'Where Are They Actually Going?': JD Vance Asked Straight-Out What's Happening To D.C.'s Homeless

Forbes Breaking News

While taking questions at an event in Atlanta, Georgia, Vice President JD Vance was asked where the homeless being removed in Washington, D.C., are going.

Transcript

00:00Sir, I'm George Chidi. I write for The Guardian. I live in a small town, less than a thousand

00:10people. I'm also a military veteran. I am a DINFO-trained killer just like you.

00:15Thank you for your service, George.

00:17In 1996, in Atlanta, when the Olympics was coming through, Atlanta very famously rounded

00:25up people who were homeless on the street, downtown, bought them bus tickets and sent

00:30them out of town and often out of state. There was a lot of negative sentiment about that

00:35later. It's one of the things that people remember. I am concerned that in the press

00:40to eliminate encampments in D.C., something similar to that is happening. What is happening

00:47to the people who are homeless, often poor, often have a mental health problem or a drug

00:54problem? Where are they actually going when these camp pits are being broken?

00:59So first of all, George, I was 12 years old when the 1996 Summer Games happened in Atlanta,

01:06so I don't remember exactly the background there. I was worried about football and fishing

01:12and doing all the things that a 12-year-old in southwestern Ohio was worried about. But

01:16I think that the question betrays a certain misunderstanding of what we're trying to do

01:24and what is the nature of real compassion. I talked earlier about my son being harassed

01:30at Union Station a couple of years ago. Now, first, as a father, you have some vagrants screaming

01:35crazy stuff. I'm sure a lot of us have had this experience where you have some vagrants screaming

01:40crazy stuff at your three-year-old. As a father, my first reaction is, grab my son closer, make sure

01:45that he's safe. Okay, then you realize the person's not going to maybe run and charge and attack

01:52us. We'll just keep our distance. But then you think, wait a second, why have we convinced

01:57ourselves that it's compassionate to allow a person who's obviously a schizophrenic or suffering

02:03from some other mental illness, why is it compassionate to let that person fester in the streets?

02:08You see them, they're, you know, a lot of them have clear mental health issues. A lot of them have

02:15clear physical health issues. They're not properly clothed. They're not properly cared for. Some of

02:20them are wasting away. The compassionate thing is to have people who are having mental health crises

02:26to get them in treatment, not to let them sit on the streets and yell at our people while they're

02:32walking by.

02:33And so the president actually signed an executive order to make it easier for some of these people

02:42to get access to mental health treatment. And I don't know for the life of me, what happened in

02:48this country where we decided that the compassionate thing was to let somebody fester on the streets

02:53instead of be, instead of get the treatment that they need. It's very simple to me. And I don't know

03:00why we accepted as parents and as grandparents and as people who just want to walk down the street

03:05in comfort, why we accepted that it was, that it was reasonable to have crazy people yelling at our

03:11kids. You should not have to cross the street in downtown Atlanta to avoid a crazy person yelling at

03:19your family. Those are your streets paid for with your tax dollars and you ought to be able to use them

03:24like any other citizen of this country.

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