Spencer Pratt is right — the homeless problem is mostly about drugs

When a reporter asked Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt about his plans to tackle homelessness, Pratt had a brusque response: “They’re not homeless. They’re drug addicts.”

“They are choosing to be on the street because they want to do drugs,” he added.

Activists expressed outrage at Pratt’s comments.

But he is correct: Much of Los Angeles’, and other cities’, homeless problems are the result of drug and alcohol abuse.

Cities that allow and encourage substance abuse, such as Los Angeles, do see more people living and dying on the street.

Homeless activists have long argued that most of the homeless don’t have problems with drug abuse or mental illness.

On one level this claim is true — but the activists are confusing two types of homeless people.

Most homeless people are in shelters, and about half of those are in families. The people in shelters are often there for a short period and need just a little extra money or time to get back on their feet again.

Yet Americans generally think of the homeless as those living out on the streets.

And Americans’ commonsense intuition that those living on the streets — that is, the unsheltered homeless — disproportionately struggle with drugs and mental illness is correct.

According to one study from UCLA, three-fourths of those on the streets said they abused drugs or alcohol and about three-fourths said they had mental health problems.

In New York City two-thirds of the unsheltered had major problems with substance abuse.

In large homeless encampments, the problems of drug abuse and drug dealing are even worse.

When Aurora, Col., mayor Mike Coffman went undercover to live in local encampments, he found they were mainly filled with hardcore drug addicts that “are a part of drug culture.”

“It is a lifestyle choice and it is a very dangerous lifestyle choice,” he added.

One survey of Philadelphia encampments found almost everybody there was abusing substances, mainly opioids.

Pratt has argued that a campaign against drug abuse and against taxpayer subsidies for the homeless would make the homeless move elsewhere.

He’s right that the homeless often do move to places like Los Angeles that allow more drug use and provide more subsidies.

The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority itself found that a third of the unsheltered there became homeless outside of Los Angeles County — and a recent City Journal poll of the unsheltered in three LA neighborhoods found over half came from outside the county.

Many of the unsheltered are honest that access to drugs or local handouts matters when they choose a town.

Seattle found that more than half of the homeless came from outside of the city, and many of those transplants cited things like legal marijuana and access to homeless services as their reason for coming.

In interviews, the homeless themselves often admit that most people out on the streets are there in order to do drugs.

One of the surest signs of the homeless drug problem comes from overdoses.

Los Angeles County regularly records over 2,000 homeless deaths a year, and nearly half of those deaths have been from alcohol and drug overdoses.

The city notes the overdose rate among the homeless is 46 times the rate in the rest of the population.

Many other homeless deaths, such as deaths due to heart disease and traffic accidents, are also likely the result of drug or alcohol abuse.

The homeless out on the streets deserve our compassion — but it’s not compassionate to allow thousands of people to die every year on those streets, and it’s not compassionate to allow and subsidize drug abuse among people who otherwise might be able to recover.

If cities like Los Angeles recognized this fact, they’d go a long way to solving their homeless problem.

Judge Glock is the director of research and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.