A SUPREME COURT-ENABLED ATTACK ON CALIFORNIA’S HOMELESS

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2024, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“A SUPREME COURT-ENABLED ATTACK ON CALIFORNIA’S HOMELESS”

 

It’s been largely obscured by the mainstream media’s justifiable and almost continuous focus on the ongoing presidential election. But the U.S. Supreme Court’s  summertime decision allowing cities and counties to take down and remove encampments erected by homeless persons has expanded into a growing campaign to virtually ban them from public spaces.

 

If the misery index of the homeless, 186,000 strong in California’s last semi-official count, was already nearing intolerable levels, new tactics authorized by local governments around the state seem about to turn the homeless into the hopeless.

 

This applies even in some cities once well known for their steadfast kindness toward and tolerance of the unhoused, including Berkeley and Santa Monica.

 

Just last month, on the same Tuesday evening Donald Trump and Kamala Harris debated in distant Philadelphia, Santa Monica’s city council voted 4-3 to eliminate a section of its anti-camping ordinance that has allowed homeless individuals to use pillows, blankets and bedrolls while sleeping outdoors. This includes sleeping bags, which church and charity volunteers have often distributed free at seasonal homeless shelters.

 

So the ultra-poor homeless populace – once able to get regular meals served on the lawn of the Santa Monica City Hall – now may be compelled to rest their heads on curbs while sleeping uncovered except by cardboard boxes in driving, near freezing January rains. Unless they are simply forced to keep moving along.

 

Local police say the revised law won’t change how they enforce the anti-camping measure, claiming they mostly use it to regulate encampments in public spaces.

 

But no one will likely know the full impact of the change until winter, when rains in recent years have flooded many of the homeless out of what little shelter their tents and tarps could provide.

 

Remember, this is a populace composed in large measure of the mentally ill, drug and alcohol addicts, persons suffering from PTSD and women driven from their homes by domestic violence, few of whom would be involved if they had enough money to avoid the situation.

 

Santa Monica is far from alone. In just over three months since the Supreme Court ruling, at least 17 other California locales -- and counting -- have taken similar actions. The new laws allow police to arrest homeless individuals apparently violating anti-camping laws, which vary only slightly from place to place.

 

They raise major questions: If the unhoused can’t camp on sidewalks or in parks, where are these virtually penniless folks to go? How long can they survive?

 

“Our residents are demanding a solution,” said the mayor of Vista, in northern San Diego County. His city has reactivated a 1968 ordinance banning encampments in the city.

 

In Berkeley, some local merchants don’t care where the homeless go, so long as it’s away from them.

 

A group of businesses filed suit this fall against the city government over homeless encampments near them. They claim financial harm from encampments due to unsanitary conditions, safety issues and “increased criminal activity,” as some encampment denizens threaten or intimidate potential customers.

 

Berkeley officials did not comment on the litigation, but its city council adopted a new policy allowing city officials to take down tent cities even when all indoor shelter beds are occupied if an encampment is a fire or health hazard.

 

No one knows where the tent residents might go if this should be enforced. Businesses and courts offer no solution.

 

Neither does anyone else. The city of Los Angeles this fall issued a report saying it would take ten years and $20 billion to solve its homeless problem. That would involve building 36,000 permanent housing units for homeless persons with chronic health conditions and 25,000 more apartments for very low-income residents.

 

The plan, not yet adopted by city council vote, assumes the city would continue operating shelters with 17,000 beds for several more years while all that is built. No one knows where funding might come from, especially now, with a major homeless housing operator having recently gone broke without accounting for millions of public dollars it received.

 

It’s an almost intractable problem, with few proven villains in sight, but plenty of very visible victims about to see their situation become much more difficult.

       

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Elias is author of the current book “The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government's Campaign to Squelch It,” now available in an updated third edition. His email address is tdelias@aol.com