Record number of Americans are homeless amid nationwide surge in rent, report finds
cbsnews.com
A growing number of Americans are ending up homeless as soaring rents in recent years squeeze their budgets.
According to a Jan. 25 report from Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies, roughly 653,000 people reported experiencing homelessness in January of 2023, up roughly 12% from the same time a year prior and 48% from 2015. That marks the largest single-year increase in the country's unhoused population on record, Harvard researchers said.
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You cracked the case!
It wasn't anything like coordinated rent increases from large groups of landlords using a pricing app, it wasn't a worldwide pandemic disrupting the market, it wasn't America keeping housing as an investment vehicle instead of a means of sheltering humans, it wasn't decades of wealthy investors buying housing to convert into rentals.
Nope, all of that complexity can be tossed out the window because one single man is to blame: Joe Biden. All in his first term as president too!
It’s amazing that rentals are going through the roof all around the world, there seems to be different reasons everywhere but the problem is the same. The underlying problem is probably capitalism underscored by neoliberalism which drives laws and policies to support short term, high growth returns.
RealPage needs to be dismantled and entire C-suite jailed. If Wall St isn't scared to death of making price fixing trusts then we are all in very deep shit.
Buh those people take the risks without them there won't be any housing 🤡
Hey Biden wants credit for the economy. He's out there claiming it as his.
Which Biden has no interest in doing anything about. Why isn't he using the bully pulpit to name and shame enemies of his administration?
It's been years since you and the rest of Democrats gave a shit about COVID, so it's hypocritical to blame the ongoing pandemic.
Perhaps if Biden didn't give up entirely on public health then the ongoing economic problems caused by COVID could be addressed, but instead we don't even talk about it like it's still a serious issue and ignore the ongoing wave of deaths. We are still having excess deaths far above the pre-pandemic period, but I bet you don't even wear a mask to the store. What a joke.
Both problems are something Biden helped establish over his long tenure as a Senator.
Liberals in every country do this thing where they use complexity as a way to mystify and obscure the consequences of their party's actions and inaction. Somehow the President is powerless and problems come from nowhere. No one is to blame, except maybe the red team.
Both parties are neolibs.
It's just a duopoly.
All of your critiques apply to both parties.
I'm left so I hate right.
I'm right so I hate left.
So boring.
Introduce ranked choice voting.
We could hate omnidirectionally.
Strangely more often it's "I'm left so I hate the US left" and they don't bother criticizing Republicans at all.
You want someone to help you do something for the good of everyone. Do you ask the giant selfish asshole or a rock for help? Republicans are the rock.
They're not asking or working with Democrats, they're painting them as worse than 'the rock' and telling people to abandon the party. Oddly it's the exact same thing foreign influence operations were doing on reddit in 2015, and Republicans in ~2006... discouraging young voters from voting at all. Huh, wonder who that helps.
I hate everyone equally
This!
Not so much, this. Hate is bad, hate leads to destruction (Dark Side, etc).
We should ALL be asking our politicians about ranked choice voting. It's not even mentioned currently by anyone though.
There is no left.
If you are located in the United States, this is correct.
The left is a bogeyman spectre used to prevent change.
Do you think you make any sort of sense with this way of writing? You are slamming Biden because you don't know who is a actually responsible. It's greedy landlords and the corporate overlords that run housing.
Biden runs the country. Not the whole housing market. If anything he helped it with his administration relieving college debt and made it more affordable to many Americans that don't need to pay off debt.
You make zero points and I just throwing mud to make Trump the only choice.
He definitely could interfere with the housing market to a much higher degree. He could also make better use of the bully pulpit to attack greedy landlords and corporate housing by name.
He will not.
When Trump wins he will make everything worse and Biden is doing everything he can to make sure he loses.
Biden: "You landlords are terrible and charge too much! Here are your names!"
Landlords: "Cool. How are you going to be able to stop us?"
Biden: "..."
He supposedly loves unions, right? How about he starts throwing his support behind tenant unions and rent strikes? How about he tells the millions of Democrats to take political and economic actions against landlords and real estate companies? "Here are your enemies and these are their companies, you know what to do."
I think you may be misunderstanding who has all the money and all the high-priced lawyers in this equation.
Bosses have money and high-priced lawyers, workers can beat them anyway. A strong tenant union can beat a landlord just the same.
Yeah, okay. The last time I lived in an apartment building, there were six tenants. If we had tried to form a union, we would have just been kicked out because we lived in a desirable area of L.A. and he could have charged new tenants more. Should we have added ourselves to the record number of homeless so this plan of yours can come to fruition? How about all the people in single-occupancy dwellings that are renting? Should they form a tenant union of one? Do you think that would work?
