The Matt Walsh Show - The Homelessness Crisis Isn’t About Lack Of Housing ｜ Proof For Your Liberal Friend

00:00:00.000 I would prefer this personally to living on the street.

00:00:04.800 It's about the same, really.

00:00:06.400 It's really about the same because we would have more freedom out there, though.

00:00:10.220 We wouldn't care if we lost it today.

00:00:12.420 This is some, I think, quite revealing footage that's been circulating.

00:00:16.880 It's from apparently an Instagram account that I guess goes around and films stuff like this,

00:00:21.720 people kind of living their lives.

00:00:24.100 And here we have a couple of homeless people who are no longer homeless, technically,

00:00:27.880 because they were given free public housing.

00:00:30.920 And it's just a short clip of them, it seems,

00:00:34.060 shortly after they moved into this public housing arrangement.

00:00:38.300 And this is how they reacted to it.

00:00:40.160 This is how they are responding to being taken off the street,

00:00:44.820 rescued, you'd think, from this life of vagrancy.

00:00:47.820 But here's how they feel about it.

00:00:51.040 I don't want to be in government housing.

00:00:53.700 This is Isabella Towers, an apartment complex in Knoxville, Tennessee.

00:00:58.640 It's just terrible.

00:01:00.240 And it's just too small.

00:01:01.900 But you could kind of make this nice about the size of mine back home now.

00:01:05.960 Come on, we've got to learn a little gratitude.

00:01:08.340 This is a heater.

00:01:10.080 I would prefer this personally to living on the street.

00:01:12.780 It's about the same, really.

00:01:14.380 It's really about the same because we would have more freedom out there, though.

00:01:18.200 We wouldn't care if we lost it today, though.

00:01:20.440 You wouldn't care?

00:01:21.500 No.

00:01:22.100 Got a TV, A.C., shower.

00:01:25.260 The only two things I've...

00:01:26.980 Black door.

00:01:27.380 Yeah.

00:01:28.220 We consider this still homeless.

00:01:29.760 I mean, I still believe.

00:01:31.260 I want to live in a house.

00:01:32.820 To where I could actually go outside and do yard work.

00:01:35.340 Achieving that from this place is substantially easier than achieving that from the streets.

00:01:43.320 Not really.

00:01:44.180 It's much easier to do on the streets.

00:01:46.080 It doesn't have a window factor.

00:01:47.840 But I would say this is a good transitionary point.

00:01:51.020 Have a place where you can take a shower, freshen up, and then go to work.

00:01:54.800 Start saving money over to the bank account.

00:01:57.300 It has a lot of potential.

00:01:58.800 And then from there, you can eventually have your first life in security for a place that you actually would like.

00:02:03.660 Or actually, we actually want.

00:02:05.580 Did you get anything that you could use?

00:02:07.300 Okay, so they're given free housing.

00:02:11.320 They have a bathroom, a shower, A.C., kitchen bed, a door they can lock.

00:02:17.060 And you would think much better than sleeping on a cardboard box out on the street or under a bridge or something.

00:02:24.360 But they're not satisfied with it.

00:02:25.660 They say that it's no better than being on the street.

00:02:28.120 They want a bigger place with a yard.

00:02:29.460 They won't accept anything less than 3,000 square feet and five acres, you know.

00:02:36.660 Meanwhile, if you look at the video, you can see that they've already totally destroyed this place that they were given. 0.98

00:02:40.620 It's a disgusting, filthy pigsty. 0.99

00:02:43.380 Trash everywhere. 1.00

00:02:45.400 And this is what you get. 0.99

00:02:47.740 People don't want to hear it.

00:02:49.700 People don't want to hear it.

00:02:50.640 Very few people, we always hear about, let's have an honest conversation about this and that.

00:02:57.520 Well, when are we going to have the honest conversation about homelessness?

00:03:01.420 That's a conversation that very few people want to have.

00:03:04.380 Even though we all kind of know, you know, and it's one of those classic sort of conversations that you have in your living room, but people don't want to say it out loud.

00:03:16.200 But, you know, at a certain point, we just have to be real about it.

00:03:20.640 That you give homeless people free housing, and they destroy it, and they complain about it, and they don't want it, and they end up back on the street. 0.96

00:03:33.160 This is the way it works.

00:03:34.980 Totally predictable.

