On May 12, California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, demanded that cities throughout the state adopt anti-camping ordinances that would effectively ban public homelessness by requiring unhoused individuals to relocate every 72 hours.
While presented as a humanitarian effort to reduce homelessness, the new policy victimizes Californiaās growing unhoused populationāapproximately 187,000 peopleāby tying funding in Proposition 1 to local laws banning sleeping or camping on public land.
In his announcement, Newsom pushed local governments to adopt the draconian ordinances āwithout delay.ā
We know how to fix homelessness. Itās not bulldozers; you fucking house them. Newsome has made some good strides in terms of encouraging more housing in California, but weād be much closer to actually addressing homelessness if:
He hit the bullshit zoning laws that restrict housing in this state with as big of a hammer as he hits homeless people with, and
We stopped trickling money to the homeless via an infinitely recursing filter of non-profits and either directly administered the aid via the state government or just gave them the fucking money / housing. In LA, thereās something like 10,000 non-profits focused on homelessness that have to coordinate with each other. Thatās some looney toons level shit right there, and it should be obvious to anyone that that would never work.
Californiaās been trying to fix homelessness with cops and bulldozers for forty or fifty years, and especially the last twenty. How long do we have to keep āaccidentallyā killing people and setting taxpayer cash on fire before we acknowledge that it doesnāt fucking work and never will? You cannot beat homeless people into being housed, though I can see why Gavin would think that this solution would appeal to potential Republican voters who will ultimately not vote for him anyway.