It's like you think every renter lives in a high-rise.
It's like you think the wider national union wouldn't bother to help a little group of six tenants. You're basically arguing we shouldn't bother with labor unions because not everyone works in a factory.
If your six neighbors joined a union to collectively bargain, it wouldn't be a union of six people! You'd just be one small part of the broader union, which has the resources to hire lawyers and pressure the landlord.
How could they help a group of six tenants?
How could they work with single-occupancy renters?
What would stop the landlord from just kicking those people out? Do you think people can just refuse to pay rent until their demands are met? Because it doesn't work like that anywhere.
You're basically asking for people to be forcibly dragged out of their homes by cops and then becoming homeless.
Finally- what have you done about this? Have you unionized any tenants anywhere? Have you risked getting kicked out of your own home? Otherwise, this sounds very much like "some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make."
In California at least, laws.
And in all the other states?
When the UAW negotiates for higher wages, that raises wages for everyone else even when they're un-unionized. A rising tide lifts all boats. That's how you help single-occupancy renters.
It would also help if blue states would pass more tenant's rights laws to keep landlords from evicting people, and Biden could use the bully pulpit to push those forward. You're seemingly ignoring that we were talking about tenant unions with a national spotlight. Surely you realize that would be different, right? A shitty landlord would get national attention and be forced to bargain by public pressure, and Biden could help. Sure, some landlords would be basically untouchable (single-occupancy renters and such) but enough could be pressured to effect the market.
All of this is besides the point! I said that Biden could support tenant unions to help fight homelessness and unaffordable rents. Do you disagree with this basic premise?
You have not answered any of my questions. I asked you multiple questions and you didn't answer a single one. Not even the one where I asked you what you personally have done about unionizing renters.
So I have no idea why you think I would answer your question.
You can what if all day long. And it's not fact. It's fantasy. So you don't make sense in two posts. Keep going. Your whole account can look like a lost soul in a cult.
A cult of what? I'm just criticizing Biden! You seem to think the president is powerless and nothing that has gone wrong is his fault.
Is there literally anything you would criticize him for?
Not to you. Because you are Trump's nuts and are a sad excuse for an American.
So you're hostile to outsiders and blindly support Blue Leader no matter what?
Remember, I never told anyone how to vote. If someone wants to vote for Biden that is their business and I completely understand it. You, on the other hand, attack anyone who even criticizes Biden.
Sounds like I'm not the one in a cult. Good luck Blue MAGA
No. I'm not going to engage with someone with their head so far up their keester they don't know how to discuss things to make sense. You never make any points other than pure speculation and are actively trying to muddy the water because you support Trump and don't want to admit it. Your whole account is soley to bolster votes for your cult.
So keep doing it. And I'll keep not caring. And neither will all the other people that are lurking and reading how little sense you make with what ifs and could haves.
That statement/opinion is not intellectually honest.
You may disagree with the opinions she's expressing, but she's expressing them well, and they are worthy of debate/discussion.
It is absolutely honest. She is in engaging in what ifs and could be. Not what it is. That is intellectually dishonest. And not helpful.
She ain't supporting Trump. Biden is a piece of shit and neither do I but it is what it is. Sure I'll take Biden over Trump easily but the lesser of two evil is still fucking evil. Let's go Cthulhu and just be done with it all. IA! Fthagn!
You, however, are a fighter fighting everyone you can to lose. You will. You will be homeless shortly herein after.
It's interesting to see the assumptions and projections you put onto me. All I've said (or implied snarkily) is that the housing and homelessness crisis that we're seeing in America is a multifaceted issue, and much larger than trying to simply blame one man.
For what it's worth, I have no love for Biden and think he could be doing a hell of a lot more from his position, as could the rest of the corporate Democrat party, as could literally any Republican with a spine, but unfortunately we're stuck with a party that won't act and a party whose only purpose is to block the other.
I still don't think you can distill the housing issue down to just 'Biden bad' though, so you should really do some introspection and see if your anger towards Biden might be blurring your viewpoint a little bit
Consider that, maybe, the assumptions and projections that you put on to me. When did I say Biden is to blame for everything? When did I actually distill the housing issue down to just 'Biden bad' except by glibly mocking their PR teams attempt to spin good economic news as "Bidenomics". Remember, they're the ones that made up that term. I was just referencing it.
I mean, sure, you didn't type that exact sentence but when you provided an itemized list of why Biden is to blame for each item in my original comment, it's not a huge leap of logic to think you blame Biden for these things.
I was just listing things Biden played a role in. Things he is partially to blame for, because he has not done everything he can to fight back.
Obviously he's not the king of America and can't just be blamed for everything, but I refuse to just say he's blameless because of that.