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.

  • Allonzee@lemmy.world
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    2 hours 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 🇺🇸

  • hector@sh.itjust.works
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    3 hours ago

    If those nefarious groups are profiting from high level of homelessness, nothing is stopping them from finding sheltered for the unhoused…

  • MonkeyBusiness@sh.itjust.works
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    4 hours ago

    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.

    • pftbest@sh.itjust.works
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      5 hours 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
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      5 hours 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
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      6 hours 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.

  • perestroika@lemm.ee
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    6 hours ago

    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.

    • SulaymanF@lemmy.world
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      9 hours ago

      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.

  • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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    10 hours ago

    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.

  • lennivelkant@discuss.tchncs.de
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    9 hours ago

    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.

    • assassinatedbyCIA@lemmy.world
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      10 hours ago

      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).

    • SanctimoniousApe@lemmings.world
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      11 hours ago

      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

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        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.

  • diffusive@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

    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

    • Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee
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      4 hours ago

      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…

  • asteriskeverything@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    “What you actually have are violent drug zombies with dead eyes, and needles and human feces on the street.”

    Yo this is the most cartoonish out-of-touch shit take I’ve see. In an election that accused a disenfranchised minority group of eating people’s pets!