How Authoritarians Abuse and Use the Homeless

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Next Comes What" - Episode: How Authoritarians Abuse and Use the Homeless

Podcast Information:

• Title: Next Comes What
• Host/Author: Andrea Pitzer
• Description: Author Andrea Pitzer explores lessons from the rise of strongmen globally to counteract figures like Donald Trump and his allies.
• Episode Title: How Authoritarians Abuse and Use the Homeless
• Release Date: January 10, 2025

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of Next Comes What, host Andrea Pitzer delves into the intricate relationship between authoritarian regimes and the exploitation of homeless populations. By examining historical precedents and contemporary policies in the United States, Pitzer illuminates how the marginalized are often scapegoated and manipulated to further authoritarian agendas. The episode serves as a poignant reminder of the persistent struggle against systemic abuses and offers insights into effective strategies for combating such injustices.

The Criminalization of Homelessness in America

Andrea Pitzer opens the discussion by highlighting recent legislative actions aimed at criminalizing homelessness. She references a Tennessee law passed in 2022 that transformed urban camping into a felony offense:

Andrea Pitzer [00:35]: "After Tennessee passed a law in 2022 making it a felony to camp and effectively to sleep outside on not just state-owned property, but all public property."

The episode underscores the Supreme Court's summer decision supporting this approach, effectively making it illegal to exist without housing across various jurisdictions:

Andrea Pitzer [01:03]: "In the wake of this decision supporting essentially criminalizing homelessness in the U.S., the court has more or less made it illegal to exist as a person outside without housing across time."

Justice Sonia Sotomayor's dissent is cited to emphasize the humanitarian concerns:

Andrea Pitzer [01:38]: "Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in her dissent that this constituted cruel and unusual punishment because in her words, sleep is a biological necessity, not a crime."

Grants Pass: A Case Study in Overcriminalization

The city of Grants Pass is presented as a microcosm of the nationwide issue:

Andrea Pitzer [02:52]: "In the city of Grants Pass jails and fines these people for sleeping anywhere in public at any time, including in their cars, if they use as little as a blanket to keep warm or a rolled-up shirt as a pillow."

Brian Goldstone, author of There is No Place for Us, provides statistical insights:

Brian Goldstone [02:38]: "Since the early 2000s, Grants Pass has more than doubled in size, but it hasn't doubled its affordable housing stock. The vacancy rate is less than 1%, meaning if you lose your apartment, it's basically impossible to find a new one."

The Escalating Crisis of Homelessness

Pitzer and Goldstone discuss the alarming rise in homelessness statistics:

Andrea Pitzer [02:52]: "A report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development came out not long ago showing a massive spike in homelessness in the US with over 700,000 individuals lacking housing entirely for families and children."

Goldstone adds depth to the numbers:

Brian Goldstone [03:30]: "Both of those were record increases in homelessness that we've seen this month."

Historical Exploitation of the Homeless by Authoritarian Regimes

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to historical parallels, illustrating how authoritarian leaders have historically targeted homeless populations to consolidate power. Pitzer references the use of concentration camps during and after World Wars I and II:

Andrea Pitzer [05:01]: "If you recall this global internment normalized, locking up innocent civilians."

A historian elaborates on the internment practices:

Historian [05:01]: "In the US approximately 6,000 German migrants, overwhelmingly men, were imprisoned in camps, and the government seized an estimated half a billion dollars in private property."

Further comparisons are drawn with Hungary's post-WWI camps and Mussolini's Italy:

Andrea Pitzer [07:06]: "In Cuba in 1931, newspapers reported that beggars were being swept from city streets and put into forced labor on farms... Mussolini adopted these kinds of camps. In Italy, Spain had followed his example."

The Nazi Regime and Homelessness

The episode delves into how the Nazi party initially targeted homeless individuals as part of their rise to power:

Holocaust Historian [08:16]: "In the beginning, the Nazi camps didn't look that different than other camp systems that had already developed..."

Pitzer connects this to contemporary practices:

Andrea Pitzer [09:08]: "First roundups of homeless people under Hitler began in 1933 at the dawn of the Nazi era."

