That is not my solution. That is the modest proposal put forth my Daily Wire tradcon Matt Walsh, except he’s serious.
My answer to most things are simple because as you know I’m a simple man and I see simple solutions to problems most people seem to think are complicated (i.e. multivariate like the rest of reality) and I think most problems are not complicated (multivariate) and most solutions to most problems are simple.
This is pretty much the train of thought Walsh and every other tradcon have on every issue. While simplicity can often be a shortcut to truth especially when dealing with overly complex paradigms that become overly complex through ad hoc hypotheses and assumptions to avoid falsification like the epicycles and deferents of the Ptolemaic model of the universe, simplicity for simplicity’s sake should never be mistaken for parsimony; they are not the same especially when you’re starting from the false premise that drugs and mental illness are the only mediating variables in homelessness.
The number of sober homeless people who either have jobs or are actively applying and trying to get one….. that number is probably like 5 in the whole country if that many. It’s like a non-existent population.
Now I actually addressed this specific question in my answer to ‘what do you think is the main cause of homelessness?’ back in January before I had even addressed Walsh’s shit take on Singapore’s airport. A cross sectional analysis counted by Meyer et al., based on data aggregated from the Census Bureau’s 2010 Service Based Enumeration Survey, American Community Survey, HUD’s Homeless Management Information System, and their 2018 point-in-time count, found that 40.4% of unsheltered homeless persons and 52.8% of sheltered homeless persons had 1040 or W2 tax forms indicating formal employment. There is also a large proportion of homeless persons who have informal employment through gig work, temp work or day labor paid under the table that does not get reported to the IRS. For instance, the National Survey of Homeless Assistance Providers and Clients reported that 44% of homeless clients had done some kind of paid work within the last 30 days with about half of employed clients reporting earning income through the aforementioned informal arrangements. As I mentioned in Predicting and Preventing Chronic Homelessness, Economic Roundtable (link in post) found that one third of low-wage workers who become chronically homeless do so before they lose their job. A third also hold down jobs despite physical and mental impairments. These disabilities occur more often and become more debilitating when they lose their jobs. Additionally, homeless youth are more likely to be employed than their non-homeless counterparts but earn lower wages. As far as drug abuse goes even the majority of Chronically homeless adults are not drug abusers; about 37% of chronically homeless persons and 14% of short-term homeless persons, who find their way out within a year, engage in substance. While this is substantially higher than the general population, and thus a risk factor for homelessness, it is very far from Walsh’s assertion that no sober or sane person is homeless. Even though Walsh’s opinion here is completely unsubstantiated by any shred of evidence it becomes the basis for his modest proposal.
It is very easy to get a job, it is very easy to afford some kind of housing…. it may not be a very good job…… it may not be very nice housing.
Ah yes, that very inexpensive housing that’s in plentiful supply. That was largely true prior to urban renewal. Prior to urban renewal the bum’s he sees on the streets would have been mostly confined to SRO residential hotels that were demolished to make way for luxury condominiums and shopping centers. As I mentioned in Land Value Capture as Social Restitution, a quarter century of urban renewal projects razed 400,000 housing units, across almost a thousand U.S. cities, and replaced them with only 10,760 comparable units that the prior residents could afford. This included not only working class, and mostly minority, neighborhoods but also many SRO hotels. Of course, this process continues to this day even without congressional appropriations under new the new name of ‘revitalization’ and under the much more liberal Kelo interpretation of the takings clause. I explain this in much greater detail in Urban Renewal 2.0. Apparently, Walsh has also never heard of zoning ordinances which do serve some legitimate nuisance prevention purposes, like preventing hazardous waste facilities from being built near schools, are also deliberately used to create artificial scarcity and price lower income workers out of towns and entire zip codes to intentionally create income segregation and to some extent ethnic homogeneity. While Matt Walsh likely thinks this is a good thing that protects “muh property values” it is also a stumbling block for homeless persons trying to obtain a permanent nighttime residence - that they can afford. The City of Las Vegas demonstrated this prima facie when they razed a few tiny houses constructed for homeless persons, on a private parcel by the owner of said parcel, for not complying with their single-family home zoning and minimum floor space requirement of 1200 sqft for single family houses - two ordinances that are used across the country to keep the poor out of middle-class homeowner communities. I’ve also enumerated this problem in greater detail in (Part 1), (Part 2), (Part 3) and (Part 4) of When Affordable Solutions to the Housing Shortage are Illegal with a Part 5 in the pipeline for next month. Walsh’s full argument that any sober and sane person on the street can get any job and could afford at least a studio apartment is also unsubstantiated and false as rent hikes in particular and housing costs in general have risen faster than bottom quintile and second lower quintile household income for the past half century and even median household income for the past 2 decades.
See my answer to:
For more detail.
Starting from a false premise (that there are no sane, sober, or gainfully employed homeless persons) we literally end up in bedlam as Walsh’s simple solution is the civil commitment or involuntary hospitalization of all homeless persons in mental asylums. While I am not against civil commitment in and of itself implying that an entire class demographic should be subject to it is ‘not an easy solution’ because it violates 20th century human rights norms and three centuries of due process precedent which ’round them up and put them in asylums’ likely ignores and which psychiatric hospitals throughout the U.S. routinely violated throughout the 20th century especially during the pre-war era when eugenics and compulsory sterilization was popular. Institutionalization is “not an easy solution” because it’s much harder to violate people’s rights these days without push back and “there is no third option” that he wants to hear about because it offends his class interests as a property owner. This entire Quora space is dedicated to explaining the third option and its ramifications.