I don’t think there’s a purer, more distilled form of evil than anti-homeless architecture. Imagine spending this much money to prevent people without homes from getting sleep. https://twitter.com/garlandsculptor/status/1209593346403921920

It makes me sick just thinking about it. Fuck every supposedly “progressive” city official who pushes for rocks/spikes/bars to prevent homeless people from resting at night. It’s absolutely barbaric.

You can say "Vote Blue No Matter Who" all you want at the federal level but in city elections, with a few exceptions in places like Jacksonville and Fort Worth, virtually every single person runs for City Council/Mayor as a Democrat.

This means that everyone from socialists/tenants rights activists to millionaire (or sometimes even billionaire!) developers runs as members of the same party. To put it simply: *Primaries matter!*

Please stop screaming at leftists for daring to hold Dem. officeholders accountable. On the municipal level, virtually everyone runs as a member of the Democratic Party, which means that, yes, the primaries are the most important elections.

If you want cities to stop treating homeless people like disposable objects, to stop police from brutalizing Black people, to stop destroying poor people's houses to make room for upscale brunch restaurants, you can't just "Vote Blue No Matter Who".

For Current Affairs I wrote about this phenomenon and why we desperately need a new municipal Left in the face of crucial citywide elections in Seattle, NYC, Boston, St. Louis, and Minneapolis (among others) next year. https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/08/the-path-to-a-progressive-america-runs-through-the-cities/

Also, as an Angelino (Countian?), please support LA City Council candidate @nithyavraman, who has the most transformative housing platform of any candidate in the country. https://www.nithyaforthecity.com/ 

Let's be clear about something: Homelessness isn't actually that "complex" of an issue and framing it as such is a deliberate tactic to obfuscate the root of the problem which is literally in its name: People not having homes.

If our society guaranteed housing as a human right (logistically challenging, sure, but something that can absolutely be done if we put our resources into doing it) homelessness will be solved as a phenomenon.

Before we blame mental health issues and drug addiction on homelessness, have we ever considered that, uh, it's more common for homelessness to lead to mental health issues and drug addiction and not the other way around?

There are plenty of homeless people who lived a semi-comfortable life before one bad event (maybe a loved one was diagnosed with a disease that ate their entire life savings?) destroyed their livelihood and thrust them into a life of homelessness.

Imagine that happening to you. Imagine one day you're down on your luck, and all of a sudden people will refuse to even look at you on the street. Can you imagine how such dehumanization would affect the psyche?

Imagine being trapped in a cycle of homelessness, constantly being kicked out of your temporary shelter by cops doing sweeps under the orders of centrist Mayors, prevented from getting a job due to no consistent address, gaps in your resume, and lack of transportation.

Guess what! Your mental health would suffer (to put it lightly) and it's not unlikely that you'd take solace in addictive substances, be it alcohol or something else.

Sure, there are some people who become homeless as a result of mental health problems and addiction. It's far more common, though, for people to develop mental health problems and drug addictions once experiencing something as traumatic as homelessness.

Homelessness (and material deprivation more generally) is a moral failing, but not of the people who fall victim to it: It's a moral failure of society as a whole.

Don't forget this.