The historian discusses the evolution of these camps into more sinister forms:

Holocaust Historian [10:17]: "When they realized they could do these mass arrests... the camp system was wildly expanded."

The Modern Housing Crisis as a Self-Fulfilling Nightmare

Goldstone’s analysis reveals that the homelessness crisis in America is not merely a byproduct of poverty but is intricately linked to economic prosperity and urban development strategies:

Brian Goldstone [17:08]: "It's so crucial to highlight the extent to which this, this crisis that continues to escalate in so many cities around the country is a product not of poverty, but a product of prosperity."

He cites Atlanta's urban revitalization as a catalyst for housing insecurity:

Brian Goldstone [17:08]: "In a city like Atlanta, there has been this remaking of urban space, this revitalization that has actually fueled the very insecurity I'm writing about..."

The Disproportionate Impact on Minority Communities

The discussion emphasizes how systemic housing policies have historically marginalized people of color, perpetuating cycles of homelessness:

Brian Goldstone [19:25]: "The Wikipedia version of homelessness in America tends to begin in the colonial period... I've been very compelled by the possibility of narrating homelessness, mass homelessness, especially in the US as actually having a precedent in the millions of newly emancipated people..."

In Atlanta, the statistics reveal a glaring racial disparity:

Brian Goldstone [21:02]: "The black population in Atlanta is something now it's under 50%. It used to be a majority black city, but the percentage of families in Atlanta who are experiencing homelessness, it's like 93% black."

Policy Critique and the Rejection of "Housing First"

Pitzer and Goldstone advocate for a paradigm shift in housing policy. They critique the Trump administration's stance against the "housing first" approach, which prioritizes stable shelter before addressing other issues like mental health or addiction:

Donald Trump [22:43]: "This strategy will be far better and also far less expensive than spending vast sums of taxpayer money to house the Homeless Project."

Goldstone contrasts this with successful implementations abroad:

Brian Goldstone [27:19]: "What both Finland and Vienna have done is created thousands of units of what they call social housing..."

Solutions and Grassroots Movements

The episode highlights the importance of local action and grassroots movements in addressing homelessness. Goldstone points to the emergence of tenant rights movements and local organizations as pivotal in driving change:

Brian Goldstone [29:28]: "One of the most hopeful developments in recent years... is the emergence of a powerful and vibrant tenants rights movement."

Pitzer encourages listeners to engage with these local efforts and emphasizes the potential for community-driven solutions:

Andrea Pitzer [30:29]: "Homelessness is one of those issues where local action to protect the vulnerable and adopt best practices can make a big difference."

The Danger of Authoritarian Tactics

Concluding the episode, Pitzer warns against the broader societal dangers of marginalizing vulnerable populations. She draws parallels between historical authoritarian tactics and current policies that seek to isolate and control the homeless:

Andrea Pitzer [31:35]: "We cannot let our communities be splintered... allowing any group to be isolated and removed from society is a danger to society itself."

Notable Quotes

• Andrea Pitzer [14:31]: "It's so much with us now. And if you live in a good sized town or certainly in a city, you're probably seeing it yourself."
• Brian Goldstone [15:19]: "What I'm trying to accomplish overall in including all of these details is to show the complexity of what it's like to experience this, to go through the kinds of... violence... inflicted on them by capitalism..."
• Brian Goldstone [27:19]: "What both Finland and Vienna have done is created thousands of units of what they call social housing."

Conclusion

Andrea Pitzer's episode serves as a critical examination of how homelessness is exploited by authoritarian figures to enact broader societal control. By intertwining historical contexts with present-day policies, the podcast underscores the urgent need for compassionate, systemic solutions. Next Comes What not only highlights the challenges but also empowers listeners with knowledge and avenues for activism, emphasizing that combating homelessness is integral to safeguarding democratic and humane societies.

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Resources Mentioned:

• There is No Place for Us by Brian Goldstone
• Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Reports
• Autonomous Tenants Union Network
• National Low Income Housing Coalition

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Support the Podcast: For more insights and to support Next Comes What, subscribe at AndreaPitzer.com and consider leaving a five-star review on your preferred podcast platform.

