The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 1830 - We Investigated The Collapse Of The American Mall

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00:00:30.000 If you're listening to this podcast in America, the odds are overwhelming, actually about 70%, that you live within an hour of a rundown or abandoned mall.

00:00:40.160 The vast majority of Americans can name at least one mall nearby that's either growing tumbleweeds or has a very high vacancy rate and low customer traffic, along with, in almost every case, a high crime rate.

00:00:52.600 And these things are obviously related.

00:00:54.500 If you're one of the few Americans who can't name a mall that's failing, then in all likelihood, that will change very soon.

00:01:00.080 Half of the malls in the United States have closed since the 1980s.

00:01:02.820 By the end of the decade, projections suggest 87% of the existing large shopping malls in this country will also shut down.

00:01:09.300 So we'll have just a few hundred malls by 2030, along with a lot of creepy, dangerous, dilapidated buildings where malls used to be.

00:01:17.540 But on the bright side, we'll also have a lot more vape shops and, you know, pawnbrokers.

00:01:22.080 Now, at the same time, bizarrely, a handful of malls are actually doing very well right now.

00:01:26.220 Some of them are expanding while 90% of the industry is shrinking or disappearing entirely.

00:01:31.620 Why is that happening?

00:01:33.820 Well, it's hard to explain, at least on the surface.

00:01:35.680 I mean, off the top of your head, you could probably identify several different reasons

00:01:38.560 for the collapse of America's malls, from the convenience and lower cost of online shopping.

00:01:43.020 That's the big one that comes to mind.

00:01:45.380 also the covid lockdowns the priority the priorities of private equity firms

00:01:49.980 to the rise of social media and the decline of interpersonal interaction in general and we'll

00:01:55.860 talk about all those causes in a moment and to one extent or another they're all true in ways

00:02:00.440 that you know you probably don't even realize but the most important part uh for the most part the

00:02:06.380 the decline of malls while a small number of malls are thriving has been seen as a straightforward

00:02:12.220 economic problem as a matter of supply and demand. Malls in general don't interest people

00:02:17.940 anymore, so they're dying. They're obsolete, so they're gone now. That's how it works.

00:02:22.180 No further explanation is required. Is that analysis wrong? Well, no, not really,

00:02:26.980 but it's also incomplete. And for one thing, it ignores the cultural significance of the

00:02:31.380 American mall and how malls were central to the social lives of millions of young people.

00:02:36.400 Now, for me personally, when I was a kid, like a lot of kids in the 90s, our local mall was the hangout spot.

00:02:43.680 And now the idea of going and hanging out at a mall all day is totally foreign, not even possible for most people.

00:02:50.380 My parents used to drop me off at the mall, like when I was 11 or 12, they would just drop me off.

00:02:55.260 I'd hang out there for several hours with my friends, and now every part of that seems alien.

00:03:00.780 Hanging out at a mall for several hours, actually hanging out anywhere in a physical location for several hours,

00:03:05.860 dropping your child off at a place without direct adult supervision having actual friends in real

00:03:12.360 life i mean the whole thing is bizarre like something out of an alternate universe it's so

00:03:18.080 bizarre that it triggers kind of an existential crisis if you want to understand the popularity 0.71

00:03:22.840 of movies like back rooms this offers a pretty good explanation young people are genuinely

00:03:28.040 disturbed by the amount of empty space they see everywhere to the point that they're wondering if

00:03:33.160 malls are even real or just like a psyop of some kind watch so i'm in the mall this place so coming

00:03:43.300 to the mall makes me realize we're living in a simulation like this can't be real like you're

00:03:48.760 telling me you're telling me this place right here that has two people working in there they're

00:03:56.480 selling enough hats, you're selling enough hats just to pay two employees. No, I don't

00:04:04.740 believe it. I don't believe it. It's not real. Also, like some of these stores, okay, like

00:04:15.380 maybe, right? Like women's lingerie, underwear, whatever. The buckle. I don't know. Are people

00:04:23.160 still shopping there i don't even know i don't even know um okay like how you're telling me this

00:04:31.000 place icing sells enough this is enough two dollar earrings to get to pay the rent no way

00:04:39.500 and in this this place this place what is it even i don't even what do they do it's like nail

00:04:46.140 polishing candles that's not no there's no way or phone cases no you know it's like he's coming

00:04:52.620 across the ruins of an ancient civilization, which it kind of is, and he doesn't know how

00:04:59.140 to process it. We built vast structures all over the country in every single suburb and

00:05:04.700 designed them for the express purpose of facilitating in-person human interaction,

00:05:09.160 specifically the kind of interaction that leads to merchandise sales. Now those structures

00:05:13.700 are hollowed out, but in many cases, they're still standing, alone and empty. It's almost

00:05:19.580 impossible for today's teenagers to imagine that when people flooded into these malls for the first

00:05:24.920 time 70 years ago, they were a revelation. The malls were always crowded on the weekend. New

00:05:30.700 malls were constantly popping up in new towns. The typical teenager felt like he was part of a

00:05:36.260 growing country with new industries and markets opening up all the time, all over the place.

00:05:41.980 Young people associated the mall with their friends and their family, with

00:05:45.340 innovation and excitement and community. To give you an idea what it was like, this is footage

00:05:51.900 from 1957 featuring the brand new Hillsdale Shopping Center in San Mateo, California. The

00:05:58.580 mall contained a Macy's, a Sears, a farmer's market, and it blew people's minds at the time

00:06:03.920 because they weren't used to centralized open-air shopping centers. So here's how the mall was

00:06:09.680 announced to the public via the short film, Shopping Can Be Fun, A New Concept in Merchandising.

