Trump and his billionaire allies are out of touch with a crisis facing more than 600,000 Americans, advocates tell Alex Woodward

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.

  • M0oP0o@mander.xyz
    8·
    1 day ago

    Ah yes, it is a “life style” choice and all that jazz… Not at all the inevitable result of decades plus of poor governance/systemic failures.

  • ArchRecord@lemm.eeEnglish
    10·
    2 days ago

    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.

  • Allonzee@lemmy.world
    37·
    2 days ago

    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 costs.

    But that doesn’t send a message of fear.

    Herp derp Freedom 🇺🇸

    • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
      2·
      2 days ago

      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.

  • NutWrench@lemmy.mlEnglish
    301·
    2 days ago

    “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.”

    • frezik@midwest.social
      101·
      2 days ago

      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.

      • NutWrench@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        1 day ago

        Oooo. “Tens of thousands” you say? It almost sounds like keeping people from dying in the street should be a full-time job.

    • Alwaysnownevernotme@lemmy.world
      31·
      2 days ago

      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.

  • yarr@feddit.nlEnglish
    15·
    2 days ago

    For someone that claims to be so data-driven, I’d be curious what data he is looking at here when he calls it a lie. I will say that it is factual that the US spends a lot of money on homelessness and we still have homelessness, but the existence of homelessness is not something I would call a lie.

    • III@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      2 days ago

      If his data driven claims aren’t just complete bullshit, the data he is talking about tells him that saying this type of shit will get him something he wants. Whether homelessness is real doesn’t matter to him.

      If his data driven claims are bullshit, he probably saw a homeless person who didn’t look exactly like a Hollywood movie homeless person so, per his tiny, tiny idiot brain, they must be faking homelessness.

    • monotremata@lemmy.caEnglish
      15·
      2 days ago

      It’s so much worse than that. From the article;

      “Homeless is a misnomer. It implies that someone got a little bit behind on their mortgage, and if you just gave them a job, they’d be back on their feet,” he told former Fox News personality Tucker Carlson in October. “What you actually have are violent drug zombies with dead eyes, and needles and human feces on the street.”

      Basically, it’s not the “homeless” part of “homeless people” he thinks is a lie.

      • derfunkatron@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        This take is infuriating because it completely ignores the unobvious homeless (or unhoused). If homeless equates to “drug zombie,” then you can say shit like “this person chose to be homeless so they could do drugs” or “they deserve what they get because of drugs” or some other awful sentiment I can’t articulate. It completely erases homelessness because of bigotry, domestic abuse, low wages, lack of opportunity, etc.

        And to top it off, Musk can literally afford to never go to the places where you’d most likely see his version of the homeless.

    • pftbest@sh.itjust.works
      12·
      2 days ago

      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

    • ThrowawayOnLemmy@lemmy.world
      8·
      2 days ago

      He doesn’t actually believe anything he espouses. He only says these things to further his goal of self enrichment to our detriment.

    • klemptor@startrek.website
      2·
      2 days ago

      Would it even matter? We’re already gonna have a brainworm running the DHHS…

      Maybe all these numbnuts are brainworms driving human meat suits.

      • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
        101·
        2 days ago

        It’s also interesting to think about the level of artificial unemployment. In theory everyone could work… and a lot less hours, and we would have no scarcity.

        We would never do it but I have a theory that we could set aside 20T (less than 1 year of GDP) and it would be enough money to build everyone in the U.S. a house and provide free housing for everyone in America, without ever touching the initial investment, and setting aside 3% to assure if we keep inflation below 3% a year if would cover housing indefinitely. That’s based off the 2.5 people per household average, and building a new house every 30 years at a base price of $250,000. Which at mass production, would be the equivalent of a much more costly house. Could repurpose what we have to house people until everyone got moved in over a generation.

        What that does is free up ~$1400-$1900 dollars a month for the average household, and instead of having to stash money in savings over the worries of losing a job and becoming homeless (which stunts the economy), it incentivises people to go eat at a restaurant more often, have a kid they were worried about having, buy nicer things. All of which is spending money and boosting the economy. More kids… Less/near 0 homeless… and booming economy that will offset the original investment. Stress levels down, happiness levels up… which should also mean health issues should decrease.

        Who knows…

        (That’s over 2T a year being added back into the economy, also we don’t have to build all new, refurbish/keep older homes that people want works as well, figure out solutions that have less impact on the environment, and can plan more walkable, heathier towns when building them)

        • Pieisawesome@lemmy.world
          2·
          2 days ago

          GDP is not taxed revenue or availability of funds.

          Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the monetary value of all finished goods and services produced within a country during a specific period. (I used gen AI for this paragraph).

          According to the CBO, they expect to collect $4.864 trillion in taxes in 2025 (source: https://www.cbo.gov/topics/taxes ).

          Unless you are going to forcibly steal assets from companies (which would lead to amass exodus from the US economy and cause a massive depression) you’d never get 20 trillion.

          This idea is a nice thought, but impossible and not how the economy works.

        • in4aPenny@lemmy.world
          1·
          2 days ago

          Very nice idea, but that’s assuming the 1% give a fuck about helping people and not having an army of slaves to make everything they want. Why does money have to be involved in feeding or housing human beings?