00:00The United States faces a homelessness crisis.
00:03In Lawrence, Massachusetts, the House of Mercy Church is fighting the city's policy that seeks to cut its house for
00:10their own house.
00:11Our correspondent and outbring has the details.
00:16Cost of living was the buzzword of the election season, and yet you rarely hear politicians speaking about the record
00:23homelessness crisis in the United States.
00:26In the richest nation in the world, over three-quarters of a million people go unhoused every night.
00:32And increasingly, it's criminalized in the United States to be without a home.
00:37Here in Lawrence, Massachusetts, a church congregation has taken matters into its own hands, offering refuge on its private property.
00:45I mean, look, we're trying to clean. They are cleaning. Why is this hurting anybody?
00:50It's not hurting anybody. It's not costing anybody anything except the House of Mercy.
00:54The city has ordered its tent community removed, citing health, fire, and zoning violations, while fining the church $1,200
01:03a day.
01:04Wherever we go, they don't want us. I come here because I feel safe, and it feels like home.
01:12Mayor Brian DePena wasn't immediately available for comment, but he said in a statement humanitarian intentions do not exempt House
01:21of Mercy from safety and zoning rules, while arguing Lawrence has carried an outsized burden of a regional homelessness crisis.
01:28The city is treating the homeless population as a pathology that it's all their own fault that people have become
01:40homeless, and the structural issues that are involved don't play a role in this.
01:46If we had enough affordable housing in this country, we wouldn't have people living on the streets.
01:51In 2024, the Supreme Court ruled that cities can enforce bans on public camping.
01:57Across the political spectrum, officials from Gavin Newsom in California to Michelle Wu in Boston have backed encampment clearances.
02:05Three hundred and twenty cities, people have made the decision that it's better to jail, fine, or institutionalize people than
02:15it is to house them.
02:16And the resources being used for that could be used so much more effectively to provide housing.
02:23Homelessness is a feature of capitalism.
02:27Economic insecurity and the threat of destitution help discipline workers as rents outpace wages.
02:34The neoliberal-era faircloth amendment still limits federal support for public housing to roughly 1999 levels.
02:42Still, cities like Denver show that housing-focused interventions have helped cut street homelessness there by 64 percent since 2023.
02:52We are the richest country in the world, but we are turning our back on the less fortunate.
02:56What does that make us?
02:58What does that make us?
03:00Where are we going to be tomorrow?
03:03Where?
03:03Where are we going to be tomorrow?
03:04Pastor Farah tells me they have no plans at House of Mercy Worship to stop providing services for the unhoused
03:11here.
03:12And they plan to work with local authorities to come to a resolution on the matter.
03:18We will be following all the latest developments on this situation and tracking poverty from the ground in the United
03:26States into the future.
03:28From Lawrence, Massachusetts, Dan Albright, tell us soar.