00:06:16.520 Watch. Yes, this is Hillsdale, popularly known as the heart of the San Francisco Peninsula.

00:06:24.000 It is composed of some of the nation's great department stores,

00:06:27.500 many of the leading national chain stores, and important local merchandising names.

00:06:32.280 the 50 acre center is bounded on the south by a large bustling Sears Roebuck store on the north

00:06:41.880 by the unique farmers market the central mall is flanked by a well-balanced selection of retail

00:06:52.200 stores in every field and price bracket which provides all customers with the most complete

00:06:57.540 comparative shopping in the entire area and now let's see just how shopping can be fun real fun

00:07:05.400 at this modern and convenient shopping center hillsdale's first annual automobile show was

00:07:11.640 launched with a horseless carriage caravan intermingling the cars of yesteryear with a

00:07:16.740 full showing of 1956 models these cars paraded the entire peninsula area so it was supposed to be

00:07:25.000 basically the future of shopping in the post-war era. The concept of the so-called introverted mall,

00:07:30.840 where the structure was built to encourage people to remain inside, walking past numerous different

00:07:36.520 stores on their way to their destination, was a welcome development. And not just because people

00:07:41.080 could find the products they wanted in a pre-internet age, as you just saw as far back as

00:07:46.360 the 50s, people saw the mall as an ideal gathering place. The birthplace of the modern mall was in

00:07:51.980 the Detroit metro area in Michigan, where the Hudson's department store and the architect Victor

00:07:58.120 Gruen set up four regional shopping centers, one for every cardinal direction, aptly named Northland

00:08:04.800 Center, Eastland Center, Westland Center, and Southland Center. And Northland, which the locals

00:08:10.100 pronounce as two words, like Disneyland instead of Northland, has a distinction of being the first

00:08:16.700 large regional open-air shopping center anywhere in the United States. And as Victor Grun put it,

00:08:23.340 quote, this is not just the opening of a shopping center, but an important milestone for city

00:08:27.640 planners, architects, economists, merchandisers, and the American public at large. He was determined

00:08:32.940 to give customers and businesses an alternative to rows of strip malls in every suburb. In addition

00:08:38.540 to being inefficient, strip malls were ugly and undesirable, with each store running its own

00:08:43.180 operation, for better or worse. Northland, on the other hand, was created by a single developer

00:08:48.420 with executive authority over all construction. As a result, there was a much more cohesive and

00:08:53.780 modern look, and customers were naturally drawn to it. It was seen as a genuine breakthrough at

00:08:58.920 the time. As reported by CityLab, which compiled contemporaneous coverage of Northland's launch,

00:09:04.360 the mall had a bank, a post office, an infirmary, fountains, even free gas for shoppers who

00:09:10.040 desperately needed it anyway. It wasn't intended simply as a place for people to buy things. It

00:09:14.720 seemed more like an indoor metropolis. It served a civic function as well as a commercial one.

00:09:19.780 And even beyond that, it was just a marvel of engineering. It was something that the entire

00:09:23.160 community was genuinely proud of. The Detroit Free Press lost their minds over the thing.

00:09:28.760 They wrote that, quote, the size of such a mammoth group of stores at Northland Centers

00:09:32.660 is often hard for the layman to visualize. They reported that the structure was built with nine

00:09:37.740 million pounds of steel, which was, as they helpfully noted, the equivalent of 4,000 autos.

00:09:43.560 The mall, according to the paper, had the extraordinary capability of making 200 million

00:09:47.440 ice cubes daily. The parking lot could comfortably store more than 8,000 vehicles, which at the time

00:09:53.380 meant that Northland offered the single largest parking lot anywhere in the world. CityLab also

00:09:58.220 notes that the mall even offered a lost car department for customers who couldn't find their

00:10:02.200 vehicle. The lost car department would dispatch a Jeep to roam around the vast parking lot with

00:10:06.760 the customer in tow looking for the vehicle. As a columnist with the Detroit Free Pest put it,

00:10:11.080 quote, wives who visit the new Northland shopping center will never want to go home.

00:10:15.640 When they're not shopping, they'll just sit on the benches under the trees,

00:10:18.720 listening to the splashing of fountains and dreaming up new ways of spending money, 1.00

00:10:24.520 as women tend to do. Keep in mind, this was an era where women could not obtain credit cards 1.00

00:10:28.740 independently. They had to have their husbands co-sign the card. Otherwise, they had no access 0.77

00:10:31.820 to credit whatsoever. And within a couple of decades, by the mid-70s, the mall was fully

00:10:37.420 enclosed and much more developed. Everything was going well. In fact, the population around

00:10:41.760 Northland and other malls in the Detroit area doubled from 1960 to 1970. There were more jobs

00:10:47.700 available than ever before. It was an economic boom for a city that, to put it mildly, is no

00:10:52.680 longer known for economic booms. As late as the early 90s, depending on where you lived, malls

00:10:58.800 could bring the same type of benefits to your communities. In the Twin Cities metro area,

00:11:03.480 the famous Mall of America, of course, opened in 1992, complete with an amusement park,

00:11:07.500 roller coaster, hundreds of stores, a design that somehow kept people warm in the winter without a

00:11:12.460 central heating system. Again, it was a marvel of engineering, and not just because of its size.

00:11:18.360 And just like the Northland Mall decades earlier, it blew people's minds. The footage from the

00:11:23.300 opening of Mall of America was shot just prior to the Somali takeover of Minneapolis and large 0.75

00:11:28.380 parts of Minnesota generally. So you'll notice a distinct lack of fighting and shooting and

00:11:34.380 stabbing in this footage, a distinct lack of diversity, which these things are not unrelated.