00:03:37.460 And by the way, many, you know, you talk to people that work with the homeless.

00:03:41.140 You talk to people who, anyone who's tried to help the homeless in any way.

00:03:46.000 Everyone has a similar story.

00:03:47.280 I mean, I'll never forget, my sister has a story of seeing a homeless person in a parking lot once, and, you know, it's just an anecdote, but, like, there's just many, just symptomatic of the larger problem.

00:04:02.660 But didn't want to give cash because, you know, not really excited about the idea of helping someone's drug habit.

00:04:13.380 So she gave, I think it was a homeless woman, she gave the woman a gift card. 0.61

00:04:17.120 She went out and she went to a local takeout place and got a gift card for whatever it was, you know, 20, 30 bucks to go get some food.

00:04:27.220 And the homeless woman complained that she didn't like that restaurant. 1.00

00:04:34.220 I mean, they say beggars can't be choosers, but it turns out the beggars very often are choosers, at least in these kinds of cases.

00:04:44.720 So I've said many times on the show, and I've been mocked for it every time, that you cannot fix homelessness by giving people homes.

00:04:52.480 I know, when I say that, it's very easy. What do you mean? They're homeless, Matt. Of course you can fix it by giving them homes.

00:04:59.920 No, you can't, you moron. This is what happens. 1.00

00:05:06.400 The problem with homeless people is not that they don't have homes. The lack of homes is not actually the issue.

00:05:11.240 I know it's shocking for some of the dumbest among us to hear that. 0.93

00:05:14.640 You know, the homelessness is a symptom. It's a result of the problem. It's not the actual problem. 0.99

00:05:23.640 And we know that because when you give them free housing, this is what happens.

00:05:28.700 They destroy it, first of all, and then they're back on the street.

00:05:33.340 Okay, you could give every homeless person in America a free house with three square meals a day for free,

00:05:38.660 and we would have zero homelessness in America for about a week.

00:05:43.660 And within two weeks, we'd have the same amount that we had before.

00:05:47.940 Okay?

00:05:49.080 And that's obviously the case. It's obvious because in most cases,

00:05:52.800 if a homeless person really wanted to be in a house, they could be.

00:05:59.820 They're not out on the street because they couldn't get a job and they couldn't afford a house.

00:06:03.540 Because the vast majority of these people are not trying to get jobs or get houses.

00:06:09.020 And when you see someone on the side of the road, you know, with the change cup, like they're not,

00:06:14.420 this is not someone who's trying every single day and putting in applications and trying to get a job.

00:06:18.760 But it's just, they're not trying at all.

00:06:21.640 They're really not making, they're most likely making basically zero attempt to change their situation.

00:06:28.500 Um, in fact, they're so uninterested in finding housing that again, if you give them housing,

00:06:34.980 they'll end up back on the street in many, many cases.

00:06:38.360 Why is that?

00:06:39.000 Well, again, this should be obvious.

00:06:41.320 I think it is obvious to almost everyone, whether they say it out loud or not.

00:06:45.340 First of all, many of these people are drug addicts.

00:06:47.500 The vast majority are drug addicts.

00:06:50.340 Okay?

00:06:51.420 Uh, I can't say for absolute certain about the two individuals in that video.

00:06:55.200 I don't know.

00:06:56.020 My guess, if I had to guess, I think it's a safe assumption that when they talk about the freedom

00:07:02.500 of being on the street, they're talking about drugs.

00:07:07.020 He means he can do drugs on the street, but he can't do drugs in government housing.

00:07:12.020 Or if he does, he might get kicked out.

00:07:14.500 Um, you know, homeless people are homeless in many, many cases because they've dedicated

00:07:19.340 their whole lives to drugs.

00:07:20.400 And if you give them money, if you give them, if you treat me very generous, uh, and give

00:07:27.800 them even, you know, say you go to a homeless person, you give them a hundred dollars, let's

00:07:31.060 because you really want to be generous. 0.74

00:07:32.900 You might've just killed that person because they're going to go spend it on drugs and overdose. 0.96

00:07:36.560 Um, and they're apathetic at best about their housing situation. 0.97

00:07:44.200 And I don't know why people pretend they can't wrap their minds around this sort of thing.

00:07:48.940 But a lot of homeless people really don't actually want homes all that much.

