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.
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.
“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.”
Elon Musk is actually bullet proof. Impervious to bullets. I guarantee it.
*Ymmv
He sure is!
So… You think people who are homeless are just lying about not having a home?
Can we check this fuckstick for brain worms or just if his brain looks like swiss cheese?
I think the idea is they are too lazy to work for rent. If they really wanted they would go to work and not be homeless anymore. And if they are not able to find any job, they can always do forced labor in a prison system. That’s how it was in the USSR. People in power really like this kind of a system
He doesn’t actually believe anything he espouses. He only says these things to further his goal of self enrichment to our detriment.
Would it even matter? We’re already gonna have a brainworm running the DHHS…
Maybe all these numbnuts are brainworms driving human meat suits.
Kind of like the “self-made billionaire.”
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.
Sounds like the kind of thing a tyrannical government would say.
How far up the ivory tower do you need to be to ignore homelessness by denying its existence?
It’s an old old myth. Ronald Reagan said that everyone who is homeless in America is by choice since there’s so many shelters and charities already. It’s incredibly out of touch, but today people like Musk brag about their ignorance.
I suggest to remedy what must clearly be a misunderstanding, we give him a deep and personal insight: Cut him off from all of his assets, give him nothing but a set of cheap clothes and kick him to the curb.
Of course, we’d need to make sure his billionaire buddies don’t help him, but maybe we can just enroll them in this experiment too.
Actually, they might just promise someone a reward once they get access to their funds again, so we need to make sure that this can’t influence the experiment. Maybe we could just seize the assets without giving them back? With their hard work, surely they can get back to where they were, pulling bootstraps and all.
Homelessness is a lie and propaganda? That’s news to all the homeless people I used to regularly interact with when I worked down town.
can you imagine how happy they will be? “How did I fall for this? I was really convinced I was homeless!”
“Have you tried living in house?”
Every action involves a reaction.
You cut taxes? What will be lost? This is not an exception.
Half million people that have literally nothing to lose (even a prison may be a safer place for them) is quite an army. Desperate people are famous for doing desperate things.
This will not end up well and not only for the homeless
I’m sure he recognizes this, but also recognizes that he won’t be on the first front of that particular fight.
Of course it’s a lie. With his money, he could end it overnight.
Where’s a Luigi when you need 'em.
Remember people Luigi didn’t do it and it’s very important that twelve people in either new york or Pennsylvania say the same. But if he did do it, which he absolutely didn’t, I think it was pretty [redacted] (not condoning it 👉👈 unless).
With the insane amount of support he’s gotten, I’ve little doubt there will be copycats attempting to gain their own bit of limelight. Things might get really interesting should they organize into terrorist groups like has happened in so many other countries. Then the US will be one of those “third world shitholes” Trump was complaining about in his first term.
Trump: Making America Galling Again
I’ve little doubt there will be copycats attempting to gain their own bit of limelight.
And this is what worries me. A lot. Because vigilantes get the wrong person all the time and some of them also don’t care if other people get killed. I’ve provided lots of links for this in the past, but it doesn’t seem to convince people that vigilantism can go very wrong in this case as well, so I’m not going to bother doing it again.
The idea that everyone going after a healthcare CEO will definitely hit their target and only their target is now apparently the consensus.
When he called them shitholes, I’m starting to think that might have been geopolitical tsundere.
It’s rather interesting to see trump falling for the same bullshit he feeds his devoted minions.
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…