00:11:39.380 Watch. The bargains are coming. The bargains are coming. Hear ye, hear ye. The mother of all

00:11:45.240 shopping crowds was waiting as the doors opened. Yes, shop till you drop. We are professional

00:11:50.240 shoppers. By noon, the two parking ramps were filled with 13,000 cars, and that sent the mall's

00:11:57.480 war room into action. We were able to divert to off site

00:12:00.800 parking properly and efficiently and effectively within

00:12:04.500 five minutes. There was congestion on the roads, but

00:12:08.100 the plan seemed to work. Meanwhile, the traffic jam

00:12:11.100 continued inside the mall. It took almost an hour to get on

00:12:16.620 some of the most popular amusement rides and the wait

00:12:19.100 continued in the food line. Well, I placed an order at

00:12:22.260 about 1.27 and got the food about 2, about 2.20.

00:12:28.320 All officials say the delays were due in part to a green workforce.

00:12:32.600 You sure got a variety. You can buy anything you want, I guess.

00:12:35.440 This place has over 300 stores, some very specialized.

00:12:39.860 Just what this doctor ordered.

00:12:41.540 And I found a book that I've not been able to find anywhere else,

00:12:45.580 Human Anatomy by an illustrator.

00:12:48.920 Some people came just to look.

00:12:50.520 This California man says he likes taking pictures of cultural icons.

00:12:55.140 This is really one of them. This is a high watermark of where we're going.

00:13:02.940 Well, he was right about that. It was the high watermark of where we're going.

00:13:07.700 And it was all downhill from there.

00:13:09.700 Northland is defunct now after a deep decline in foot traffic around the turn of the century.

00:13:14.780 And the Mall of America potentially won't be far behind.

00:13:17.900 Let's pull up some representative footage of what the Mall of America looks like today

00:13:21.680 and the kind of quote-unquote Minnesota residents who are spending time in this mall.

00:13:28.120 Watch.

00:13:29.320 In several videos circulating on social media and more widely reposted and shared over the past day.

00:13:36.980 This incident from Wednesday night in the North Food Court at Mall of America.

00:13:41.200 Crowds running as police broke up a fight among teenagers.

00:13:45.360 A statement today from Bloomington Police Chief Booker Hodges.

00:13:48.640 Eid should be a time of peace, and some use this as a time to settle beefs,

00:13:53.280 and that appears to be what happened here.

00:13:55.900 The Mall of America is a traditional gathering spot for thousands of Muslims

00:14:00.600 to mark the two Eid holidays, the first of which came at the end of Ramadan on Wednesday.

00:14:07.380 In fact, we did a story on this Mall of America custom eight years ago

00:14:12.000 on that year's second EAT holiday,

00:14:14.200 and one of the organizers explained this tradition.

00:14:17.160 The Mall of America is part of our Somali-American culture

00:14:20.120 here in Minnesota.

00:14:22.000 We love malls.

00:14:23.480 We've got seven Somali malls.

00:14:25.880 So this is where we work, where we shop, where we enjoy.

00:14:30.760 So that is really, we feel very safe and part of it.

00:14:35.380 But because of the large crowds, and especially teenagers,

00:14:38.400 and as they do for other large events,

00:14:40.940 Bloomington police set extra officers on duty at the mall Wednesday.

00:14:45.400 In the end, they arrested three juveniles for disorderly conduct and obstructing police.

00:14:50.740 They say it was a purely physical fight, no weapons involved or even found. 0.98

00:14:56.420 Well, just teenagers being teenagers, pay no attention to the fact that they're all black. 1.00

00:15:00.260 Every single one of them. 1.00

00:15:01.980 That can't possibly be relevant.

00:15:04.080 It's just how teenagers behave across all cultures, across all family structures and races and ethnicities.

00:15:08.820 Nothing to see here.

00:15:10.940 And no, your ears did not deceive you, sandwiched in between footage of the black teenagers fighting one another. 0.51

00:15:16.780 You heard the news anchor say, quote, the Mall of America is a traditional gathering spot for thousands of Muslims.

00:15:26.180 A traditional gathering spot, the Mall of America.

00:15:31.260 And then we hear the Somali guy say, quote, the Mall of America is part of our Somali-American culture.

00:15:36.540 Actually, no, the Mall of America is not part of your culture.

00:15:42.800 That's our culture.

00:15:44.200 It has nothing to do with your culture.

00:15:45.940 It's in the name, Mall of America.

00:15:48.900 We built it.

00:15:50.120 It's for Americans. 0.96

00:15:52.240 Somalia doesn't have a structure like the Mall of America 1.00

00:15:54.580 because they're too primitive to draw the blueprint, 0.79

00:15:56.800 much less begin construction.

00:15:59.140 The fact that you people commit wanton acts of violence inside the building

00:16:03.060 and make it undesirable for everyone else

00:16:04.860 does not mean it's part of your culture.

00:16:07.600 Showing up to a place and destroying it

00:16:09.340 and driving all the civilized people away

00:16:11.400 does not make it yours or make it a part of your culture.

00:16:15.260 What it means is you're destroying

00:16:16.820 a very important piece of American culture, 0.99

00:16:19.200 which is what invaders tend to do. 1.00

00:16:21.740 In this case, the invaders are being welcomed

00:16:23.580 with open arms by the people they're conquering.

00:16:26.440 That's why the news anchor calls the mall

00:16:28.340 a traditional gathering spot for Muslims.

00:16:32.600 You know what it was before that?