Transcript

[Andrea Pitzer]

You're listening to. Next comes what from Degenerate Art. Each week we'll look at one aspect of authoritarianism to figure out how we got where we are and how to fight back. This is Andrea Pitzer. Today we're talking about homelessness, the state of the unhoused in America today, and how this population has been punished and used as a trial balloon across history as a kind of precursor to commit more serious abuses against broader swaths of the population.

[Donald Trump]

We will ban urban camping wherever possible. Violators of these bans will be arrested.

[Andrea Pitzer]

After Tennessee passed a law in 2022 making it a felony to camp and effectively to sleep outside on not just state owned property, but all public property.

[Donald Trump]

We would then open up large parcels of inexpensive land.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The Supreme Court weighed in this summer on an Oregon case that was related and backed up that approach and create.

[Donald Trump]

10 cities where the homeless can be relocated.

[Andrea Pitzer]

In the wake of this decision supporting essentially criminalizing homelessness in the U.S. the court has more or less made it illegal to exist as a person outside without housing across time. Where do we put them? If every city, every village, every town lacks compassion and passes a law identical to this, where are they supposed to sleep? Are they supposed to kill themselves, not sleeping? Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in her dissent that this constituted cruel and unusual punishment because in her words, sleep is a biological necessity, not a crime. For some people, sleeping outside is their only option. For people with no access to shelter, that punishes them for being homeless. That's unconscionable and unconstitutional. The city of Grants Pass jails and fines these people for sleeping anywhere in public at any time, including in their cars, if they use as little as a blanket to keep warm or a rolled up shirt as a pillow. Cops give us tickets for any reason they can find, and it doesn't matter if it's raining, snowing, whatever. We have to move. If we're there when we're supposed to move, we get a ticket for being there. For people with no access to shelter that punishes them for being homeless.

[Brian Goldstone]

Since the early 2000s, Grants Pass has more than doubled in size, but it hasn't doubled its affordable housing stock. The vacancy rate is less than 1%, meaning if you lose your apartment, it's basically impossible to find a new one.

[Andrea Pitzer]

A report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development came out not long ago showing a massive spike in homelessness in the US with over 700,000 individuals lacking housing entirely for families and children. One of the largest increases in homelessness. Families, a 39% spike 2024 from 2023.

[Brian Goldstone]

And on that January night that they.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Surveyed, they found 150,000 children experiencing homelessness.

[Brian Goldstone]

And in shelters, the number of unaccompanied.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Children has reached record numbers. With a long term housing shortage already in place, we're heading deeper and deeper into this crisis.

[Brian Goldstone]

This was an 18% increase, but it comes on the heels of a 12% increase last year in these numbers, so roughly a third increase over two years. Both of those were record increases in homelessness that we've seen this month.

[Andrea Pitzer]

We're facing the collision of this long term issue with the adversarial approach of Donald Trump, who has made his opinion abundantly clear in the past.

[Brian Goldstone]

New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles.

[Donald Trump]

They'Ve got a major problem with. Very sad.

[Andrea Pitzer]

With filth.

[Donald Trump]

Very sad.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Why is that?

[Donald Trump]

It's a phenomena that started two years ago.

[Andrea Pitzer]

It's disgraceful saying the homeless have no right to turn every park and sidewalk into a place for them to squat and do so much drugs. Today I want to talk about homelessness in history, abroad and in the US the ways it's been used in authoritarian states, why you might not really understand what's happening around housing in America and the very real solutions that already exist, some of which you can be a part of.

[Donald Trump]

It's a tough task, a very tough task.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Part with you. The Episode I'll share some pieces of a conversation I had last week with Brian Goldstone, the author of a fantastic forthcoming book on homelessness in America. First going back a century, in our episode on immigration, I talked about the use of concentration camps against immigrants from enemy nations. During World War I, the precedent of.

