This is the Friends of History Debating Society. I'm John Bachelors. Jeff Bliss is Pacific Watch.

The homeless of the United States of America and the homeless of California, Jeff has some important

measurements that are revelatory about why San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles, San Diego

are struggling with these huge tent cities. This difficulty of maneuvering the roads and the

pavements and the closing of stores in San Francisco and the unending problems despite spending

$18 billion. Jeff, a very good evening too. It turns out the reason for homelessness in California

is not housing. What is it, Jeff? What's driving this?

You mean, John? Well, there are some people that still push the idea that it's

crippling poverty or housing availability or costs. Those are the things that are driving homelessness.

But if you get down to the street level, if you talk to the actual homeless people themselves or

if you talk to cops or judges or any but sociologists who work with these groups, social workers,

they'll tell you that, yeah, that's part of it, but drugs, alcohol, those are a big part of it

and of course, mental health. So you have people that are dealing with one of those or all of those

together and it makes matters worse. Yes, those other situations, the costs and the poverty

do play into it, but not in the way that a lot of advocates, a lot of people that are invested

in the homeless industrial complex want it to be because those things you can't throw money at

and show any change or you know, you can't stand up in front of a building that they just built and

say, oh, this is what we did, you can't throw money at substance abuse and mental illness and have

the kind of appearance right away, good looking, happy time appearance, that a new building, a new

clinic, a new housing shelter provides or gets a report written about how bad economics are. So

it's very strange to see otherwise credible groups put out this kind of information. It's

almost like they didn't go to the streets and find out with their own eyes to see what's going on.

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