Cause of LAs Homeless Populations
Mayor Eric Garcetti says the cause of Los Angeles' homeless population is due to a lack of affordable housing. He bases this on the fact that based on some optimistic math, a person would need to earn about $47.00 / hr in order to afford LA's average rent.
I could argue the math but even taken at face value I think this is a pretty weak argument. If a person were homeless and couldn't find a job to support the rent, would they not just move? Wouldn't we be seeing a different problem? Rents are lower in other areas. Why hang out on the streets of LA if you can't afford to live there.
Perhaps there are other factors going on. While LA's high rents are not helping maters could this increase in the homeless population be caused by other factors as well?
My opinion on this is that homeless people are drawn to California because California is liberal, has great weather and is pretty homeless friendly (compared with other states). Add this to the ever widening distribution of wealth issues in the US and it results in higher populations of homeless in California.
The root cause however is one of more overall poverty in the US. Politicians like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren like to talk about distribution of wealth, but don't emphasis that as the distribution of wealth curve widens, more people are pushed into poverty. More poverty equals more homeless.
The US needs to do more to make sure that wealth from the top is circulated to the bottom. This is done through progressive tax rates, an estate tax without loopholes, strong labor unions and higher minimum wage laws.
Help the poor and you reduce the ranks of the homeless. Also fix our health care system so that mentally challenged folks can get help.
One thing I am pretty sure of. Even if you could increase California's housing supply (not sure where all the water would come from to do that), and if you could get rents to come down, there would still be a ton of homeless people living here. The focus should be on poverty, not just housing.
