Nick Kristof wants to know what's wrong with liberalism on the West Coast:
Centrist voters can reasonably ask: Why put liberals in charge nationally when the places where they have greatest control are plagued by homelessness, crime and dysfunction?
Without being too much of a Pollyanna, I think Kristof is being misled by the problems in his home state of Oregon—and the city of Portland in particular. Let's take these one by one.
First, homelessness. Yes, West Coast states have the highest homelessness rates in the country, but it's not because of liberal rule. Liberals run lots of states and nearly all big cities. It's because housing prices are super high on the West Coast:
West Coast states are right where you'd expect them to be. The exception is Oregon, which has a higher rate of homelessness than California even though housing is a third cheaper.
Second, crime. Oregon and Washington have lower violent crime rates than the US average. California's crime rate has always been higher, but it's reduced crime more than average since the 1992 peak:
Third, dysfunction. I don't quite know what this means, but I might as well just quote Kristof on this:
Democratic states enjoy a life expectancy two years longer than Republican states. Per capita G.D.P. in Democratic states is 29 percent higher than in G.O.P. states, and child poverty is lower. Education is generally better in blue states, with more kids graduating from high school and college. The gulf in well-being between blue states and red states is growing wider, not narrower.
That doesn't sound very dysfunctional.
Homelessness is a real problem here in California, but the source of the problem has nothing to do with liberal governance. It's the fact that the people of California are (a) extremely opposed to building dense new housing, and (b) extremely opposed to building homeless shelters anywhere near their own neighborhood. That's nothing to do with liberalism.
There's no question that lefty legislators can fall into purity traps that produce some ridiculous proposals. Most of them never become law, though, and the ones that do don't usually cause much trouble.
All of us have narrow views of things based on where we live and what we do, but I feel the same way about Kristof's lament as I do when conservatives try to paint California as a dystopian hellhole. I live here, and all you have to do is look around. Things are fine. Not perfect. Every state has some serious problems, and California is no exception. But overall we're fine, and nothing much has changed about that over the past half century.
And another thing causing homelessness is the vast number of houses of apartments being converted to AirBnB or VRBO or Pacaso. Those are homes no longer used for housing. Just being converted into mini hotels.
That could be. But I'll need to see some data on that.
You're either on to something, or you're on something.
This is just San Diego, but still staggering.
https://www.cbs8.com/video/news/local/509-d7c7da86-95fc-4380-b505-037767715ff7
Yeah, I get that the essence of capitalism is for resources to find their most profitable use, but short term rentals are a plague. I say that as someone who books them and will likely operate one via an ADU at my next house.
Build more hotels with kitchens and separate sleeping and living quarters. Also build more hotels where a whole family can stay and a lot of this problem goes away.
You beat me to posting that.
4% of beach community housing is estimated to be shot term rentals.
That is a lot of housing.
As someone who recently went to Cali on a holiday the inability to find hotel accommodation that was family friendly was wild.
What does a trip to Colombia have to do with housing in California?
😄😄Really, Cali?? Just stop.
People who don't live in California think it's cool to call it "Cali" so they sound like a native. Oops. Same thing with "San Fran" or "Frisco".
LL Cool J probably deserves a lot of the blame. His 1987 song "Going Back to Cali" (originally on the Less Than Zero soundtrack) gave people of a certain generation the idea that it was a cool thing to say.
LL Cool J was born and raised in New York.
As others have pointed out no one who actually lives in California calls it "Cali".
My daughter in law is from Hayward, and graduated from UCLA. She refers to herself as a Cali girl. Just sayin'
Many European cities are drastically restricting or even outlawing AirBnB and other short term rentals. Same reason,- its just aggravating the housing shortage.
Restrictive zoning that prevents construction is the real culprit here. AirBnB is often blamed, but if construction could keep pace with demand it wouldn't be an issue.
