The Daily Signal - How Progressive Policies Have Aggravated Homeless Crisis During COVID-19

Episode Date: May 6, 2020

The coronavirus crisis has taken a particular toll on the homeless community. Christopher Rufo, a documentary filmmaker and director of Discovery Institute's Center on Wealth and Poverty, joins the podcast to talk about how West Coast progressives have failed the homeless. He also discusses which, if any, areas in the country are handling the homeless crisis during coronavirus pandemic well, and what might happen if there is no change in policies on the west coast for the homeless. We also cover these stories: President Donald Trump sounds a warning note about state bailouts. Trump says an internal document from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that says coronavirus deaths are projected to reach 3,000 daily by June 1 didn't take mitigation efforts into account. Rep. John Ratcliffe, Trump’s pick to be the next director of national intelligence, said in his Senate hearing Tuesday that he will be independent in his work if confirmed.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Snap up Ancestry DNA's lowest price ever in our incredible cyber sale. With 50% off Ancestry DNA kits, it's the perfect time to help a loved one unwrap the past. And with their latest update, they'll discover their family origins like never before. With even more precise regions and new and exclusive features, their best gift, our lowest price. 50% off Ancestry DNA, only until December 2nd. Visit Ancestry.ca for more details. Terms apply. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Wednesday, May 6th.

I'm Virginia Allen. And I'm Rachel Dahl Judas. Coronavirus has had an impact on the homeless. Christopher Rufo, a documentary filmmaker, a contributing editor at Sydney Journal, and a research fellow at Discovery Institute's Center on Wealth, Poverty, and Morality, joins the podcast to talk about this impact of coronavirus and what can be done. Don't forget. If you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple

podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Now, under our top news. President Trump has made it clear that Congress should not bail out states. In a sit-down interview in the Oval Office on Monday, the president told the New York Post that, I think Congress is inclined to do a lot of things, but I don't think they're inclined to do bailouts. And he continued saying, it's not fair to the Republicans because all the states that need help, they're run by Democrats in every. every case. Florida is doing phenomenal. Texas is doing phenomenal. The Midwest is, you know, fantastic, very little debt. You look at Illinois, you look at New York, you look at California. You know, those three. There's tremendous debt there and many others. And he added,

I don't think the Republicans want to be in a position where they bail out states that are that have been mismanaged over a long period of time. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo responded to the president's remarks during a press briefing on Tuesday via CNBC. It's not just Democratic states that have an economic shortfall. Republican states have an economic shortfall. Well, it's the mismanagement of blue states for decades that they now want us to bail out. That's just not a fact. It is not a fact.

First of all, no Blue State was asking for a bailout before this coronavirus. I wasn't asking for anything from the federal government before the coronavirus. And by the way, the federal government wasn't giving New York anything for years. Everything they were doing was negative to New York. Then comes the coronavirus. our economy stops because we shut it down, now we have a $13 billion deficit because we stop the economy. So what we're asking, every state is asking, because of the coronavirus, we need financial help in restarting the economy. President Donald Trump says an internal document from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that was obtained by the New York Times, which says deaths from coronavirus are projected to reach 3,000 daily deaths by June 1st, wasn't accounting for mitigation efforts.

That report is a no mitigation report, and we are mitigating, Trump told reporters Tuesday per USA Today. He also said that Americans are going to be social distancing, they're going to be washing their hands, they're going to be. to be doing the things you're supposed to do. Dests are currently at 1,750 daily deaths. The New York Times reported Monday. Dr. Fauci will testify in front of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and pension committee on May 12th regarding the administration's handling of COVID-19. The House Appropriations Committee asked Fauci to testify in front of them today, but the request was declined. President Trump explained to reporters outside the White House on Tuesday why Dr. Fauci would not testify in front of the House committee per Fox business.

The House is set up. The House is a bunch of Trump haters. They put every Trump hater on the committee, the same old stuff. They frankly want our situation to be unsuccessful, which means death, which means death. And our situation is going to be very successful. The House has put on a committee and oversight. committee of Maxine Waters and Maloney and the same people. And it's just a setup. But Dr. Fauci will be testifying in front of the Senate. And he looks forward to doing that.

