California’s Democratic lawmakers have been blamed for decades for failing to fix the state’s out-of-control homeless problem and are now pushing back, pointing the finger at left-leaning judges and liberal advocates who have held up street-sweeping efforts by arguing such policies violate a person’s civil rights.
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) on Tuesday called a court order preventing San Francisco officials from clearing most of the tent encampments in the city “preposterous” and said people have acted in disbelief when he told them his hands were tied by the courts.
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“The San Francisco order, it’s preposterous, and it’s inhumane,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle. “It’s incredibly frustrating.”
The Democratic governor said he knew he would ultimately bear the brunt of the blame but added, “Damn it, they need to be accountable as well. These judges are wrong on these overriding sweeping orders.”
The misery of homelessness, coupled with mental illness and drug addiction, has turned once-beautiful cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles into public toilets and has led to previously like-minded groups turning on one another.
The disconnect between Democratic-elected officials and progressive activists most recently played out at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week when judges heard arguments from the city and homeless advocates over whether to uphold a controversial ruling that put the brakes on the city’s plan to conduct encampment sweeps.
A lawyer for the city told the federal appeals court that a December injunction by a U.S. magistrate was bypassing the law and ignoring the deteriorating and “dismal conditions” that have overtaken San Francisco sidewalks. Deputy City Attorney Wayne Snodgrass added that the injunction issued by Judge Donna Ryu has been “chilling the city from doing what it needs to do to promote public health and safety.”
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An attorney for the Coalition on Homelessness argued that the injunction should stay in place and alleged that San Francisco was evicting hundreds of homeless people and destroying their property without offering them a place in shelters.
The scene outside the courthouse was just as dramatic as protesters and counterprotesters shouted over one another.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed, a Democrat, at one point yelled into a microphone that it wasn’t “humane to let people live on our streets in tents.”
“We want a reversal of this injunction that makes it impossible for us to do our jobs,” she said.
That same day, Newsom announced his office would give out $40 million to conduct encampment sweeps statewide, claiming “the courts are creating costly delays that slow progress” of addressing homelessness.
Newsom told the San Francisco Chronicle he became incensed after doing a series of highway-side photo ops where he helped clean up encampments. He had planned to clean one along the border of Berkeley and Emeryville that had been deemed dangerous to drivers but a judge blocked his office from doing so. He was so upset that he considered posting the judge’s contact information so residents could see who was holding up the process.
“I literally was talking about putting a big sign with the judge’s phone number saying, ‘Call the judge. We want to clean this up, too. Yes, we’re aware. Yes, we see what you see,'” he told the newspaper.
Newsom has criticized several other decisions that were handed down by Democratic-appointed judges, including one in Sacramento that prevented officials from cleaning up a camp right outside his office.
“These are insane rulings,” he said, adding that they go beyond interpreting the laws to creating new policies.
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California has more homeless people than any state in the nation, with numbers exceeding the 171,000 mark, according to a comprehensive study by the University of California. The state is home to 12% of the nation’s population but makes up 30% of the county’s homeless population and half of America’s unsheltered population.
The state has spent $17.5 billion over the past four years trying to combat the problem, only to see its homeless population grow.
