There is an easy explanation for Los Angeles’ out-of-control homeless encampments: The city’s leaders allow them. They instructed the LAPD years ago to stop enforcing its no camping laws, which had prevented tents or sleeping on city sidewalks, in parks, beaches, and other public spaces. Incredibly, it also instructed police that such tents must be treated as private homes!
The problem started in 2018 with the case of Martin v. City of Boise wherein the Ninth Circuit ruled that a city may not enforce simple camping, vagrancy, or loitering laws to remove people from sleeping on public property unless the city can demonstrate that it provides sufficient homeless shelters. Otherwise, enforcement of such a law, the court ruled, would constitute “cruel and unusual punishment.”
With its ruling, the Ninth Circuit invented two radically new interpretations of the U.S. Constitution. First, that the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment applies not just to sentences imposed for crimes but can be applied to the criminal law itself. Second, by requiring cities to provide housing for the homeless before it may enforce laws to protect the safety, security, and cleanliness of its public spaces, it effectively created a constitutional right to housing, a progressive’s dream previously thought achievable only via a constitutional amendment.
Most cities learned to comply with the ruling by providing minimum, temporary shelters for the homeless. But not Los Angeles, where leaders saw an opportunity to use the decision to implement their progressive dreams of government-provided housing for all. Intentionally or unintentionally, they misidentified the problem as being a lack of affordable housing. It thus embarked on a multi-billion-dollar plan focused almost entirely on building permanent housing. Here we are, four years later, and only about 1,100 units have been built, some at a cost of $837,000 per unit!
Last week, the city agreed to a settlement in a case brought by downtown business owners demanding the problem be addressed. Los Angeles agreed in the settlement to build enough housing to accommodate 60 percent of the current homeless population at an estimated cost of $2.6-$3 billion over the next five year. In other words, more of the same. Until L.A. completes the housing projects, it appears it will continue to not enforce its no camping laws.
It will also continue to treat the tents as dwellings. A friend’s garage was recently broken into. He suspected it could have been one of the many homeless who live in his Venice neighborhood. Sure enough, he found some of the items in a tent nearby. Police, however, refused to help him retrieve his items from the tent, noting they have been instructed that it must be treated as a private dwelling, and thus a warrant is required. This is despite the fact that the tent sat on a public sidewalk!
Los Angeles’ neighboring cities have no such problems. They wisely made sure to have sufficient temporary shelters in response to the Ninth Circuit ruling. They enforce their no camping laws. Travel anywhere outside L.A.’s city limits and you see virtually no homeless. When camping is not allowed, the homeless find other solutions. This means getting treatment for mental health or addiction issues, locating friends or family for help, or going to a temporary shelter. Or, it means finding a safe haven where camping is allowed. In this case, that is L.A.
More than anything else, this is likely what has caused Los Angeles’ homeless problem to soar. And now, L.A.’s residents are asked to foot the multi-billion dollar bill to house them and face continued lack of enforcement while the housing is being built.
The crisis is the number one issue in this year’s mayor and city council races. Every candidate claims they have the solution which they will implement “on Day One.” Many say they will implement a “state of emergency” to handle the problem. However, the state of emergency declared for the COVID crisis taught us to be cautious about handing over unchecked power to bureaucrats. The city’s unelected health official implemented draconian lockdowns on a whim. L.A.’s beaches, parks, and mountain trails were closed.
Angelenos should fear what the city may do with emergency powers to address the homeless problem. It could mandate businesses, and even residents, to permit shelters on their property. It could also ban all evictions and rent increases.
Emergency powers are unnecessary. The solution is simple. Los Angeles must immediately begin enforcing its laws during the day. The Ninth Circuit ruling only pertains to camping at night. This would put an end to the massive permanent encampments that have sprouted up all over the city. L.A. must also focus on inexpensive temporary shelters in designated areas away from neighborhoods, beaches, and parks. The ruling did not mandate permanent housing, just shelter. These could be set up quickly, thus allowing it to enforce its laws both in the day and the evening.
But city leaders do not want simple solutions. They prefer to “not let a crisis go to waste” by using it to implement their progressive agenda, including permanent government housing. Government housing “projects” were in vogue in the 1960s, but most cities have since realized they do not work. Government projects suffer from high crime, poverty, and drug use, as well as major government corruption and mismanagement.
But the progressive utopian dream is to provide free health care, free food, and free housing to all. The homeless crisis gives them an excuse to deliver. The fact that it comes at the expense of its residents, taking both from their pocketbooks and ability to enjoy L.A.’s public spaces, apparently is of no concern to them.
