Trump and his billionaire allies are out of touch with a crisis facing more than 600,000 Americans, advocates tell Alex Woodward

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.

    • monotremata@lemmy.caEnglish
      0·
      27 days ago

      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.

      • derfunkatron@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        27 days ago

        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.

  • Allonzee@lemmy.world
    0·
    27 days ago

    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 🇺🇸

  • Queen HawlSera@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    27 days ago

    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.

    • andallthat@lemmy.world
      1·
      27 days ago

      can you imagine how happy they will be? “How did I fall for this? I was really convinced I was homeless!”

    • ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world
      0·
      28 days ago

      Instead of Jews, it’s Hispanics. Instead of gypsies, it’s the homeless. And instead of trans people…well that one is the same.

          • skulblaka@sh.itjust.works
            0·
            27 days ago

            But we do have people who can be accused of being Roma, followed by an explanation of why that is somehow bad.

            Objective truth no longer has a horse in this race.

            • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
              1·
              27 days ago

              Yeah but I don’t think most people in the US know what that is. It wouldn’t be useful to them. If they wanted to demonize someone, they’d call them addicts or illegal immigrants or something.

              • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
                1·
                27 days ago

                Most people in the US don’t even know the Roma consider ‘Gypsy’ to be a slur.

                They also don’t know that the same slur is used for Irish Travellers. Or that there are such a thing as Irish Travellers.

      • _core@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        27 days ago

        If you’re picking shitty people it doesn’t make you look good, it makes you look like a shitty person for picking shitty people.

  • lennivelkant@discuss.tchncs.de
    0·
    27 days ago

    I suggest to remedy what must clearly be a misunderstanding, we give him a deep and personal insight: Cut him off from all of his assets, give him nothing but a set of cheap clothes and kick him to the curb.

    Of course, we’d need to make sure his billionaire buddies don’t help him, but maybe we can just enroll them in this experiment too.

    Actually, they might just promise someone a reward once they get access to their funds again, so we need to make sure that this can’t influence the experiment. Maybe we could just seize the assets without giving them back? With their hard work, surely they can get back to where they were, pulling bootstraps and all.