Former President Barack Obama called the homelessness crisis gripping Los Angeles an "atrocity" and warned fellow Democrats that their permissive approach to encampments amounts to a "losing political strategy."

Obama made the remarks during a conversation with YouTuber Brian Tyler Cohen, offering a rare concession from a leading Democrat figure that the party's handling of the issue has failed on both moral and political terms, Fox News reported.

"I think it is morally — ethically speaking — it is an atrocity that in a country this wealthy, we have people just on the streets, and we should insist on policies that recognize their full humanity — people who are houseless — and be able to provide them with the help and resources that they need."

But Obama didn't stop at sympathy. He took direct aim at the activist-class posture that has defined progressive homelessness policy for years, the idea that compassion means tolerating tent cities with no expectations attached.

"We're not going to be able to generate support for it if we simply say, 'You know what, it's not their fault and so they should be able to do whatever they want,' because that's a losing political strategy."

That sentence alone is an indictment of every progressive city council member, every activist nonprofit, and every California politician who spent the last decade treating encampment removal as cruelty rather than governance.

The Quiet Part, Out Loud

What makes Obama's comments remarkable isn't the substance. Conservatives and ordinary residents have said exactly this for years. It's that Obama is saying it at all.

This is a man who chose his words with surgical care throughout eight years in office and hasn't stopped since. When he tells Democrats that "the average person doesn't want to have to navigate around a tent city in the middle of downtown," he's not freelancing. He's diagnosing a political problem his party refuses to acknowledge publicly.

The diagnosis, of course, is incomplete. Obama frames this as a messaging failure: Democrats simply need to be more "practical" about "gaining majority support." He urged his side to "build on those victories" rather than demand maximum accommodation for people living on the streets.

What he doesn't say is more telling. He doesn't question whether the billions of dollars California's elected officials have poured into homelessness programs actually worked. He doesn't ask whether the entire policy architecture, built on housing-first ideology, harm reduction without accountability, and bureaucratic empire-building, might be the problem itself. He's adjusting the sales pitch, not the product.

Billions Spent, Crisis Deepened

California has spent billions to combat homelessness. The results speak for themselves to anyone who has walked through downtown Los Angeles, Venice Beach, or the underpasses of the 101.

Governor Gavin Newsom, eager to claim progress, touted a 9% statewide drop in unsheltered homelessness in his State of the State address last month. In January, he announced new investments to create more shelters and services. His spokesperson, Tara Gallegos, told Fox News Digital that Newsom "agrees with" Obama and insisted the state is building a national model.

"California is creating a model that should be replicated nationwide — building more housing, reforming mental health systems, removing encampments, and creating stronger support and accountability."

A model that should be replicated nationwide. After decades of escalating homelessness, billions in spending with questionable returns, and a crisis so severe that a former Democrat president calls it an "atrocity," California believes it has cracked the code.

Gallegos described the crisis as "decades in the making" and called Newsom "the first governor in California history to make addressing homelessness a statewide priority." If that's true, it raises an obvious question: What were all the previous Democrat governors doing with those billions?

The Silence from City Hall

Fox News Digital reached out to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass for comment. None was provided.

That silence is its own statement. Bass has presided over a city where the homelessness catastrophe defines daily life for hundreds of thousands of residents and business owners. When a former president from your own party labels conditions in your city an atrocity, the expected response is some form of engagement. The mayor chose otherwise.

Compassion Without Accountability Is Abandonment

Obama's framing reveals a contradiction that sits at the heart of progressive governance on this issue. He wants to "recognize their full humanity" while also admitting that letting people "do whatever they want" doesn't work. Those two impulses have been at war in Democrat policy for years, and the second one keeps winning inside the activist infrastructure that actually shapes city-level decisions.

Conservatives have never struggled with this tension. Compassion and accountability are not opposites. Clearing encampments is not cruelty; it's the bare minimum of functional governance. Requiring treatment or shelter participation as a condition of public assistance is not punitive; it's how you actually help people rebuild lives. Allowing open-air drug markets and tent cities to consume public spaces isn't progressive. It's abandonment dressed up as tolerance.

Obama seems to understand this on a political level. He sees the electoral cost. What he still can't bring himself to say is that the conservative critique was right on the merits, not just the messaging.

The residents and business owners of Los Angeles didn't need a former president to tell them what they've lived every day for years. But it's clarifying when even Barack Obama admits the strategy failed. Now the question is whether anyone in his party is willing to do more than adjust the language.