cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/4116

From private prisons to health care scams, the attack on unhoused people is about exploitation, not safety.

From the Trump administration to Democrats in California, responses to the homeless crisis in the U.S. continue to ignore the main drivers of the problem and aim to make the unhoused magically disappear. Like so many of the faux social policies in the U.S., this one increasingly looks designed for big private players to profit off the disappearing.

Let’s first look at the main tenets of the U.S. response at both the state and federal level before examining how such ruthless policy offers opportunities for economic elites to cash in on the added layers of cruelty.

Trump’s July executive order frames the country’s homelessness crisis as the sole product of mental illness and drug addiction and helps make it easier to arrest and involuntarily commit the homeless. This is a continuation of a years-long effort by American elites to redirect attention away from the root causes of homelessness. According to a study from UCSF’s Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative last year (one of the deepest dives into California’s crisis in decades), the number one problem that is fueling the homelessness crisis is the increasing precariousness of the working poor.

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