Many political guarantees have been made, many billions of taxpayer {dollars} have been spent and plenty of applications have been launched, however the state’s homelessness disaster continues to worsen and Californians’ tolerance has worn skinny.
Just a few months in the past, the Public Coverage Institute of California took the general public’s temperature on the difficulty and located that overwhelming majorities of the state’s adults need one thing finished, pronto. It’s one of many few main points that bridges the state’s in any other case large partisan divide.
“Issues have shifted, and everyone’s jobs are on the rattling line, and they need to be,” Gov. Gavin Newsom informed a Dreamforce convention in San Francisco final week. “We’re solely curious about actual outcomes, and that’s our dedication to all of you.”
Underscoring the state of affairs’s fraught politics, Newsom has denounced a federal Justice of the Peace who blocked San Francisco’s plans to scrub up squalid encampments, pledged that the state will intervene within the case and expressed hope {that a} very conservative U.S. Supreme Courtroom may elevate the ban.
“That’s a hell of a press release coming from a progressive Democrat from California that claims we want assist from the Supreme Courtroom,” Newsom mentioned throughout his Dreamforce interview.
Newsom mentioned that in an unannounced go to to San Francisco – a metropolis he as soon as ruled as mayor – he noticed a disgusting degree of drug abuse close to a metropolis police station.
“Individuals aren’t giving a rattling that any of us are there,” he mentioned. “They had been dealing, had been utilizing, had been abusing, and there was a police division substation, and it was all occurring throughout the road. All I assumed was, how rattling demoralized everyone should be. There go all our tax {dollars} and who the hell is working this place?”
Who certainly?
The social and political angst in San Francisco over the right way to do one thing efficient about homelessness will not be confined to that metropolis. There are no less than 170,000 individuals residing on the streets in California and each massive metropolis faces its model of the syndrome.
Karen Bass was elected mayor of Los Angeles on her pledge to scrub up its streets however has solely been capable of tinker on the margins, whereas the numbers of the unhoused have continued to climb.
The sidewalks of Sacramento close to the state Capitol are full of encampments of homeless women and men, sparking a pointy conflict between the town’s mayor, former state Senate chief Darrell Steinberg, and Sacramento County’s newly elected district lawyer, Thien Ho.
For weeks, Ho issued public denunciations of metropolis officers for, he mentioned, failing to implement anti-camping legal guidelines and at one level even threatened to subject felony costs in opposition to them.
This week, Ho filed a civil lawsuit in opposition to the town, alleging its inaction is making a public nuisance. A companion swimsuit was filed by a coalition of metropolis residents and enterprise homeowners.
“Sufficient is sufficient,” Ho informed The Sacramento Bee. “We have to deal with this public security disaster for each the housed and the unhoused.”
The 36-page lawsuit describes Sacramento as a once-thriving metropolis that faces “descent into decay and this utter collapse into chaos,” threatening each housed and unhoused residents.
“The frustration that members of our group really feel is completely justified,” Steinberg mentioned in a press release, defending steps the town has taken to take care of the difficulty, and criticizing Ho’s intervention.
“Frankly,” Steinberg mentioned, “we’ve got no time for the district lawyer’s performative distraction from the arduous work all of us must do collectively to resolve this advanced social downside plaguing city facilities all through the state and nation.”
The carping amongst politicians – all from the identical celebration – tells us that they know the general public will precise retribution if the disaster continues to worsen.
Dan Walters is a CalMatters columnist.