00:07:51.980 Uh, these, these are, these are, you know, often, often not desperate and starving people

00:07:59.680 who are yearning to be housed again.

00:08:02.360 They might be desperate in many ways, but, uh, the yearning for the house part is, doesn't

00:08:08.100 appear to be the case.

00:08:09.300 And again, anyone who's ever worked with homeless people knows this, um, whether they say it or

00:08:14.740 not, uh, this, this, it becomes very obvious.

00:08:18.220 Um, so what do you do then about homelessness?

00:08:24.680 How do you solve it?

00:08:27.160 Well, you can't solve it completely.

00:08:30.180 That's the first thing we have to just accept.

00:08:32.500 You're not going to solve it.

00:08:33.600 There's not gonna be a time when there's no homeless people, but you can address it.

00:08:38.700 It doesn't have to be as bad as it is now.

00:08:41.840 It doesn't have to be like, you can't walk down the street in any major city because it's

00:08:45.460 just strewn with homeless people.

00:08:46.840 It doesn't, it doesn't have to be that way.

00:08:51.340 So how do you solve it?

00:08:52.400 Well, if you have the stomach for it, the problem is that our leaders and a lot of people

00:08:57.960 in general just don't have the stomach.

00:08:59.720 They don't have the stomach to deal with these kinds of problems, the way that they need to

00:09:04.220 be dealt with.

00:09:05.340 There's, and there's really only one way most of the time.

00:09:08.540 And either you're going to do the thing that works or you're not going to do it because

00:09:16.240 it makes your tummy hurt to think about it.

00:09:18.420 And then the problem is going to continue.

00:09:19.860 So with homelessness, well, first of all, you need to crack down on drugs in a major, major

00:09:33.340 way, in a way that we in fact are not for all the talk about, oh, the war on drugs has

00:09:38.640 failed.

00:09:39.120 What war on drugs?

00:09:40.340 What war on drugs are you talking about?

00:09:42.400 There's a war happening.

00:09:43.760 There should be, but there's not.

00:09:46.800 Okay.

00:09:47.220 I'll know that there's an actual war on drugs when drug traffickers are being arrested and

00:09:52.560 executed.

00:09:55.120 That's a war on drugs. 0.93

00:09:56.680 You think we've had a war on drugs?

00:09:58.200 Like you ain't seen nothing.

00:10:00.040 A war on drugs is you arrest the drug traffickers and you put them on trial and you convict them

00:10:04.660 and then you execute them as mass murderers because that's what they are.

00:10:10.340 So that's step number one. 0.99

00:10:13.220 And number two is you have to disincentivize homelessness.

00:10:16.660 And I know that it sounds crazy if you're completely clueless about these things.

00:10:20.680 You think disincentivize?

00:10:22.520 There are no incentives to be homeless.

00:10:25.340 What do you mean?

00:10:26.140 No one's choosing to be homeless.

00:10:28.440 Yeah, they are.

00:10:29.420 You just heard it.

00:10:30.900 You just heard it from two people who said that they'd kind of prefer to be homeless.

00:10:34.660 on the street.

00:10:37.360 How do you disincentivize it?

00:10:38.780 Well, you take away the freedom that he's talking about.

00:10:43.120 He likes the freedom of being homeless.

00:10:45.600 And what he probably means, probably, is that as a homeless person, he can set up a camp wherever

00:10:51.260 he wants and there's no expectation of him at all.

00:10:55.780 And he can do drugs openly anytime he wants.

00:11:00.140 You take that away.

00:11:01.740 You take that freedom away.

00:11:02.860 You crack down on the drugs.

00:11:04.980 You crack down on the homeless camps.

00:11:07.240 You start arresting people who are doing drugs openly.

00:11:11.760 You arrest them.

00:11:13.980 People that set up camps on sidewalks that should not be allowed.

00:11:20.700 People that do that, you arrest them.

00:11:23.300 You ban this kind of behavior.

00:11:24.940 You strongly disincentivize it.

00:11:27.560 You crack down on the drugs.

00:11:30.320 Real, serious, ugly consequences for the people that are pushing this poison into our communities.

00:11:35.520 That's what you do.

00:11:36.500 And if you're not willing to do that, then you are not serious about helping, about solving

00:11:41.040 this problem or helping these kinds of people.

00:11:42.580 And I don't want to hear anything.

