| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Just I want to thank all of the companies that are here. | ||
| These are big names, great, great people. | ||
| Now you're doing something that's so important for our country, really for the world. | ||
| It's beyond our country, I suspect. | ||
| It's really for the world. | ||
| So just keep it up. | ||
| And you've hit new highs almost virtually every day for the last few months. | ||
| And that makes your job probably a little bit easier. | ||
| You're under very little stress. | ||
| But someday you might have a little bit, but you're not going to have much. | ||
| I think we're really going to great heights. | ||
| But I just want to thank everybody, political people and the teachers and the companies and all of our cabinet. | ||
| I even see Newt. | ||
| Do I see Newt? | ||
| I just see Newt. | ||
| Look at him. | ||
| He's such a handsome man. | ||
| He's a healthy man. | ||
| We don't have to do any tests in him. | ||
| But good to see you, Newt. | ||
| But I just want to thank everybody. | ||
| This is a very big undertaking and it's a very serious undertaking. | ||
| It's going to make a lot of people lead a much better life. | ||
| Thank you all very much for coming. | ||
| Appreciate it. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Can I call you by MSN? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Can we start? | ||
| At our table this morning is Michael Tanner. | ||
| He is the Social Mobility Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity here to talk about efforts to combat homelessness in the United States. | ||
| Mr. Tanner, thank you for being here. | ||
| I want to begin with President Trump's executive order on homelessness, where the White House wrote this, shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment will restore public order. | ||
| Surrendering our citizens and cities and citizens to disorder and fear is neither compassionate to the homeless nor other citizens. | ||
| My administration will take a new approach focused on protecting public safety. | ||
| Mr. Tanner, what did you make of this executive order? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, like so many of the president's executive orders, this is sort of a vague wish list for policy rather than a specific directive on exactly how things are going to take place. | |
| So a lot depends on the implementation and the details to follow. | ||
| But it's sort of a designer to help make it easier or to at least encourage the states to pursue the involuntary commitment of individuals who are mentally ill or suffering from substance abuse and are basically not able to care for themselves. | ||
| Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, the top-ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee in the House, had this to say about the executive order. | ||
| Let me be very clear. | ||
| Forcibly removing people from the streets and institutionalizing them is not just cruel and inhumane, but also blatantly ineffective. | ||
| Trump's order also undermines evidence-based solutions to addressing this crisis, is what she had to write, like housing first, and instead doubles down on the type of criminalization and policing that have consistently proven unsuccessful. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, we certainly don't want to criminalize homelessness and we don't want necessarily the police involved in forcing these mechanisms. | |
| But we should recognize that even folks on the left side of the spectrum from California like Governor Newsom or Scott Wiener from the legislature have said basically there's nothing compassionate about letting people die on the street because they are suffering from mental illness or substance abuse. | ||
| Now we're not talking about all homeless people. | ||
| We certainly want to build in safeguards to the system. | ||
| But certainly there are some people out there who are simply not capable of caring for themselves. | ||
| Well according to the government estimates, at least 653,000 Americans are experiencing homelessness in January of 2023. | ||
| We'll take your questions and your comments on homelessness in the United States here this morning with Michael Tanner. | ||
| If you live in the eastern central part of the country, dial in at 202-748-8000. | ||
| Mountain Pacific 202-748-8001. | ||
| And if you've experienced homelessness, we'd like to hear your story at 202-748-8002. | ||
| Remember, you can text instead of calling at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Michael Tanner, before we get to these calls, what leads to homelessness? | ||
| What are the factors? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, we should be careful not to try to lump all people who are experiencing homelessness into one single category. | |
| There are actually a variety. | ||
| The majority of people are people who simply can't afford housing for whatever reason, or they're experiencing a life crisis and they've ended up falling to the street because they can't find affordable housing or shelter. | ||
| And the other group that's out there is probably 20 to 40 percent, and those are people who have serious mental illness problems or their substance abuse problems that prevent them from taking the actions that would help get them off the street. | ||
| And these folks require very different looks, very different types of sets of solutions to deal with. | ||
| I just gave the numbers from the government on their estimates of how many Americans are homeless or suffering from homelessness in this country. | ||
| How does that compare to recent years and decades? | ||
| Is it getting worse? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It actually is. | |
| We are at some of the highest numbers that we've seen in a long time. | ||
| So basically, homelessness has gotten worse in America over the last several years. | ||
| Some of that has to do with COVID, some of it has to do with rising cost of housing, but there's basically a lot of people on the street than there used to be. | ||
| What about the current price of housing has led to this situation? | ||
| I mean, how big of a factor is that in the rise of homelessness? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's a surprisingly big proportion of this. | |
| There's been studies out there that show that for every 1% increase in rents, you get about a 1% increase in the number of people on the street. | ||
| And especially in areas where most homelessness occurs, about half of all unhoused homeless are in California, for example, which is one of the most expensive housing markets out there. | ||