[Historian]

Interning civilians continued in both Europe and the US where forces detained German migrants. In the US approximately 6,000 German migrants, overwhelmingly men, were imprisoned in camps, and the government seized an estimated half a billion dollars in private property. The conditions in the US Camps varied, resulting in some suicides and disease outbreaks.

[Andrea Pitzer]

If you recall this global internment normalized, locking up innocent civilians.

[Historian]

Going forward, forced imprisonment in the US occurred again. During World War II, 120,000 Japanese Americans were sent to these camps.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Here's an example of how that's relevant to today's episode. In 1920, after World War I had ended, Hungary set up concentration camps. Think more internment camps than Nazi or Gulag camps. These Hungarian camps were meant for foreign Jews. This was not an uncommon thing at the time because this post war period marked a jump from interning enemy aliens to just interning aliens, even when there was no war. But the Category of undesirables would soon grow from immigrants to include citizens. By the 1930s, many countries would simply remove citizens deemed undesirable from having any public presence. This was how concentration camps unrelated to war became widespread around the globe. And the homeless were the people most commonly detained in them. In Cuba in 1931, newspapers reported that beggars were being swept from city streets and put into forced labor on farms with, quote, those lodged temporarily in the old Persima market concentration camp for the homeless being outfitted with uniforms and their old clothing and belongings were destroyed. So Mussolini adopted these kinds of camps. In Italy, Spain had followed his example. Public health concerns were often the paper thin justification given for removing the homeless and those living on the streets from society.

[Spanish Civil War Expert]

It began with a military rebellion against the fragile left wing government. There was no swift victory, but with support from Hitler and Mussolini, Franco led the nationalists to power in 1939. His regime was brutal. Thousands of his political opponents executed in hundreds of concentration camps. Thousands of others fled to countries like France, kept in camps just the other side of the Pyrenees mountains.

[Andrea Pitzer]

But the actual rhetoric was that of a strongman creating through brute force a false social cleanliness or purity, even if their attempts weren't really effective and only temporarily shoved unwanted groups out of sight in a given town. Can you talk, Andrea Pitzer, about how the German concentration camps actually developed, how Hitler managed to do this?

[Holocaust Historian]

Well, I'm glad that you asked about that.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Before coming to power, the Nazi party at first tried to compete against the Communist party in recruiting disaffected young men from the ranks of hundreds of thousands of homeless and unemployed young men during the Depression.

[Holocaust Historian]

In the beginning, the Nazi camps didn't look that different than other camp systems that had already developed, which I think is part of why the world was slow to realize what was going on. Because in fact, the Nazis themselves in the beginning didn't have the potential to implement this final solution.

[Andrea Pitzer]

But once in power in 1933, the party quickly shifted to pushing those they termed vagrants and tramps out of cities, shutting them out of food and housing benefits that the country would have had difficulty providing even if it were willing to.

[Holocaust Historian]

In the early days, certainly there were many Jews who were put into the camps, but it was almost a side issue at that point. It was because many of them were political, politically active against the Nazis, were members of socialist or communist parties. And at first it was a way to really keep power in the country and to get down and get rid of their opposition. They were also used for vagrants the.

[Andrea Pitzer]

First roundups of homeless people under Hitler began in 1933 at the dawn of the Nazi era. And like the earliest days of concentration camps in that era, those who were not direct political enemies of the new regiment were often released quickly or wound up working for pennies in mandatory labor camps.

[Holocaust Historian]

But it really wasn't until closer to Kristallnacht, you know, which is near the end of the 30s, that you see this targeting of Jews in this very specific way.

[Andrea Pitzer]

By 1938, five years in the attempt to remove any itinerant unhoused people from public view had become an obsession. And those detained as vagrants were often sent directly to camps such as Sachsenhausen, camps whose brutality had already increased exponentially and would descend further and further into atrocity. After Hitler launched World War II, of.

[Holocaust Historian]

Course, when they realized they could do these mass arrests, they could do all this and the world would not act, would not take in these refugees, that a lot more options begin to open up for them and they have this camp system in place, which by then of course was wildly expanded.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Again, I want to point out that this initial approach to homelessness and instability was global in the wake of the Great Depression and the US was no exception. Performer and humorist Will Rogers probably put it best.

