California, if it were a country, would be the 5th richest country in the world. With its diverse, scenic landscapes, Hollywood, the tech industry, $85k per capita GDP, as well as its high human development level, the state is one of the most prosperous places in the world.

However, recently, the state has been facing an acute homelessness crisis, which has seen some of its major cities overwhelmed by unhoused people. Joe Rogan, who left the state in 2020 for Austin, Texas, is famously not a fan of the state and discussed the recent revelations regarding the $24 billion it spent to solve a serious problem California faces.

Joe Rogan discusses California’s homelessness problem

Speaking to the legendary Royce Gracie, winner of UFC 1, on episode #156 of the JRE MMA show, Joe Rogan felt that while California’s climate was beautiful and many of the people were great, as a collective body politic, “they’ve lost their f***ing minds.”

Rogan recounted how the state invested $24 billion over the past five years to tackle its homelessness problem. However, an audit found that the state had failed to track some of the money and whether it had been effectively used and actually had an impact on mitigating the problems. According to estimates, the state has an unhoused population of around 180,000, the highest in the country.

Yeah, you know and just the whole way they’re dealing with the homeless situation is f***ing insane, you know. Here it is: California spent $24 billion tackling homelessness over 5 years but didn’t track if the money was helping the state’s growing number of unhoused people so they spent $24 billion and they can’t figure out what the f**k it did. God it’s ridiculous and it’s not getting better at all.”

The UFC commentator felt that the state had only gotten worse since he left and declared that it would take decades, if not centuries, to roll it back. The Teas resident, however, did tell Gracie that he wanted to move back to the state one day, but the timeline for its politics, even somewhat aligned with his, was a very long one.

“God, it’s worse every time I go back there. I’m like ‘oh God it’s worse.’ I go back once a year and love it. I hope it gets better. I would love to move back but it’s not going to get better, yeah. Not going to get better for a long time, it’s going to it’s going to take generations,” he said. And Rogan, who has repeatedly stated he loves his new home, wouldn’t even have moved there if it was not for the COVID-19 pandemic.

Why did Rogan move from California to Texas?

Joe Rogan left California amid the Covid-19 pandemic. The main reason he moved to Texas was his vehement opposition to the stringent lockdown, masking, and social distancing norms that ‘The Sunshine State’ had imposed to try and flatten the curve on the exploding numbers of infections in the state, especially its densely populated urban centers.

Rogan, of course, has been a critic of the ‘woke’ and (what he considers) ‘far-left’ policies and politics of the firmly blue state. While he had been a critic of the state on various issues during his long stay there, the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures the state took to counter it was the final straw for Rogan.

“I might move to Texas… if California continues to be this restrictive I don’t know if this is a good place to live. First of all, it’s extremely expensive. The taxes are ridiculous. And if they really say that we can’t do stand up until 2022, or some s*** like that, I might jet. I’m not kidding. This is silly. I don’t need to be here,” Rogan said back in May 2020, shortly before relocating to The Lone Star State.