00:16:34.040 a gathering place for Americans, people who obeyed laws and behaved in a dignified fashion

00:16:40.160 when they're out in public. So much for that. Of course, it's not just Somalis who are making

00:16:46.300 malls completely unusable. Somalis are concentrated mainly in places like Ohio, California, Maine, 1.00

00:16:52.020 and Minnesota. And meanwhile, malls are failing all over the country. One of the broader problems

00:16:58.100 here is something we discuss at length in part one of our documentary, Real History of the Civil

00:17:02.520 rights movement. It's one of the best documentaries we've done. But the simple version is that as part

00:17:06.980 of the civil rights movement, the government engineered massive demographic shifts that made

00:17:11.760 malls far more dangerous. The Civil Rights Act, as we discussed in the documentary, was akin to an

00:17:17.220 entirely new constitution. It was not, as you're taught in schools, a mere declaration of equality

00:17:22.040 among the races. In fact, it was the exact opposite. The Civil Rights Act and the government

00:17:26.320 policies that followed had the legal effect of authorizing a wave of anti-white terrorism all

00:17:32.480 over the country, especially in the suburbs. Places where white people once felt safe in their

00:17:36.820 homes and shopping malls and so on became war zones. The government provided housing vouchers 0.97

00:17:40.980 to enable poor black families to rent property in white areas so they were no longer confined

00:17:45.760 to urban centers. The government also implemented busing at gunpoint, which didn't simply transport

00:17:50.700 black students into white schools, but also forced many white students to attend black schools,

00:17:54.780 where in some cases they were brutally attacked. Any landlord who refused to rent to a black tenant, 0.97

00:17:59.440 even for a legitimate reason, faced the risk of crippling lawsuits, and as elderly white people

00:18:04.600 in places like East Fort Worth were abused and tormented for sport as documented in Left Behind

00:18:09.280 in Rosedale, the government did nothing to help. Here's a strange reality. Success can actually

00:18:15.720 create a financial emergency. Well, let's say business is going well. Great. Congratulations.

00:18:21.560 Well, now you have too many customers, which means you need another employee, except that employees

00:18:25.680 need to be paid. Maybe you need another truck or you need more equipment. Perhaps you're low on

00:18:30.360 inventory. You need to stock up. Maybe you need a bigger space. Some of your reward for making

00:18:34.620 more money is that you need to spend a whole bunch more money that you may not actually have yet to

00:18:40.820 spend. And this is what people mean when they talk about a good problem to have, which frankly

00:18:46.060 is a weird term. You've spent years building a business. The opportunity finally arrives.

00:18:50.680 Customers are standing there ready to give you their money. And you have to tell them no,

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00:19:48.620 The decaying old gray lady might as well lie in your cat box. 0.98

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00:20:41.460 One legacy of the Civil Rights Act is that as a result of government-mandated demographic change,

00:20:46.400 property values began to fall in suburbs that were once considered highly desirable, many families 0.98

00:20:52.300 moved further away to avoid the carnage, which was a rational decision, even though every history 0.55

00:20:58.880 textbook presents it as an act of extraordinary white supremacy, white flight, they call it.

00:21:05.160 These white people left and they took their high paying jobs with them. The result is that malls

00:21:08.940 became surrounded by low income residents who were more interested in shooting each other

00:21:13.180 than buying expensive shoes or, you know, anything like that. And they've left widespread

00:21:18.020 devastation in their wake. Many Americans over the age of 30 witnessed this transformation and

00:21:24.000 can remember it vividly. My own mall, where my parents used to drop me off unsupervised

00:21:28.060 and was for many years a family-friendly place, became by my mid to late teens

00:21:34.020 totally unusable. You know, they swapped out the preppy clothing stores for urban fashion outlets

00:21:41.560 and suddenly there were shootings in the parking lots

00:21:44.800 and crime and fighting and violence,

00:21:48.060 a piece of our community was taken from us.

00:21:50.680 Here's another side-by-side for you.

00:21:52.240 This is an advertisement from 1983 featuring a store called World Bazaar

00:21:56.020 at the Greens Point Mall in Houston.

00:21:58.680 Watch.

00:21:59.640 World Bazaar in Greens Point Mall, truly the marketplace of the world

00:22:03.660 with low direct importer prices,

00:22:05.840 such as silk flowers in an array of styles and color,

00:22:08.580 vases and glass, brass, porcelain, and clay,

00:22:11.380 Baskets for every need.

00:22:12.700 Choose from hundreds of styles and shapes.

00:22:14.740 Burry, wicker, rattan furniture, arches, wall shelves, all at low direct importer prices.

00:22:20.360 Burnt bamboo and matchstick roll-up blinds on sale through June.

00:22:24.100 World Brazaar, marketplace of the world.

00:22:26.740 It's in Greens Point Mall near Sears.

00:22:30.340 You can go to Greens Point and get silk flowers, baskets for any occasion, even bamboo blinds.

00:22:36.900 Sounds pretty nice.

00:22:38.360 As a bonus, it's near Sears, a convenient department store for middle-class families looking to pick up an appliance or maybe some other household essentials or get a pair of jeans, whatever.

00:22:48.840 Greens Point doesn't exist anymore.

00:22:50.400 It's been known for several years now as Guns Point Mall because of the constant shootings and carjackings and stabbings.

00:22:57.800 Somebody was actually just killed at the mall or what's left of it a few months ago.

00:23:01.660 Watch.

00:23:02.640 Hey, we have new insight into what's next for Greenspoint Mall following a deadly shooting overnight.

00:23:07.580 Yeah, police say a 19-year-old man died during an unsanctioned car meetup.

00:23:13.000 Jason Miles live from the scene with more. Jason.

00:23:18.100 Hey there, guys. Yeah, police say these car meetups are a regular nuisance and problem here in the parking lot of Greenspoint Mall.

00:23:25.060 But like the old mall itself, they should eventually be a thing of the past.

00:23:30.940 Houston police were called to the former Greens Point Mall overnight for the same reason they've come here on the weekends before.

