Posted on by Californiacontrarian

Weather or Not

Whether or not Bernie was a nice guy was irrelevant, as he was homeless.

What was his story?

Bernie was 58 years old and had lived his entire life in Michigan. He was a productive member of society until he got fired from his railroad job. He was not old enough to receive his pension, and subsequently ran out of money. As he was estranged from his family and could no longer support himself, he decided that he was ready to die. He was an atheist, but a quick exit was not for him. For whatever reason, he wanted to die in a warm place, so he rented a car and drove to Southern California. He ended up in a strip mall in Chula Vista, just south of San Diego, and figured that he would just starve to death. However, after a few days in the strip mall’s parking lot, a woman who owned a taco shop noticed him living in his car, and started to feed him. Whether he would have died if not for the taco lady is a mute point. Bernie survived, and I subsequently met him at the soup-kitchen as he had gotten into the short term accommodations at St. Vincent de Paul. Whether he would stay in California or not, he was technically no longer homeless, as he now had a regular place to sleep.

Even though he had some issues with certain authority figures, he was a hard worker.

He was a nice guy, and I liked him

Out of the blue, one day he was gone! Possibly homeless again. Whether or not he had a disagreement with an “authority figure” . . . ???

 

Being homeless is defined as not having a fixed regular and adequate night time residence. Certainly when Bernie got here, he was homeless and living in his car.

It is estimated that there are over 500,000 homeless individuals in the U.S.A., and about 50% are over 50 years old – just like Bernie. In 2015, 21% of the nation’s homeless lived in California, and even worse about 1/3 of the chronically homeless live in California. Contrary to the national trend (a decrease of 11% from 2010- 2015), the number of homeless had increased by 1.6% in California between 2014 and 2015.

Why are there disproportionately so many homeless in California? The question is whether or not, there is something else that draws the homeless to California other than the weather.

Warm weather could not be the sole reason as homelessness decreased from 2007-2016 in Tampa, Atlanta, and Phoenix in a recent U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (H.U..D.) study.

After I asked myself whether or not there could be another reason that Democratic California has more than its share of the homeless, I saw some interesting data from the same H.U.D study about “Metros with the largest increase in homeless”, 2007-2016. Four metro areas in California had the “distinction” of being in the top ten spots. What was interesting was that the other six top spots were also metro areas that are predominately Democratic with liberal mayors, including Honolulu, Seattle, Washington D.C.., and New York City!

I am not sure whether Democratic metro areas are the cart or the horse, but the correlation of increased homelessness where the Democrats are in charge is certainly more than would be expected by chance alone.

 

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