The 10 States Where Homelessness is Out of Control and Beyond Repair

so every day on average 55 people in the u.s become homeless for some it's a choice for many it's not while we had seen a decrease for a number of years the homeless rate in the u.s is going back up again and in a lot of states it's exploding if the homeless rate continued at the rate we've seen for the last few years by the year twenty thousand nine forty nine the whole u.s population's gonna be living on the streets okay that's not gonna happen although with the pandemic and the rising cost of living and the spike in drug use there's a lot of people that are worried that we're to see a spike in homeless folks in the coming years now the homeless issue is a very controversial one the root of the problem's really complex and politicians have been baffled as to how to solve it and we'll talk about that and you're going to find that a lot of americans view homelessness from two entirely different camps some of us feel bad for the homeless and we put the blame on our government and some of us blame the homeless themselves for their own decisions we're going to talk about that too however you feel about homelessness though it's a very complex problem and one that shouldn't exist in the richest country in the world there isn't one answer because there isn't just one problem in this video we're going to look at the most homeless states in america some are going to be a surprise and many will not but i think we can all agree the problem is out of control now here i am in my backyard living in my tent it's relatively safe here for me but every night there's hundreds of thousands of us that are out in tents and on sidewalks and living in their cars and hotel rooms and it's not safe for them drive around and you'll see them on a lot of corners and some big cities let's take a look and see which parts of our country are going through a homeless crisis right now now we're going to begin in the state of colorado the people in denver sure know about the rise in homelessness here over the past few years there's been a big spike in the number of people living on the streets in denver in places that were once clean and safe the state of colorado estimates that on any given night there's about 10 000 people living without shelter here but that number is actually pretty hard to measure i mean for one there's lots of people living in areas that you'll never see and a lot of times there's family who are living in hotel rooms or living in their cars and they won't want to be counted so it's likely this number's much higher in fact another report said the denver metro area had 30 000 people who had accessed homeless resources last year again there's no real way of getting exact count but it's estimated that colorado's seen an 8 rise in homelessness in the last decade it's estimated that about a quarter of the homeless population in colorado is chronically homeless like they've been living on the streets for years now and they're going to continue to do so because for many it's a lifestyle of choice despite how you feel about the cost of living or the lack of resources for the chronically homeless it's true that a large part of the homeless population simply wants to live a life like this and of course in colorado a big reason for the number of people who are homeless here is legal marijuana the state saw a big surge in its population when marijuana became legal now nevada is another state that legalized marijuana and it's had an impact on the state's homeless population too now there's fewer homeless people in nevada than in colorado but the population here is far smaller than in colorado so the per capita number is higher about 9 000 people in nevada were homeless last year but in the greater las vegas metro area there's more than 13 000 people that experienced homelessness at some point and there's actually a lot of people who live in the sewers underneath the city of las vegas who are likely never going to be counted either of course booze and drugs and gambling are a big draw to las vegas and that's going to boost the homeless numbers but it's also pretty warm here year round and as we're going to see the warmer the climate the more people are willing to sleep on the streets other states like arizona and new mexico also have a large homeless problem and they're just outside of the top ten the warm weather doesn't necessarily mean a large homeless population that's because the states with the least number of homeless people are in the deep south mississippi has the fewest number of homeless people per capita followed by louisiana and alabama and those are some of our warmest states why is that two reasons primarily far less people in the deep south live in urbanized areas but the cost of living in the deep south is really low look you can see mississippi residents can comfortably run a house on about 3 500 a month combined monthly income but in california a family needs about 8 300 a month to comfortably rent a home a huge difference now vermont's kind of a unique situation the homeless rate here had been going down but it's on the rise once again there's far fewer homeless people than in the other states we're going to talk about but it's a small state too it's estimated that there's about 20 homeless people for every 10 000 residents of course it's a lot colder here in vermont than it is out west but ten percent of the people in vermont live on the streets every night that's a lot lower than it is out west where about one in three people live outdoors vermont ranks fourth in the nation for welfare spending per capita and a lot of people here complain about high taxes and a high cost of living however all that tax money just isn't enough to keep up with all the homeless people in vermont the state spends 140 000 a night putting up people in hotel rooms and they actually spend a lot more than that fielding calls from hotel owners regarding vandalism and drug use incidentally vermont ranks towards the top of the nation in drug use and overdose rates too alaska believe it or not ranks seventh in terms of homeless rate per capita of course it's very cold here but still 18 of alaskans who are homeless live unsheltered now a lot of people here will just commit a petty crime to get thrown in jail intentionally so they're warm and then they get out and they do it all over again the cost of living here is also very high alaska ranks ninth in the country for most expensive when you factor in the cost to have a roof over your head anchorage has a