During the Great Depression (1929 to 1933), 48 percent of the nation was homeless, living with relatives or in “shantytowns,” “Hoovervilles.” Today, between 47 and 52 percent of young adults are homeless, living with parents or shelters, a direct result of Biden’s radical overspending, energy and immigration policies, inflation, and high interest, turning America into a giant “Bidenville.”
If any issue will drive this election, it is the economy, which saw inflation hit nine percent in August 2022, interest set a 22-year record, and housing become utterly unaffordable. We are headed there again, as inflation again climbs, interest stays high, and affordable housing is nowhere.
Housing may seem secondary to food and gas prices, a good job, education, crime, drug abuse, or the open border, but in fact – it is primarily, affected by and affecting all those issues.
Over the last three years, first time in decades, inflation has stayed high not “transient,” as Treasury’s Yellen suggested. It is more like “permanent,” interest stuck where mortgages are impossible to afford, housing stock scarce, rentals owned by strapped landlords, hard to pay.
Put differently, median income – from Maine to California – does not support median rent, which means people have to find other ways to live, back with parents, friends, or in shelters. Incredibly, 40 to 60 percent of the homeless work, and yet just cannot make it. That is a crisis.
Now, as if this data were not enough, inflation is again climbing, up 3.5 percent in March, after up in February. Interest rates – on credit cards, national debt, and mortgages – are so high no one but cash buyers get homes. If rates fall, inflation will spike. With labor tight, inflation, and interest that high, builders are slow to restore housing stock. If interest gets any higher, forget it.
Bottom line: One of the big unseen issues of 2024 is unaffordable housing, which – like inflation – hits the young and old harder, is indirectly chewing up suburbia, and not just parents housing kids who have nowhere to go. Some 60 percent are concerned about it now.
Paralleling the rise in unaffordable housing and a shuddering economy, other issues matter – affecting and affected by unaffordable housing. Illegal aliens gobble up housing citizens need in places like Maine knocking veterans, working, and middle-class families out of the market.
Meantime, crime, drug trafficking, and mental health issues rise where housing becomes unaffordable, and education, public school attendance, tourism, and public confidence plummet.
As homelessness spreads and tent cities grow – Hoovervilles better named “Bidenvilles” – from Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, and Phoenix to DC, Houston, Boise, and everywhere – the combined effect of these influences accelerates social unease.
Like Democrats who learned late that defunding police creates insecurity, those who are now drawing illegal aliens, foreign drug traffickers, and overspending are learning, that boats with holes sink. The answer for some, rather shortsighted, is to outlaw homeless encampments as if a finger snap and “whoa, all the Bidenvilles dry up” … not quite.
Stepping back, how bad is the housing unaffordability crisis? Bad, driven by national errors. In eight (8) states really bad, driven by Democrats, with one-party rule in six, and influence in the other two.
The worst eight (8) states for affordable housing, thanks to Democrat governors, legislatures, attorneys general, and secretaries of state – are Maine, Washington State, Oregon, California, New York, Massachusetts, and Vermont (legislature Democrat, governor Republican), and Alaska (split government, unique landmass).
How bad is the housing crisis in those places? Take a look.
In Maine, homeless jumped by 112 percent from 2020 to 2022, doubling – while veteran homelessness shot up 130 percent and Democrats kept building for illegals. When does that kind of madness stop? Maine’s crisis deepened recently, with no end in sight under Democrat control.
Between 2022 and 2024, California saw homelessness jump five percent, Washington State 10 percent, Oregon 20 percent, and in all eight states, homelessness has exploded over 20 years.
So, are economic indicators worth tracking? Yes. Show a major slide? Yes. Likely to bring voters to the polls in 2024? Yes. But topping the list are unaffordable housing, the lost “American Dream,” and home ownership. If we do not get that back – restore hope – we will all live in “Bidenvilles.”
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.
