Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

Earlier this year, the economists reported that America's homeless population has risen

by a rate of just under 6% nationwide. In San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle, that rate is much higher. According to some

estimates, half of America's unsheltered homeless population live in California. Christopher Rufo,

in the Discovery Institute Project Homelessness, writes this, quote, it's emotionally jarring.

How's it possible that more than a half million Americans are sleeping on the streets and tents and an emergency shelters?

Governments have mobilized billions of dollars to solve homelessness. But there are more tents on the streets than ever.

Well, what has happened? Clearly, policy is a major factor. Over the last few years, many major cities have leaned exclusively on a

housing-first model. This model makes getting homeless populations off the streets and into housing

priority number one, even if it costs billions of dollars. But behind the policy is an expansive

and flawed worldview that assumes that issues facing the homeless population have less

to do with individual decisions and everything to do with systemic injustices. In this view,

racism, capitalism, landlords, employers have created a world where homelessness is essentially

random. It could happen to anyone, as Rufo describes it, removing any sense of fault or responsibility

from the problem. Now, of course, many times chance and injustice do land people on the streets.

However, exclusively blaming social injustices ignores two of the most critical factors that are

driving homelessness right now, drug addiction and mental illness.

The result is a deadly triangle of public policy. Drugs have been decriminalized, leading to a

flush of cheap opioids in vulnerable areas. Open-air camps grow unrestricted. Lawmakers just have

to look the other way. Spending explodes with nothing really to show for, and often for the

simple reason that building new homes simply can't outpace the effect of bad policies. For example,

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