[Brian Goldstone]

Ten men in our country could buy the whole world and 10 million can't buy enough to eat.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Shanty towns called Hoovervilles arose around the country, nicknamed after the President who was seen as doing nothing to help, and the newspapers, they slipped under Hoover blankets. And these, what were sometimes called hobos camps were seen as a blight. World War I veterans had been promised a bonus for their service.

[Donald Trump]

A law had granted them the bonus equivalent to a dollar to a dollar and a quarter a day for every day they served, which in many cases would be 6, 800, $1,000.

[Andrea Pitzer]

But there was a catch.

[Donald Trump]

They don't get a nickel of the money until 1945 unless they die. That's why they call it the tombstone bonus.

[Andrea Pitzer]

They set up camp on the banks of the Anacostia river in Washington D.C. in protest.

[Tennessee State Senator Frank Nicely]

The veterans frankly made a nuisance of themselves. Couple of veterans were always sitting in each representative's waiting rooms. The representatives were solicited outside the building as well.

[Andrea Pitzer]

After local police injured some of the protesters and in fact failed to clear the camp.

[Donald Trump]

President Hoover and other people kept saying, why can't we drive them home? A lot of these people didn't have a home.

[Andrea Pitzer]

A 52 year old US Army Chief of Staff named Douglas MacArthur took in tanks to clear them out. The President does not want MacArthur to cross the bridge, and MacArthur disregards the order. Eisenhower later says that he saw this happen. He did so with bayonets and tear gas. Tear gas was just burning my face. I was trailing behind my dad and he kept hollering, come on, boy. Come on, boy. That tear gas ended up setting fire to the camp itself. The President looked out a window of the White House in the direction of the fire, then retired for the night. This was a debacle. But these violent measures persisted around the country. And a few Months later, in August 1932, police cleared an encampment of 300 homeless men in Jersey City and set fire to it, supposedly to reduce the risk of disease. Homelessness isn't just something happening in some other place in time. And you know, we all come from somewhere and there's a reason like this. It's not just we come and choose, as the recent Tennessee law and Supreme Court decisions show. It's very much with us now. And if you live in a good sized town or certainly in a city, you're probably seeing it yourself.

[Donald Trump]

You know, I had a situation when I first became president. We had certain areas of Washington, D.C. where that was starting to happen. And I ended it very quickly. I said, you can't do that.

[Andrea Pitzer]

To be able to think about where we're at right now with homelessness in America, I wanted to talk with Brian Goldstone, an expert on this topic with a heartbreaking book coming out in March called There is no Place for Us.

[Brian Goldstone]

I'm a journalist and an anthropologist and I'm also the author of of There is no Place for Us Working and Homeless in America, which will be coming out in March 2025.

[Andrea Pitzer]

In his book, Goldstone follows the Herculean struggles of several families living in Atlanta who lose stable housing around the time of the start of the COVID pandemic. And he illustrates their lives and struggles beautifully.

[Brian Goldstone]

Thank you for mentioning that.

[Andrea Pitzer]

One key element to his book is that the main characters he's chosen.

[Brian Goldstone]

My book follows five families in Atlanta. All of them are headed by parents who are employed in full time jobs. It was important to me to focus on people like them because there is this growing phenomenon of people with jobs, often more than one, who are unable to maintain stable housing. Unable to afford it, I should say.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Goldstone's focus is also on families and the effects of homelessness and eviction on family life.

[Brian Goldstone]

I have no interest in saying, well, these people have jobs, so they're more worth. They're the deserving poor, they're more worthy of our compassion. It's simply to say that the American story, the myth that we've sort of told ourselves generation after generation, does not hold up to scrutiny.

[Andrea Pitzer]

As someone who was evicted as a child, I can say that the moment you realize that you have no place to go, no place to live, that someone from a bank or a management company can turn you out of what you thought was your home, that is a harrowing moment that can easily be traumatic for kids and parents too.

