This is such a bias tinted view of reality. There are homeless in all parts of the country including suburban and rural areas. You find the majority of homeless in cities because that is just where people in generally are so if by most of the country is extremely clean you mean most of the country is extremely empty and void of life then yeah.
Let's just ignore the rural areas and suburbs. Let's even ignore party (since most big cities are democrat run at this point).
Even with all of those things held the same, the West Coast cities are still uniquely bad not just in the people without permanent housing but also their lack of ability to do anything.
This particular article points to housing supply. Again, this is a simple choice. For example, my city of Portland, which is very high on this list, makes it impossible to build anything (tree planting requirements, years long waits for final premits, rent control, urban growth boundary, high tax state gov't, etc). It's terrible. At the end of the day though, Portlanders are Americans and will experience the same outcomes should the state just be normal
The west coast was a great place to live, people moved there, they didn’t build enough housing, people lose their jobs and can’t afford rent, they go homeless.
These are the fastest growing regions of the country. Texas and Florida are going to take several West Coast electoral votes if trends continue.
They’re growing now because people can’t afford the west coast anymore.
As far as they lack the ability to do anything, you're right. Cities are NIMBY trapped and unless they fix that they won't be able to make any real progress on the problem.
That isn't a democrat problem, indeed the unwillingness to build new things is, by definition, a conservative tendency to "leave neighborhoods as they are".
Historically Seattle's city council was full of "conservative democrats" who didn't rock the boat much and who worked well with local businesses. The city council may be willing to build bathrooms for any gender, but no way in hell are they willing to rezone "historic" neighborhoods. However they've had no qualms about building large amounts of shelters in minority neighborhoods, devastating many of them. Likewise the police don't bother shutting down open air drug markets in Chinatown, but I'm pretty sure if a few dozen dealers and several hundred customers congregated on Queen Anne the crowd wouldn't last long.
Show me a republican candidate who is willing to run on the platform of "extreme property rights, get rid of all zoning except for heavy industry, do whatever you want on your land." The reality is outside of a few places in Texas, republican controlled cities are just as heavily restricted and zoned as democrat controlled cities.
> The reality is outside of a few places in Texas, republican controlled cities are just as heavily restricted and zoned as democrat controlled cities.
I mean... you're ignoring the largest Republican state for what reason exactly?
But anyway, I think a lot of zoning policy is set by the state.
For example (and this is frankly why efforts like DOGE are necessary), it is simply true that politicians of both parties will seek to maximize their power. State codes typically grant cities zoning powers. They don't have to. But most do. Thus, one can expect that any politician will wield that power.
I've never met a politician who didn't fully exercise their power. Those who do become folk heroes like Cincinnatus -- so rare is the accomplishment.
At the end of the day, we the people simply need to remove the power from the state, one way or another. If DOGE works, it would provide a good model for how this could happen.
From my perspective, I think that every decade, the citizens should elect a 'deregulation' committee whose only power is to remove regulation. Or, randomly pick a group of 12 people to sit on a grand jury to eliminate laws periodically. That's their only power, and they'd be anonymous. Maybe that'd work.
Up until a year or two ago Kirkland had a long standing (and well respected) republican on its city council. Small r republicans used to hold multiple positions in the PNW, but after the party purge post 2016 the Republican party in Washington State has done nothing but run absolutely unelectable candidates. They used to run candidates who ran on a fiscally conservative platform and who didn't engage in culture war stuff.
But aside from that, fiscal conservatives and social conservatives are two different axis, and historically Democrats in Washington have been rather fiscally conservative.
The Seattle city council worked very well with the local businesses communities and they were adverse to adding new taxes.
While the council's behavior has changed in recent years, the history is that up until less than a decade ago, Washington was rather purple when it came to actual policies.
Hell the super liberal local independent newspaper used to put some small r republicans on their voter guide now and then.