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Homelessness On Path To New Records Under Biden-Harris: Report

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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


As the economy remains one of the top issues among voters in the current presidential election, a dramatic rise in homelessness is on its way to breaking records under the Biden-Harris regime.

With President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris at the helm, the number of homeless Americans has continued to rise and is on pace to smash the record for the number of homeless people in the nation, The Wall Street Journal reported.

“The numbers come from more than 250 homeless-service organizations covering cities, metro areas and vast rural areas. They are meant to reflect homelessness as it existed on a single night early this year. The Journal’s count includes about 550,000 homeless people so far, up about 10% from what these places reported last year,” the report said.

“The trend thus far means the U.S. is likely to top the roughly 653,000 homeless people estimated in 2023—the highest number since the government started reporting comparable data in 2007.

“The final count will depend on outstanding data from places that haven’t yet divulged their 2024 numbers, especially New York City, which reported the highest count last year,” it said.

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Contributing to the rise is the migrant crisis and the illegal immigrants bussed from places like Texas to New York as well as the mental health crisis and fentanyl epidemic.

Another factor in the rise in homelessness is the rising price of homes and rent in the nation.

“It’s deeply unfortunate, but it’s not surprising,” Diane Yentel, who serves as the chief executive of the nonprofit National Low Income Housing Coalition, said to The Journal.

Sadly the numbers are still preliminary and there are anticipated to be undercounts on the current numbers, which were collected in January.

“About 70% of reports from around the U.S. that the Journal reviewed included higher numbers for 2024. Boston said its tally rose about 11%, fueled in part by a migrant surge in Massachusetts,” The Journal said.

“Excluding cities and areas that report separately, Massachusetts numbers jumped to nearly 12,100 from about 4,430 last year, reflecting in part migrants sheltered in hotels and motels there,” it said.

Higher homelessness numbers were reported by San Francisco and the Seattle area, along with Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and the Miami area while Milwaukee’s number decreased 16%.

A CNN poll taken immediately after the debate between Trump and Harris found that the percentage of voters who trust Trump more than Harris on the economy jumped from +16 percent to +20 percent.

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CNN’s Jake Tapper introduced the poll by saying to CNN political director David Chalian, “The first results of our instant poll of debate-watchers have just come in and David Chalian is going to join us now to break it all down. David, tell us more.”

“Yeah, Jake, and as you noted, this is a poll of debate watchers,” Chalian pointed out. “This is not a poll that represents the overall population, although in partisan breakdown it is pretty close to what the overall registered population looks like in the country.”

Later in the event, Chalian presented the results of a poll asking viewers which candidate, Trump or Harris, they trusted more on the economy. While Trump had a 16-point advantage over Harris before the debate (53%–37%), his lead had increased to 20% (55%–35%) during the discussion.

During the debate, Trump stated, “We’ve had a terrible economy because inflation has — which is really known as a country buster. It breaks up countries. We have inflation like very few people have ever seen before. Probably the worst in our nation’s history. … everybody knows I’m an open book. Everybody knows what I’m going to do. Cut taxes very substantially. And create a great economy like I did before. We had the greatest economy.”

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