crisis on its hands people are wandering around or they're couch surfing or they're battling bed bugs or crime at local fleabag motels but it's more than the cost of living it's the culture in alaska there's a big drug and alcohol problem here and the number of domestic violence and all the child abuse and the sexual assault rates are all super high in alaska which means people are in transition a lot more often here what are they doing about it well alaska doubled its homeless assistance program to eight million dollars a year or eight thousand dollars per homeless person per year as a nation we spend about 3 billion annually on homeless assistance programs at the federal level to put that into perspective we gave afghanistan nearly 5 billion last year and that's just the tip of our foreign spending iceberg as you can imagine we give away a lot of money to other countries while our own citizens live like this that is a shame there's about 25 000 people in massachusetts who are homeless on any given night these days and it's estimated that the number of families who were homeless here has increased at the highest rate of any other state and that's terrible overall as a state it's up by 20 percent in the last decade now this is really the only real right to shelter state in the country though new york has similar laws basically it means if you don't have anywhere to live the state will put you up in a hotel room for up to a year and then help you transition to permanent housing though the wait for that's like 10 years i mean 10 years is a long time but some people never do it's really complicated why there's a lot of homeless people who recently lost their jobs and they had other setbacks and those people sleep in motels or in their cars or in other vehicles they often move around a lot until they can get back on their feet again those people can be helped but then there's a lot of people who are just openly living on the streets like this and they're not from that group for the most part some americans say that the people you see on the streets choose to live like this because in the shelters they have to follow rules there's places that'll take them in for free and they'll help them get back on their feet i mean would somebody that has a healthy state of mind choose to live like this for a lot of these people on the streets it's addiction and mental illness now other americans are going to say this is out of their hands homeless people exist like this because of a cost of living problem what do you say are the street beggars on the sidewalk campers like this homeless because of addiction or because of housing costs and is it fair to lump these people in with poor families who were trying to not be homeless let us know in the comments below okay so seattle's just a mess as you've heard the homeless problem here is beyond a crisis and is getting worse by the week what was once a beautiful city has been taken over by drug addicts the mentally unstable and the lifestyle street people of course there's a lot of other people in the state who are not just those you see in seattle there's about 25 000 homeless people in washington state at the time of this writing but again nobody knows a true number seattle's talked about tax and businesses up to 120 million a year to help fund the homeless relief programs and help pay for affordable housing and that scared a lot of people and if you haven't heard a lot of companies and residents have been leaving seattle how much of the problem in places like seattle is because the cost of living and how much is the lifestyle now seattle's the perfect example of a cost of living problem sure getting a place in seattle is out of reach for a lot of people but they can relocate right i mean if you get priced out of your house there's plenty of places you can move where you can afford and there's even agencies that'll help you relocate am i oversimplifying this like if you can't afford to live in seattle why stay and live in your car i'm not trying to be insensitive i just don't get it well as it turns out the new york times had something to say about that they wrote an article that said that a lot of times people do leave but the thing that keeps people from moving from big cities they can't afford and will never be able to afford are social connections so a lot of people are sticking around for their support groups even though they can't afford to live there anyways the cost of living in places like seattle is very complicated sometimes it's greedy landlords that add fire the problem of affordable housing we're going to talk about that a little bit when we get to new york but regulations make it hard for developers to build affordable housing or to justify their construction to begin with this guy says he's a landlord and a developer and the fees that the government charges make it hard to justify building affordable units on the land he owns even though he'd love to do it so maybe we just have to take away regulations of course oregon has a huge homeless problem we knew about that while the national homeless rates gone down a bit over the last 10 years oregon's has gone up by 14 and seems to be going up all the time portland and eugene have the most homeless people here and they both rank towards the top nationally lots of people complain that the state of oregon caters to the homeless which is why more and more of them are showing up here's an example from an oregon resident i spoke to you recently about that very problem why is oregon becoming a location central gathering point for homeless druggies i think it's probably just uh the welfare programs and stuff that they're giving them and uh i i heard that like up north in seattle i know they give out tents and i think there's gotta be something like that going on here because i'm like i don't know where they're getting all their their tents obviously it's like super easy to get stamps and welfare and all this and uh yeah it's crazy and then uh i don't know if you've heard of this this is this cracks me up but there's a thing that uh people are doing like crazy so um our uh our bottles are our bottles have a 10 cent deposit on them here so what tons of the homeless people do they give them like they'll give them like a flat of uh like a crate of bottles and they'll take them to where they recycle and they'll dump all the water out and turn in the cans just to get a couple bucks to go get some booze or some drugs or whatever it's funny because you'll go to the like the can recycling place and you'll see a