All you ever hear about in Vancouver, Seattle or Portland are problems like homelessness and drugs, besides real estate. I’m assuming LA deals with the same stuff, just on a larger scale. Why don’t we hear the East Coast talking about these issues as much as the West Coast?
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climate, politics, governance, infrastructure
Homeless people are very mobile. The west coast winters are better.
There is a lot of homelessness out east too, it’s just a lot more out of sight, out of mind.
Well in the us they literally give homeless people one way tickets to California
If you have to live outside, it’s much easier where the weather isn’t as harsh. A winter in the northeastern US would likely not be survivable.
Part of it is culture. The West Coast has always been known to be more open minded towards drugs. It’s more socially acceptable than on the East Coast. The East Coast in general tends to lean more toward traditional values, while the West Coast is more progressive.
Another part is climate. You can “comfortably” live on the streets in LA, Sacramento, Portland, and Seattle, but try living on the streets on a cold January in NYC or Boston. Ain’t gonna happen.
But you know, if you go to NYC, Boston, Philly, DC, etc, you’re going to find plenty of homeless drug addicts.
> Why don’t we hear the East Coast talking about these issues as much as the West Coast?
Believe me, we discuss those issues plenty here.
I don’t know why you dont hear about it, because there’s plenty talked about homeless on the East Coast. Just depends on where you look for your news.
Weather. The West Coast is significantly warmer than the East Coast, especially during the winter.
San Francisco is on roughly the same latitude as Kansas City. In one of those cities, you can easily dip below freezing and get snowstorms. In the other, you can wear shorts in February and nobody would think you’re insane. (Just very tolerant of the cold.)
The ocean helps to moderate temperatures. In North America, the wind largely blows west to east. So on the West Coast, you have nice warm air being blown in from the Pacific. On the East Coast, you’ve got cold Midwestern and Canadian air blowing downward and outward. The ocean effect and also the gulfstream keeps the East Coast warmer than similar latitudes in the Midwest. But it doesn’t get as warm as on the West Coast.
Also, the Atlantic is generally colder than the Pacific overall. Not sure what role that plays though.
High rent tends to be correlated with higher levels of homelessness but local governance and policies also play a part. Some places like New York City actually have government run homeless shelters.
Red states literally buy one way tickets to west coast cities for their homeless.
Warmer on the west coast.
They don’t build enough. Once you get to the Rockies (and also in Texas) it’s just like a sea of single family homes. It comes in different flavors, Tucson is different from LA is different from Seattle, but it’s still the primary issue.
Homelessness correlates with housing affordability and rental vacancy rates. California, Seattle, and Vancouver have some of the most unaffordable housing in North America.
These places don’t necessarily have higher drug use rates than a lot of other US metros. But when people are unsheltered, that drug use becomes a lot more visible.
If you have to live outside somewhere, the weather is much nicer on the West Coast. Some areas of the country, living outside can literally be a death sentence. Some areas of the country get so cold in the winter that people would likely freeze to death.
The West Coast is generally more accepting of people, and many cities are fairly generous with their homeless populations.
Some red states will buy homeless people 1 way bus tickets to a West Coast city so they don’t have to keep dealing with them.
Lots of free stuff for homeless and drug addicts. Little to no restrictions. Places to do drugs “safely”.
Legislators in the three most populous counties believe that throwing more money at the problem is the answer.
Probably because of the better climate and social services and republican states literally put them on a bus to ship them away lol
Permissive government benefits is a large part of it.
Folks will say weather, and while that’s not completely irrelevant, it’s worth noting that places with nice weather but less free stuff (Florida, Arizona, Texas) don’t have nearly the homeless populations as the places you mention.
For instance, Seattle is just short of twice the size of Miami (almost 800k vs 450k).
Seattle has a homeless population 2,000% of Miami’s (over 16,000 versus around 900).
There are two types of homeless: locals who had a place and lost it and nomads who arrived homeless. The cost of housing on the west coast means the first group has a high barrier to getting out of homelessness. There are also a ton of homeless services. In major metro areas there are generally hot meals available 3 meals a day 365 days a year. However these services tend to be clustered together and drug use in those areas in prevalent. So once you are homeless relying on what some refer to as “the homeless industrial complex” you are more likely to be around hard drug/alcohol abuse (if drugs didn’t make you homeless already). Once you are battling addiction it’s nearly impossible to get off the street. Each of the areas on the west coast BC, WA, OR, CA have to some extent reduced or eliminated criminal penalties in the last few years for hard drug use and possession.
The west coast being more liberal mindset of live and let live has more tolerance for this. And it’s gotten more out of control since COVID.
For the second type the weather and other jurisdictions send people out west. The more services a city offers the more homeless it attracts. It’s a double edged sword. Mayors in California have recently been complaining about the suburbs sending all the homeless to the downtown cores of major cities.
I live in Southern California. I’ve been to each west coast city over the last 4 years. It literally gets worse each city you go north. In the CBD in Vancouver people shoot H up in public next to a nice office tower. It was wild visiting there and I felt deeply unsafe even compared to California.
Drugs come from Mexico. The West Coast states are also a lot less aggressive on drug enforcement, so it’s easy for smugglers to bring drugs straight up interstate 5 from Mexico to Canada. The cost of drugs goes up the farther you get from Mexico. They can be 2-10 times more expensive in like New York or Ottawa than in San Diego or LA.
Better weather
Liberal areas honestly.
I’m a liberal so this isn’t me bitching about liberals. It’s just true though at this point. West Coast has been more on the leading edge of accomodations for drug and homeless, plus California has weather advantage. Certain groups of people migrste to where they can live without as much interference.
Now I’m from East Coast USA, but I’ve been to all the lower 48 states. There is a lot of homeless addicts here in NYC and Philadelphia. It’s just brutal for winters. Check out Kensington Philadelphia. It rivals places like tenderloin district or Portland.
East Coast has the same issues.
Having had many vagabond, train hopping friends, a lot of them follow the growing season, and go to west coast areas that have mild winters.
Also from what I’ve seen east coast authorities treat migrants harsher on a general basis
New York has a right to shelter. California has no such right, and in fact, had many outright antagonistic laws to the homeless. And thus, far, far more of California’s homeless population is unsheltered. It’s such a legal mismatch you would think the ruling political parties were different between the two states.
Being unsheltered likely makes you far more vulnerable to crime, drugs, alcohol, violence, legally sanctioned harassment from police, poor health/sanitation, dwindling exit opportunities, social isolation/atomization, and deteriorating mental health largely due to the above.
Quite a bit of that has a social and political agenda to it. If you look at a map of where opiate overdoses are highest, it is the Appalachians and Ohio River valley: West Virginia, and parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee.
When opiates hit that area, there was a lot of stories about innocent older people (who are also white and rural) who got trapped into addiction.
But when opiates and drugs are covered in the Pacific Coast states, it is a matter of liberal permissiveness, etc.
Every city in the US has homeless people. They’re just reported more and tend to head for places that are warm.
It’s mostly weather, but there are a few other more minor things:
Fools flock to Cali.
Weaker drug laws.
Far less (low incomel) social mobility
Super high cost of living
Nicer to homeless people.
On the east coast they have more places to hide and be out of sight.
Sun.