See, this is exactly what I was trying not to do: politicize the damn thing. Sure, so Tim started the whole thing by bringing conservatism into it. But then again, conservatism is a principle, not a policy. I might not agree with his statement in the first place, but it doesn't mean I agree completely with yours, Ken. There are too many factors that play into the situation in our state to blame it all completely on either party, or even on principles alone. Furthermore, it is frusterating that you narrow the entire report to just my comments on it. The entire state of Texas is was studied in this, not just the RGV. And I did see the map. It's nearly all red, hence Republican. This was no surprise, I've known this for years. But this should actually further enhance the point I was trying to make in the first place: this has little to do with politics alone (of course they have to do with it, but they're not the entire cause of it). Because these homeless problems are occuring all over the state, not just south Texas, where it's predominantly blue. What's happening in the rest of the state? My guess is more of the same. Or are you seriously suggesting that the handful of predominantly Democratic counties along the border are what brought down an entire state to the last place in the nation? Please.

I will concede you the point that a large majority of the problem is the illegal immigration problem our state is plagued with. But as for them comprising near all of the percentage of people who are homeless, there I completely disagree. Yes, 46% of impoverished children are Hispanic, but 40% are white. That's only a six percent difference, and to point out the obvious, that ain't much. And I'll grant that this does not include the homeless in the state, but it's a fairly good indicator. If you're poor, chances are, you might end up on the street.

So many things play into our state's current situation, including wage earnings in the state, the amount (or lack of) Public Housing Authorities in place in the state, the illegal immigration, and even the influx of homeless people that flooded our state in the aftermath of Hurricanes Rita and Katrina. There's places in New Orleans and all over Louisianna that still haven't been repaired since those 2005 hurricanes, and people who lost everything just decided to stay in Texas or couldn't go back because they ran out of money.

The only thing I was trying to point out with my previous post was that immature finger-pointing isn't going to solve anything. This is far too complicated to be solved by a mere change of a political party. And c'mon, who're we kidding? Texas has been conservative since we were our own republic. Our state government, regardless of where its leanings lie, need to study the root causes of this problem and actually try and do something to fix it, not sit back and do nothing as they've been doing for the past decade. At the time the study the article mentions was published (yes, I actually went and read the study, not just the article), which to be honest, I'm not sure when it was exactly, but it was definately in 2009, Texas did not have a 10-year plan in place to battle homlessness like most other states do. We have the trust funds that apparantly no other states seem to have, but we're not doing anything productive with it. Texas doesn't even have a set definition for who they consider to be homless - that's how little importance they're giving to this problem. Now, I love my state, but damn! That's shameful.