00:11:43.320 I just don't want to hear it anymore from people that talk about their deep compassion for people

00:11:48.780 like that.

00:11:49.200 You have no compassion.

00:11:50.600 You, in fact, are indifferent to them.

00:11:54.760 You see them as like little puppy dogs.

00:11:57.560 You don't even see them as people.

00:11:58.420 Because you're not willing to do the things that would actually require to help people

00:12:02.640 like that.

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00:13:15.320 California.

00:13:15.880 Here's the latest idea, where they've decided they want to take homeless people and move

00:13:23.040 them into hotels.

00:13:24.560 Real simple solution, right?

00:13:26.440 Because they look at homeless people and they think, well, the problem here is that the people

00:13:31.080 don't have homes.

00:13:32.120 And so we could solve the problem by just putting them in a building.

00:13:36.700 This is, you know, because this is how you think if you're a leftist or if you're a child.

00:13:43.300 I can remember having this conversation with my own kids when they were five years old.

00:13:46.960 And they would see homeless people and say, Daddy, if they're homeless, why don't we just

00:13:51.320 give them homes? 0.72

00:13:52.020 And that's a very good question for a five-year-old.

00:13:57.000 But if you're an adult, you should realize that the homeless problem is not, you know,

00:14:01.560 it's not simply a problem that they don't have homes.

00:14:06.420 That's certainly not where the problem begins.

00:14:08.760 Like, there's a reason why these people don't have homes.

00:14:14.000 But tell that to the people that are proposing this law.

00:14:16.220 Let's watch a little bit of the CNN report here.

00:14:18.520 In Los Angeles County, more than 60,000 people are homeless on the average night.

00:14:26.620 And more than 20,000 hotel rooms lie empty on the average night.

00:14:32.980 See where this might be going?

00:14:35.600 It's just, it's insane.

00:14:37.700 It isn't going to solve the problem.

00:14:40.100 We think this is one part of the solution.

00:14:42.360 By no means do we think this solves a homelessness crisis.

00:14:45.020 But do hotels have a role to play?

00:14:47.000 Of course they do.

00:14:48.520 So the union he leads, which reps hotel workers, gathered enough signatures and Angelenos will vote on a bill

00:14:55.420 that would force every hotel in town to report vacancies at 2 p.m. every day,

00:15:02.120 then welcome homeless people into those vacant rooms.

00:15:07.160 Honestly, would you check into a hotel knowing that the chance of your neighbor,

00:15:12.840 to the left or right, is a homeless individual?

00:15:15.500 Manoj Patel voluntarily rents some rooms to homeless people who are vetted and paid for by a local church.

00:15:23.080 But he's against this bill that would make that mandatory.

00:15:27.660 We barely are surviving, number one.

00:15:30.560 Number two, we have to think of the safety of our staff.

00:15:33.840 And number three, we're not professionally or any otherwise equipped with any of the supporting mechanism that the homeless guest would require.

00:15:44.320 What services would be provided remains unclear.

00:15:47.480 Also unclear, the funding and hotels would be paid fair market rate.

00:15:52.000 Brilliant. Just a brilliant idea.

00:15:56.180 Can you imagine you pay $900 a night to stay at the Ritz-Carlton or something,

00:16:00.340 and there's a homeless meth addict next door?

00:16:04.000 Like you're walking to your room.

00:16:05.860 They wouldn't even, I say next door, that assumes they'd be in the room, which they wouldn't even be.

00:16:09.580 You're walking to your room, that you're paying hundreds and hundreds of dollars for a night,

00:16:13.840 and you're stepping over a homeless guy, defecating in the hallway.

00:16:18.240 That's what they want to set up.

00:16:20.380 And the great thing here is one of the voices of reason in this report is an actual homeless guy who says,

00:16:27.180 no, don't do this.

00:16:29.660 Let's watch the rest of it.

00:16:32.340 It's up to the city.

00:16:33.360 I mean, they did it during Project Roomkey.

00:16:34.740 The pandemic era program now winding down that inspired this bill by placing more than 10,000 people in hotels that volunteered.

00:16:43.840 Sean Bigdeli among them.

00:16:45.800 Well, first of all, it's a blessing.

00:16:47.040 It's a great room.

00:16:48.680 The technology is not up to par, but, you know, what technologies do you have in a tent?

