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New Jersey jumps out (along with Connecticut) as being two of the relatively expensive states to score 'better' on this list. I don't think it's a coincidence that a) neither state has an expensive, flagship city (most of the wealth is in the suburbs) and b) they are both adjacent to NYC, which vacuums up everything from surrounding areas, including homelessness. Our numbers in Hoboken have been (optically, at least) increasing quite a bit over the past few years, but most of that is spillover from Manhattan as that has gotten pretty dangerous for the unhoused recently.
Vermont being #2.... doesn't surprise me. Burlington is similar in many ways to Portland, OR in that it attracts a certain lifestyle, and part of that manifests in homelessness. It also has quite a robust hard (and soft) drug culture, which doesn't help. Couple that with the explosion in real estate costs like everywhere else that's bucolic since COVID, and there you go. I believe the NY Times had an article on this exact issue in Burlington very recently, and it's discussed extensively in the VT sub.
Nothing? Of course it'll do something. A lot of homeless are on the edge based on pure economics, particularly those just hitting the streets. Of course even these people often fall into drugs and crime as a result.
Homelessness is a complex issue with a lot of factors, and duggies/insane are a big part.
We can say one thing with great certainty: Any simple answer is wrong.
New Jersey jumps out (along with Connecticut) as being two of the relatively expensive states to score 'better' on this list. I don't think it's a coincidence that a) neither state has an expensive, flagship city (most of the wealth is in the suburbs) and b) they are both adjacent to NYC, which vacuums up everything from surrounding areas, including homelessness. Our numbers in Hoboken have been (optically, at least) increasing quite a bit over the past few years, but most of that is spillover from Manhattan as that has gotten pretty dangerous for the unhoused recently.
Vermont being #2.... doesn't surprise me. Burlington is similar in many ways to Portland, OR in that it attracts a certain lifestyle, and part of that manifests in homelessness. It also has quite a robust hard (and soft) drug culture, which doesn't help. Couple that with the explosion in real estate costs like everywhere else that's bucolic since COVID, and there you go. I believe the NY Times had an article on this exact issue in Burlington very recently, and it's discussed extensively in the VT sub.
Vermont isn’t just Burlington. The heroin zombies are in all the larger towns.
Vermont has absurd public policy that has caused an enormous shortage of rental housing. The state school property tax taxes rental housing at the higher commercial rate. Environmental law makes is very expensive to permit apartments and can add years to the project or halt them completely. Plus there is an anti-subdivision law that makes house lots for single family homes really expensive. This makes housing extremely expensive.
Yep. Mississippi is just a very poor state all around, so not at all surprising that it has a high supplemental poverty rate. But it also has some the least expensive housing, which helps explain its low rate of homelessness. It's a lot easier to remain housed if one can split a 2 bed for around $750/month (https://www.rentdata.org/states/mississippi/2023) vs $2400 in California. Someone on SSDI can actually afford a roof over their head and have enough leftover for other essentials in MS, vs near impossible in CA. My point is that high housing costs result in higher rates of homelessness.
I'm from Tennessee.
The cost of living here is rapidly rising, much moreso than MS. TN may be higher income than MS, but against the COL, it's probably worse off.
Takeaway: The northeast has way more provisions, in their cities budgets, as a whole, than other regions.
"In New York and Philadelphia, for instance, most homeless people are not unsheltered, but rather reside in temporary shelter or transitional housing (94% and 82%, respectively) (Figure 1). In Chicago, most of the homeless population resides in either emergency shelter (46%) or transitional housing (20%), with 33% living unsheltered. Seattle is the stark outlier in the sample: Over 57% of its homeless population is living without shelter. These variations matter because a city like Seattle that is struggling with over half of its homeless population living unsheltered will require a different set of policies than a city like New York, whose “right to shelter” mandate has helped secure temporary shelter for most people experiencing homelessness.
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