00:23:37.440 Only this time, a 19-year-old man died on the scene.

00:23:40.420 There was an unsanctioned car meet here, and during that, at some point, a shooting occurred.

00:23:48.900 We saw multiple bullet holes in this pickup truck, although police say many potential witnesses scattered after shots were fired.

00:23:55.780 Constantly on Sundays, the North Belt Patrol gets dispatched to this parking lot regarding these car meetups and reckless driving.

00:24:03.600 And they come out here regularly on Sundays and run everybody off and end up making arrests when they can.

00:24:10.580 This latest incident in the Greens Point Mall area prompted us to ask about ongoing redevelopment efforts.

00:24:16.480 Right now, a fitness connection inside a former Anchor store appears to be the last remaining tenant.

00:24:21.940 There is no longer access to the mall's interior.

00:24:24.240 And while this affordable housing complex recently went up on the south side of the mall, other projects have been slow going due in part, I'm told, to multiple parties owning sections of the building.

00:24:36.240 Aside from the police spokesman who appears to be heavily intoxicated for some reason, the most interesting part of the clip is the news that there's an affordable housing complex right next to Guns Point Mall.

00:24:47.280 Imagine that.

00:24:48.820 As best I can tell, he's referring to the Summit at Renaissance Park,

00:24:52.280 which is a government-backed housing project.

00:24:56.180 And these kinds of housing projects are all over Houston.

00:24:59.160 But let's focus on this one, just to keep it simple.

00:25:01.880 The city of Houston contributed more than $10 million to the project

00:25:04.820 using federal funds that were allocated after Hurricane Harvey.

00:25:08.180 And on top of the direct funding to build the affordable housing complex,

00:25:12.300 the government also provided low-income housing tax credits to the developer

00:25:15.460 in addition to tax-exempt bonds,

00:25:17.300 all of which dramatically lowered

00:25:18.480 the upfront cost of building

00:25:19.740 and also operating the apartments.

00:25:21.800 And the way this works is that,

00:25:23.340 in almost every case,

00:25:25.220 the developer sells these tax credits

00:25:26.840 to investors like big banks

00:25:28.360 who are looking to lower their own tax bill.

00:25:30.440 In exchange, the developer gets

00:25:31.660 an immediate cash infusion

00:25:33.040 to the tune of tens of millions of dollars,

00:25:35.600 in this case.

00:25:36.720 The only catch,

00:25:37.760 from the developer's perspective,

00:25:39.260 is that the apartment is legally obligated

00:25:41.360 to rent to poor people.

00:25:42.500 And not only that,

00:25:43.340 the rent is capped

00:25:44.240 based on the income and family size of each tenant.

00:25:47.640 Usually it doesn't exceed 30% of the tenant's income

00:25:50.620 or the typical median income in the area at a maximum.

00:25:53.220 So ordinarily, a one-bedroom apartment

00:25:54.980 and a building like this in Houston

00:25:56.840 might cost $1,200 a month.

00:25:59.340 But with the benefit of affordable housing programs

00:26:01.820 and all the subsidies that you're paying for as a taxpayer,

00:26:04.940 the rent drops to only $500 a month.

00:26:08.360 No matter where you live,

00:26:09.880 your federal taxes are being redistributed

00:26:12.460 to the states to pay for programs like this. You're subsidizing other people's rent based

00:26:19.600 on the income they're reporting. And you're subsidizing other people's rent so that your

00:26:24.160 own communities can become less livable. We can assume that this program, like every other

00:26:29.420 government program, is constantly defrauded, by the way. That's the other part of this. But

00:26:32.740 even if it's not defrauded at all, which it is, it's still an insane idea because it's giving

00:26:38.120 these people an incentive to maintain a low income, or at least to report a low income.

00:26:43.560 So the government has created a large housing complex full of poor people and given them

00:26:47.580 an incentive to remain low income. And the government has placed this gigantic housing

00:26:52.640 complex directly next to a mall that for many years was functioning normally. Now it's a

00:26:58.520 decaying husk where people get shot every other week. This kind of thing is happening at an

00:27:04.000 enormous scale all over the place. There's just one example. And by the way, in case it wasn't

00:27:10.620 obvious, these affordable housing programs overwhelmingly benefit non-whites. So although

00:27:16.400 we could say, well, this is for poor people, it's actually not really. Very specifically,

00:27:23.160 this is non-white is what ends up happening. In the case of that Houston complex, 0.99

00:27:27.120 that area is around 60 percent hispanic and 30 percent black that's 90 percent non-white if

00:27:35.380 you're doing the math it's a government policy that by any measure has a disparate impact in

00:27:40.500 terms of benefiting people who aren't white but as always disparate impact only works one way

00:27:46.340 you see it's fine for the government to come up with programs that only benefit non-whites but 0.85

00:27:51.000 at the same time it's totally unconstitutional for the government to treat everyone equally 0.91

00:27:54.140 without giving any special benefits to any particular skin color.

00:27:57.880 That'd be racist. 0.74

00:27:59.380 This is the magical reasoning of the civil rights movement.

00:28:02.260 And we see the effects all over the place, particularly on Worldstar.

00:28:05.480 This is what malls look like today.

00:28:07.540 Notice in the first clip, the woman leaves her child behind in the stroller

00:28:11.980 so that she can kick someone during the bra.

00:28:15.300 Yeah, you got to have your priorities straight. 0.92

00:28:17.220 Watch.

00:28:24.140 I ain't getting involved in it!

00:28:39.140 What in the hell is going on?

00:28:41.140 Hey! 0.82

00:28:42.140 Hey! 0.96

00:28:43.140 Hey!

