California has a major homelessness issue. A March 2021 federal report showed that California’s #homeless population increased by nearly 7% early in 2020, which is months before the COVID pandemic and subsequent economic crisis spread across the state. In 2022, California has the highest homeless population, with about 151,278 homeless people. This is about one-fifth of the total homeless population in the United States. 

Most of these homeless people are not able to pay rent for reasons such as addiction, mental illness, or criminal records that hinder them from maintaining stable #jobs. Quite a significant number of homeless people in California are African-Americans who are victims of racial discrimination and a result of high poverty-rates in Black families. 

Efforts have been made to solve this by allocating billions of dollars in “supportive housing” projects, however, they appear to be ineffective. Even when some hotels were turned into temporary homeless housing, so many continue to turn to the streets for shelter.

The question for debate is, are social systems in California actually helping homeless people, or are the systems doing more harm than good?