With homelessness increasing nationwide, John Oliver takes a look at the way we discuss the unhoused, what policy failures are making the problem worse, and how we can help.
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There is a small homeless village nearby me, they live in tents in what is basically a swamp. I think I'll go make it rain tacos there tonight.
The city of Austin literally bought some hotels to turn into housing to help mitigate the tent cities, and local business owner assholes decided to protest. The protests were pathetic, and they failed. But people here are offering literally nothing as alternative and seem to just want these people they don't like to disappear. Meanwhile housing prices in Austin have doubled thanks to giveaways to tech billionaires so they'll come here and "create jobs." Yeah jobs for people who we have no room for here. We also have really shitty public transport.
Honestly if just having to pick up shit upsets you enough to challenge your commitment to social liberalism and the value of other human beings, you're not very good at compassion to begin with. I am also an Austinite. I do worry about what people are capable of doing if they are in an unsafe environment, stressed, in poverty, and potentially on powerful drugs, but I know that the solution is still compassion and getting people the resources they need
It's wild that people feel like people don't have a right to exist while being homeless but we still don't pay a living wage like anywhere. Proportional minimum wage should be $25.00 and we had to fight to get it to half the amount.
It's raining tacos was played at my friend's wedding, definitely the most fun I had all night
Come on guys… Government high ranking members see this right?… The not solving the problem seems like a choice… The why of it, if you question about it, leads to so called conspiracy theories (the comun sensical ones)…
In fact, reading the statement below I am sort of on the last straw of what I cannot believe I am seeing around me. Me? Fixing to be homeless….. Again…….. So what?……. In the past I lived on my campboat, got married, it was bullshit, started a business, even obtained a patent…. More on that later….. She died, married a gold diggen' byoch….. Drove me crazy, lasted 12 days, spent a year tangled in her crap trying to get a divorce…. They wanted the upcoming patent….. whatever…… Spent the next 20 years or so wandering the country, did all sorts of things. Stayed on top of it. Decided to put my life together…. Got a mobile home, tried to improve myself, got all sorts of druggies, meth heads, etc. in the trailer park, crime like you wouldn't believe, to make matters worse, landlord developed a crush on me. Why not? Pathetic stalker, pissed that I didn't give in made my life worse. Dumped my possessions, hit the road again…. Built a nice camp on an abandoned golf course, out of sight out of mind. I am severely "cripple". Who cares, that is my problem and I will shoulder the load and am not going to panhandle or pimp my rosey cheeks out on the way. Soldier on program at the V.A.? What a joke, and these welfare homeless organizations? What a joke. So a stalker almost got me sent to the Pen……. Grand Jury convened, thank gawd I had a good attorney, not one of those slovenly court appointed racketteers. Never forget the vindictiveness of a woman scorned. Anyways. Finally got out, everything I owned was gone and stolen, cops wouldn't do a friggen thing….. Another stalker, this one seemed o.k., but no, you just can't fix the broken if they want to wallow in their delusions. Here is the kicker, that patent thing? Here is what I can provide if allowed. A constructed medium 11 feet wide at the base, made of concrete, produced and installed at the the height of 30 feet above grade and at a rate of one linear mile per day (5,280 linear feet) for $1,480.oo per linear foot on the southern border. Wrote Guv. Abbott, the Lt. Guv. Wrote the inglorious Donald Trump, Mike Pence, and Mick Mulvaney both when he ran the GAO and then became white house chief of staff, wrote 86 + Texas legislatures involved with homeland security, ways and means, department of public service, etc., etc., etc. The scam going on and the siphoning or skim of funds going on there…. What a joke… What a bunch of graft and corruption…. No answer, oh, and this latest gal pal? Had she been there managing the motel at 8 a.m. behind the desk, she would have been one of those 5, 6 gruesome casualties of that scenario in Biloxi Ms. a few days ago. And why did that happen in the first place? Well, the place was a magnet for drugs, homeless programs, prostitution, and all the assorted violence and crime that went with it. My point…… Screw the spineless, may God help them, may God help us, but we need to help ourselves first….
What an obscene tragedy society has become……. And you know what, opportunity is a myth in America anymore…. Nothing but a bunch of selfish greedy fug alls runnin' the show….. So excuse my rant. Yes, there are a lot of good people that don't need to be homeless out there, but they don't need to be taken advantage of or victimized any more than they have already allowed themselves to be. You don't kick a dog when it is down for the amusement of seeing whether it has the strength left to bite back or not, or if it was even in its nature in the first place….. Shame on those kinds of people, and shame on the users and abusers that hide in those ranks as well. Again, sorry for the rant, but a great number of the population out there needs to pull their collective heads out of their collective assholes and get on with things in a proper fashion…… Me thinks……..