00:28:46.140 What is going on here?

00:28:48.140 Pull up to the bar!

00:28:50.140 he said going to jail

00:28:53.360 uh oh what's this one doing here

00:28:58.540 so keep footage like this in mind when you're told that online shopping explains entirely

00:29:19.720 the death of malls in the country? Actually, that's not true. Online shopping is part of the

00:29:25.900 picture, but the main problem really is that when you import criminals to places, those places become

00:29:32.000 less desirable. It's one of the reasons housing prices are so high. If the cities were safe and

00:29:37.120 livable, we'd have a lot more available housing. As it stands, you need to pay a premium to avoid

00:29:42.120 places like this. Bet mode activated. The Scorebet app here with trusted stats and real-time sports

00:29:48.900 news yeah hey who should i take in the boston game well statistically speaking nah no more

00:29:53.540 statistically speaking i want hot takes i want knee-jerk reactions that's not really what i do

00:29:59.520 is that because you don't have any knees or the score bet trusted sports content seamless sports

00:30:06.020 betting download today 19 plus ontario only if you have questions or concerns about your gambling

00:30:10.640 or the gambling of someone close to you please go to conixontario.ca now part of the reason we

00:30:15.620 can't blame online shopping is that this decline was underway long before, um, the arrival of

00:30:21.320 Amazon, certainly before Amazon became what it is now, uh, which, and that didn't really happen

00:30:26.840 until late nineties, early two thousands. The other reason is that we can look at other countries

00:30:32.280 like China. So this is footage from the, uh, Shenzhen Wanda mall, which I'm reliably informed

00:30:38.960 is located in the Longgang district, specifically in the Pingu sub district near the South

00:30:44.680 China City. Of course, I knew all that already without even looking it up, but we'll put it up

00:30:51.100 on the screen now. You'll notice immediately that it's extremely clean, high budget, packed full of

00:30:57.140 people, offers plenty of activities in addition to shopping. There's an indoor glass suspension

00:31:01.740 bridge, an indoor arena for team-based first-person shooter style games, an indoor surfing pool, a rock

00:31:07.720 climbing facility, a go-kart track, an equestrian area for horseback riding. There's also a huge

00:31:13.900 bookstore, a culinary museum, an escalator that goes to the sixth floor. It's a major landmark to

00:31:19.600 the same degree or more as American malls in the 1950s. And I'm not cherry picking here, by the

00:31:24.140 way. China overall has many more malls than we do, and they're much nicer. Again, we only have around

00:31:28.720 1,200 malls now. China has something like 7,000 by most estimates. They've doubled the number of

00:31:34.260 malls they have since 2013, while we've closed most of ours. And as for the Shenzhen Wanda Mall

00:31:39.940 in particular, it's also important to point out that based on my extensive research into the

00:31:44.320 Chinese suburbs, the mall isn't even located in a rich area. It's working class and it's

00:31:48.900 frequented by people from a wide array of professions and income brackets. People are

00:31:53.920 almost exclusively Chinese. Now you won't notice too many Somalis in that mall, nor do they

00:32:00.060 typically host any unlicensed teen takeovers. It's just a normal working class, historically

00:32:05.800 industrial part of town. Everyone there is Chinese. On the other hand, to the extent that

00:32:12.500 we have functioning malls, nice malls anymore in the United States, they're all in wealthy areas

00:32:18.420 with overwhelmingly white, homogenous populations. So take the Ross Park Mall in North Pittsburgh, 0.97

00:32:24.360 for example. Now, local news reports will tell you that it's doing very well.

00:32:28.880 I'm going to tell you the truth, though, about why it's doing well. Watch.

00:32:33.360 Across the region, you see the empty promenades, the closed-gated stores, the leaky roofs, and the cracking facades.

00:32:41.520 Century three has gone under. The Pittsburgh Mills is teetering.

00:32:45.680 The mall at Robinson is shedding tenants and shoppers alike.

00:32:49.760 By some accounts, the whole idea of a shopping mall is dead.

00:32:53.640 But others say reports of its demise have been greatly exaggerated.

00:32:57.620 We are evidence that malls are doing well. They're surviving. They're thriving.

00:33:01.520 people are coming here in droves. Ross Park Mall is the region's biggest exception to the dying

00:33:07.580 mall. While other malls have suffered from online shopping and disinvestment, its parent company

00:33:13.600 Simon has aggressively reinvested in its properties, managing to stay ahead of the curve,

00:33:19.840 assembling cutting-edge stores. We have stores like Aritzia just made their grand debut here

00:33:25.360 in Pittsburgh. Allo Yoga, they were brand new. We have Rowan where they have nurses that actually

00:33:30.780 do all of the piercings. It's important that you know your market, you know what stores

00:33:35.100 are going to really resonate with that shopper that's in that area, and give them what they want.

00:33:41.400 And the mall continues to evolve, aspiring to be more than a shopping destination, but an experience.