[Brian Goldstone]

What I'm trying to accomplish overall in including all of these details is to show the complexity of what it's like to experience this, to go through the kinds of what I would call, you know, not too strongly, I think, violence, the violence that's been inflicted on them by capitalism, by these various systems that are intersecting in their lives. I want to show that that violence is real.

[Andrea Pitzer]

And by choosing the working homeless to focus on, Goldstone hopes to reveal how much of the country is vulnerable in exactly this way and how many people are already in crisis. And he suggests that the problem is much bigger than the official statistics on homelessness would indicate.

[Brian Goldstone]

The numbers for 2024 came out from HUD showing that homelessness is at the highest level in recorded history. What I'm arguing is that as as dire as that crisis is, there's actually this entire vast invisible population of men and especially women and children who aren't even counted in that number. Those are people who are not necessarily living on the street. They are doubled up, tripled up with others, in the apartments of friends and relatives. They're living in their cars, they're living in extended stay motels and hotels, and they are really out of sight.

[Andrea Pitzer]

One thing that struck me talking to him and while reading this book, is that homelessness in America is one of those crises that doesn't require malevolent landlords twirling evil mustaches to happen. The legacy of perpetual displacement and the focus on growth have created, along with the successes in those realms, a kind of self fulfilling nightmare.

[Brian Goldstone]

It's so crucial to highlight the extent to which this, this crisis that continues to escalate in so many cities around the country is a product not of poverty, but a product of prosperity. It is a byproduct of the very renaissance that so many of our cities are, are seeing today. And in a city like Atlanta, there has been this remaking of urban space, this revitalization that has actually fueled the very insecurity I'm writing about and has fueled this growing catastrophe of Homelessness and housing precarity among the city's poorest households, including many working households.

[Andrea Pitzer]

To the people who might ask, well, have the homeless always been with us? Goldstone has an answer for that, too, and he noted that the problem of homelessness really became pervasive and ongoing and permanent in a way it hadn't been before, starting in the era of Ronald Reagan's presidency, in part because of the ways that it was ignored, in addition.

[Brian Goldstone]

Due to the decimation of the social safety net under the Reagan administration, including the gutting of federal funding for housing and housing assistance.

[Andrea Pitzer]

If we keep just a narrow view of homelessness and convince ourselves that it's only the profoundly mentally ill or those with addiction and substance abuse issues who fall into that category, Goldscone suggests that we're missing an important part of the picture.

[Brian Goldstone]

A lot of people, an eviction, a job loss that leads them to lose their housing, actually is the first domino that falls in a series of events that lead people to have really difficult struggles with addiction and mental illness.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Even if we broaden our view of the definition of homelessness, we can begin to imagine people in a stable home being just one crisis remove from experiencing the same trauma that people undergo in Goldstone's book. While that's true for far too many, the burden of housing instability falls disproportionately on people of color.

[Brian Goldstone]

The Wikipedia version of homelessness in America tends to begin in the colonial period with poor houses and runs through how the other half lives and on through the Depression and then into the modern period. What that leaves out is the experience of formerly enslaved Americans. I've been very compelled by the possibility of narrating homelessness, mass homelessness, especially in the US as actually having a precedent in the millions of newly emancipated people who were actually deprived of land, deprived of a home, forced into a labor economy of low wages, rent, and debt. And then there was a whole slew of vagrancy laws and black codes that, just like we're seeing today, criminalized people for not having a place to live. That wasn't just a kind of punitive attempt to crack down on people without homes. It was actually meant to push people into carceral settings where they could. Then, instead of providing slave labor, they were providing almost slave labor. Or it was slavery by a different name. And there's a reason why slavery was never outlawed in jails and prisons in America.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Everything from housing covenants to discrimination in home loans has shaped limitations on minority access to stable housing for generations. And now, in the case of black people in Atlanta, the burden of homelessness is likewise not equally shared.

[Brian Goldstone]

I think it's no accident that in a city like Atlanta, the black population in Atlanta is something now it's under 50%. It used to be a majority black city, but the percentage of families in Atlanta who are experiencing homelessness, it's like 93% black.

