Homelessness Is Not a "Blue City" Problem

A center-left think tank went viral for concluding in the aftermath of the 2024 election that Democrats “need to own the failures of Democratic governance in large cities”. Although the think tank doesn’t specify these governance issues, this is part of a larger and now very strong narrative that refers to homelessness and the impacts of encampments on local communities in Democratic areas. This has been a common post-2024 election autopsy from pundits mostly based out of the coasts: that Democratic-run cities with high homelessness and encampments are radicalizing housed citizens into voting against Democrats.

The empirical evidence is weak. There’s sufficient evidence that progressive, left-wing candidates performed worse than moderate, liberal candidates in federal elections. But Trump won mostly from less educated voters whose news sources are heavily social media based. The Trump vote didn’t dominate as severely in the places where issues like unsheltered homelessness are most acute.

In the Oakland Metropolitan area where I reside, Trump’s vote share had weak-to-very moderate correlation with our most prolific encampments. It may explain some small urban variance among non-white, non-degree holding areas of Oakland (note the relatively high 25% Trump support around the very Latino and Asian Fruitvale-San Antonio area; area contains a massive encampment) but these were still strongly blue areas in the 2024 election. It could be a correlation problem as areas with heavy encampments also tend to be more crime-heavy areas which may be the primary factor.

Something I’m imploring liberal writers to be conscious about is not falling for Republican framing on important issues. Liberals tend to be introspective to a self-defeating extent. The issues of San Francisco, Los Angeles, D.C., Seattle, and New York City are coastal city problems, not “Democratic problems.” Nearly all American major or notable cities are Democratic. I’m not sure why we’re glamorizing Republican-run areas implicitly either: red America is de-populating en-masse and most of the population growth Texas steals from California is to Democratic cities or purple suburbs. For some weird reason it's considered punching down for Democrats to ever shine spotlights on the low human developmental indices of Republican areas and states.

The problem with Democratic, coastal cities is that they’re usually popular and rich with jobs, and the local governments are bad if not antagonistic at accommodating the millions of people who want to move there.

It’s incontrovertible that blue states on the coasts have more homeless residents than red states and blue states inland. Most homeless people were formerly housed within the region they lost their housing in, which affirms that Democratic housing markets are at fault. However, there are clear exceptions: Virginia, Minnesota, and Illinois are blue states (yes, V.A. has a Republican governor, but so did California in the 2000s). New Mexico is on the lower end of homelessness. Is this about Democrats or is this about being close to the coast?