2024 CNN Town Hall: on Welfare & Poverty

Nikki Haley: Homelessness is shameful, and it's not their fault

HALEY: Well, we're seeing homelessness is up 12 percent. We now have 650,000 Americans who are homeless; 35,000 of them are veterans who are homeless. It's shameful. This is not their fault. It's the fact that inflation is up. We're seeing a lot of families get squeezed. It's the fact that America refuses to deal with the cancer that's mental health. America refuses to deal with addictions, which we have to deal with. And there are answers to this. This is why I want to move as many programs from the federal government down to the states, because, right now, a lot of it's tied up in D.C. You have got over $300 billion that's spent on things like mental health and behavioral services in D.C. Only $1 billion of it gets down to the states for states to decide how to use it. Let's release those resources, so that every state can do what they need to, to get the mental health therapists they need to have.