West Virginia has Nation’s Worst Drug Problem, But Fewer Homeless than LA

AUDIO – A DISCONNECT? –

Oct. 12, 2023 – “People conflate these crises,” said Dr. Margot Kushel, a UC San Francisco professor who led the largest representative study of homeless people in three decades, released earlier this year. “They are related but they are far from one and the same.”

Huntington, a college town and riverside port city along the border of Ohio and Kentucky that was once dubbed the overdose capital of America, illustrates the knotty relationship between the two plagues.

Nearly two-thirds of the homeless people here self-reported that they were struggling with addiction this year. But cheap and available housing has kept the official homeless count at 244 people in Huntington’s two-county service area, up since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic but still about a fourth of the per capita homeless population of Los Angeles County.

Housing markets operate a bit like rock concerts. Almost everyone can get in when demand and prices are low. But when Taylor Swift comes to town, and far more people want a seat than can get one, the barriers to entry grow, even for the cheapest tickets.