggestions and inevitable angry emails about this episode straight to me, Jordan at JordanHarbinger.com. advertisers, deals, discounts, ways to support the show all at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. I'm at jordanharbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. This show is created in association with podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Tata Sadlowskis, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own and I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer.

1:09:02Also, of course, we try to get these as right as we can. Not everything is gospel, even if it is fact checked. So consult a qualified professional before applying anything you hear on the show, especially if it's about your health and well-being. Remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love. If you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use a good dose of the skepticism and knowledge we doled out today because I want angry emails from them too. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn. And we'll see you next time.

1:09:31You're about to hear a preview that may completely reframe how you think about nuclear power. What if the energy source we've been taught to fear is actually one of the safest and cleanest tools we have. We're very familiar with electricity. You get home, you turn on the lights, you charge your phone, charge your computer, do all the things that we do without thinking twice about electricity, right? But electricity is a secondary source of energy. The primary sources of energy that we use are coal, oil, methane gas, solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and nuclear. Nuclear is actually the largest source of clean energy in the United States.

1:10:08It's the second largest source of clean energy in the world. And what I mean by that is that whenever we make electricity with nuclear, we're not releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere or even particulate matter. So there are no emissions that happen whenever you're creating electricity with nuclear. So it's just to say, you know, everything that's related to nuclear accidents in Chernobyl is completely overblown because people tend to think generally like everybody died and it became this wasteland and nobody can go in. And so it's interesting, right, that we have all this weird fears about nuclear when the facts and reality just point to it being actually extremely safe.

1:10:44The biggest energy disaster in history was actually a hydropower dam collapse. So entire villages were swept away. It's estimated that 200 ,000 people died. He would need like at least 200 Chernobyls happening every single year for nuclear to be as dangerous as fossil fuels. What about the 4 million premature deaths from burning fossil fuels? Why are people so afraid of nuclear? Hear the science behind the stigma with Isabel Bumke on episode 1277 of The Jordan Harbinger Show.

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1:12:38It's one of those shows that makes you smarter in a practical, useful way. Same curiosity vibe we go for here, just in a fast, focused format. Mike brings on top experts and asks the exact questions that you'd want to ask, and the topics are all over the place in the best way. Recently, they've covered things like why we care so much what other people think, the benefits of laughter, why sports fans get so invested, and what makes people like you or not. The through line is always the same. Smart ideas you can actually use in real life. Something You Should Know has been featured in Apple's Shows We Love, and it's got thousands of five-star reviews because it's consistently interesting.

1:13:11So if you want another show that scratches that I-want-to-understand-how-people-in-the-world-really-work itch, search for something you should know wherever you get your podcasts. Look for the bright yellow light bulb and start listening. You can thank me later.