Congressman John Ratcliffe, who is President Trump's pick to be the Director of National Intelligence, said in his Senate hearing Tuesday that he will be independent in his work if confirmed. Whether you are talking about the president, whether you were talking about Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, anyone's views on what they want the intelligence to be will never impact the intelligence that I deliver. Never, Rockcliffe, the Texas Republican said, CNN reported. His hearing was the first held by the Senate under the new coronavirus social distancing rules. He also said that he never talked about the subject of loyalty when he was chosen for the role. Let me be very clear. Regardless of what anyone wants our intelligence to reflect, the intelligence

I provide, if confirmed, will not be impacted or altered as a result of outside influence. Bratcliffe said, political reported. A new Washington Post University of Maryland poll finds that many Americans are still leery of reopening the economy. One question on the survey asked the 1,05 participants if they thought stores, restaurants, and other businesses like gyms and gun shops in their state should reopen now. A majority of participants said businesses should not yet be allowed to reopen. 82% said movie theaters should not be allowed to reopen yet, and 74% oppose restaurants reopening.

But 56% of the participants did say that they feel comfortable shopping at a grocery store. Costco, Giant Eagle, and Kroger are among multiple grocery stores restricting the amount of meat customers can buy as stores continue to warn of meat shortages. Costco said Monday that, patrons can buy up to three meat items. Giant Eagle said customers can buy only two meat items. Wegman said it is limiting meat purchases to two for family. Kroger is also restricting purchases of meat and giant customers can buy two meat products per customer. The Washington Examiner reported. I do have one correction from yesterday's podcast. While GOP House members are asking Education Secretary Betsy DeVos for an investigation into China and its influence at American

colleges, they are not implying that China had an influence on American colleges' coronavirus research. Instead, noting China's attempts to squash COVID-19 research, the lawmakers are calling for a look at China's influence on American universities generally. Now, stay tuned for my conversation with Christopher Rufo, a documentary filmmaker about homelessness and the coronavirus crisis. We need standard bears in Washington, D.C. I'm so proud to work at the Heritage Foundation, where our mission is to have sensible solutions to every issue that arises in this nation. The coronavirus is no exception.

That's why the Heritage Foundation started the National Coronavirus Recovery Commission. The Commission's goal is to save lives, but also the livelihood of millions of Americans impacted by this virus. To do this, the Commission has released several recommendations to help our nation's leaders navigate us through this crisis and move toward a recovery. Log on to www.com.com to track the Commission's recommendations and to see what our recovery plan looks like. Again, that's www.com.com. We are joined today on the Daily Signal podcast by Christopher Rufo. He's a documentary filmmaker, contributing editor at City Journal and research fellow at Discovery Institute Center on Wealth, Poverty, and Morality. Christopher, it's great to have you on the Daily Signal podcast.

It's great to be with you. So, Chris, you've studied homelessness extensively and are homeless Americans at risk for coronavirus more so than others. And what about as well giving it to others? Yeah, there are actually two key vulnerabilities when you're thinking about coronavirus. and the homeless population. First is that public health experts are now saying that homeless shelters and homeless encampments are really one of the most dangerous vectors for transmission because within shelters, for example, it's very hard to maintain social distancing. People are living at very close quarters. And even in the outdoor illegal tent cities and encampments that

you'd find in cities like Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, because of the nature and culture of those encampments. What you're seeing and what I've seen on the streets the past few weeks is that people are not following any social distancing guidelines. There are open-air drug markets operating in the tenderloin in San Francisco, in Skid Row in Los Angeles, and you're seeing hundreds of people congregating in very close quarters without any countermeasures to prevent transmission. But the second key element is that if you look at the health dynamics of the homeless, they're actually medically more vulnerable because of pre-existing health conditions. According to a UCLA study that came out recently, among the unsheltered homeless, roughly