You really should read the blog https://www.fresheconomicthinking.com/ - which at great length points out why this is a myth. Why should somebody build when they will make more money by waiting for the price to go up. And also, in a sense, you are stealing from existing residents by changing the rules after they have paid a great sum of money to buy a house in a particular neighbourhood with particular zoning laws. There are some things you can do in the short term (clean-up brown field sites - invest in infrastructure to make other areas more attractive, but I see two policies that will really help (as against this neo-Liberal wish thinking):
1. Build public housing
2. UBI - which will enable people to live where they can afford to live, not just where they can find a job.
There are also some law changes related specifically to housing that would help. Penalties for housing left empty for more than a certain period (after which it could be forced to be let for public housing for instance). Limiting how long a property can be used for very short lets only. Lending rule changes (for instance banning lending without a down a payment of at least 10% of the loan amount, banning secondary mortgages), changes in tax treatment to reduce the inflationary effect of deductions for mortgages, increasing rates based on unimproved value of the land etc, etc.
That lending rule change would kick low income people from mortgages.
And me. I wouldn't have a home and would be poorer by more than the price of my home from just the amount rent is higher than my mortgage.
This is a good response, Jim!
No.
Those wouldn't exist if there wasn't demand for them. Sure, they displace people - but then you're not counting who's displaced from short-term housing. Or hotels that suddenly don't exist.
There's a demand for murder for hire.
I think weather is a factor in homelessness in the west. The relatively mild climates of the west coast are more tolerable than the extremes reached in the rest of the country. I realize it's not part of the root cause, but it does come into play. It likely attracts people from elsewhere, and it prolongs the time living outside is tolerable.
I've read that nine out of 10 people experiencing homelessness in CA are residents of the state. I guess that makes sense, since homeless people elsewhere would need money to relocate to CA, and once they get there they are still homeless.
And many of them are seniors, forced out of their apartments by rising rents.
And how do you define "residency" of someone who is homeless?
The problem with those statistics is that cities already contain 90% of the population and California contains a tenth of the nation.
So it would take alot of homeless from elsewhere to even budge those numbers.
If anything, I think you underestimate the weather factor. Just think about spending a Chicago or New York winter on the street. No matter how bad your life situation is, it would be worse with snow, ice, and cold for half the year.
Lived a few years in Menapolis. The number of street people thinned out considerable in winter.
In Chicago, they literally have laws against turning off the heat or evicting people in winter or kicking homeless off trains at night.
I think that's a factor - it's easier to make the decision to save on rent by living in your car in a mild climate than in a frigid one.
Also, I think the whole Bohemian, beatnik, hippie vibe on the West coast may make it culturally more acceptable to follow a vagabonding lifestyle.
The first two commenters left me with nothing to add. Carry on!
I am 100% convinced that short term rentals are the real problem. It's become more profitable to rent out on Airbnb than it is to rent to a long term tenant. More cities need to enact strict, as in draconian, limits on the number of properties that can be offered as short term rentals.
The rent's too damn low!
Or just regulate them as if they were hotels. The primary reason the "short term rental" market is so large is due to regulatory arbitrage.
There is only so much demand for short-term rentals. If we didn't have restrictive zoning laws preventing construction from keeping pace with demand, AirBnB would not be an issue here.
Instead of going after AirBnB hosts, loosen the zoning code.
> There is only so much demand for short-term rentals.
It's not just about demand though. If you can safely predict making 30% more on 50% occupancy for an STR, why would you do LTR at all?
1) Expenses running short term rentals are higher, too.
2) Short term rentals may have higher returns, but they also involve more risk.
Some of that risk is borne by neighbors who don't get a cut of the rent. There are reasons transient housing is regulated differently from regulated housing.
And raise the taxes on short term rentals. Make sure inefficient ones are pushed out of the market.
NYC has such a law which was strengthened recently. Of course, enforcement is going to always be a problem. When the vacancy rate is 1.5% with an inflexible demand even a one or two percent change in supply is going to make a big difference in price.
If there are a lot of AirBnBs in one area, like the touristy part of a city, the stores and services available will also change - good bye hardware store, hello souvenir shop. And strangers trooping in and out of your apartment building.
This doesn't just apply to an entire house or apartment being AirBnB-ed, but even one room that would otherwise be rented to a long term roommate.
