SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) – Governor Gavin Newsom is weighing in on San Francisco’s homeless encampments. He stated throughout an interview with Politico on Tuesday that the state will intervene within the federal court docket case barring town from clearing tents.
The Coalition On Homelessness filed a lawsuit in opposition to the Metropolis of San Francisco final yr, claiming they have been clearing homeless encampments with out providing those that are unhoused a spot to dwell. They have been profitable, and town’s attraction in opposition to the ruling was rejected final month. Newsom is now talking up, siding with town.
In any considered one of San Francisco’s neighborhoods, you’re prone to see tents alongside the sidewalk. Throughout a sit-down interview Tuesday with Politico, Governor Gavin Newsom stated he plans on submitting an amicus transient, supporting town’s efforts to overturn the ruling that bars the clearing of homeless encampments.
“I’ve had it,” he stated. “We’re going to intervene, and I hope this goes to the Supreme Court docket, and that’s a hell of an announcement for a progressive democrat out of Supreme Court docket to say.”
Jennifer Friedenbach, government director for the Coalition On Homeless, says town cited and arrested individuals who have been unhoused and had no different selection greater than 3,000 instances. She was disenchanted to listen to the governor facet in opposition to the coalition.
“We’re very disenchanted that he’s attempting to overturn some slender elementary rights of impoverished Californians,” she stated.
The federal injunction has been in place since December. Friedenbach says town can nonetheless clear encampments to supply safer situations for housed and unhoused, however she desires a extra considerate strategy.
“Making it unlawful to be homeless and summarily destroying their property, taking away their medication and throwing it within the trash and inflicting elevated deaths – that isn’t okay,” she stated.
Residents and enterprise homeowners in San Francisco have had their very own frustrations with homeless encampments. Lorenzo Bouchard, an working associate at One Market Restaurant, says tent sweeps will assist change the narrative that San Francisco is unsafe for vacationers.
“For lots of us within the trade, you already know we now have these compassion candles and our wicks are burnt right down to a few nub as a result of there’s solely a lot that many operators can take earlier than you’re going to see the ground drop out,” he stated.
Newsom acknowledged the stubbornness of fixing homelessness, saying all ranges of presidency have develop into complicit. California is house to roughly one-third of the nation’s unhoused inhabitants.
