Green Medina

It’s not just your imagination. Since the pandemic, there really are more tents popping up in cities and people sleeping on the streets.

And yet what is even more startling, is that there are 28 vacant houses for every person in the U.S. experiencing homelessness. What may shock you even further, is that sixteen million homes currently sit vacant across the U.S. while over half a million Americans are experiencing homelessness.

These 600,000+ unhoused Americans are more likely to die from noncardiac causes than housed people, including gastrointestinal disorders, infections, and suicide.

The massive racial disparity of homelessness should also be noted. Pacific Islander and Black Americans are the populations most at risk to experience homelessness.

Why are there so many unoccupied houses when there are so many in need of housing?

Part of the answer is soaring rent and housing costs.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) said that rental housing conditions were “extraordinarily challenging” in 2022, with rents increasing at more than twice the rate of recent years.

So the problem isn’t a lack of houses. There are plenty of houses to go around.

The problem is a lack of affordability. Empty homes are being reserved for the highest bidders.

BuT mUh CaPiTaLiSm Is So EfFiCiEnT wItH tHe SuPpLy AnD dUhMaNd.

When I was young and in elementary school, I was taught that Capitalism was the best economic system because it functioned on the principle of “supply and demand.” Well, with our current housing crisis, there is a massive demand and a massive supply, so why isn’t Adam Smith’s invisible hand of the free market working its magic?

Well, there is a magic trick going on. It just involves making your money disappear.

You see, wages have not kept up with inflation or the rising cost of living in the last forty years. In layman’s terms, this has been the greatest heist in history. $50 Trillion has been stolen from the paychecks of working class Americans and transferred to our wealthiest citizens by not raising wages, despite the wealth and productivity generated by the working class. So the invisible hand of the free market isn’t some tooth fairy making sure everyone gets their money as long as they work hard and follow the rules. The invisible hand is reaching into my pockets, and your pockets.

Indeed, while the number of people who experienced homelessness for the first time in the United States increased by 30% between 2020 and 2022 (HUD data), the richest ten men in the world doubled their wealth (OXFAM). “If these ten men were to lose 99.999 percent of their wealth tomorrow, they would still be richer than 99 percent of all the people on this planet,” said Oxfam International’s Executive Director Gabriela Bucher. Also, about $42 trillion in new wealth was created in the first two years of the pandemic. Two-thirds of that has gone to the richest 1% of the world’s people.

Meanwhile, the number of people dying from homelessness has increased by 200 percent . So while there are people who are so rich, you can’t even fathom how rich they are, there are also 2,000 people dying in the U.S. every year because they don’t have anywhere to live (when there are plenty of homes available).

Some people may say, “Well, they just need to get a job.” The truth is that about half of all people experiencing homelessness have jobs (United States Interagency Council on Homelessness).

There’s also the reality that a disproportionately high number of those experiencing homelessness suffer from mental illness, debilitating health conditions, and are veterans of America’s forever wars. So people who need help the most are being left to die on the street and then blamed for it.

However, fear not, dear citizens, the Supreme Court has recently come up with a solution! Is that solution to make housing more affordable? No. The solution of the Supreme Court is to allow cities to criminalize homelessness. So if you’re too poor to afford a massively over-inflated home price in your city and are forced to sleep on a bench because of this, you can now be arrested. The Supreme Court Just Criminalized Homelessness.

The U.S. truly has become the kick you while you’re down country.

This is the true Sodom and Gomorrah. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah incurred God’s wrath in the Old Testament for their lack of hospitality and for their cruelty to those who lacked housing and sleeping accommodations.

A society can be judged by how it treats its most vulnerable.

Solving homelessness by punishing people for it is about as productive as solving illness by throwing people in prison for getting the flu. What we need is more affordable housing, more public housing, more homeless shelters, and more multiple occupant housing, along with increased minimum wage, and increased access to healthcare.

It’s not all doom and gloom though. Some cities in the U.S. are taking positive actions. Denver, for example, is disrupting the homeless to jail pipeline with a policy of housing first. Crucially, it was found when people experiencing homelessness were offered supportive housing, most took it and stayed for the long term. This disrupts the pernicious myth that the unhoused like living outside or that they are too unstable to live in a home. This housing first policy also reduced time in jail for those experiencing homelessness.

Dear rest of America, be more like Denver!

No more NIMBYISM (Not in My Backyard). Just because it’s not your backyard, doesn’t mean you’re not affected by it. After all, 60% of Americans are just one paycheck away from falling into homelessness themselves. It could be a turn of bad luck, losing a job, a medical crisis, a death in the family. Anyone of these things could render most of us homeless. Therefore we should have more compassion, humility, and empathy for the most vulnerable people in our society.

Don’t NIMBY. HEAL (Housing, Equality, Affordability, Love).

I also published this on Medium.