Then the answer is to build more hotels, not banning short term rentals.
Which is the same answer as if we don't have enough homes.
Well, sounds like we need a Drum Chart showing the rate of homelessness in California, going back half a century.
I’ve been to California five times in 2000, 2009, 2012, 2018 and 2023 and it was by far and away much worse in 2023 - even compared to 2018. I went to a restaurant in Downtown San Diego in 2000, 2009 and 2023 and I don’t remember people multiple walking around having a mental health crisis in 2009 or 2000.
Oh, we're doing anecdotes? I was in Berkeley in 1990 and again in 2023. Exact same number of mental health crises were observable on the streets.
It's illegal to arrest people for homelessness now, and has been for about five years.
Before then, they could and would arrest you for sleeping in a public.
So of course it's more visible.
Judging from the chart, it has been rising since circa 2014.
Just like the rest of the country.
In the chart Kevin provided, the rest of the country looks wobbly flat.
Residential owner resistance to 'lower' (with respect to the current) income housing is to be expected everywhere. Much of housing price premiums are set by the 'Quality' of the schools, typically measured by the test scores. But test scores are more a measure of the parents and educational culture than of the schools themselves. If there is a perception that the prospective residents children are likely to do less well in the schools, there is a financial threat to current home owners.
And local government officials have significant concerns with less than market rate housing - much of the income stream that supports the government services is provided by the property tax. Housing developments that are going to increase the demand for services compared to the existing mix are going to stretch local government finances. Even market rate housing can cause problems if it is associated with a significant increase in young families and their needs.
The least cost approach is slow decay and decline.
Drifting OT, but this: "test scores are more a measure of the parents and educational culture than of the schools themselves." This is generally but not necessarily linked with income levels, and includes every minute of the child's life from birth. I live in a mostly immigrant mostly Chinese area of Brooklyn and have taught in multicultural middle and high school classrooms in San Francisco. General success and attitude about education from different racial/cultural groups was consistently obvious (but of course not universal). Asian kids from working class immigrant families often with not highly educated parents are generally prepped for learning from day one.
I saw the same thing when I was in school, except my academic peers were the children of Holacuast survivors. It why I did not mention income, there is a correlation, but the cultural issue dominates - in this case the money follows the culture, typically a generation later.
People pay a premium to live in areas with higher overall tax rates. The secret realtor code phrase is "good school district".
Yes, you live here, and you look around. Around Irvine. https://datausa.io/profile/geo/irvine-ca puts the 2022 median household income of Irvine at $122,948. https://www.statista.com/statistics/205778/median-household-income-in-california puts it at $85,300 for the state as a whole, putting Irvine 44% above the state as a whole. The city touts how it has the lowest violent crime rate for any city its size for something like 17 years running (as of a couple years ago) https://www.cityofirvine.org/news-media/news-article/irvine-safest-city-its-size-17th-year-0
I doubt you have your finger on the pulse of California as a whole any better from Irvine than I do from Sunnyvale.
I live in Los Altos Hills. I used to live in Mountain View. I think things are ok. Not a disaster. Sunnyvale, I expect, got completely hosed by covid as it pretty much destroyed Sunnyvale Town Center (which always seemed like a kind of out there idea, but it had to be tried, I guess), along with Valco (which yeah, is not in Sunnyvale).
I think you're quibbling. The West Coast is not a disaster. California is not a hellhole. We have a lot more homeless than other places, because of house prices and climate. We also have better weather, and higher incomes, on average.
If I were to guess, there is a thing, or a set of things, that you want that you can't have while living here, either because of cost, or space or too many people, and that rubs you the wrong way. But that's just a guess.
It’s a culture problem. Lots of drug users. Lots of mental cases. Lots of criminals.
Naive liberals, bless their hearts, really don’t understand evil. Addiction is a disease, I suppose, but when they victimize innocent people, who cares? To hell with them. There really are bad and violent people. They aren’t interested in your compassion. They are content to screw you over. Don’t be Naive.
Well, that describes literally every place in the US. Don't be Naive.
