Homelessness by Design: Requiem of the American Dream

When rent spikes, courts criminalize sleep, and billionaires cash out, then your job is won't be enough to save you.

May 17, 2025

Melissa works full-time as a hospice nurse. School-age children. She’s hustling to get them from school on time. Traffic-dependent. Today, she lives in her minivan with her kids and a Chihuahua named Rufus. Melissa's husband died of a heart attack during the pandemic. Something they couldn’t change. They couldn’t afford to then, and they sure cannot afford decent medical care today. Rent in her city jumped 41% in 18 months.

Her building wasn’t immune to the increases. The investment firm that owns it coordinated with other large rental firms. Melissa’s rent increased, and despite a steady income, she couldn’t pay. The eviction followed, and with a credit score already in the 500s, medical bills in collections, no savings, and her family across the country, they had nowhere to go but to their minivan. The family now parks in a dedicated overnight car park, hoping to get just enough rest to get back to work tomorrow. Melissa doesn’t perceive herself to be homeless, merely “houseless”. She’s a die-hard patriot, deeply believing in the American Dream. Even when she can’t get by financially.

Paycheck to Paycheck

While one survey by LendingClub found that more than 60% of Americans reported living paycheck to paycheck, others recorded lower numbers. LendingClub asked 3,252 U.S. consumers if they needed their next paycheck to cover their monthly spending; 62% answered yes.
In contrast, the Federal Reserve found that 54% of Americans have emergency savings to cover three months of expenses. Bankrate found that while 59% of Americans are uncomfortable with their level of emergency savings, 34% are living paycheck to paycheck.
The lack of consensus may be explained by the ambiguity of the term “paycheck to paycheck.” For example, almost half of Americans surveyed by Bank of America said they were living paycheck to paycheck but only a quarter spent 95% of their income on necessities.

No matter how you massage the numbers, when you take a critical look at your finances, comparing income to expenditure, and available cash to price increases, you’ll come to the inevitable conclusion that …

You are closer to homelessness than you are to wealth.

Not closer to struggle. Not closer to breaking even. But closer to sleeping on concrete under a freeway overpass with one eye open and a felony charge for daring to rest your head on public ground. And even that, if the concrete hasn’t been modified so that resting is damn near impossible.

The housing crisis is only one disturbing aspect of how the wealthy have absolved themselves from any responsibility. Compounded by an unreasonable and unjustifiable disdain for unhoused individuals, we’re in a freefall toward the collapse of the social contract. If we ever had a fully functional one to begin with. Yet, not to be deterred by Americans who are suffering, the policies that have already been written into law, and those that are currently being proposed to "fix" it, read more like war strategy than public health.

More Than Enough Housing

The 2024 PIT Count statistically determined that 770,000 Americans are homeless. The number is staggeringly inaccurate, tho. I wrote about this here:

Homeless: A new [shocking] calculation

Michael Zeitgeist

October 20, 2024

New York City

Read full story

Nonetheless, let’s consider that the determined numbers are accurate.

Therefore, IF 770,000 are unhoused,

then, with 15 million vacant homes, we should not have a problem housing them.

You might argue that the system is broken. This is true to some degree. The system is heavily bureaucratic, difficult to navigate, and almost impossible to solve on your own. This is why cities, states, and nonprofits employ housing navigators and case managers. However, even with available resources, there are innumerable obstacles. Any one of these barriers can prevent you from getting into housing. In many cases, barriers are concurrent:

Documentation and Accessibility:

Difficulty obtaining identification
Lack of dwellings with accessibility accommodations
Long waiting periods
Affordability
Inability to save money
Poor credit history
Lack of stable employment history
Mental health and substance use disorders
Lack of support networks
Open warrants
Lack of self-care resources
Lack of options for those with pets
Racial disparities

I’ve written about this before. Please read: Silenced in Plain Sight or Manufacturing a Humanitarian Crisis

The Geography of Desperation

In June 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Grants Pass v. Johnson that cities can jail homeless people for sleeping in public spaces. The case hinged on whether such punishment violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. SCOTUS decided it does not. This ruling reversed years of progress that had protected unhoused people from arrest when no shelter alternatives existed. The previous guardrails set by Jones v. City of Los Angeles and Martin v. City of Boise no longer apply. You will be subject to a $295 fine per ticket, and if you cannot pay, you may be subject to serving time, and if you do not attend the court hearing, you’ll get a warrant. Thus, the cycle starts if you’re a first-time homeless person, or continues if you’ve been on the streets for years.

You Are Not Ready for This

Michael Zeitgeist

December 29, 2024

On a random Friday morning, you’re clocking in at your work, ready to slog through capitalistic monotony.

Read full story

In America today:

It’s illegal to sleep outside if you have nowhere to go.
It’s illegal to sleep in your car if it’s parked in the wrong lot.
It’s illegal to sleep in shelters if you’re trans in the wrong state.
It’s illegal to ask for help in some cities, unless you buy a permit to beg.
It’s legal to buy a senator, but illegal to sleep in public.

Across the country, states are outlawing basic acts of survival. In Arizona and Alabama, panhandling near ATMs or intersections is a criminal offense. Mississippi still uses vagrancy laws rooted in Jim Crow-era control of Black labor. In New Jersey, police can arrest you for begging in public without a permit. In Iowa, simply existing in a state of poverty near a retail zone can bring fines, arrest, or both.

Now you can add California to the states in which the unhoused community will be chased from camp to camp, ticketed and fined, and ultimately run out of the state to a destination unknown.