I lost my job because my work permit expired and my Lawyers fucked me with my money and didn’t begin processing my renewal in time and I lost my job and home and am currently looking for any way of sustenance in LA. I was a fulltime student working fulltime when I suddenly lost everything. Still haven’t used a day in my life but everyday that goes on and I wonder why I cant have a home despite me wanting to work and study in the country I have resided on since I was 6 months old. Being treated as an outcast while doing nothing wrong but being born too far south has surely changed my perspective on homelessness.
Her liberalism gets lowered with the increase of homelessness? Aren’t conservatives the ones directly affecting the increase? Last I checked, liberals are the ones with programs trying to get the homeless back to work.
Isn’t that a huge amount of hypocrisy, stupidity and irony?
Well done to the one person who "woo'd" when the obvuous solution was mentioned and fuck the rest of the ghouls who sat silent.
keep voting blue lol
Plays a song about raining food? That can make homelessness more depressing, fuck.
There's 16 million empty homes in America and about 1-2 million homeless. Easy fix.
If they paid teachers like judges our society would be alot better. Easy to get those people jobs too. Spread them across America around farmland. Let them work on farms and give farmers tax incentives to hire them.
😭❤️
Breaktime.. bouncing over to listen to raining tacos for a while. brb.
11:41 waaait wait wait America. We have to talk. "Sitting and lying" are criminalized? WHAT. the *absolute*. FUCK?
Social conservatism is fundamentally irrational, short sited, selfish AND MOST IMPORTANTLY sadistic. A lot of people love to kick down: It actually a significant part of their identity.
The fact that helping people is often cheeper in the short term, and highly profitable in the medium to long term, is irrelevant. It's one of the reasons why humans are such a shitty species.
"No one screaming out of a car window has ever said anything worthwhile". Sorry but you're quite mistaken. I present to you, the then, embarrassingly, Prime Minister of Australia Tony Abbott:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cSkX7X8a3o
17:05 it's unnerving how accurate he is.
My heart goes out to all the homeless out there. I wish more people would think logically about this and have more compassion but I think that would force people to look at their wages and living situation and realize they’re about a stones throw away from homeless and that’s an uncomfortable thought.
We learned nothing from the pandemic. If we had, portapotties would have to have hand sanitizer available…
A socialist overthrow of the fascist oligarchy might change the housing problem
CLOSE, closer than most. But it is about accumulation. I accumulate enough to stay alive – its stolen start all over, get copies of what I can get a job but no way to stay clean and odorless so use a shelter – everything stolen again start all over. Veteran programs – fellow vets stole the free phone before the vet who I helped get 1 and spent 10yrs in a mission before he even got it out of the mail. Do this over and over for 20yrs – you will eventually quit trying and cop an attitude – fornicate you all!
to all the NIMBY people, me and the newly not homeless can totally be neighbors. Like me they're just going be happy to spend time in a home of their own and not worrying about the color of my damn door being in keeping with the HOA.
Sigh
I completely baffles me – as someone in tech – that these apparent cutting edge progressive tech firms insist on forcing all of their national workforce into these Orwellian campuses… FFS remote work has so many obvious benefits, and if these places can't make it work, who can??
Shout out to err body livin in your car!
Stop blaming covid. Things will get worse over the next 4 years cause of stupid Biden
24:02 YOU SEXIST. using dick as a derogatory term. how come you feel uncomfortable using the work "gay" to describe something bad but not the word "dick"?
23:26 actually no. i think it has more to do that people dont wanna give handouts cause
a) they have to pay for it
b) something else will get its funding cut that they might prefer
c) they think it could make people opt to not work and just claim the benefits.
holy shit, that ex homeless veterans house is nicer than the place im living at and working for :O
This episode hit pretty hard. Watched my life torn apart by Family Court, no drug abuse, no criminal record, always had a job, just went broke trying to stay in my son's life. Ran out of resources, lost my home, found myself homeless. I was able to eventually escape homelessness but it is very expensive to be poor and the whole experience taught me that one can not truly understand how horrible the experience of homelessness is until one finds themselves homeless. Went to Veterans Affairs for help and because I told them I stayed on a friend's couch in his basement once in a while they denied me assistance because the Government considered it "couch surfing" and technically not homeless. The whole experience was a very sobering reality check to what we as a society are being told and promised by agencies being funded with tax dollars to help versus what is actually being done. It's the embodiment of learned helplessness and it seems certain agencies who have the means to help won't, but they give the illusion they will.
fundamental attribution error
My boyfriend is from Texas and I'm friends with his friends, and the more I hear about Texas the more I'm glad I don't live there.
If you can't pay the rent stop making babies!
So to torment homeless people they played them music about all you can eat tacos tormenting them with food they can’t get?! Sick!
It worked in Finland.