00:33:48.420 Dick's House of Sport offers hands-on tee shots and a climbing wall. The mall currently updated

00:33:54.400 and expanded its food court and added new restaurants like Plaza Azteca for lunch and

00:34:00.840 dinner. They've got the right location and they've done very well on bringing in some of those

00:34:06.600 additional amenities to make it a place for people to have experiences and not just shopping. And that

00:34:12.340 seems to be some of the secret sauce for the malls that are doing well. Yeah, give the customers what

00:34:18.520 they want. At the Ross Park Mall, you can hire nurses to do all your piercings when you're 1.00

00:34:23.680 done with the yoga studio, the rock climbing wall, Topgolf. Then you can sit down for a nice

00:34:29.380 steak dinner. Why didn't any other mall think of that? Well, Ross Township, where this mall is

00:34:35.720 located, is one of the richest enclaves in North Pittsburgh. It's much wealthier than that Chinese 1.00

00:34:40.760 province that I mentioned earlier, where the Space Age Mall is located. To the extent that

00:34:44.780 any malls are doing well in the United States, this is the secret sauce. They're selling high-end

00:34:49.840 products and services to rich white people in an environment where they won't come across any

00:34:55.580 Somalis living in an affordable housing complex. Not exactly a revolutionary discovery. Any place 0.56

00:35:02.500 that caters to upper-class white people is going to be nice. It's going to be the sort of place

00:35:07.740 where you can spend the day without having to worry about getting robbed or stabbed or shot

00:35:13.600 in the parking lot or anywhere else. Southdale Center in Minnesota, the first enclosed mall in

00:35:18.860 the country, is doing the same thing as Ross Park Mall, which isn't surprising, since it's owned by

00:35:23.200 the same company, the Simon Property Group. Watch. I'm going to throw a number at you here.

00:35:28.500 94 billion. That's a billion with a B. That is how much money is expected to be spent on luxury

00:35:35.080 retail items in the United States this year alone. That's insane. And malls in the Twin City

00:35:40.700 are responding. In Edina, Southdale Center, the nation's first enclosed mall, is in the midst of

00:35:46.920 a $400 million upgrade, including a luxury wing that opened in June. Some of the businesses going

00:35:53.520 in there at Southdale actually moved over from the Galleria, which if you know the area, you know the

00:35:59.100 Galleria is right across the street. So what does this mean for what was once considered the ultimate

00:36:05.600 mall for luxury in the Twin Cities. We bring in Beth Pero Jarvis and Mary Van Note from Ginger

00:36:11.700 Consulting. Thank you both for being here. I live in Edina. There's so much activity going on at

00:36:16.460 these malls. Southdale was very quiet for a long time and now you're seeing this like big push to

00:36:21.600 bring in luxury. Talk a little bit about that because the mall has such history that like it

00:36:27.320 almost couldn't fail so they're kind of revamping the whole thing. Yeah so Simon Properties owns

00:36:33.280 southdale and they own almost every great mall across the country and they have tons and tons

00:36:37.440 of money so they're pouring 400 million dollars into the first enclosed mall in the u.s we're very

00:36:42.560 proud of and it's mostly about luxury so they're taking um they have kowalski's they have the

00:36:47.760 lifetime fitness and then they are putting in 50 new high-end stores 50 over the next year

00:36:54.480 now even outside of simon property group this is the strategy that pretty much every successful

00:36:58.240 Mall is now adopting, what few remain. This is from a local news report about Lakeside Mall in

00:37:04.640 the New Orleans area, for example, which is one of the only malls in the country that is growing.

00:37:09.200 Quote, the mall's management has done a good job attracting trendy new tenants from outside the

00:37:14.040 market, like Aloe Yoga, a Beverly Hills brand that opened its first Louisiana location at Lakeside

00:37:18.840 last year, and Aretesia, a fashionable Canadian label opening this spring. The mall also has been

00:37:27.060 effective in attracting retail tenants away from other shopping centers in the local market.

00:37:32.060 Our house, a high-end furniture store, left the South Market District for Lakeside in 2023.

00:37:37.420 Anthropologie vacated its two-story location in Canal Place, where it was an anchor tenant,

00:37:42.680 for Lakeside in 2025. So if a mall is going to survive and remain economically viable,

00:37:48.900 this is apparently the only route that's available. And as a result, what you end up with

00:37:54.100 are these high-end retail places for upper-class people.

00:37:58.600 And then you have low-end garbage dumps like Dollar Tree

00:38:02.740 on the other end of the spectrum.

00:38:06.200 But what you don't have,

00:38:09.100 and there's basically no equivalent

00:38:11.260 to what Sears was in the 80s and 90s,

00:38:15.140 which is a nice, clean, family-friendly retail location

00:38:22.360 that sells relatively high-quality products affordably.

00:38:29.140 That sort of thing basically doesn't exist in the country anymore.

00:38:34.540 And by the way, since we're on the subject of Sears,

00:38:36.840 it's important to acknowledge that there are several other factors

00:38:39.160 that led to the decline of malls.

00:38:41.420 The Civil Rights Act and related policies were a main contributor,

00:38:45.240 and online shopping obviously didn't help.

00:38:47.460 But when you're talking about a complicated development like this,

00:38:49.780 there's always multiple factors at play.

00:38:51.300 And one of those factors, which is relevant to what happened with Sears, relates to the involvement of hedge funds and private equity style leadership.

00:38:57.840 Now, to be clear about this, Sears was in financial trouble for many years before any hedge fund got involved.

00:39:02.920 I'm not claiming that without private equity, Sears would somehow be thriving today.

00:39:06.440 I'm not going to blame private equity for the death of shopping malls, you know, on their own.

00:39:11.020 But at the same time, it's obviously true that when the hedge fund took over Sears, they had some very mixed incentives.

00:39:16.820 So to give just one example, they had Sears sell off their real estate and pay rent to a separate firm, which the same hedge fund owned.

00:39:23.800 They could also collect interest on their loans to Sears.

00:39:26.500 In other words, the hedge fund made as much money as possible from Sears' failing business before it shut down for good.

00:39:32.840 This was beneficial for the hedge fund, and arguably it was the fate that Sears was going to meet anyway.

00:39:38.400 You could make the case that this outcome was economically efficient, but it's also true that when malls existed back in the 50s and 60s,

00:39:44.660 this kind of thinking simply didn't exist at any meaningful scale.

