The moral crisis driving elections nationwide

We can fix homelessness, but who would politicians bully without consequence?

Welcome to premium Thursday evening edition of Progress Report.

President Biden stood in front of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall tonight and delivered an urgent warning about the existential danger posed to American democracy by an openly fascist and increasingly militant Republican Party.

Everything about the speech was uniquely American, from its historic setting and earnest patriotic exceptionalism to the fact that none of the major TV broadcast networks bothered to air the speech, which was then further obscured by inane complaints by cable news reporters now working for a ruthless corporation controlled by a conservative billionaire.

An independent media and aggressive populist progressive movement are truly our best hope to survive this era of kleptocracy, extremism, and turmoil.

We’ll have a story about the fight to save representative democracy and blunt far-right extremism this weekend. Tonight, we’ve got a great piece on a pressing issue with deep moral, economic, and electoral consequences.

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by Natalie Meltzer

For many people, the Covid-19 pandemic created an unexpected and unprecedented opportunity to get a deal on an underpriced apartment or buy a home for far below its normal asking price. But for others, the viral plague wiped away what little shred of stability they’d previously been able to maintain. Homelessness became much more visible during the height of the pandemic, as many unhoused people chose to live on the streets rather than in shelters to avoid contracting COVID.

And it only got worse from there.

By late summer 2020, Republicans were zeroing in on crime as a way to discredit the Black Lives Matter movement and distract from the public health catastrophe. As a result, many states and municipalities have created an inhospitable and legally challenging environment for the unhoused by criminalizing sleeping on public property, banning permanent encampments, and penalizing cities and agencies that do not remove them. 

While we’re increasingly living in what are essentially seperate countries when it comes to policies such as voting rights and abortion, the attack on the unhoused has been a bipartisan affair. Liberal cities like New York, Minneapolis, Seattle, and Washington, DC are sweeping and policing homeless communities, often couched under the banner of public safety. Each city right now is run by a mayor far more conservative and big business-friendly than the overall electorate.

But not all hope is lost — there are some municipalities with housing-first programs that are increasingly proving to alleviate the homeless crisis and create better outcomes for all involved. In many states, the issue will be a key driver in this fall’s midterm elections, and the partisan lines aren’t so obvious. We’ll help you decipher the truly progressive policies from the punitive right-wing garbage masquerading as measured and civic-mind.