Christopher Rufo has an article in the City Journal titled An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis: Opioids are fueling homelessness on the West Coast.
Progressive political activists allege that tech companies have inflated housing costs and forced middle-class people onto the streets. Declaring that "no two people living on Skid Row . . . ended up there for the same reasons," Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti, for his part, blames a housing shortage, stagnant wages, cuts to mental health services, domestic and sexual abuse, shortcomings in criminal justice, and a lack of resources for veterans. These factors may all have played a role, but the most pervasive cause of West Coast homelessness is clear: heroin, fentanyl, and synthetic opioids.
* * *West Coast cities are seeing a crime spike associated with homeless opioid addicts. In Seattle, police busted two sophisticated criminal rings engaged in "predatory drug dealing" in homeless encampments (they were found in possession of $20,000 in cash, heroin, firearms, knives, machetes, and a sword).* * *What are local governments doing to address this problem? To a large extent, they have adopted a strategy of deflection, obfuscation, and denial. In her #SeattleForAll public relations campaign, Mayor Jenny Durkan insists that only one in three homeless people struggle with substance abuse, understating the figures of her own police department as well as the city attorney, who has claimed that the real numbers, just for opioid addiction, rise to 80 percent of the unsheltered.* * *No matter how much local governments pour into affordable-housing projects, homeless opioid addicts--nearly all unemployed--will never be able to afford the rent in expensive West Coast cities. The first step in solving these intractable issues is to address the real problem: addiction is the common denominator for most of the homeless and must be confronted honestly if we have any hope of solving it.
This is absolutely, 100% correct. The homeless have joined other victim-identity groups which are immune from constructive criticism or impartial examination.
There are so many things wrong with this article it is hard to know where to start. First, it is premised on an "estimate" that the majority of homeless in Seattle are addicted to opioids. This is sourced to a civil complaint by King County against drug makers and others. That complaint contains no data to support the "estimate" that I could find. Then the article assumes that proportion would hold for the whole west coast, again with no data or other basis for the assumption.
Actual data from Oakland, based on the point in time survey which involves actual data collection, estimated 31% of homeless are drug addicted. 10% reported that substance abuse was the primary cause of homelessness while 58% reported it was money issues. This is in an important point because it highlights that often substance abuse is a result, not a cause of homelessness. https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/5a4d4c68a5f7f90001da7b5b/5aa973a08032ce175f68e568_09_Homeless%20Count%20and%20Survey%20Oakland%202017.pdf
None of this is to say that substance abuse is not a significant issues for people who do not have housing. It is. I was listening to SF mayor London Breed on the radio just this morning talking about the mental health and substance abuse programs that are part of the her strategy for addressing the problem, including a guardianship program. So the article is also wrong that nothing is being done to address the problem.
Finally, the suggestion in the article that the affordability problem is some invention of "Progressive political activists " is absurd. In 2012 70% of rental housing in the bay area was affordable on an income of $100,000. In 2018 it was 28%.
"For a family earning less than $64,000 — think two workers making $15 an hour — not a single neighborhood last year had an affordable median apartment rent. The cheapest option was in Vallejo, in a neighborhood with median rent of $1,602. But even that was out of reach for 35 percent of the region’s households."
https://extras.mercurynews.com/pricewepay/
Just a terrible article from start to finish, which is unfortunate because the problem is real. We need to have much better drug treatment policies to help people get off drugs. We have proven that prohibition will never stop people from using drugs. Treatment is the only viable solution.