whole bunch of little lids all over the ground you're like yeah i know what went down here and it'll be all wet ridiculous of course we expect california to have the most homeless people and we be right but per capita it's only third nobody knows exactly how many homeless people are in this state i filmed this in los angeles this past october where it's estimated that there's 40 000 homeless people in this city alone it's probably way higher than that what was once just skid row is blossomed into skid city there's a lot of movie stars in la i haven't heard them help in this problem a lot of people say la manufactures its own homeless problem due to a lack of affordable places to live and i'm sure that's correct however the addicted and the mentally unstable i'm showing here do not seem to be victims of a housing shortage california as a whole has seen a 16 increase in homeless rates over the last decade they think there's 150 000 people here but it's likely much higher than that and the whole state nobody knows how many homeless people there are but everywhere you look there's homeless people in california now san francisco is also terrible it's the city without pity people just walk around san francisco and they step over people sleeping on the sidewalks all the time they've taken over much of downtown now and the city kind of panders to them they put them up in rooms and they give them cigarettes and drugs and booze to keep them under control emotionally they seem to have more rights than the average working person the homeless people here were actually given a higher priority for coveted vaccines than most california residents were can you believe that homeless people got a covered vaccine before everybody else when it rains all the homeless people just sleep on the buses and drive around in circles all night but when it rains that also means all the poop and needles go down the drain so that's good no wonder california has the most people moving out when you look at how things look right now with all the homes people everywhere it's actually pretty sad and there's no solution of course hawaii is really expensive it's actually the most expensive state to live in so the homeless problem there is definitely related to a lack of affordable housing and it's also a lot harder to get off the island so they're kind of stuck there however the good news if there's any good news in this depressing video is that homelessness in hawaii is actually going down the state's no longer number one per capita for homeless but as it stands there's still about 7 000 people on these islands that are homeless and that's a lot considering the small population here now what's hawaii doing right spending money to save money they have a program called housing first and it provides free housing for homeless people and it costs about twenty five thousand a year per person however the state saves money on health care and from locking people up when they give them a home so they don't have to spend money on giving them free health care or putting them in jail so it seems like housing hawaiians is an investment but the budget only goes so far and the state admits the biggest problem is still funding for drug rehab and mental illness treatment they don't have a lot of money they need more money but you know who isn't investing in housing its residents new york isn't at least new york city isn't they actually get caught schlepping their homeless people across the river in new jersey new jersey people apparently don't like that very much the state of new york pays for a year of rent in another state as long as you don't come back apparently it's cheaper to just move them into new jersey than it is to keep them within their own city limits a year of rent for free can you imagine that they also buy them one-way tickets to get the homeless people the hell out of their city no questions asked just leave i guess you can't solve the problem the easy way is just to erase the problem there's been a lot of cases of cops who are just sick of arresting the same homeless guy over and over let's go down to the bus station and just buy him a one-way ticket just to get him out of town i mean that's really nice but it's really sad too and it's nothing unique to new york city either a lot of cities do this anyways there's somewhere around 100 000 homeless people in the state of new york and around 80 000 of them are in new york city alone even though mayor bill de blasio says it's far less than that all in all about one in five homeless people in the country are either in la or new york city alone people now new york doesn't send all their people out of state they try to help their homeless they have a bunch of shelters and their budget's about 4 billion annually and most of that spent in new york city alone this is interesting new york city homeless shelters apparently charged whatever the heck they want that's pissing people off because you know the budget has limits of course new york city proper is very expensive to live in and there's definitely a lack of affordable housing here now we talked about greedy landlords earlier and how complex the affordable housing problem is rent control is supposed to provide affordable housing but only for people who are actually in the building to begin with if somebody moves out you can charge the next guy whatever you want so there's landlords in new york city that are incentivized to have you move out maybe by not fixing stuff or not killing the rats or the roaches and then when you move the next guy comes in and he has to pay more than you paid and so these landlords can charge whatever the heck they want so they wait for somebody to come along that'll pay a lot of money and so all these units are left vacant for a long time there's another problem with rent control in some cities like san francisco i mean the land so valuable that building owners will turn their apartments into condos or retail or just knock them down because the rent controls made running their building unprofitable and of course gentrifications definitely made living in large urban areas harder for poor folks but again the question arises why don't people who can't afford just leave well they feel stuck all their friends and family are there it's their social network so as you can see the problem of homelessness is very complicated and very sad and there's a lot of stuff to go over the us has a terrible problem with homelessness now part of the problems politics i mean you have to set aside money or create laws to help people