Wealthy Fox Hosts LAUGH And LAUGH Over How *Silly* It Is To Help Unhoused People Find Homes

This is horrifying, even for Fox.

Nonprofits and government officials in California's Bay Area are hoping to help the region's 30,000 unhoused people find places to live, and the fine people of Fox News think that is just hilarious .

This week, the Mercury News reported on various efforts to house people, which include the city of Richmond partnering with the Rotary Club to pay landlords to rent to people without homes — private donations will pay their rent for a year — as well as non-profits asking people to open up spare rooms to unhoused college students or formerly incarcerated people, either for a stipend or out of the kindness of their hearts. The former is not a particularly new idea, as Housing Authorities across the nation have been doing that for decades .

Fox's "The Five" ran a segment on the initiatives last night titled "Liberal Solution: Let The Homeless Live With You," in which the whole group of them managed to say every possible horrible thing anyone can say about unhoused people in the span of about seven minutes.

It is ... astonishing. Honestly even for Fox, it's astonishing. Five extremely rich people cackling their faces off over efforts to help the homeless with absolutely no shame whatsoever. 

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Ignoring the fact that these are non-profits that are asking people to help out, The Five laughed and laughed at the idea of Jesse Watters inviting a homeless person to stay with him, "right next to Jesse Jr.'s crib," or anyone ever wanting to do that, because obviously all unhoused people are gross, before Watters exclaimed, "The government has quit! They've just said 'We can't do this anymore, you take 'em!"

Watters then went on about San Francisco's unofficial crack pipe distribution program, which he seemed to think was also very funny. The Right has been flipping out about "crack pipe distribution" all week, in light of erroneous claims that the Biden administration planned to use taxpayer money for a nationwide program. This is apparently very hilarious and absurd to people who have no idea why crack pipe distribution programs exist in the first place — to reduce the spread of hepatitis and HIV from broken crack pipes, which is in fact a pretty serious problem.

Then, we had Geraldo Rivera speaking glowingly of the time former New York Mayor Ed Koch bravely told the citizens of New York to just ignore homeless people and not give them money, on account of how they would just spend it on booze or drugs — noting that he believes this led to a decrease in the homeless population. Yes, either that or the fact that he implemented a "$5.1 billion program intended to build, preserve or rehabilitate 252,000 apartments or homes by 1996 and to move the homeless from squalid hotels and armories."

Then we had Jeanine Pirro, who searched and searched and couldn't figure out who is responsible for these initiatives (according to the easily Google-able article, a variety of nonprofits, along with Richmond Mayor Tom Butt), explained that she certainly would not house a homeless person, on account of the fact that they are always "taking bats to people."

"Maybe if you were fielding a baseball team, but not for a sleepover!" Watters said, which Geraldo Rivera found very amusing.

Dana Perino then somehow tried to connect this all to letting people in at the border, because what this conversation really needed was a healthy dose of xenophobia.

But the cake here was taken by Greg Gutfeld, who went on a rant about how unhoused people all actually want to be homeless, so affordable housing is not actually an issue and the stupid liberals are just pretending it's an issue. Gutfeld laughed off the idea that there were homeless families, claiming that you could count the number of homeless families on your hands. He must have very large hands because there are an average of 55,739 family households — an estimated 171,575 individuals — currently experiencing homelessness. That is 30 percent of the entire unhoused population.

He also laughed off the idea of unhoused children.

We've all seen the homeless situation. We've seen it up close. We don't need to pretend there are two million children down on their luck. These are not children, all right? These are men, many are criminal, many are mentally ill, many are drug addicts. That's a fact that you don't hear in these commissions on homelessness, right?

Actually, it's 2.5 million children that experience homelessness every year, not two million, and there are over 100,000 children who are unhoused on any given night in America. So no, that's not a fact, which is why you don't hear it in any studies on homelessness.

You brought up the idea — it's all about affordable housing. If you Google stuff on homelessness, that's the number one hit, it's about affordable housing. That is a lie. It has no effect on the transient population. If you do not contribute to society through work, the only affordable housing has to be free. It doesn't matter if it's $300 a month or $200, they're not going to pay.

It is pretty damned hard to get a job when you don't have a place to stay, when you don't have a place to shower, when you don't have clothes to wear, when you do not have money for transportation to get there, when you do not have a phone, etc.

The money for most homeless goes to drugs and alcohol. I know that's politically incorrect to say, but it's an unspeakable truth.

Because Greg Gutfeld thinks he'd be able to do homelessness sober?

Also, not only is it a "politically incorrect" thing to say, it's also a "literally incorrect" thing to say. While there is certainly a connection between homelessness and substance abuse (both as a cause and effect), it's not nearly as much as people think. Thirty-eight percent of unhoused people have a problem with alcohol, while about 26 percent have a problem with other drugs. That does not mean it is okay that they do not have places to live, that does not excuse the fact that they don't.

Geraldo brought up the idea, California has the most because of the climate. That's what you call a choice, right? It's preferable. So, many people prefer to be homeless. No rent, no food to buy, no bills, find a shelter, free meals, get drugs, sustainable lifestyle. And you know why it's sustainable, or you know the proof that it's sustainable? It's not shrinking. It's growing. It's growing because it's possible.

It's growing because it is getting increasingly expensive to live anywhere. Particularly in California, particularly in the Bay Area. The average rent in San Francisco is $3,244 a month. The living wage for one adult with zero children is $28 an hour — that is over $58,000 a year.

With exceptions being made for crust punks, rainbow family hippies, and those with serious mental health issues, no, people generally do not "prefer" to be homeless. It is not pleasant. People do what they can, by living in better climates or being in cities where they are more likely to be able to get help, but it's not pleasant. They're not doing it because they're lazy. It's a lot harder and more exhausting being an unhoused person than it is working at Fox News, cracking up about how funny it is that people have nowhere to live all day.

The idea that it's not enough affordable housing — that is true for people who are working, who are low income people. Yes, but they're not the homeless people. Do not be tricked into this.

Actually they are. About 40 percent of the unhoused population actually does have a job. But again, it is very, very hard to get a job when one does not have a home. It's also hard to get a home when one does not currently have a home, because few landlords are willing to take that kind of "chance." That, again, is why there are long-standing Housing Authority programs to recruit landlords to rent to indigent people and families. My parents did it in Massachusetts back in the '80s and '90s. These are good programs and they should be lauded, not laughed at.

People, not just Fox hosts, frequently feel the need to make up lies about unhoused people and impoverished people because otherwise it would be very hard to live with themselves, to live in this country. They have to say, "Oh, they're morally deficient in some way, so this is justified and not as horrific as it clearly is."

There have been myriad studies showing that the most effective and least expensive way to help unhoused people is to give them someplace to live. Now, it's hard to implement those programs because of people who watch Fox News and live in terror of being "tricked" into helping people who might be "lazy" (not that that's a dog whistle or anything), but that is the "unspeakable truth" that is, you know, an actual truth.

[ Media Matters ]

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