Overall Rank State Total Score Drug Use & Addiction Rank Law Enforcement Rank Drug Health Issues & Rehab Rank
1 New Mexico 69.89 1 13 2
2 West Virginia 63.56 5 3 18
3 Nevada 56.93 11 29 1
4 District of Columbia 56.61 3 31 3
5 Colorado 56.46 16 4 17
6 Missouri 55.93 19 6 8
7 Louisiana 55.74 4 23 10
8 Arkansas 54.67 24 2 30
9 Oklahoma 53.65 12 27 4
10 Michigan 51.64 17 16 11
11 Alaska 51.33 2 46 5
12 Kentucky 50.00 8 8 50
13 Indiana 49.25 20 11 35
14 Tennessee 48.69 7 25 37
15 Wyoming 48.52 42 1 24
16 Mississippi 48.48 22 22 15
17 Vermont 47.89 6 45 13
18 Oregon 47.36 10 47 9
19 Kansas 45.97 27 24 14
20 Arizona 45.63 13 37 20
21 Rhode Island 45.44 18 42 6
22 Maine 44.81 9 43 27
23 Massachusetts 43.41 28 21 31
24 Pennsylvania 43.30 30 7 47
25 Delaware 42.23 21 39 23
26 Montana 42.17 26 36 19
27 Ohio 42.09 14 35 42
28 Georgia 41.93 34 32 7
29 Illinois 41.71 32 19 41
30 New York 41.36 36 18 32
31 Washington 41.22 15 49 26
32 Wisconsin 41.07 40 10 36
33 Texas 38.98 49 12 16
34 South Dakota 38.74 47 9 28
35 South Carolina 38.72 23 50 22
36 New Jersey 38.54 44 20 29
37 California 38.40 33 34 25
38 Alabama 38.23 25 51 12
39 North Carolina 37.92 29 26 48
40 North Dakota 37.73 50 5 34
40 Virginia 37.73 41 17 43
42 New Hampshire 36.25 39 14 51
43 Iowa 33.79 45 30 21
44 Idaho 33.64 43 28 40
45 Minnesota 33.46 38 38 38
46 Connecticut 33.19 35 41 45
47 Maryland 33.11 31 44 46
48 Florida 32.89 37 40 44
49 Nebraska 30.87 51 15 39
50 Utah 29.52 48 33 33
51 Hawaii 24.08 46 48 49
https://wallethub.com/edu/drug-use-by-state/35150
CA is 37th.
Yeah, California is FILLED with really bright people. Look at all the "knowledge industries" located there.
They are, in fact, bright enough to sell pot and psychedelics to Red State "consumers". As the stats show, contrary to everyone's image of Flower Power San Francusco, Californians work hard to stay there.
You remind me of an observation that a prof new to Stanford made to us grad students. "On the East Coast [where he hailed from], students were always very publicly studying. At Stanford, you don't let anybody see you study."
I think this is a valid observation of cultural differences, which amount less to "East Coasters work harder" and more to "East Coasters want everyone to know how hard they work".
In saying it's a culture problem, Justin is correct. Way too many people respond reflexively to people they disagree with by saying, in effect, "I'm right, you're wrong, and this conversation is over." They're also naive. They also tend to project. For example, they think people who aren't naive are naive.
I was thinking of Kristoff’s essay about a group that provided bail money to a guy who subsequently committed murder. Were they naive? I think so.
“Adan was charged with murder — no bail this time — and the incident prompted soul-searching in Portland. But perhaps not enough. A well-meaning effort to help people of color may have cost the life of a woman of color.”
I have zero influence in this world. But when people do things which backfire, it makes me wonder too.
Anyway… several mass shootings this weekend outside of California so… everything is fine. Crime is down. Nothing to see here. It’s a shame about that little kid shot in the head in Michigan. Hope he comes out ok.
It’s ok for rich sociopaths who can afford it to get out on bail, just not poor sociopaths.
Do I have that right?
So people who commit crimes - such as falsifying business records in order to coverup payments of hush money to a porn star - do not deserve a second chance, and nobody should ever give such a person a moment of their attention?
