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.
Sir, you can’t sleep here.
“Didn’t you hear? I don’t exist.”
Is this a dead cat?
For someone that claims to be so data-driven, I’d be curious what data he is looking at here when he calls it a lie. I will say that it is factual that the US spends a lot of money on homelessness and we still have homelessness, but the existence of homelessness is not something I would call a lie.
If his data driven claims aren’t just complete bullshit, the data he is talking about tells him that saying this type of shit will get him something he wants. Whether homelessness is real doesn’t matter to him.
If his data driven claims are bullshit, he probably saw a homeless person who didn’t look exactly like a Hollywood movie homeless person so, per his tiny, tiny idiot brain, they must be faking homelessness.
He says it’s a lie because he thinks those people are just NPCs
He thinks everybody is a NPC, as do all sociopaths.
I think he is in a special group of sociopaths.
In a wraparound evil way they are providing housing for homeless.
Also known as concentration camps.
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 🇺🇸
“claiming advocacy groups profit from maintaining high homelessness rates.”
Uhhh . . . how? “You there! Go be homeless! I need to profit from your utter lack of income.”
Social workers making literally tens of thousand of dollars a year off of this. That’s enough to be rich according to people who make that much while eating a french fry.
He’s sadly got a bit of truth there.
I’ve heard it called the homeless industrial complex, groups get public sector funding to purchase necessities and camping equipment for distribution. Occasionally drop shipping it and paying themselves or some other double Irish maneuver.
Then the encampment gets bulldozed/ razed/ robbed/ flooded and its all destroyed along with any progress the unhoused have managed and all their belongings and reserves.
And they get handed new tents and socks and instant ramen etc.
Meanwhile the persons medical care from sleeping outside skyrockets occupying a large chunk of their discretionary time. As a huge obstacle to getting back on their feet.
So the government is paying someone to help them sleep outside, and paying for the consequences of them sleeping outside, and collecting no tax revenue.
Might as well just give them an apartment, if the cruelty wasn’t the point that is.
If those nefarious groups are profiting from high level of homelessness, nothing is stopping them from finding sheltered for the unhoused…
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.
Elon Musk is actually bullet proof. Impervious to bullets. I guarantee it.
*Ymmv
He sure is!
So… You think people who are homeless are just lying about not having a home?
Can we check this fuckstick for brain worms or just if his brain looks like swiss cheese?
It’s so much worse than that. From the article;
“Homeless is a misnomer. It implies that someone got a little bit behind on their mortgage, and if you just gave them a job, they’d be back on their feet,” he told former Fox News personality Tucker Carlson in October. “What you actually have are violent drug zombies with dead eyes, and needles and human feces on the street.”
Basically, it’s not the “homeless” part of “homeless people” he thinks is a lie.
This take is infuriating because it completely ignores the unobvious homeless (or unhoused). If homeless equates to “drug zombie,” then you can say shit like “this person chose to be homeless so they could do drugs” or “they deserve what they get because of drugs” or some other awful sentiment I can’t articulate. It completely erases homelessness because of bigotry, domestic abuse, low wages, lack of opportunity, etc.
And to top it off, Musk can literally afford to never go to the places where you’d most likely see his version of the homeless.
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
He doesn’t actually believe anything he espouses. He only says these things to further his goal of self enrichment to our detriment.
Would it even matter? We’re already gonna have a brainworm running the DHHS…
Maybe all these numbnuts are brainworms driving human meat suits.
Kind of like the “self-made billionaire.”
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.
How far up the ivory tower do you need to be to ignore homelessness by denying its existence?
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.
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.
can you imagine how happy they will be? “How did I fall for this? I was really convinced I was homeless!”
“Have you tried living in house?”
