Photo: Alamy
Republican Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake stated that homeless military veterans should have priority over migrants when it comes to homeless emergency shelters, according to Newsmax.
Lake appeared on Newsmax’s show “Eric Bolling The Balance” and reacted to a Daily Mail story, discussing how migrants in Chicago are now “fleeing back to Venezuela” after reportedly “being dumped in shelters and refused jobs.”
The Arizona candidate told Newsmax about how she believes “our homeless vets on the streets don’t want to live in tents.”
Lake continued, “We’ve allowed for the drugs to pour across, we’ve watched [how] this drug addiction has taken over millions of people’s lives, we have Americans living in tents, and it’s about time we shut down this border, shut down this insanity at the border, and start putting our own people first.”
During his administration, former President Donald Trump renovated and restored the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to “improve care, choice, and employee accountability,” according to White House archives.
In addition to multiple changes within the VA, the Trump administration also “decreased veteran homelessness, improved education benefits, and achieved record-low Veteran unemployment.”
A previous report by former U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson showed that within 2018, the number of homeless veterans dropped 5.4 percent since 2017 and by nearly half since 2010, according to a VA press release.
Further, during a campaign event this month, President Trump pledged to “eradicate” homelessness among veterans.
Former Executive Director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness Matthew Doherty had noted the “new” federal strategic plan, “Home, Together,” had allowed federal, state, and local law officials to “make progress” towards ending homelessness for veterans and all Americans.
“In ‘Home, Together,’ the new federal strategic plan to prevent and end homelessness, we redouble our commitment to ending homelessness among Veterans and among all Americans,” Doherty stated. “Working together at the federal, state and local level, we can and will continue to make progress until all Americans have a stable home from which they can pursue opportunity.”