[ackshually]

I'm not american, so correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I see in the american news many liberal strongholds have the highest homeless rates and aren't doing a lot to remedy the situation - lacking low income housing etc.

It makes me a little skeptical that "the left"[1] care that much about the homeless.

[1] I'll be honest I think "the left" and "liberal" are kind of useless catch all term at this point and lumps too many people into one group together. For instance, for this conversation I mean middle class college educated men and women living in coastal american cities that had at least semi-stable childhoods.

[TulliusCicero]

Yes, but you have to consider that the homeless aren't fixed to a certain place. A place that's more generous to the homeless will inevitably get more homeless people. Because why wouldn't you go to somewhere that treats you better, rather than the place that treats you like garbage?

This means there's a financial incentive for any given city to treat the homeless like shit. Classic free rider problem; why not let other cities deal with helping them?

If you look at the countries where they do a better job, what you largely see is not a handful of metros doing their part, while other cities and the national government completely shunt the responsibility. The whole country contributes, is at least sort of on the same page. At least, that's been my experience living in Germany and reading about other places.

So in my opinion, what we'd need to see is a federal mandate that doesn't let some cities mooch off of others' charity. But short of Bernie storming the white House and the Dems getting an overwhelming majority in both halves of Congress, it's hard to see that happening.

Anyway, I don't disagree that more liberal cities could do more, but at the same time I don't think the problem is solvable without national involvement.

[ackshually]

Very fair point, haven't thought about it that way. I wonder if any studies have been done on where the homeless in the liberal leaning cities actually originally come from.

As for the Dems in congress - You'd need the right kind of democrat also. I think Hillary clinton did a real number to that parties reputation during her time in power. The american democrats desperately need smart, ethical and above all honest new faces that will fight the rampant corruption in american politics.

[zzyyzzxx]

In some cases, homeless people are given bus tickets to liberal cities by officials

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/...

[AlexTWithBeard]

People in the thread below were complaining about how toxic reddit is. Politics is ten times worse.

Why would a smart, ethical and honest person ever get within a gunshot of politics?

And should by any accident that happen, how such a person would survive?

[TulliusCicero]

Don't think smart, ethical, and honest matters. Oh sure, those things are great and greatly preferable to the status quo. But the reason why other countries have good homeless policies and why we don't is not because they have unusually honest politicians, I don't think. They're just further left economically, and thus more supportive of the downtrodden.

[growlist]

One theory goes that the left has no genuine interest in improving its voters' circumstances, because a more empowered individual has less need of the state to look after them, and thus would be less likely to vote for the left. The corollary is that it is in the left's electoral interests to attempt to disempower, impoverish and weaken the greatest number of voters as possible, because then said voters will see that their best interests would be served by the party that 'looks after them', and would vote for socialism en masse.