^{Wealth & Poverty Review} Covid-19 Exposes the Roots of the Homeless Crisis in our Cities

“The coronavirus has started to reveal some long standing truths about homelessness, about addiction, and about mental illness,” explains Christopher Rufo director of Discovery Institute’s Center on Wealth & Poverty.  “For the past decade, policy makers have largely avoided these questions, or, largely been in denial about the causes of homelessness.”

As people continue to socially distance and remain in their homes, homelessness runs rampant on the streets. Open air drug markets are flourishing, mental illness rages, and blatant public drug use has soared.

As these problems escalate and as some cities try and fail to give the homeless housing, public officials are being forced to acknowledge that homelessness cannot be boiled down to a lack of housing alone; instead, addiction, mental illness, and permissive public policies are the driving factors of the homelessness crisis facing west coast cities.

In this webinar, Rufo examines how the coronavirus has laid bare the role that addiction and mental illness plays in creating and perpetuating homelessness and reveals why cities like Seattle, San Francisco, and L.A. are descending into even greater chaos. He explores these root causes of the homeless crisis as well as what our response to the coronavirus pandemic reveals about the Left-Right divide. Instead of continuing to employ the same self-defeating progressive policies, Rufo outlines new, bold strategies to combat the issue.