Is that what you're saying?
Why should we listen to the guy who consistently posts misleading conservative memes?
In the 2022 Multnomah County (Portland metro) point in time count, over 3/4 of the houseless who answered the Q about their length of residence in the county, were actually not from the county. [1] Anecdotally, of the handful of houseless people I've talked to over the decades, all were from elsewhere and some traveled up and down the coast.
1 - https://multco-web7-psh-files-usw2.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2022%20Point%20In%20Time%20Report%20-%20Full.pdf
Nicholas Kristof should go back to NY. Yeah, Portland has its problems, but the majority of west coasters, including me, thank our lucky stars we live in a blue bubble. Does Kristoff really think the MAGA states are better run? If so, he is a bigger fool than I thought. Meanwhile the government of Florida, tied for the lowest average elevation among all the states, continues to deny global climate change and the resultant rise in sea-level and increase in hurricane intensity.
I personally think he should have to live in a red state like Texas or Florida where things are run much better. In all fairness, however, he does work for a very conservative, Trump supporting newspaper. And I’m sure that he wants to fit in.
Your definition of "Trump supporting" seems a little creative to me.
The NYT suffers from some serious journalistic malpractice that helps enable Trump a lot of the time. But to say that it "supports Trump" seems to me to stretch the truth more than just a little, not dissimilarly to some of the NYT's worst practices.
In that it enables him and refuses to report when it matters is kinda yeah, Trump-supporting.
If these didn't quash reporting on Santos or Trump, they wouldn't have gotten elected in the first place.
He's not saying that at all. His point is that by the very metrics that liberals/progressives/democrats put forward to define progress, west coast states don't do very well.
Do they do better than southern red states? In just about every way (except homelessness, which may have other causes).
Do they do better than other blue states? Not when it comes to homelessness or housing, and somewhat anecdotally, "a sense of civic disorder".
Best hope it isn't a bubble. Bubbles burst. Especially when they are inflated too large.
Kristoff is a joke, getting played by a Cambodian con woman about his signature issue of sex trafficking should have ended his career. But NY Times columnist has the job security of College Football coach, no matter how bad at you are someone is ready to hire you.
His campaign for Governor was the typical “all the politicians are wrong, only us real people get it” nonsense, when pressed on what his policies would be they were exactly the same as every other mainstream Democrats, but because he is Nick Kristoff man of the people they are magically better.
We are nearly 2 generations into the ever growing media campaign to smear blue America and the NYT has joined the movement. Kristof knows his editors and executives want this kind of red meat. It doesnt have to make sense. It never does. Thats not the point.
> extremely opposed to building dense new housing
I don't believe you. How about a graph?
And while you're at it, maybe you could point to the plans that have been developed to increase the water supply and improve transportation?
Density is increasing. Most new housing development is multi-family housing. Developers choose what to build, and they build for the top end of the market.
There are about 2.5m houses in the bay area. We need to build on the order of 100,000 per year (4% growth), not 25,000 per year (1% growth), for the next 10 years to work our way out of our hole. Over the next 10 years, we need to increase housing by 50%. We need to fundamentally redesign and rebuild our core urban infrastructure.
Just putting up some condos in a residential neighborhood usually doesn't cause a huge ruckus, especially if they're higher-end ones that will attract the "right kind of people." But mention Section 8 or "transitional housing" and you'll run into a buzzsaw of protest and resistance the likes of which you've never seen.
We need housing, yes, but we need housing that will rent to those with drug / violent crime convictions or a sexual abuse history. That is all knowable and no landlord in their right mind would rent to folks with these histories. Especially where housing is limited, landlords will avoid these people and they end up on the streets. Having been a landlord, and a long term tenant who lived next to drug users for awhile, I cannot blame anyone who takes this approach.
