[rossdavidh]

I think Democrats at the national level underestimate how much inner-city Democratic mayors, city councils, school boards, and district attorneys determine their image as a party. If suburban swing voters, when commuting into the city center to work, shop, go to a show, etc. see homeless encampments and vacant storefronts, it's going to hit the Democrats' image as a party that can run things. Republicans in city government tend not to be in big cities, they are more often in suburbs and small towns, which don't have the same kind of homeless problem, and thus don't have the same kinds of challenges projecting an image of being a safe, lawful community.

I'm sure it's a solvable problem for Democrats, but first they have to resolve to address it, rather than just wishing that voters didn't feel this way.

[ModernMech]

Do Republican run jurisdictions not have a problem with homelessness, or is it just less visible? Are they shifting their homeless burden to places like cities with more programs and support for homelessness? Because I've never actually heard a Republican plan for dealing with homelessness that doesn't involve criminalizing it and sweeping it under the rug where no one can see it.

[ahoy]

To be fair, that's largely the democratic plan too. See NYC/LA/etc. D's and R's alike hate the homeless.

[dragonwriter]

> Do Republican run jurisdictions not have a problem with homelessness, or is it just less visible?

Both; suburban and rural homelessness is less visible, but also less common, in part because urban jurisdictions are inherently more amenable to service delivery (whether by the government or by charities) to the homeless, and homeless people are not nailed down in one place.

> Are they shifting their homeless burden to places like cities with more programs and support for homelessness?

Some of it is “shifting”, some of which is just inherent features of the places conducive to Republican political success in the first place.

> Because I've never actually heard a Republican plan for dealing with homelessness that doesn't involve criminalizing it and sweeping it under the rug where no one can see it.

To be fair, Democratic-run jurisdictions do this a lot, too (there are some exceptions, but they are exceptions even among urban Democratic jurisdictions.) The difference is that heterogenous urban jurisdictions can sweep the homeless out of the places where the people who matter can see them without sweeping them out of the jurisdiction or the range of local government or charity service delivery.

[rossdavidh]

I think there is both less homelessness, and also what there is, is less visible. Some of this is simply scale-dependent. If a town of 1,000 people has a homeless person, he's thought of as "that guy", not scary, and anyway he's only one. If a town of 1,000,000 has 1,000 homeless, it's an encampment, and if they all cluster in the middle of town it causes people to feel unsafe, because they're outnumbered when walking downtown.

[caycep]

well..rumors of 1 way bus tickets to LA...

Small town police departments are notorious for running "undesirables" out of their town...redlining and zoning keeping certain people from buying real estate...things like that.

[askin4it]

If only Republicans would use their nearly infinite influence to do something we can all get behind

[zozbot234]

Isn't Donald Trump a Republican, and a real estate developer? He's the kind of guy who can "deal with homeless" in a very real way, by building stuff - and make a profit while doing it. Win-win!

[dragonwriter]

> Isn't Donald Trump a Republican, and a real estate developer?

Not really. Donald Trump is, for quite a long time, much more of a personal brand marketer than a real estate developer (though “real estate developer” is part of the personal brand he markets.)

[dragonwriter]

> I think Democrats at the national level underestimate how much inner-city Democratic mayors, city councils, school boards, and district attorneys determine their image as a party.

No, they don't. Whether they are actively fighting it, meekly bending to it, or crassly exploiting it for intra-party power games (and there are clear examples of all of those among nationally prominent Democrats), national Democrats understand very much how those things, and even more the right-wing media narratives around those things, drive opinion.

The internal dominance of the center-right faction of the party for the last 30 years has been built almost entirely on exploitation of this.

[fuzzer37]

Ah yes, the myth of the swing voter.

[rossdavidh]

Well I'm one.