[Andrea Pitzer]

We need protections for residents, including renters, to make it more difficult to evict people and to make sure those who hit life crises don't fall between the cracks. We need a bigger housing supply. And it's been shown pretty clearly that what's known as a housing first policy, prioritizing stable shelter as the first step that's offered in terms of help before requiring the completion of rehab or mental health treatment, that this is the most effective way to deal with homelessness.

[Brian Goldstone]

The winters are really harsh here in Finland. They would also die on the streets. So I think that was really, really the wake up call that we need to do something and change the policies quite slowly. And then we get the rapid phase when we start the housing first.

[Andrea Pitzer]

2008, it's been proven again and again in five years. We both created the program and halved the long term homelessness in Finland, most recently with veterans, a community whose homelessness has fallen to record lows due to the housing first approach. In 2023, Virginia permanently housed 46,000 veterans, exceeding its goal to house 38,000 veterans by more than 22%. Yet the incoming Trump administration is likely to follow the same approach espoused during his first administration, when the housing first strategy was rejected.

[Donald Trump]

This strategy will be far better and also far less expensive than spending vast sums of taxpayer money to house the Homeless Project.

[Andrea Pitzer]

2025 likewise favors an end to this housing first policy. And as the history of homelessness has made apparent, authoritarians and wannabes alike have used people without stable housing as punching bags to establish policies that can be used against them in cruel ways and then expanded to encompass others. More strangely in 2022.

[Tennessee State Senator Frank Nicely]

Thanks, Mr. Speaker. I haven't given you all a history lesson in a while, and I want to give you a little history on homelessness.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Tennessee State Senator Frank Nicely testified during debate over punishments for homelessness, noting that Adolf Hitler at one point had been.

[Tennessee State Senator Frank Nicely]

Homeless 19 and 10, Hitler decided to live on the streets for a while. So for two years, Hitler lived on the streets and practiced his oratory and his body language and how to connect with the masses, and then went on to lead a life that got him in the History book. So a lot of these people, it's not a dead end. They can come out of these homeless camps and have a productive life.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Aside from the creepiness of using Hitler as a role model or some kind of inspiration porn, or in Hitler's case.

[Tennessee State Senator Frank Nicely]

A very unproductive life, I support this bill.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The willful disregard of politicians for what's happening and how to address it is shocking. This trend toward criminalizing the homeless, with potential loss of voting rights, and in the case of Tennessee, up to six years in prison, is not just cruel, but self sabotaging. The cost of enforcing these statutes by charging or especially by incarcerating the unhoused is massive and more expensive than dealing with homelessness itself. And the cost to anyone charged over homelessness, giving them an arrest record which will likely torpedo any future ability to secure housing, is staggering. As Goldstone also noted in our conversation, these laws against camping are also intended to be used on the kinds of protests that rose in the wake of George Floyd's murder. This is another way in which the homeless serve as a canary in the coal mine. Not only in the past, with detention camps, between the wars, during the normalization of concentration camps, but in the present, where public frustrations about homeless people on the street can be weaponized to roll in groups that more directly question authority. In the case of both the homeless and protesters, these laws allow the removal of inconvenient people so as not to have to address society's pressing problems.

[Brian Goldstone]

So when a homeless person asks for money, then I give them, like a fake $5 bill. So I feel good about myself, they feel good, and then when they go to use it, they get arrested. So I'm actually, like, helping clean up the community.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Many people have noted the cruel baselines of American policy, which would rather, for instance, deny children a free lunch at school than potentially feed just one whose parents might have the money to do it themselves. And in housing policy, this streak is particularly evident because it's clear that it's cheaper and more effective to house people than to demonize them.

[Donald Trump]

Housing is a matter of human dignity and sound economics. Month in the hospital, $30,000. Month in a prison, $12,000. Month in a shelter, $6,000. Month in support of housing, $4,000.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Yeah, I think the calculus is clear. Faced with the scale of homelessness, we can either provide people with housing or we can remove them from public space and public view, Goldstone told me.

