Tucker Carlson on homelessness: what the evidence says · JRE #2138

What the evidence says 01 / RECORD

Carlson claims California's rise in homelessness is a direct result of government spending creating a perverse incentive: "if you pay for something, you get more of it." California's homeless population has grown over the past decade even as state homelessness spending reached roughly $24 billion between 2019 and 2024, per a 2024 state audit that also found the state did not consistently track whether the spending reduced homelessness. However, the leading academic research on the causes of California homelessness, the 2023 UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative's California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness (CASPEH), the largest representative study of homelessness in the US since the mid-1990s, found the primary driver was unaffordable housing relative to income: surveyed participants had a median household income of just $960 per month in the six months before becoming homeless, and most said a modest rental subsidy or one-time payment would have prevented their homelessness. The study did not identify an incentive effect from aid spending as a cause of rising homelessness. The claim's core causal mechanism, that aid spending itself is the primary driver of rising homelessness, is not supported by this leading research, which instead points to the gap between housing costs and income as the dominant cause. Note: the spending audit documents the dollar figure but does not itself establish causation either way, since the state did not consistently track outcomes.