This Is Not Confined to Clean Streets

As with almost anything resembling decay, destruction, and despair, Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's fascist blueprint, or more aptly called “The Declaration of War on the American people,” is marching forward.

Criminalize homelessness - done.
Eliminate "Housing First.” - in progress.
"Treatment First," which sounds good until you realize treatment is code for forced institutionalization in detention centers, rehab camps, or jail cells. - in progress.
HUD to be gutted - in progress.
Rental assistance slashed or capped - in progress.
Programs that allow people to stay housed while they recover are being dismantled - in progress.

To the Heritage Foundation, homelessness is a desired consequence of policy failure and Trump is here to cleanse the streets of American cities. The desired outcome is to disappear Americans into encampments, by force.

Compassion Fatigue or Compassion Psychosis?

MAGA Matt Walsh has made a career out of punching down. His hot take? Homelessness isn’t a housing issue, but it’s a drug issue. He argues the solution is prisons, asylums, and forced rehab.

This isn’t fringe rhetoric. It’s from the textbook of ideological warfare against the American people: Project 2025's proposed use of jails and institutional camps as "solutions" for unhoused populations. The desired policies, repped by a deeply religious organization, criminalize homelessness out of existence, simultaneously pathologizing poverty.

Translation: They make being homeless a felony, being poor a crime, and being sick a death sentence.

Imagine losing your job, or experiencing Substance Use Disorder (whether legal or illegal drugs), getting divorced, evicted, etc., and the leading government response is a cage, a cot, and a court order. No treatment, no dignity, no plan. Or if Trump has it the Heritage Foundation’s way: forced containment into encampments.

They aim to contain poverty like a biohazard.

The result? A Kafkaesque loop where the same government that eliminates assistance now punishes you for needing it.

Housing First

For decades, "Housing First" has been the only evidence-based model that works. It prioritizes getting people into permanent housing before tackling issues like addiction or mental illness. But the Heritage Foundation calls it "far-left ideology."

Although study after study shows that people are far more likely to stabilize, seek treatment, and re-enter the workforce when housed. With Housing First, cities save money on ER visits, incarceration, and emergency services.

A Denver-based Housing First initiative saw a 76% reduction in jail time and a 64% reduction in emergency room visits among program participants. In Houston, Housing First efforts reduced chronic homelessness by over 60% in a decade. Finland, the only country that has effectively ended homelessness, relies entirely on this model.

If you have time for one thing, and one thing only, please watch this video.

With Project 2025, we do the opposite of what Finland does. We spend more to harm people faster.

The Legalization of Misery

The Grants Pass decision represents a philosophical turning point in American law. It didn't just permit cities to fine and jail homeless people; it made cruelty legally acceptable if the suffering is the bureaucratic janitorial squad.

The court refused to acknowledge sleeping as a biological necessity, instead framing it as a punishable behavior. They casually sidestepped the logic of Robinson v. California, which barred criminalizing status (addiction), and leaned into the more punitive framework of Powell v. Texas, where behavior influenced by status (public drunkenness) could still be punished.

The Economic Guillotine Is Already Dropping

If the LendingTree data holds up, then over 60% of Americans now live paycheck to paycheck. Nearly half couldn’t cover a $500 emergency. Home ownership is increasingly a myth, and rent inflation has outpaced wage growth for 22 consecutive years.

Americans are working more hours than ever before, yet housing insecurity is increasing. Gig work has replaced stable employment. Health insurance is tied to jobs people can’t keep. And the average rent in many urban areas now exceeds 50% of median income.

Now the federal government wants to convert housing vouchers into capped block grants, shift them to states, and force able-bodied adults off assistance after two years.

We’re told to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, even as the boots are repossessed and the ground disappears. The middle class is being hollowed out by inflation, debt, and stagnating wages while corporate profits reach historic highs. Your hedge fund landlord is coordinating the attack on your wallet. And if you own a house, your mortgage is someone else’s derivative. You’re not a citizen. You’re a line item.

Lastly, once they wore you down and pushed you into the streets, they’ll declare you unfit for society but fit for encampments.

This is a death sentence in slow motion.

The Mirage of Middle-Class Safety

You might still have a house. You might have a job. But you are not safe.

You are one corporate downsizing, medical bill, or rental hike away from losing the illusion of stability. And when that moment comes, the only thing between you and the street is a system actively trying to disappear you from public view.

Try to visualize it, and then tell me if you’re still OK: you lose your job after your company is bought out by private equity or goes through a massive re-org, kicking you to the curb. Your COBRA coverage is unaffordable. New jobs are applied to by the thousands. Unemployment is insufficient and time capped. Your 401k, if you have it, will be penalized if you withdraw early. Meanwhile, your landlord raises rent by $400. The little savings in your account vanish in three months. You move into your car, sleeping in overnight-save-carparks. Then your car breaks down, because it has become your home. Inevitably, it will get towed. You’re on concrete. Shelter beds are full. You get ticketed for loitering. You skip court because you're trying to find a meal. Now you have a warrant. Next, you’ll be removed from public view.

This is not fiction. It is a timeline. For many Americans, it's already a reality. For many more Americans, this is the inevitable future.

What Comes Next?

This isn’t limited to the homeless. It’s about the housed who are next in line. About workers who are burned out, priced out, and pushed out. About systems that criminalize the consequences of their own failures. Behind the systemic failure, real estate companies like Blackstone are waiting in the wings, buying your foreclosed home for pennies on the dollar.

George Carlin, modified: The American dream is no longer something you wake up into. It’s what you wake up from. Drenched in sweat, rent past due, and an eviction notice taped to the door.