In June, SCOTUS ruled on the Johnson v. Grants Pass case. In that 6–3 ruling, they decided that removing or “sweeping” homeless encampments did not constitute cruel and unusual punishment as indicated under the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution. Up until this ruling, groups like the ACLU and The Coalition on Homelessness were able to successfully obtain injunctions from lower courts, effectively blocking encampments from being removed. Later after appeal by the City and County of San Francisco a stipulation was made that allowed these removals to happen as long as shelter was offered. Now, this ruling removes those preconditions and allows cities and local municipalities to remove homeless encampments in general. This decision was reinforced on July 25, when Governor Newsom signed an executive order to begin removal of all homeless encampments in California, and if local municipalities did not comply, funding for homeless services could or would be withheld.
This is a huge victory for cities. Why? Because it has become painfully obvious that cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles, with thousands of unsheltered homeless (many from elsewhere in California and beyond) were being overrun with encampments and the associated behaviors of drug use, mental illness, or both. The lack of structure, the underlying trauma and unfettered drug use, human trafficking, and lawlessness occurring in many of these encampments has destabilized entire cities — Oakland, Sacramento, San Francisco, Fresno, Los Angeles, and San Diego have all been affected. These communities can now act whereas previously they could not due to court injunctions put forth from lawsuits from homeless activist organizations. Now, the activists are big mad. Recently on X a slew of activists voiced their disgust with Newsom and demanded what they’ve always been demanding. That we (who’s we?) provide housing to all homeless who seek it.
Governor Newsom signed an executive order to begin removal of all homeless encampments in California, and if local municipalities did not comply, funding for homeless services could or would be withheld.
Sounds great, right? It is until you realize that it costs anywhere between $500k-$1 million per housing unit. That’s right, a million bucks per door while California alone has nearly 200,000 homeless. These demands come while people working two jobs in the Bay Area can barely pay rent. Does that speak to a bigger problem? Yes. But we’re talking about folks living in a tent on the street or near a river. They start from less than zero. We need to stabilize them first. Assess what their barriers are (oftentimes addiction) and deal with that. We do this by creating interim solutions where people are stabilized at a much lower cost while we work to scale housing to meet the need in California. We could build shelters in less than six weeks pretty much anywhere we want if the state (or your city) declared a state of emergency on the homeless crisis. That would put the NIMBYS in check long enough to get shelters up and running.
What else does this SCOTUS ruling and subsequent executive order from Governor Newsom tell us? It tells us that our current approach and philosophy of harm reduction, decriminalization, and meeting people where they are but giving them the choice to stay there is failing. You can cite me data all day long, but your eyes do not lie. And when you look at the financial expenditures, it becomes clear that we’re literally throwing money into a black hole of nonprofits who mostly want to do the right thing but lack oversight, and in many cases have become solely dependent on contracts from state and local government to carry out the difficult task of providing “homeless services.” In San Francisco alone, there are currently 12 nonprofit organizations whose sole existence is predicated on providing services to the homeless that are under investigation for either wage theft, financial malfeasance, illegal spending, and issuing credit cards to 50 percent of their staff with $10k credit limits and zero accountability on how it is spent. If you consider this corruption coupled with a permissive ideology that “supports drug users” even unto death (30 people per month are dying of OD in SROs in San Francisco), its almost as if these failures eventually led to the SCOTUS decision. That said, I don’t blame the Supreme Court. Their job is to interpret the Constitution. Instead, I blame the hubris of many homeless activists who were unwilling to see the truth. California has a drug and mental health crisis among its homeless population and housing alone doesn’t solve that. It takes an entire continuum of care that starts with basic shelter. The governor has reluctantly agreed. Much to the chagrin of homeless activists. I think it’s time they stopped and looked in the mirror. Because your ideology just took a big hit.
