It’s no secret that multi-hyphenate CEO — and richest man in the world Elon Musk — has become significantly detached from reality.
He’s long surrounded himself with sycophants, going as far as to buy himself a social media network to systematically tune out his critics.
Musk has also long looked down on those far less privileged than him, baselessly accusing them of crimes and insulting them.
Now those dark threads seem to be merging: in a recent tweet, Musk claimed that “in most cases, the word ‘homeless’ is a lie,” arguing that “it’s usually a propaganda word for violent drug addicts with severe mental illness.”
Needless to say, the utterance marks a new low, highlighting Musk’s well-documented vitriol and lack of empathy for the victims of an unjust society.
It also underlines a staggering unwillingness to engage with the actual issues that have led to a steady growth in the number of unhoused people.
Musk was responding to a tweet that baselessly alleged that giving homes to unhoused people leads to them fighting and killing each other or dying of drug overdoses — an appalling and woefully inaccurate assessment.
In reality, a December 2023 report by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) found that over 650,000 Americans are experiencing homelessness on a given night, the highest since the department began reporting on the issue in 2007.
Experts have long found that poverty and lack of affordable housing remain major contributing factors, each of which is deeply interwoven with the injustices plaguing society today.
Simply dismissing the homeless as “violent drug addicts with severe mental illness” is not only a vastly inaccurate and dehumanizing statement; it’s ignorant of the causes that lead to homelessness.
Musk has long railed against “violent crime,” particularly in San Francisco, a city where X-formerly-Twitter — a company which he acquired in 2022 — is headquartered.
“Many people I know have been severely assaulted,” Musk tweeted last year, without providing any form of evidence.
“If you walk around the streets of San Francisco and many downtowns, homeless would be the wrong term, it’s ‘violent drug zombie,'” he told far-right pundit Tucker Carlson during a conversation earlier this year.
“San Francisco used to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and now you have to step over the drug needles and the feces and the bodies,” he said.
Of course, Musk conveniently glossed over a disastrous affordable housing crisis, lack of a social safety net, and underfunded housing initiatives in the city.
A post by independent publication Popular Information on Substack neatly lays out some facts Musk should learn about homelessness.
For instance, a huge chunk of homeless people in the US are children, according to the HUD report. Unhoused people are also far more likely to be the victims of violent crimes than the perpetrators.
Even with jobs — something that would automatically make the problem go away, according to Musk — unhoused people aren’t able to afford housing. Even working full-time at minimum wage, countless Americans can’t afford to rent a modest two-bedroom home.
Even users on Musk’s social media platform were unsettled by his latest claim that homelessness was a “lie.”
“The word homeless is describing someone’s financial state and lack of residency,” one user replied. “How has that got anything to do with the things you just tried to define homeless people with?”
“It’s easy to judge from stability, but compassion and empathy are marks of true consciousness,” another user wrote. “Trauma walks among us in many forms.”
“First having worked with the homeless, what Elon is saying is not true the vast majority of homeless are not severely mentally ill or drug addicts they just need a place to live,” another X user tweeted. “Elon is not offering any answers other than criticism.”
Other users were quick to point out Musk’s staggering level of privilege, dismissing his short-sightedness.
“The richest man in the country is going to tell us what ‘homeless’ means… totally relatable!” one account joked.
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