Musk's war on the homeless is 'disgusting', say advocates

Billionaire Elon Musk claims homelessness is perpetuated to enrich NGOs – and his words are having a significant impact

- ALEX WOODWARD

To Elon Musk, the word “homeless” is a “lie” and “a propaganda word”.

“Homeless is a misnomer. It implies that someone got a little bit behind on their mortgage, and if you just gave them a job, they’d be back on their feet,” he told former Fox News personality Tucker Carlson in October. “What you actually have are violent drug zombies with dead eyes, and needles and human faeces on the street.”

The more money spent combating homelessness, “the worse it gets”, according to Musk.

The businessman – who funnelled more than $250m (£197m) into Donald Trump’s presidential campaign – is now directing lawmakers and the White House to make drastic, potentially devastating cuts to federal agencies that support millions of vulnerable Americans, including thousands of people experiencing homelessness.

The world’s wealthiest person has repeatedly suggested that he believes the government he will be assisting is behind a global conspiracy to make more people homeless in order to enrich the organisations working to end homelessness.

“The ‘save the homeless’ NGOs are often paid according to how many homeless people are on the streets, thus creating a strong financial incentive for them to maximise the number of homeless people and never actually solve the problem!” he wrote on Tuesday.

“The more homeless there are, the more money these organisations get, so their incentive is to increase, not decrease, homelessness!” he said in September.

Trump, meanwhile, says people experiencing homelessness should be forced into treatment or mental institutions “or face arrest”. His campaign has promised to “end the nightmare” of the “dangerously deranged” with a plan to “open large parcels of inexpensive land, bring in doctors, psychiatrists, social workers, and drug rehab specialists, and create tent cities where the homeless can be relocated and their problems identified”.