A leading affordable-housing advocate warned this week that the U.S. has reached a “tipping point” in its treatment of people experiencing homelessness, with rhetoric increasingly veering toward hostility, vilification, victim blaming and even violence.
“We are seemingly further away than ever from implementing evidence-based solutions at scale, and people experiencing homelessness are now increasingly being attacked, harmed, and even killed,” she added. Read more: Marine Corps veteran whose chokehold on New York subway rider led to death turns himself in to NYPD
“Last week, Jordan Neely, an unhoused Black man in New York City, was killed on a crowded subway for shouting about his hunger, thirst, and exhaustion,” Yentel said in her email. “Several bystanders assisted in the killing, while others cheered or recorded the violence. Nobody intervened.” “And they are unwell, indeed,” Trump continued in the video posted to his social-media platform, Truth Social. “The homeless have no right to turn every park and sidewalk into a place for them to squat and do drugs.”
Yentel also cited a Sunday incident in which a man also plowed a car into a group of people — killing eight and wounding 10 — by a Brownsville, Texas, shelter that serves homeless people and migrants. The man accused of driving the car has since been charged with eight counts of manslaughter, according to CNN. Authorities are still investigating whether the crash was intentional, reports say.