Yeah, ending up with a tenant esp with untreated mental illness or drug problems is a landlord's worst nightmare. Once they're in, evicting them is hard, and you'll lose other good tenants in the meantime who don't want to be around that stuff, so you do your best to screen them out to begin with. This is why cities and communities need transitional housing -- subsidized shelter with wrap-around mental health and substance abuse treatment services -- to help people get healthy and get back on their feet so regular landlords will be willing to rent to them again. But nobody wants halfway houses or transitional shelters near them, so we're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place on this.
Agreed on these points. Heck I used to be leery of a bankruptcy.
I've liked the voucher system for housing with the potential for easier expulsion by landlords and a potential tax write off.
The question that popped to my mind: How does Mr. Kristof define "centrist voter?" My guess is someone halfway between a Republican and a Democrat, but the problem in 2024 is a voter halfway between a MAGA Republican and a Democrat can't see the center because it's so far to the left it's over the horizon.
Question: What is a real centrist voter?
Answer: Someone who jumps to a conclusion and then refuses to exclude relevant evidence when challenging the assumptions underlying that conclusion.
Question: What is a not-centrist voter?
Answer: Someone who jumps to a conclusion, looks for confirming evidence, and ignores relevant disconfirming evidence. Thanks to Nick Kristof for a great example of how to be a not-centrist voter.
NIMBYism is a problem, but there's also the fact that environmental reviews and other high-cost regulations and fees make it all but impossible for private-sector builders to invest in anything but up-market apartments and homes in order to recoup their costs. The 2008 financial crisis basically brought new homebuilding to a complete standstill for almost 5 years. Then the pandemic sent existing home values skyrocketing on top of that. Catching up from both those shocks will take some tough compromises that neither liberals or conservatives will like -- fighting NIMBYism and local control on one hand, and making it easier (reforming zoning, codes, fees, environmental revies) for contractors to build affordable homes on the other.
NIMBYism and regulatory red tape are not different issues. The regulatory red tape is how NIMBYs keep things out of their neighborhoods.
That's NIMBYism, tho.
If the environmental reviews were checklists, and we made sure challenges that will be slapped down are dealt with by government officials, they wouldn't near be as long, expensive, or onerous.
For the anecdote pile: https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/thieves-steal-metal-los-angeles-6th-street-bridge-ribbon-of-light-goes-dark/
There appear to be two states with housing prices just as high or higher than Washington, with substantially lower rates of homelessness. What sets them apart?
How about the two other states with prices as high or higher than Oregon but hugely lower rates? (Three if you allow horseshoe close)
The population of Seattle grew over 20% between 2010 and 2020. Nearly 130,000 people moved into a city of just over 600,000, most of them with well-paying jobs. Of course we have a housing shortage! Rents have skyrockets, and people with lower incomes find it very difficult to secure stable housing.
We’re building like crazy, though, and investing in transit and open space. Out legislature even just effectively abolished single-family zoning.
Kristof didn’t mention any of that. Instead he took a cheap shot at trans youth. Kinda gross.
It does not seem clear that effectively banning single-family zoning is a good thing.
Yes, yes it is.
Single-family zoned areas don't produce enough tax revenue to support their infrastructure. They need more milea of everything to get to the people, and the people need to take more time to get to everything else.
The zoning means that villages can't organically grow denser housing as demand increases.
Seattle has been building tens of thousands of apartments. A lot of them were in South Lake Union, but more are being built in many other neighborhoods. I think they built over 6,000 last year and more or expected very year. There has been some upzoning with emphasis on upzoning near light rail stations. You can see the light rail line from I-5, and near each station you can see new construction.
Rents have still skyrocketed, but, with so many people moving into the area, they would have gone up a lot more without all that construction.
Nicholas Kristof, famously the guy who didn't know where he lived a couple years ago? If this guy hadn't already disqualified himself from a place at the People Who Know What They're Talking About table, this article where he rehashes the dumbest right-wing myths would do it.
In his column he even had the chutzpah to blame the Secretary of State for throwing him off the ballot (a decision the state Supreme Court upheld).
As someone who worked for the last competent mayor of Portland, Vera Katz, let me say that while housing prices are likely a primary cause of the high rate of homelessness on the West Coast, Kevin is wrong to suggest policies have had no impact. Let me offer two examples.
