Susan Shelley writes for the New York Post about an interesting contrast between the nation’s capital and the Golden State.
Videos of the nation’s capital being swept clean of homeless encampments in just one week may have Californians adding Washington, DC, to the unofficial list of top-10 U-Haul destinations.
In Los Angeles, the problem of tent encampments has persisted for almost 20 years.
They began to pop up after city officials settled an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit in 2007 by agreeing to stop enforcing a ban on sitting, lying or sleeping on the sidewalk.
More lawsuits, settlements and court rulings led to the entire city and much of the state becoming the site of homeless encampments on sidewalks, streets, freeway embankments, overpasses, underpasses, median strips, parks, parking lots, public plazas, beaches, bicycle paths and concrete flood-control channels.
One lawsuit against the city and county of Los Angeles over the failure to shelter the downtown homeless population despite massive spending is in its sixth year in the courts.
President Trump’s method is faster.
The Interior Department announced this month a no-tolerance policy for homeless encampments while vowing to “provide resources to shelter, pathways to housing and access to behavioral health services to individuals at these locations.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “Homeless individuals will be given the option to leave their encampment, to be taken to a homeless shelter to be offered addiction or mental health services, and if they refuse, they will be susceptible to fines or to jail time.”
That’s consistent with the US Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling that cities may enforce a generally applicable anti-camping ordinance.
But in Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass denounced that decision and said she would do no such thing.
California’s policy is to throw billions of dollars of taxpayer money at the problem.