three quarters suffer from substance abuse disorders, mental health illnesses, and chronic physical conditions. So it's really a, not only a vector for transmission, but potentially could be devastating to the people who are already suffering from previous health conditions. Well, you recently had a piece in The Daily Signal of talking about how coronavirus exposes, how West Coast progressives have failed the homeless. How has this happened? You know, I think the biggest thing that's happened over the past 10 years, there's been a narrative that homelessness is predominantly a housing problem. But as we just talked about, there's actually a series of human problems that

contribute to homelessness and make it really hard for people to emerge from homelessness. And the two key problems are substance abuse and mental illness. We know from federal data as well as data from the state and local level that about three quarters of the people who are unsheltered have a substance abuse disorder or a mental illness. And progressives have really willfully ignored and denied these problems, but the coronavirus has really revealed them in full force. And we're even starting to see progressive leaders like the mayor of San Francisco, London breed, who came out just this week and said, you know, we can't just simply provide housing. It's a really difficult population to help because of substance abuse disorder, because of mental illness. And even though the city of

San Francisco has least hundreds and now thousands of hotel rooms, they're finding that these human challenges are really at the crux of the issue. So the coronavirus has really exposed something that we've known for a while, but the political class in progressive cities has been able to maintain denial for. And, you know, fortunately and unfortunately, they can no longer maintain that position. So, Chris, you had talked about, and briefly mentioned earlier, how these encampments on the West Coast in cities like Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, they did have a potential to basically become a tenderbox for infection. Has this happened now that we're, you know, just starting May, looking back to a few months ago, is this something that the West Coast is having to deal with

right now. You know, it is. And there's, there's really something that I don't think there's been any kind of definitive explanation for, but it actually delayed the kind of spread that they were fearing in homeless encampments for a few weeks. And as you know, the West Coast cities have actually emerged without huge problems like you've seen in New York. And for the first few weeks, as I was talking with people who work in some of the biggest shelters in West Coast cities, they said, hey, thankfully, we haven't had any big outbreaks. But that's That all changed about 10 days ago, about 14 days ago in Los Angeles, where we started seeing the first numbers of confirmed coronavirus outbreaks within homeless shelters.

And then what happened is that it spread very quickly, much like you've seen in nursing homes, another place where there's really close contact in a vulnerable population. You saw one homeless shelter in San Francisco where they, within a matter of days, went up to 100 infections. So the political leaders are faced with a really vexing political choice. The shelters that they've set up to kind of provide mass housing are now starting to see their first infections. But there's really no other good option. So instead of trying to quickly address this problem, political leaders now are essentially giving up.

In San Francisco, they're creating open parking lots where people can camp. There are currently actually, there are tents and kind of homeless encampments surrounding San Francisco City Hall on all sides. So it's really chaotic and it's not only a public health problem, but it's really metamorphosized into a very apparent and very serious political problem. Well, looking back, kind of how we got here, how would you say the West Coast homelessness response has complicated the current. coronavirus situation. The West Coast homelessness response has really created the conditions for this to be a problem in the first place. You know, West Coast cities are spending an absolutely enormous sum of money to address homelessness. According to latest data in Seattle and King County, it's more than a billion dollars a year. In the city and county of San Francisco, it's more than

a billion dollars a year. And in the city and county of Los Angeles, if you include both public and private spending, it's well over a billion dollars a year. So we're spending huge, of money, but what we've seen year after year after year are more people on the streets, more people addicted to drugs like heroin and methamphetamine, and more people who are suffering from mental illness are flocking to West Coast cities because of their permissive public policies. So while this seems like a new emerging crisis and a kind of emergency situation, West Coast leaders who have failed to meaningful address homelessness for now more than 20 years have really set up all of these conditions,

and they're really just manifesting themselves in this moment. But I think that when the coronavirus is over, it's time for West Coast voters and citizens and policymakers to really do a top-to-bottom audit of their current policies, figure out what contributed to this problem and this emergency, and then really go for a complete overhaul because what's happened hasn't worked, and it's really just set up this problem to continue in the future.