00:16:52.320 This bill would also force developers to replace housing demolished to make way for new hotels,

00:16:59.480 and hotel permits would be introduced,

00:17:03.000 as well as making every hotel from a Super 8 to the Biltmore, except homeless people, as guests.

00:17:10.300 I don't think that's a good idea.

00:17:11.720 Why not?

00:17:12.220 Maybe for some, but, you know, there's a lot of people with untreated mental health,

00:17:16.780 and some people do some damage to these poor buildings, man.

00:17:21.080 This happened in Manoj Patel's motel.

00:17:24.560 And she marked all walls, curtains she burnt, thank God there was no fire, even marked the ceiling.

00:17:31.540 Opponents of housing, the homeless, and hotels fear this,

00:17:34.940 and fear tourists could be put off from even coming to L.A.

00:17:39.240 Yeah, you think so?

00:17:41.080 I mean, if they haven't already been put off.

00:17:42.520 Like, if you're going to Los Angeles right now, at least, you might think that, yeah,

00:17:47.680 it's an apocalyptic wasteland out there, and there's just homeless people and drug addicts and criminals,

00:17:51.860 but at least I'll be safe inside the hotel room.

00:17:54.800 You take that away, and there's no reason to go.

00:17:58.100 So, you know what?

00:17:59.020 Just let them do it. 1.00

00:18:00.480 These idiots, they are determined to just destroy their cities. 1.00

00:18:06.000 They are determined to do it. 1.00

00:18:07.740 They want to destroy their cities and live in the wreckage of it.

00:18:11.620 And you know what?

00:18:12.140 Go ahead and do it.

00:18:13.340 You do something like this, it is the end of the hospitality and hotel industry in the city,

00:18:18.660 and then thus it's the end of the tourist industry as well,

00:18:21.300 because those two things go hand in hand.

00:18:23.020 So go ahead and do it.

00:18:23.880 I mean, why not?

00:18:25.020 Go ahead.

00:18:27.440 You know, what's the point of even arguing against it? 0.96

00:18:31.600 Reasonable people trying to save you maniacs from yourselves.

00:18:37.200 But just for the record, this again is what, if you are not a child, if you're over the age of five,

00:18:44.300 my children, you know, my nine-year-olds, we had this conversation when they were five,

00:18:47.360 they now understand some things about the homeless problem that even adult leftists don't understand.

00:18:53.880 And one of the most fundamental things here is that, again, there's a reason why homeless people are homeless.

00:19:03.080 Because, you know, if everything else was normal, if these are just like normal, mentally healthy people,

00:19:12.060 don't have drug abuse problems, there's no reason why they'd be homeless, okay?

00:19:16.860 If you don't have a drug abuse problem, and you're not crazy, and especially if you're physically, you know, able,

00:19:28.640 you can at least walk around, then there's no reason why you would end up on the street for any length of time.

00:19:35.760 Because there's always some kind of housing option.

00:19:40.860 It might not be great, but you can get some kind of job and afford some kind of house.

00:19:46.380 It might not be great, it might not be nice, okay?

00:19:49.320 You know, but you won't be on the street.

00:19:51.520 Which is why almost every homeless person you see on the street is, has severe mental health problems, okay?

00:20:04.260 And or is addicted to drugs.

00:20:07.800 And for a lot of them, it's both.

00:20:09.420 And the two feed off of each other.

00:20:12.180 You know, when you're doing meth and heroin and all that, it's not great for your brain.

00:20:15.200 And so you could give them money, you could put them in the house, but all, but they just, it goes right into the drugs.

00:20:22.060 It's all they care about.

00:20:23.900 And that's how they end up on the street in the first place.

00:20:27.180 So to just like leapfrog over the underlying problems, mental illness, drug abuse,

00:20:33.940 we're going to leap over that and just take these people as they currently are and put them in a, in a, in a, in a house, put them in a room.

00:20:39.600 There's zero chance that that results in anything but total disaster.

00:20:48.860 But whatever, why even explain it? 0.84

00:20:50.440 Go ahead, destroy your city. 0.99

00:20:51.880 Go ahead and do it. 0.99

00:20:52.420 Please, please do.

The Matt Walsh Show - August 23, 2025

The Homelessness Crisis Isn’t About Lack Of Housing ｜ Proof For Your Liberal Friend

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