John Oliver critiques Bay Area in latest segment on homelessness crisis

On Sunday night's episode of "Last Week Tonight," host John Oliver pulled no punches in a lengthy segment on homelessness — and how the nation's perception of the growing crisis is a large part of the problem.

Examples highlighted by Oliver range from a completely tone-deaf investigation into the subject on "The Tyra Banks Show" in 2006 to more contemporary TV news segments, some of which are bizarrely laden with black-and-white visual effects and sinister music as residents relay unfounded fears of their unhoused neighbors.

"Far too often, stories focusing on homelessness are presented solely through the lens of how it affects those with homes, when in reality, it is obviously the people without them who need the real help," Oliver laments in the segment, which has amassed more than a million views on YouTube.

He goes on to describe how the crisis has been severely compounded by the pandemic, with experts forecasting a 49% increase in chronic homelessness over the next four years due to COVID-related job loss and reduced income, which is projected to cause "twice as much homelessness as the 2008 recession," according to the Economic Roundtable, a Los Angeles-based research organization.

There are a slew of reasons why someone might be unhoused: the loss of a job, inability to afford medical expenses, to escape domestic violence, or simply the fact that housing costs are rising far more quickly than wages, as Oliver points out. in San Francisco, 42.5% of unhoused residents surveyed by the Coalition on Homelessness said their lack of a home was due to unemployment, while 63% said their largest barrier to obtaining housing was their inability to afford rent.

But in addition to a largely skewed public understanding of the causes driving the crisis, Oliver explains how policies and infrastructure in cities across the U.S. have failed their unhoused populations. For instance, he describes how Los Angeles had just 16 mobile toilet stations servicing its estimated homeless population of 36,000 people, all of which were "hauled away" at night due to lack of "around-the-clock security" — and that was before the pandemic.

"So the next time you complain about human s—t in the street, maybe think about what it would be like if someone padlocked your bathroom every night," said Oliver. "You, too, would suddenly be getting really creative really fast."

Oliver then describes instances of "hostile architecture," such as spikes under bridges or benches with dividers intended to prevent people from lying down or finding a place to rest. In San Francisco, you might remember the "anti-homeless" boulders placed on a Clinton Park sidewalk in 2019 that local artist Danielle Baskin attempted to remove by listing them on Craigslist, or the McDonald's on 24th and Mission that blared classical music from its outdoor speakers as a means to prevent people from sleeping outside of the restaurant.

"If you're thinking, 'Hold on, why don't homeless people just go to shelters?' there can be a lot of problems with that," explained Oliver.

Pulling data from the San Francisco Chronicle, he noted how in 2019, the city of Oakland had just 457 beds available in 15 shelters due to lack of funding — not nearly enough to accommodate the city's estimated 4,000 unhoused people. (SFGATE and the San Francisco Chronicle are both owned by Hearst but operate independently of one another.) That year, Oakland's number of unhoused people per capita was the highest of any of California's large cities, the Chronicle reported.

But even in instances where enough shelter beds are available, he said, people may not always want to utilize them — either for fear of becoming separated from family members or losing pets or belongings.

That said, funding isn't the only issue. Proposed housing solutions in cities like Clairemont, a suburb of San Diego, also experienced strong opposition from what Oliver described as NIMBY residents. To that, he makes an imperative point:

"There are lots of people, even liberals, who believe that homelessness is a personal failing, poverty can be avoided, and their own good fortune makes them not only better than the unhoused, but more worthy of comfort. It is basically Reagan's attitude from a Whole Foods crowd," he said.

As far as solutions go, Oliver points to programs like permanent supportive housing, with access to therapy and counseling, substance abuse treatment and other services. But he says the root of policy change lies within the ways in which people talk about the homelessness crisis.

"It will take a massive commitment in infrastructure, funding and resources, but the very first step here is a collective change of perceptions. [...] Basically, we need to stop being dicks and assuming that the unhoused are a collection of drug addict criminals who've chosen this life for themselves instead of people suffering the inevitable consequences of gutted social programs, and a nationwide divestment from affordable housing."

Watch the full segment on YouTube: