Summary
Elon Musk has called homelessness a “lie” and “propaganda,” claiming advocacy groups profit from maintaining high homelessness rates.
Partnering with Donald Trump, Musk is pushing for drastic federal budget cuts targeting programs for vulnerable populations, including food stamps and healthcare.
Trump’s plan includes forcing unhoused individuals into treatment or institutionalization.
Critics argue these approaches criminalize homelessness while ignoring root causes like lack of affordable housing.
Homelessness in the U.S. has reached record levels, with 650,000 people affected in 2023, prompting calls for evidence-based solutions over punitive measures.
Easy for a billionaire to say.
Sorta like Dejoy covering his ears when he doesn’t want to hear something. They are at a child’s maturity level.
This is the danger of elite projection. What his life is like must be how other people’s lives are like.
He was successful. If he wanted to get a job, he could. If he did work, he got paid.
If these people aren’t doing that, it must be their fault, and they need “treatment” (via institutionalization) in his mind. It couldn’t possibly be because to get a job, you often need existing housing, but to get housing, you need money from a job. Or the fact that people like him don’t pay enough.
It’s always their fault. Individual responsibility, meritocracy and all that jazz.
It was only a few months ago this tool was complain about how dangerous the homeless were @ the San Fran Twitter HQ.
Don’t believe your eyes. Don’t believe your experiences. Believe douche bag magee elon musk because he??? For no reason.
If those nefarious groups are profiting from high level of homelessness, nothing is stopping them from finding sheltered for the unhoused…
Market Capitalism needs homelessness.
If you will not make the owner’s money through labor, You will help them make money as capitalist scarecrows. A warning to any laborer thinking of failing to comply.
You WILL serve the owner’s greed disease, or else.
It would literally be cheaper to house them without conditions than all the conditioned programs and homeless encampment clean up is.
But that doesn’t send a message of fear.
Herp derp Freedom 🇺🇸
If there’s one homeless person on the street, people will say “they’re lazy, you need to work harder”. If there’s 100 homeless people on the street, people realize “something’s wrong with our society/system”, and demand change.
“What you actually have are violent drug zombies with dead eyes, and needles and human feces on the street.”
Yo this is the most cartoonish out-of-touch shit take I’ve see. In an election that accused a disenfranchised minority group of eating people’s pets!
So the one thing that differentiates homeless people and CEOs in shit in the street?
It Depends, thank you very much no further questions.
Can’t he fuck off and die on Mars already?
Someone should tell him that we know more about the mountain and canyons of Mars than we do about the depths of the ocean… and tell him that carbon fiber actually IS the best material for a submarine… and tell him that the best shipwrecks to go to are WW1 military shipwrecks…
You reap what you sow. I hope you will suffer for your stupidity.
He will be fine but others less fortunate will suffer.
Yeah, it’s not the homeless people that are victims of a cruel society that has not only abandoned but also ostracized them. It’s the wealthy that have to share an imperceptible amount of their wealth so that they have somewhere to sleep.
Just another “first they came for…” thing with the rich. As soon as they put all the homeless into for-profit labor camp prisons, the poor are next.
“claiming advocacy groups profit from maintaining high homelessness rates.”
Uhhh . . . how? “You there! Go be homeless! I need to profit from your utter lack of income.”
He’s sadly got a bit of truth there.
I’ve heard it called the homeless industrial complex, groups get public sector funding to purchase necessities and camping equipment for distribution. Occasionally drop shipping it and paying themselves or some other double Irish maneuver.
Then the encampment gets bulldozed/ razed/ robbed/ flooded and its all destroyed along with any progress the unhoused have managed and all their belongings and reserves.
And they get handed new tents and socks and instant ramen etc.
Meanwhile the persons medical care from sleeping outside skyrockets occupying a large chunk of their discretionary time. As a huge obstacle to getting back on their feet.
So the government is paying someone to help them sleep outside, and paying for the consequences of them sleeping outside, and collecting no tax revenue.
Might as well just give them an apartment, if the cruelty wasn’t the point that is.
Social workers making literally tens of thousand of dollars a year off of this. That’s enough to be rich according to people who make that much while eating a french fry.
Once upon a time, I was saving for a Tesla. Not anymore. The end.
Going for a Nisan Leaf?
That would actually be one of reasonable choices. Most e-cars today are over-engineered and too complex for the users’ good, but Leaf has been on the market for very long, has gone though many generations and repair shops generally know their way around it (even I have taken apart a Leaf’s battery). If Nissan’s engineers aren’t fools, they have solved most issues.
Tesla is a smartphone on wheels, and a maintenance nightmare. Also, it has the highest rate of fatal accidents in its category. Even if it didn’t earn Elon a penny, I’d not recommend it.
Living on latitude 60 where being homeless can (and sometimes does) kill - I think the first step is giving a person who is homeless a place where they can set up a (semi)permanent home. That will go a long way towards solving the underlying issues which a shelter system cannot address.
A relevant paper from the EU Commission:
In February 2008, the Finnish government adopted a programme aimed at halving long-term homelessness by 2011. Referring to the “Housing First” principle, which considers that appropriate permanent accommodation is a prerequisite for solving other social and health problems, the programme seeks to reduce and gradually abandon the use of conventional shelters and change them into supported rented accommodation units.
Outcomes via OECD:
While there is no OECD-wide average against which to compare Finland’s homeless rate of 0.08%, other countries with similarly broad definitions of homelessness provide points of reference, such as neighbouring Sweden (0.33%) or the Netherlands (0.23%). [1]
Finland’s success is not a matter of luck or the outcome of “quick fixes.” Rather, it is the result of a sustained, well-resourced national strategy, driven by a “Housing First” approach, which provides people experiencing homelessness with immediate, independent, permanent housing, rather than temporary accommodation (OECD, 2020).
Getting better outcomes than neighbours is a reliable indicator that a policy does work.
P.S.
Regarding Musk:
“Downregulate Musk” will be my anwer to any mention of this election-buying oligarch, probably for a while. A kneejerking far rightist is no person to call any policies.
Elon Musk is actually bullet proof. Impervious to bullets. I guarantee it.
*Ymmv
He sure is!
Sounds like the kind of thing a tyrannical government would say.
