Homelessness and its Dirty Little Secret

Homelessness is plaguing America and has become a national problem. It has overtaken some cities with great destructiveness. Originally a major problem in New York City, it has now spread from coast to coast. Particularly hard hit are Portland, Oregon, San Francisco and Los Angeles, California, and other major cities. What's going on? Why has this problem arisen and become so pervasive?

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the Marxist-Leninist movement currently seeking to capture control of the Democrat Party blames capitalism. Capitalism, private property, billionaires, the stock market, income differentials, taxes, whatever you can dream of is responsible for homelessness according to the DSA. Yet it wasn't a major problem before 1963. The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 led to the deinstitutionalization of mentally ill patients and their release into the community which never provded the care the act envisioned. The act was part of John F. Kennedy's New Frontier and later became part of Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society. JFK, and LBJ were among the most liberal presidents in American history and they had massive Senate and House majorities. Lyndon Johnson and his Democrat controlled Congress created the Great Society with liberal social programs which changed the landscape of America and still are functioning today. Were JFK and LBJ and the Great Society responsible for homelessness? The DSA probably would note that there was no homelessness in their model, the Soviet Uinon (USSR). Of course, the USSR solved homelessness by having five families share an apartment and opponents of the worker's paradise were given new homes in the SIberian Gulag, if they survived . What really happened was the rising influence of the leftist ideology of some influential psychaitrists, particularly Dr. Thomas Szasz, professor of psychaitry at Upstate Medical Center College of Medicine in Syracuse, NY. Dr. Szasz and his supporters insisted that there was no such thing as mental illness; rather these patients suffered from a lack of political power. Tens of thousands of seriously mentally ill patients were released from mental hospitals to Single Room Ocupancy (SRO) residences, particularly in New York State, then under the administration of liberal republican governor Nelson Rockefeller. All well and good. Landlords made fortunes in rents, the released psychotics could not take care of their rooms, they were not on anti-psychotic medication, they roamed the streets and subways and heard voices telling him or her to push someone in front of an oncoming train. Crime became rampant, and homelessness became something visible in center cities. But it was OK as long as these visually objectionable people stayed in the center city. When they reached suburban areas, there was a reaction; Not in my backyard (NIMBY). But liberalism was the order of the day. You had to "understand" these mentally ill people. Nothing wrong with that. But still they were dangerous to themselves and others. In NewYork City, an organization to help these people was established, named the Coalition for the Homeless. In 1989, the Coalition leader, attorney Robert Hayes admitted that their dirty little secret (their words) was that 95% of their clients were mentally ill, drug addicts or alcoholics. This admission by the Coalition did not receive much publicity in the liberal press as it was contrary to their narrative as to the cause of homelessness. Homelessness advocates did not want this publicized for fear that this fact would cause the homeless to lose the sympathy of the general public. Yet, the truth is important.

Now, in the summer of 2026 we are facing a serious national problem. Uncontrollled immigraton into the United States has increased the population. Many of the new immigrants are young, poorly educated with no employable skills, are not conversant with the English language and are not used to living in urban areas. Nevertheless, they seek housing and in that sense compete with others for a finite amount of housing and contribute to the trend of increasing homelessness. The issue of illegal or undocumented immigration will be discussed in a future post. It is mentioned here only to underline the complexity of this problem which now affects communities nationwide. Due to DSA and other extreme leftist agitators, this has become part of the national discussion of housing availability and affordabilty. Various politicians, masquerading as saviours of humanity, are quick to jump on this political bandwagon as they seek self aggrandizement but ultimately offer nothing to those in need. The Big Apple(NYC) has had rent control since World War II (to NYC pols, that war has never ended!) and still they have not solved the problems of housing as the housing stock of NYC continues to deteriorate and decline. Interestingly, the biggest slumlord in NYC is the NYC Housing Authority (NYCHA), a governmet agency which gets a free pass.

So what can be done? It is acknowledged that there are civil liberties issues involved in the involuntary treatment and confinement of mentally ill people. But isn't this a public health issue? Are food handlers allowed to work if they have communicable diseases? Think of the case of typhoid Mary. Wasn't contact tracing part of public health control of venereal disease until the AIDS epidemic when civil rights advocates made such contact tracing illegal? Yet all agreed that an HIV+ person should not be permitted to spread the virus to uninformed partners as such an act was at best immoral and at worst murder. There certainly must be some pubic health measure to recognize that people with auditory hallucinations are potentially dangerous, if not actually homicidal. Retrictions are placed on various classes of people preventing them from exercizing their constitutional right to purchase lethal weapons. Similar public health measures must be enacted to protect the general public as well as the victims of psychosis. Dr. Szasz was wrong. Mental illness does exist and is severe and dangerous. Custodial care for these people will go a long way towards solving the homelessness problem, despite the oppositon of the DSA and their cohorts who thrive on the misery of others.

Confining and treating the mentally ill is not a violation of civil rights but is rather an act of kindness. With approriate medication and therapy, they can be restored to essentially normal functioning and can return to society as full participants. That will benefit both the mentally ill and society as a whole and ameliorate the problem of homelessness in America.

Garry S. Sklar

Lucerne, Switzerland

July 20, 2026