CNN host Fareed Zakaria stunned many viewers by openly acknowledging on HBOs Real Time with Bill Maher that Americas most severe homelessness crises are concentrated in Democrat-run cities and states.
As reported by Gateway Pundit, Zakaria departed sharply from the usual progressive narrative by conceding that liberal governance has failed to address the problem, despite massive public spending and years of promises. His remarks underscored what conservatives have argued for decades: that progressive policies, permissive enforcement, and regulatory roadblocks have turned once-thriving urban centers into cautionary tales of misplaced compassion and bureaucratic excess.
Speaking on Mahers program, Zakaria said, Let me say something thats going to get me into trouble, which is, if you look at where you have the most acute homelessness problems, they are blue cities in blue states, to a large extent. He went on to stress that the crisis cannot be blamed on tight-fisted budgets, noting that these jurisdictions are hardly starved of taxpayer funds.
He argued that the issue isnt a lack of spending. The right tends to be very stingy about the money that it would take to solve these problems. But thats not New York City, thats not L.A. Were spending crazy amounts of money on it, he said, adding that in his view theres this other side to it, which he described as overprivileging the rights of the homeless over the rights of the other 99.5%.
Zakaria further observed that the pattern is not consistent nationwide, highlighting that some Republican-led cities have avoided the same level of urban decay. Miami does not have the kind of homelessness problem that New York has. Houston doesnt, Dallas doesnt, he said, implicitly crediting more market-oriented, law-and-order approaches.
He attributed part of the difference to housing construction and the regulatory climate that often stalls it in blue strongholds. Part of it is that those places are much better at building stuff. One of the problems in a place like New York or in California is we just cant build housing, of any kind, right? Affordable, homeless, whatever it is, and people dont want it.
So many once-beautiful American cities have been hollowed out by homelessness, crime, and disorder, and the tragedy is that this decline was not inevitable but the direct result of policy choices by their leaders. As even voices on the left now admit, prioritizing fringe interests over the safety, prosperity, and basic rights of the law-abiding majority has come at a devastating cost to urban America.
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