Scranton, Pennsylvania – Let’s Call It Bidenville

Joe Biden loves to talk about Scranton, Pennsylvania, and suggest he grew up there. Never mind that he left there when he was ten and has no real connection to the city. Saying he is from Scranton evokes fictitious blue-collar roots and makes people feel like he is a regular guy.

What Joe does not like to talk about is the reality of life in Scranton today. In particular, he does not want to discuss the large homeless encampments in the city.  During the Depression, they called these kinds of places “Hoovervilles” after the sitting President Herbert Hoover. Let’s call these modern-day equivalents “Bidenvilles.” After all, it is “Bidenomics” that has produced them.

Homeless encampments in Scranton are increasingly common and growing in size. The city, a Democratic stronghold, seems largely to ignore the issue. It would after all be uncomfortable to acknowledge that the Biden administration has presided over a significant growth in the size of the homeless population in town. They renamed the expressway into town the President Biden Expressway after Joe sat down in the Oval Office, but making him take responsibility for what his policies have done to Pennsylvania seems too much.

The problem is not just in Scranton of course. It is happening nationwide. People can’t afford a place to live. They put up tents in areas where they think they won’t get torn down. They live in their cars. In some cities, authorities have taken to setting aside parking lots that are now designated for use only by people living in their vehicles.

Anybody with a rudimentary understanding of economics knows why.  Since Biden took office the government has spent, borrowed, and created trillions of dollars it didn’t have. The predictable result has been runaway inflation, followed by equally foreseeable interest rate increases.

The deadly combination of high prices and high interest rates has frozen the housing market and reduced homeownership to near-record lows. In many major metropolitan areas, it takes more than 100% of the median household after-tax income to afford a median-price home. If you don’t eat, don’t buy clothes, don’t own a car, and don’t pay utilities – you still can’t afford to buy a house.

Ninety-nine percent of Americans now cannot afford to buy a house anywhere in the country.

Rent is also increasingly unaffordable. Millions of Americans now find that they literally cannot afford to pay rent. The only option they have left is to live on the street or in their cars.

“… More renter households are cost-burdened than ever before, and a record number of people are experiencing homelessness.”

Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies

More people are homeless in America than at any other time in our history. Let that sink in.

On the ground in Scranton, the numbers are bleak. Joe’s mandarins can spin the facts however they want. The reality here is brutal.

In February 2024, Scranton home prices were up 43.4% compared to last year, selling for a median price of $175K.  That may seem like a bargain compared to places like New York. When costs are jumping year on year at that rate average people simply cannot buy homes. This is not a matter of pinching pennies. They are priced out of the market.

Housing costs are obviously not the only things going up. Pennsylvania has the highest inflation in the nation when it comes to food costs. People aren’t just finding it hard to find a place to live. They are having trouble putting food on the table.

Nationwide almost 60% of respondents to a recent survey were living paycheck to paycheck and lacked sufficient savings to pay for an unexpected expense, like a major appliance breaking down. About a quarter of Americans—roughly 80 million—have zero savings.

Consequently, adults under 30 are moving back in with their parents at rates not seen since the Great Depression, giving up on the American dream of homeownership. Almost thirty percent of young adults in the country are engaging in what is known as “doomsday” spending. They have simply abandoned any idea of saving. They have abandoned the dream of homeownership. They are deliberately spending more than they make, because they don’t have any hope of ever being able to dig out financially.

Young Americans have accepted that we are going over a fiscal cliff and no longer even pretend to care.

In Washington, the lies continue to spew forth. Joe pumps out campaign ads peddling a fantasy vision of the economy. It doesn’t change reality. Down along the Lackawanna River in Scranton where the homeless huddle in pup tents shivering in the cold, lies don’t keep you warm.

Joe loves to talk about his hometown. Good, let him talk about the reality in the place we now know as Bidenville.