with housing but you don't want to upset the taxpayers or the businesses in the area addressing addiction and mental illness is another thorn we have yet to solve but we have to admit there's a huge percentage of homeless in this country that does not want help nor do they want a roof over their heads and we have to just come to grips with that anyways that's our look at the most homeless states in america it's a big mess some states have unique approaches and others are making it worse by sort of encouraging it i don't know the answer do you i mean we can't build a house for everybody in america because then nobody would want to work right [Music] do [Music] you're never out on your own [Music] [Applause] [Music] you're never alone [Music] don't hold it back don't hold back don't hold back don't hold back turn [Music] [Applause] [Music] believe it's all that you have you have [Applause] received don't hold it back don't hold back believe that's all that you have you have to receive it don't hold it back don't hold back don't hold back don't hold back turn [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] i'm going to call my mom she lives in california i'm going to ask her about the homeless problem there well it's about time hi mom how are you hi son i'm okay i'm doing a video about the homeless problem and i was wondering if i could ask you about some of the homeless things that you've seen out there oh what a sad story this is isn't it what's it like out there in california what's a homeless problem like well they're just causing a lot of trouble they started at least three fires last week in los angeles they call them eating fires they drag their propane tanks into their hiding places and um they light them for warmth and they when it blew in the wind blows it just start they start fires have you seen a lot more homeless people there the last few years sometimes they're starting to pile up on the uh freeway between redlands and highland again and they're right by the freeway there are cars lots of cars are piling up again and usually redlands runs them out but i don't know what they're waiting for because it looks like it's getting kind of out of control again what are they doing to help the homeless or or to well they always have people that are helping them their place they give them a handout they offer them housing they offer them clinics they offer them places to deal with their addiction issues but at night i know they wander all over the place and they just make the biggest messes the mess in the parking lot the mast on the sidewalk i just can't even it's gross it's disgusting they need hazmat people it's so bad that they really need hazmat to get in there every day and wash off those sidewalks and i know that they're not doing it so i just said i'm done i'm done why are there so many homeless people in california now why are they picking california well the weather i'm sure the weather is complementary and they can come out here to california and they go from county to county and they get general relief money and if california would cut them off they would not be traveling they would not be coming here by the numbers that they do plus has closed something like 17 prisons and he's released i don't know how many thousands of prisoners so where do you think these people are going to go they're going to go live on the street i'll outcome the arsonist outcome the drug the drug addicts he's releasing these people they're dangerous imagine closing 17 prisons is that like one of the main reasons a lot of people are leaving california yeah well that's yes the justice system was just completely collapsed out here and that is one of the reasons i'm sure but california and politics we may rise from the ashes yet okay well i hope california does rise from the ashes i hope california gets better uh right now california's a little sick and they're under the weather so you stay safe and i miss you guys and love you okay take care love you bye okay bye mom always says it the way she feels and i don't think that portland really has like the dangerous gangs like that it's yeah it's just like anarchists and uh and yeah druggies i mean our state overall is being overrun by druggies even in my little town so right outside of my little town right along the freeway there's this tent city and it's it's getting bigger like just about every week you're seeing it grow and grow and it's it's just it's bizarre it's unlike it you know we've always had a few homeless people but now it's like these major encampments and then in portland from what i understand it's just it's way beyond that it's just like massive cities of tents and homeless people but yeah it's it's cra i can't believe how much there's in my little town it's like i don't know what you know what they do here they just they all camp out right up they're actually right along the five so if you're going through roseburg you just look and there's people on either side of the freeway and and i think what a horrible place to be homeless it's just you know we got pretty nasty weather oftentimes um what's funny too is i was calling to my wife we were going by the other day and i was like man some of these people actually have like really nice like high-end pimps that they're camping in i'm like where are they getting these things hey guys if you learned something new about america or what it's like to live in america great you should think about subscribing and turning on your notifications you can also click one of these videos or playlists for more you can also now buy my songs on itunes and other formats click the link in the description thanks for watching and remember while we all might have different views we should all be nice to each other and try to make the us a better place in a positive way this is sage nyx manager this has been a corner house entertainment production

Channel: Nick Johnson

Views: 1,144,312

Rating: 4.7421937 out of 5

Keywords: los angeles, california, homeless, homeless problem, homelessness, how many homeless live in california, how many homeless are in los angeles, whats los angeles like, los angeles realtor, la real estate, moving to california, the most homeless cities in america, homeless states in america, where do the most homeless people live, usa, homeless crisis, las vegas, boston, seattle, san francisco, new york, colorado, alaska, nevada, massachusetts, new york city, oregon, washington, hawaii

Id: adq1rlWFE4o

Length: 26min 39sec (1599 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 12 2021