00:39:50.060 Massive hedge funds had not perfected the playbook of strip mining failing companies

00:39:54.240 and then erasing them from existence. And as a result, someone who hypothetically might have

00:39:59.160 purchased Sears on the cheap back in, say, 1950, would have had every incentive to make the company

00:40:04.480 work. They'd retool the brand. They'd start stocking different kinds of products, run different kinds

00:40:10.060 of advertisements. They make a good-faith effort to save the company. That doesn't happen anymore,

00:40:16.720 like to anywhere near the same degree, at least. Instead, our overlords are maximizing every

00:40:21.680 available dollar they can possibly earn to a degree that's demoralizing, over-the-top, and

00:40:26.080 frankly, strange. For instance, some empty mall storefronts are now being converted into

00:40:31.920 makeshift housing, complete with tiny 250-square-foot units. Developers realize that people are too

00:40:38.840 poor to afford rent, much less the products that they're selling in these malls. So their solution

00:40:43.320 is to repurpose the stores into these dystopian pods. Watch.

00:40:53.240 So welcome to the teeny tiny shoebox apartment inside the arcade. There are lots of others in

00:41:00.260 the building just like this. So mine is about 250 square feet. There is a walkway right in front

00:41:06.540 of the facade because this used to be a shop front. And so people had to access all of the

00:41:13.040 shops in the building. While malls across the U.S. are facing store closures and empty parking lots,

00:41:19.740 some are finding a new life from an unlikely source. We are here at the Arcade Mall in Providence,

00:41:25.740 Rhode Island, the oldest indoor shopping mall in the country. The Arcade had long been a center

00:41:31.320 point in Providence's bustling downtown, but like other malls, it fell in hard times

00:41:36.320 and was completely vacant.

00:41:38.380 But rather than letting this historic building fall into ruin, developers came in and decided

00:41:42.780 to build 48 microlofts here on the second floor and up here on the third floor.

00:41:47.960 Another obstacle is design.

00:41:50.080 Most malls have limited windows, which are essential for residential spaces because they

00:41:54.120 need natural light, making it difficult to convert certain parts of the mall.

00:41:58.660 Usually, only the exterior-facing retail spaces are suitable for housing.

00:42:03.520 Well, at least you get a window.

00:42:05.680 So they won't stick you in an old abandoned footlocker store or something like that,

00:42:09.320 where the big metal security grill is your front door.

00:42:12.740 Give it a few more years, I'm sure that will change. 0.99

00:42:15.200 In the meantime, your kitchen is a bombed-out Auntie Anne's pretzel store.

00:42:19.820 The mannequins will be your only company.

00:42:22.500 Enjoy owning nothing and being happy.

00:42:24.720 The same malls that used to be a symbol of American progress, ingenuity, and growth are now massive empty husks,

00:42:30.820 where human beings are jammed into shoeboxes because they can't afford anything else.

00:42:36.840 If you're measuring the success of our economy by traditional metrics, none of this really shows up.

00:42:42.580 You'll hear that we're a much more efficient country now, we're wealthier than ever, and so on.

00:42:47.360 But even if you can cede all that data, and even if you're generally happy with the way things are going, if you are,

00:42:52.920 there's no denying that monuments to American greatness have now become evidence of our

00:42:58.640 decline. They are no longer inspiring or interesting or desirable. They serve the

00:43:04.580 opposite purpose. They're demoralizing and demeaning and even dangerous. They're totally

00:43:10.040 defunct. And in their place, we have what? Amazon.com, Walmart with 24-hour delivery,

00:43:18.160 dollar tree this is a trade that according to every economic textbook is a worthwhile one

00:43:24.880 you have to wonder as you think of those pod dwellers going back to their depressing little

00:43:30.240 bedrooms otherwise known as the storage closet of a jc penny and as people continue getting

00:43:34.960 stabbed and shot during teen takeovers in the parking lots of once of once great american

00:43:40.060 institutions you have to wonder whether any of the official data is actually capturing the full

00:43:46.680 extent of what we've lost. That will do it for the show today and this week. Have a great weekend.

00:43:55.700 We'll talk to you on Monday. Godspeed.

00:44:04.020 In all of my years of public life, I have never profited from public service. I welcome this kind

00:44:12.080 of examination because people have got to know whether or not their president's a crook.

00:44:16.700 Well, I'm not a crook.

00:44:18.180 For more than five decades, from Iran-Contra to Monica Lewinsky to Russiagate, every political

00:44:23.160 scandal has been measured against one, the Watergate affair.

00:44:27.120 But what if Richard Nixon was telling the truth?

00:44:29.920 What if Watergate isn't what it seems?

00:44:32.300 What if hundreds of thousands of pages of sworn testimony, memoirs, and newly released

00:44:37.020 government documents tell a different story than the one you learned in school?

00:44:40.900 In 1972, Nixon won the biggest electoral landslide in modern American history with

00:44:46.900 grand plans to remake the federal government.

00:44:50.140 Two years later, he was out of office.

00:44:52.620 You were taught that Nixon's men broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters

00:44:56.440 to spy on his political opponents.

00:44:58.660 You were taught that when he found out, Nixon covered it up, and that the cover-up was worse

00:45:04.180 than the crime.

00:45:06.000 You were taught that two heroic Washington Post reporters

00:45:09.100 guided by a righteous FBI whistleblower

00:45:12.240 brought the most powerful man in the world to justice.

00:45:15.220 But you were never taught what really happened.

00:45:17.660 I shall resign the presidency

00:45:19.220 effective at noon tomorrow.

00:45:20.840 The real history of the Watergate scandal

00:45:22.820 is available now on Daily Wire+.

The Matt Walsh Show - August 27, 2026

Ep. 1830 - We Investigated The Collapse Of The American Mall

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