Same old… There is literally a ‘homeless highway’ that runs up and down the left coast. San Diego/LA/Vegas in the winter, summer in San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle… And this has been going on for well over 30 years.
An executive order signed by President Donald Trump is aiming to combat crime involving homelessness throughout the country, with cities such as Las Vegas seeing a crisis surrounding encampments overtaking communities and crippling the local area.
Sin City has seen an uptick in homelessness throughout the community, with a 20% increase within Clark County in 2024, according to the most recent data from the Southern Nevada Homeless Continuum of Care.
“It’s progressively gotten worse and worse and worse,” Robert Marbut, the former federal homelessness czar under Trump’s first administration, told Fox News Digital. “And there was sort of an idea that they tried a lot of gimmicks in the beginning.”
Full article, HERE from Fox News.
What is ‘new’ in Vegas is that tourism is way down, due to costs of the big hotels, the bed bug issues, and the cost of food. That puts more folks out of work, exacerbating the problem, and what is not mentioned is the hundreds of miles of tunnels UNDER Vegas that are actually storm drains. HERE is a video of those who live there…
As indicated in the article, they keep trying the same things to ‘remove’ the homeless, and it doesn’t work.
Part of the reason is these people do not WANT to get off the street. The are the mentally ill, druggies, and others who ‘like’ the freedom of their lifestyle and freedom from ‘laws’. They bounce from the streets to the hospital when they OD, or jail, a rehab program for a month or two, a halfway house, and slip back to the streets. Lather, rinse, repeat.
If it gets too ‘hot’ for them, they move either north or south, depending…
The ‘fix’ that Atlanta (Olympics 1996) and Denver (Dem convention) did was bus tickets ‘somewhere’ out of town that meant they would be gone at least a week or more… For Atlanta, that meant New Orleans, Memphis, Chicago, or NYC. I was based in Virginia then and remember the LEOs talking about how EVERY bus was full of homeless coming out of Atlanta, and how much work they had to ‘keep’ them moving north…
Where will Vegas sent their homeless??? California? Colorado? Who knows…
A few dozen grimly determined men with shotguns will fix the problem. It’s not nice. It’s not pretty. But it is effective. So, of course, nobody will ever do it.
What happens when a flash flood washes all their belongings to the exit of that drain and it gets jammed up, blocking the flow of water?
They die. It happens a lot. Just doesn’t get reported.
The vast majority of homeless have mental issues or drug problems (often both, often one leading to the other). The “homeless industrial complex” is a real thing in California and there is no intention of actually helping any of these folks. Homeless programs generally do nothing more than line pockets. I’m certain it’s the same with Oregon, Washington, etc..
Bring back sanitariums!
Yuppers.
Wife and I lived in Chico, CA for 30+ years, raising our kids there, and bailing for Texas in 2015. We watched as Chico steadily became a homeless magnet. Elected city government turned liberal. Policies towards homeless were effectively catch and release. P.D. officers became on a regular first name basis with many homeless.
One city council member was questioned about the fact that many of the homeless refused to use the available shelters because they also refused to follow the shelter rules. Said council member’s straight-faced reply was that there needed to be additional shelter that had no rules.
X2
Much of this problem can be traced back to the 1970-80s “de-institution” movement.
Hey Old NFO,
Yeah the ’96 olympics did Atlanta no favors, besides showcasing the most crooked mayor in Atlanta history, they ran the homeless out of town, and dumped the projects into my county(Clayton)at the time and I saw the crime skyrocket as they hurriedly refurbished some condemned apartments and shoved the project dwellers into them and said denezins had a whole new fertile ground for their criminal enterprises, I was a Domino’s Pizza manager during this time and I was rapidly “redlining” apartments that were robbing my drivers. joy, joy rapture…..
Come winter just relocate them all into Mexico. Fair trade is no robbery.
Lots of closed military bases in many states. . .could be reopened and utilized to house these dregs, Jist sayin’
I volunteered at the local Salvation Army for a couple of years. I would agree 90% suffer from some type of addiction or severe mental issues. The remaining 10% just were going thru some bad times, some of their fault, most not. This was during Covid.
The city council decided to build or finance more shelters, which just attracted more homeless. They legalized panhandling, which just attracted more panhandlers. There was a whole lot of self medicating taking place. The public library was force to hire security guards because the air conditioning during the heat of the summer was a place to hang out at for those who could not behave.
Most of these folks need structure forced on them. How to do that is currently has not been decided.
Vagrancy laws.
There’s an argument that if we institutionalized everyone too seriously ill to care for themselves, then there would be almost no one left free who is interested in supporting the current crop of Democrats.
Politics is a terribly destructive motivation for trying to adjust the norms of such questions.
Anyway, my preferred answers have been fairly stable for a while. Which does not mean that I have been correct for that period of time, it could merely be that I am persistently wrong.
Vegas is also suffering under the same curse as cruise ships and spring break locations. The ghetto-class people have discovered these locations and made them no-go zones for normal folk.
It’s not nice to say, but it is what it is. Same people that make some sections of any city a no-go zone are also making nice vacation places Hells-on-this-Earth.
Combine that with the rabid homeless and big cities just aren’t attractive to me anymore.
There are no nice, pleasant easy solutions to some problems. This being one of them.
All- You ALL raise valid points. RHT, my youngest daughter was a paramedic working Chico in the early 2010s, 90% of her runs were drug ODs, and uncounted number of druggies that attempted to get their drug box off the rig… sigh… WSF- Yep! Can you say ALCU???
Do tell. Still had my FFL then. I think by that time I had just about all the flight crew for Enloe Hospital life flight as customers.
I may be homeless myself soon , as my landlord is in a retirement home and her surviving daughter couldn’t give two shits about the farmhouse I’ve lived in (rented) for twenty years . No way the V.A. would approve this house for a loan , it would never pass inspection. May be forced to buy an over priced home at terrible terms in this market using my V.A. loan . If in the interim if I am living in an RV trailer somewhere, please don’t send in the grisly men with shotguns , thanks to military service I don’t sleep worth a shit , and I ain’t on dope , but I will probably reciprocate in equal measure .
I became acquainted with a marine vet at the local VFW , an Iraq vet . He was couch surfin for a while here locally , but decided one day he was going to walk to St.Louis , and he did , about 400 miles , sleeping in the woods along the way . He wasn’t thumbing it, he walked it . He called me a while later on , said he was
working at Mickee Dees , haven’t heard from him since .
I admit there are some no loads , dopers, mooches and bums out there but damn , it is tough world today , the delinquency rate on credit cards and mortgages are at an all time high . A lot of people are a couple of paychecks away from being homeless . I ain’t no softee , nor a liberal bleeding heart , but , I have a heart and I think it is sad , and it saddens me to hear some of these responses . I was gonna just zip my lip on this one , but nope I couldn’t . I get it , the tarp cities on sidewalks , the sidewalk shitters , the no go zones, …I get it , but I also am aware of stupid shit the millions going to the tar baby Ukraine , and God knows where fuck all money is going around the globe that would go a long way to fix shit at home .
RHT- Sent you an email.
Boats- Ouch, that sucks. Lots of vets in that situation…