Well, is there any area in the country that is handling the homeless crisis during this coronavirus pandemic well? Yeah, I mean, I think certainly you see a huge disparity between different cities and different geographical regions and the number of infections. But if you really look to a city that I think has done a great job tackling homelessness, it's really Houston, Texas. And what Houston has done, again, Houston is a big city. It's an expensive city. Rents have gone up significantly in the past 10 years. On the surface, it has many of the same dynamics as other large cities and West Coast cities. But what Houston has done is they've adopted fundamentally different policies towards homelessness.

The city of Houston and Harris County in conjunction with federal government, they have built housing, they have built emergency shelters. They have created programs that are compassionate that really offer people help. But what they've done in addition to that that West Coast cities have failed to do is they've actually instituted a policy of responsibility and a policy of enforcement. So the rhetoric from Houston and really the policies of Houston have been, we're going to offer you a hand up. We're going to offer you compassion and help. But it's your responsibility to accept it, to accept housing, to accept services. And it's your responsibility to not camp on the streets or else we're going to. going to enforce the law. And I think that Houston's model of what I'm calling compassionate enforcement

is quite different than the model of unlimited permissiveness from Seattle or San Francisco or Los Angeles. And you see the results. Whereas the homeless population and city like Seattle has doubled in roughly the past 10 years, the city of Houston has been able to reduce it by more than half. So the outcomes tell the story. And if you work backwards to understand the policies, it's really the cities who have combined compassion with enforcement, with services and responsibility that have been able to make a big difference. And I think that's now paying dividends with the corona crisis. Well, thanks for sharing the insight. Bud's fee just had a piece out about how there are thousands of empty hotel rooms across the U.S. And basically, the piece was asking the question, why can't homeless people use? them through this time of quarantine. And my question to you is, why don't you think these hotel rooms, this availability, have been able to be utilized by the homeless? Is there a missed

opportunity here or is there another consideration that people should be looking at? Yeah. Well, you know, in fact, leaders in Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles have leased thousands upon thousands of hotel rooms in the past 60 days. But what they're finding is that it's not just a housing problem. It's actually very difficult to persuade people who are living on the streets, who are, you know, suffering from substance abuse disorders, suffering from mental illness, to persuade them to even accept the housing they found is very difficult. You have a large percentage of people who simply don't want to leave the streets. They've adopted this kind of, kind of adapted to a culture of street life, a culture of outdoor camping, and they don't want to go.

So that's the first problem. But the second problem is that once you move people who may have an addiction to heroin and methamphetamines who may be suffering from schizophrenia or bipolar disorder or may have a chronic and serious health condition, just moving them into a hotel room is actually not enough. Policymakers are finding that, you know, there's high risk of damage to property. There's high risk of drug dealers, pimps and other criminals moving into hotel complexes. And there's, still the problem of dealing with those other behavioral and social pathologies. So again, London Breed in San Francisco has actually admitted something that they have been denying for years. She said it's very hard to move this population that has such high rates of behavioral problems into hotel rooms without setting up a really vast social service apparatus. So the folks at BuzzFeed are operating on a very narrow logical grounds. They're saying there are people without homes and there are empty hotel rooms, one plus one equals two problem solved.

The problem is that what they haven't done is actually go and investigate the deeper problems, the deeper causes, and really the deeper challenges to adopting a policy like that, which frankly hasn't worked out very well in the past 60 days. Fox News also had an article out this week saying that hundreds of homeless tested positive for coronavirus in Denver and that shelter workers also ended up getting sick. think should be done in situations like this? What I've seen in the people that I've talked to is a tremendous amount of courage and compassion on behalf of shelter workers here in Seattle, Washington, when one of the largest homeless shelters at the Union Gospel Mission went into lockdown,

they had staff members volunteer to lock down with the homeless inside the shelter and really ride out a 14-day quarantine. So, you know, homeless shelter workers are really on the the front lines of dealing with a crucial challenge and they're putting themselves at risk to help the homeless. And I think it's our responsibility as a society and responsibility, and the responsibility of policymakers to try to rapidly create solutions so that in five years, 10 years, 20 years, we don't have to ask people to really put themselves at risk in this way. And I think that the only thing that can ultimately reverse course is adopting a policy of compassionate enforcement and really trying to create programs that can transform people's lives so we can not only move people off the streets,

