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Clinton Initiatives, Book Homeless Trusts, and Newsom's California homelessness disaster are part of the worldwide homelessness disaster. Ron Book has chaired the Miami-Dade Homeless Trust for over two decades while lobbying for a private prison company that profits from homeless arrests. The Clinton Global Initiative funded boutique supportive housing projects while the cities those initiatives called home blocked the zoning reforms that would have mattered. This disaster is a travesty of the Western world. The wealthiest nations in the world should never be housing homeless people in need of mental health and substance abuse treatment on the streets. Above you see a London scene; Portugal Street, WC2: Theatre Stone, the Peacock nearby, people lying on the pavement in one of the richest corners of London. The same picture exists in Los Angeles, Portland, and Gainesville, Florida. It is not mysterious. It is what you get when housing is scarce, asylums are closed without replacement beds, addiction and psychosis are treated as lifestyle, and the curb is allowed to be a waiting room.
Street counts are not "poverty with a blanket." London's CHAIN data continues to show mental health needs among about half of people seen rough sleeping and substance use needs among around four in ten. Relationship breakdown is a top reason new people lose their last home. Illness and the street then lock together. A soup kitchen doesn't fix that.
The institutions that once housed the sickest people were emptied—for good reasons, then for cheap ones. Drugs and civil-rights rulings made community care seem possible. The community beds, locked dual-diagnosis wards, and supported housing were never built at the scale of the closures. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was an indictment of abuse in hospitals. It was not a charter to leave untreated psychosis on a tourist pavement.
The American Split Is Not A Morality Play. It Is A Results Sheet.
HUD counted about 746,000 people homeless on a January 2025 night—the first national drop since 2016, after a record 2024. Chronic homelessness still hit a record. The drop was lumpy: New York and Illinois, after migrant-shelter spikes eased; California, unsheltered down off a huge base; twenty-eight states still up.
Rates:
New York, Oregon, Vermont, Hawaii, California, Washington, and Massachusetts rank at the top per 10,000 residents. These are expensive, mostly Democratic-run states. Mississippi and a band of cheaper Southern and Plains states rank at the bottom. Texas has a large raw count and a low rate (~9 per 10k) because it is huge and housing is cheaper. Florida's rate is in the mid-teens and falling. California and New York still hold a staggering share of the national headcount.
Unsheltered Share Is The Fork That Matters.
California ~64% outside; Oregon ~61%. New York ~4%; Massachusetts ~6%. January weather inflates warm-state street counts. Policy inflates them further. NYC's right-to-shelter fills buildings and empties some sidewalks without fixing rents. West Coast cities spent years treating tents as housing. Florida's 2026 PIT: total homelessness down about 10%, unsheltered down 25%, sheltered slightly up—the signature of a camping ban that moves people into beds or out of the official picture. Democrat-led Gainesville still wrestles with visible camps. Republican Ocala/Marion, next door, reports a smaller street count and discusses exits and public space.
Programs Exist In Both Colors.
Blue-state model: Housing First, billions (California's Homekey, HHAP, encampment grants, Medicaid housing waivers), tenant law, tight housing supply. Red-state model: statewide camping bans (Texas 2021, Florida HB 1365), less state cash per head, more enforcement, cheaper land. Houston cut homelessness sharply in the 2010s with Housing First and camp clearance under a Democratic mayor. That is the mix that works. Spending without rules is a press conference. Rules without beds are displacement.
Housing costs are the quiet majority of the "blue state" penalty. Those metros, on average, permit less housing and face larger estimated shortages. High rents create new homelessness faster than outreach can address it. That is not a slogan. It is why Texas can have more people and a lower rate than Oregon.
What "Permanent" Actually Requires
There is no law that abolishes human wreckage. There is a stack that makes street homelessness rare again—as it was in rich cities within living memory.
1. The Sidewalk Is Not Housing.
Ban unauthorized camping on streets, parks, and theatre doorways. Allow time-limited designated sites only with toilets, water, security, and a hard ban on drugs and alcohol. Give residents and businesses a fast civil action if the city will not enforce. Florida's model is the template; Houston showed the clearance-plus-placement version.
2. Build Ordinary Housing At Volume.
The chronic street population is the visible minority. The feeder system is eviction and rent. Upzone, speed permits, legalize small apartments and single-room occupancy, stop freezing housing-benefit caps below market. Without cheaper stock, every placement is replaced by a new arrival.
3. Rebuild Treatment That Can Hold Someone.
Serious mental illness and addiction are over-represented on the street. Fund locked and step-down dual-diagnosis beds so "community care" is not a slogan. Change civil-commitment rules so dangerousness and grave disability can be acted on before the third ambulance. Discharge from hospital or jail to a sidewalk is a system crime.
4. Housing With Conditions For The Sickest.
Permanent supportive housing for people who will take it and keep it. Transitional beds with sobriety and treatment rules for people who will not. Stop pretending an unconditional key ends methamphetamine psychosis.
5. Outreach That Can Say No.
Street teams should offer a bed tonight and a treatment slot, not an indefinite negotiation. After refusal plus public camping, the next step is citation, hold, or conservatorship—not another hygiene kit.
6. Measure Empty Blocks, Not Budgets.
Publish monthly unsheltered counts on the same downtown grids. If spending rises and the same corners stay occupied, the program failed. CoC grants and state dollars should follow exits and empty sidewalks, not process meetings.
7. Stop Discharging People Into Nothing.
Prison, psych ward, and foster care must have a named bed on the day of release. That single rule cuts a large slice of "new" rough sleeping.
Compassion that cannot close a tent becomes abandonment with better branding. Enforcement without a bed is cruelty with a badge. The permanent fix is both: no public camping, enough cheap housing, and enough treatment to keep the sickest people off the stone. London's West End and a California underpass are the same failure. Build the stack. Then keep it.
The numbers don't lie; Liberal Blue States have failed in their efforts with the homeless. Red states clearly have a long road to success; however, their leadership efforts are doing a much better job. The focus must be on the individuals, who are all unique; there is no one-size-fits-all, and a balance needs to be struck between those in need and the general public that is caught between political showboating and genuine, yet very dangerous, needy.