[Brian Goldstone]

Of course, cities in America are increasingly going with the latter tactic.

[Andrea Pitzer]

He notes that on the whole, the trend is to do the latter, and that under the new Trump administration, they're promising internment camps and other kinds of temporary, out of sight spaces where homeless people could be moved to migrants, asylum.

[Brian Goldstone]

Seekers and homeless people are the most at risk, vulnerable populations.

[Andrea Pitzer]

We don't even have to reinvent the wheel. Our own history, as well as two examples in Europe, have offered ambitious ways to think about next steps.

[Brian Goldstone]

What both Finland and Vienna have done is created thousands of units of what they call social housing. That removes housing from the private market. And it's on publicly owned land. And it basically guarantees people a roof over their head, and not just a roof over the head, but like actually really nice accommodations, permanently affordable so they don't have to worry about a 20% rent hike next year.

[Andrea Pitzer]

But of course, the US is not at the point yet where it's ready to tackle this.

[Brian Goldstone]

There's a whole range of very practical things that can be done to alleviate the suffering that people experiencing homelessness in America and who are on the verge of that, that can be done to help them. Everything from widening the definition of homelessness the federal government uses so that families who are excluded from the formal metrics can begin to access services and resources today. Banning things like application fees when people are applying for apartments, banning discrimination against people who have housing vouchers. But at the foundation of any solution, I feel, has to be that a paradigm shift around how we understand housing and its function in our lives as a country.

[Andrea Pitzer]

We, Goldstein suggests, to be thinking about this entirely differently than we do.

[Brian Goldstone]

For too long, we've treated housing as a vehicle for wealth accumulation. Whoever owns the most of it can control what it costs. And you know, another term for that is price gouging. It's hoarding. When people were hoarding hand sanitizer during the pandemic, there was outrage that this scarce resource that is also essential could just be auctioned off to the highest bidder. But that's exactly what we've done with one of the most essential human needs, which is the need for shelter.

[Andrea Pitzer]

But the need for this paradigm shift at a national level doesn't at all mean there's nothing that you could do right now. Goldstone talked a lot about all the organizing that's going on in Atlanta, where his book takes place, as an example.

[Brian Goldstone]

One of the most hopeful developments in recent years where these issues are concerned is the emergence of a powerful and vibrant tenants rights movement. Tenants rights has been framed by many in this movement as extending to tenants who don't have housing today. So kind of connecting the dots between those who are renters, who have a lease, who are living in an apartment and who might be vulnerable to losing it, and those on the streets or in cars or hotels or in shelters who were renters and have lost that status. And I think that the vibrancy and really the militancy of this movement has forced solutions and really an imagination onto the agenda that simply wouldn't have been there otherwise. We can't look to those in power at the top of the hierarchy to provide for these needs.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Homelessness is one of those issues where local action to protect the vulnerable and adopt best practices can make a big difference. Close to home, he mentioned the Autonomous Tenants Union Network, which has groups around the country, as well as the National Low Income Housing Coalition's list of needs and opportunities state by state. There are many other groups doing this kind of work, which you can plug into. And in the Friday roundup on my newsletter Degenerate Art, I'll include links to a lot more groups that Brian sent.

[Brian Goldstone]

A lot of the things that will solve the problems that are highlighted in my book happen at the local level. They actually don't happen as much at the federal level.

[Andrea Pitzer]

We will not, however, be able to resolve the problem coast to coast until we take on the housing shortage in a realistic way and also recognize this issue as part of the larger culture war that's filled with wedges used by those who are seeking more money or more political power.

[Donald Trump]

We're making many suffer for the whims of a deeply unwell few, and they are unwell indeed.

[Andrea Pitzer]

We cannot let our communities be splintered, and part of that is realizing that just like the pipeline from detention camps to punitive concentration camps during World War II, allowing any group to be isolated and removed from society is a danger to society itself. That's it. Thanks for listening to Next Comes what? Please share this with anyone who's looking for ways to help each other survive this mess. To support this podcast, Please [e-mail] and consider giving Next Comes what? A five star review where you get your podcasts.