but we can actually get them on the path towards self-sufficiency. That really should be the kind of guiding light, the load star for all of the policies that we're thinking about. not only during this time of the coronavirus emergency, but moving forward far into the future. Well, Chris, for in your piece, you wrote that once life returns to normal, citizens must hold the inept leadership of America's West Coast cities accountable for their actions. If they do not immediately change course, they will cause tremendous harm to those on the streets. So what might happen if there is no change in policies on the West Coast for the homeless? You know, we're seeing it already. I mean, we've seen it growing the past 10 years, and it's really just,

accelerated. And what you're seeing is the creation of an entirely new class of people that have been relegated to the streets that have been really enabled and normalized in their addictions. And then we're also casting out a large group of people suffering from severe mental illness through no fault of their own onto the streets. And what we're seeing the creation of now in Skid Row in Los Angeles, in the tenderloin in San Francisco and Pioneer Square in Seattle is we're seeing the resurgence of open-air drug markets. We're seeing now thousands of people sleeping on the streets, sleeping in tents, sleeping in packing crates. And there's no viable proposed solution to really end that kind of human misery. And in the larger socioeconomic perspective, I think what we're seeing

is the emergence of elite West Coast cities that are home to really the affluent and the indigent. You know, many of these cities are quickly losing their old middle class. And what we're seeing is either kind of progressive, tech-driven wealth at the top, and the really destitute and disordered and the homeless at the bottom. And I think that that is fundamentally counter to what we're trying to do. And the great irony is that the cities that have progressive leaders who have most kind of aggressively denounced inequality, are the same leaders who are creating the greatest inequality in the United States today. Well, as we close up, what would your word of advice be to city officials and others who do have a role to play and do have leadership in this area? What would you encourage them to do to help address this homelessness crisis?

You know, I would just remind everyone that local policies matter. There are state homelessness programs. There are significant, you know, multi-billion dollar funding. at the federal level, but ultimately these are all local problems, local challenges, and require local solutions. And what I would, you know, leave in people's minds is that you see even within the same region, you see cities that adopt different policies have different outcomes. And no matter what size city you are, no matter what kind of budget or resources you have as a city, you can take steps to intelligently address homelessness, get people off the streets,

and really disincentivize people from coming to your city, from camping in your city, from, you know, succumbing to addiction in your city. And city leaders should not be shy in adopting policies that protect, you know, average citizen and also insist on a certain amount of compassion and responsibility for those people who are experiencing homelessness. And one last thing. You do have a film coming out. Can you tell listeners quickly about it and where they can go to find it. Yeah, I spent five years exploring life in three forgotten American cities, Youngstown, Ohio, Memphis, Tennessee, and Stockton, California. And I'm really looking at these declining cities through the lens of families that are struggling to make it. And the city,

the film rather, is going to be broadcasting later this year on PBS. But it's now currently available at AmericaLostfilm.com. And for Daily Signal listeners, you know, they can actually watch the film for free in its entirety before it comes out on national PBS at AmericaLostfilm.com slash premiere. It's just AmericaLostfilm.com slash premiere. And it touches on a lot of these themes, the collapse of family, the kind of decline of work, meaningful work and stable work in these communities, and really the fraying of the social fabric that I think we're seeing throughout the American interior. Well, Chris, sir, thank you so much for joining us on the Daily Simililil. podcast. It's been a pleasure to have you. Thank you. And that will do it for today's episode.

Thank you for listening to The Daily Signal podcast. We do appreciate your patience as we report remotely during these weeks. Please be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or Spotify. And please leave us a review or a rating on Apple Podcasts and give us your feedback. Stay healthy and safe and we will be back with you all tomorrow. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members. of the Heritage Foundation. It is executive produced by Kate Shrinco and Rachel Del Judas. Sound design by Lauren Evans, Thalia Rampersad, Mark Geine, and John Pop.

For more information, visit DailySignal.com.