| When I did some work out there and met with many people who were experiencing homelessness, I met people who were certainly employed, teachers, government workers, even emergency room nurse who were basically living out of their cars because they couldn't find apartments. | ||
| When an apartment, you know, average apartment in San Francisco costs some $3,000 or so for a one-bedroom apartment, it's very difficult if you encounter some sort of temporary interruption in your income or a problem of that nature. | ||
| So what are cities' governors, I mean, who is in charge of homelessness policy? | ||
| Is it the mayor or is it the governor of the state? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it depends on state laws. | |
| But basically the person who's going to have the skin in the game and be most dealing with it's going to be the mayor, essentially, the city councils in these areas. | ||
| Certainly there can be funds from the state government and certainly they can pass some requirements and some laws both to increase the housing supply and also to deal with people who have mental illness issues. | ||
| What are some laws that are being passed in recent years as the numbers have risen? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, for example, California has taken steps in recent years to try to lower the cost of housing to basically deal with a lot of the zoning issues, restrictionary, exclusionary zoning and other issues that prevents new houses from being built, new apartments from being built, gives supply and demand problem that drives up the cost of houses and apartments in those communities. | |
| So they've made it easier to build houses and that's a good step in the right direction. | ||
| They also created in California something called a conservancy court, which is basically not widely implemented yet, but the goal is to be able to make sure you're protecting the rights of homeless individuals and at the same time permit the imposition of some sort of treatment plan on those people who are unable to make decisions for appreciate the decisions for themselves. | ||
| We're talking about homelessness in the United States this morning. | ||
| Michael Tanner is our guest related to this conversation. | ||
| And what Mr. Tanner was just speaking about is this headline in the Washington Post: Senators make rare bipartisan effort on housing package. | ||
| After the unlikely duo of Senator Tim Scott and Elizabeth Warren, Republican of South Carolina and Democrat of Massachusetts, teamed up to write the measure, it passed unanimously out of the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday. | ||
| Excuse me. | ||
| Lawmakers stress the urgency of the nation's housing crisis as they come together to move the package forward. | ||
| What do you know about this package? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it's largely symbolic, again, because most of the laws that block the construction of new housing are at the local level. | |
| They have to do with individual, you know, local zoning ordinances, exclusionary zoning, things of that nature. | ||
| But there are certainly some steps that the federal government can do to encourage states to make changes. | ||
| And hopefully this package will do something to that effect. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, thank you very much for jumping in there as I get a drink of water. | ||
| We'll go to Laverne, who's in South Carolina. | ||
| Experience with homelessness. | ||
| Laverne, welcome to the conversation. | ||
| Tell us your story. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Laverne in South Carolina. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning. | |
| Hello. | ||
| Laverne, I'm going to move on to Janetta, who's in Granite Falls, Washington. | ||
| Janetta, good morning. | ||
| Welcome to the conversation on homelessness. | ||
| What's your question or comment? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for taking my call. | |
| First of all, I was, for the past year, I was sort of facing homelessness myself. | ||
| And my situation has pretty much worked out, thank God. | ||
| But it was a terrifying experience. | ||
| And the only reason that I was facing homelessness was I've rented the same place for 30 years, and all of a sudden things changed. | ||
| But I don't make enough on Social Security to cover the rents now, which is a real problem in this state. | ||
| It's very expensive living here. | ||
| But my question for the gentleman there is, in hearing about this executive order, what is going to happen to these people if they're rounded up? | ||
| Because I did a little research myself and there are no facilities available. | ||
| They're all full. | ||
| The jails couldn't absorb the overflow because they're full too. | ||
| And especially with all these cuts that are going on, budget cuts, where are these people going to go and what's going to happen to them? | ||
| And as somebody who is facing living on the street, I got to tell you, it's a terrifying, terrifying thought, especially for somebody like myself who's worked all my life. | ||
| And the only reason that I was facing it was because I didn't make enough money. | ||
| So I guess I'll leave it there unless you have any questions. | ||
| No, you raise a huge point. | ||
| And the executive order does direct the government to see if any of the federal resources can be made available, but there aren't a great many federal resources available for this either. | ||
| And we know that in states like California, the substance abuse waiting list for treatment is enormous. | ||
| We know there's not enough beds to handle all the homeless population on any given night. | ||
| So certainly localities and probably states as well are going to have to inject more resources into the problem. | ||
| You can't, you have to have someplace to put people if you're going to just go in and pick them up. | ||
| We'll go to John next in Florida. | ||
| John, good morning. | ||
| Question or comment on homelessness. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm not homeless, thank God, but I try to help the homeless. | ||
| I'm in Florida, in Hernando County, and the prices of real estate and rentals are very, very expensive. | ||
| The prices around where I live, I live in the manufactured home, the prices have tripled in the last 12 years. | ||
| And people getting like $1,000 on Social Security just can't cut it. | ||
| They usually try to get a bedroom in somebody's house. | ||
| But I know some people that are living in the woods in tents, and it's private property, then people come along and say, you've got to move out. | ||
| I know a woman living in a car with two dogs for the last year and a half. | ||
| And with this heat here, it's terrible. |