Multnomah County, where Portland is located, had a new jail with 500+ units that was never used as a jail, yet when it was suggested it be converted to supportive services housing (the way to go, not "shelters'), the leaders of the county and city agreed with activists who said it was outrageous to "stigmatize" the house-less by providing living space in a facility that had been intended as a jail, even though it had never been used as a jail.
Then, there was Washington High School, which the local school district had shuttered. If you've been to Portland, you know the McMenamim brothers specialize in converting old schools into boutique hotels. The school, which sits on 5 acres, could have been converted into hundreds of housing units. Hell, the school was across the street from the local St. Vincent DePaul Society homeless services so NIMBYism was not an issue. Yet the city decided the space had a higher public use if converted into a concert hall, a brew pub and a coffee shop because Portland certainly does not have enough of those.
Kristoff may have overstated his case but let's not pretend that some faux-gressive policymakers in West Coast cities have not made some stupid decisions that have exacerbated the problem considerably.
Saying we shouldn't have a movie theater and old buildings because you'd rather have soviet-style housing blocks without pubs is not where I would've taken your argument.
Like, I kinda think we need both. The pub and movie theater create a new urban village that you can site more housing around. Pubs aren't going to complain about having apartments as neighbors.
Do not know about the West Coast, but the progressives/socialists running Chicago are certainly doing a bang up job trashing it these days.
Noted, you failed to cite anything.
Crime is down.
Unemployment is down.
Homelessness is up, but so are refugees both domestic and foreign... and is really a federal problem to solve.
So what did they trash?
There is zero way you follow what is going on here as it is apparent even
Gov. Pritzker knows the clowns are running Chicago at this point.
1. Public transportation is in shambles. Went to the Loop to the office today. Took 55 minutes on what used to take less than half the time. Head of CTA resorting to blaming racism for everyone and their mother looking to can his incompetent ass. Mayor won't do it. Mayor sought to appoint a crony who admitted
preferring to drive downtown and having no clue that public transit is facing a huge deficit given end of fed Covid funding. He withdrew, accusing his critics of racism.
2. Loop has ton of vacancies due to the lack of workers coming downtown. Ken Griffin isn't the only one who voted with his feet.
3. Ever talk to Chicago
cops? I do. They don't bother with paperwork on a lot of calls since they know the Progressive Husband Beater State's Attorney won't prosecute. The crime numbers are dubious.
4. The Progressive/Socialists have come out and said they want to destroy the actual good HS (some of the top in the nation) since they want to rasie funding for HS with 200 to 300 students left (that have been abandoned by those living near them because they stink). The legislature moved to stop them and the Progressives and Socialists have stepped back, for now. Springfield scoffed at the mayor for claiming the city schools were owed $1b when the CTU contract is up and no one trusts the Mayor to actually bargain with the union.
5. Migrants? They are being evicted from the shelters, when they are not brawling in Pritzker Park, after being welcomed by the mayor.
6. The doofus mayor wants the state to pay for a new Bears stadium. Pritzker has put the kibosh on that.
7. The mayor spent $35k on hairdressers and grooming during his campaign. Real man of the people.
8. The mayor and his Socialist cabal snuffed out ethics reform.
9. Mayor cut the size of the Pride parade without first telling the organizers.
I could go on. It is a clown show here. These people know nothing about actually governing.
New York City used to have a bum district, the Bowery, as in the song "They say such things / And they do strange things / On the Bow'ry! The Bow'ry!" It was a neighborhood full of drunks and derelicts. They spent their days buzzed or worse on the street, but they spent their nights in one of the flophouses. For a few bucks a night, one got a basic room, shared bathroom and a hard ass landlord who came down hard on anyone who caused trouble. I gather it has been gentrified since.
There used to be boarding houses, rooming houses and single room occupancy hotels, but these were all eliminated in a post-World War II push and since then by gentrification. A boarding house provided at least one meal a day,. A rooming house just provided a room. I noticed a couple of motels out where I live now have been converted to apartments. We're a tourist town, so I guess this compensates for a few AirBnBs.