“In Rare Alliance, Democrats and Republicans Seek Legal Power to Clear
Homeless Camps,”

from
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/west-coast-cities-start-to-confront-the-limits-of-the-liberal-dream/

West Coast cities start to confront the limits of the liberal dream
Sep. 30, 2023 at 6:00 am Updated Sep. 30, 2023 at 6:00 am

People pack up some belongings during the removal of a homeless camp on
Third Avenue South in Seattle in June 2022. In new court briefs,
Seattle, San Francisco, Portland and other cities argue that their
oft-stated goal of housing all the homeless is actually not possible.
(Ellen M. Banner / The Seattle Times, 2022)

Danny Westneat By Danny Westneat
Seattle Times columnist

The news this past week on the homelessness front is that some cities
across the West are banding together to try to more aggressively tackle
the vexing issue of urban encampments.

“In Rare Alliance, Democrats and Republicans Seek Legal Power to Clear
Homeless Camps,” was how The New York Times put it.

It’s an effort to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit some Western
court rulings, regarding ordinances in Boise, Idaho, and Grants Pass,
Ore., that established a constitutional right to camp in public spaces,
provided those cities can’t come up with alternative accommodations such
as shelter.

It isn’t known if the high court will take up the case. The news for now
is in the effort: that some of the West’s most progressive cities —
Seattle, San Francisco, and Portland among them — are joining with
conservatives in states like Arizona and Idaho to try to exert more
legal coercion on unauthorized encampments in parks and under bridges,
rather than letting them proliferate as has been happening for years now.

“ … Many communities affected by homelessness (are) at a breaking
point,” reads the Seattle brief, which was joined by attorneys for
Tacoma, Spokane, San Diego, Honolulu and others. “Despite massive
infusions of public resources, businesses and residents are suffering
the increasingly negative effects of long-term urban camping.”

But there’s an even bigger political shift on display in the case. The
cities appear to be acknowledging that the well-meaning effort to house
all the homeless, for years now a widely espoused goal, isn’t actually
possible.

The city of San Francisco’s pleas to the high court are most blunt on
this point.

“In recent years, San Francisco has spent billions of dollars providing
shelter and housing to persons experiencing homelessness, including over
$672 million during the past fiscal year. But the City cannot feasibly
provide shelter for everyone,” the legal filing declares, emphasis added
by me.

San Francisco said doing so would consume a third of its entire budget.

Or take Portland, which in 2020 funded a major new program with the
stated goal to “help end homelessness across the region.”

Here’s what Portland is now arguing: “Even if cities could build enough
shelters to house the entire homeless population — a budgetary
impossibility for most cities — it is not clear even that would be
enough.” (Again, emphasis mine.) It went on to cite one of the reasons
they’re struggling: In the past year Portland built more shelter and
made 3,399 offers to go into it, but people turned them down 2,560 of
those times.

Seattle’s brief was signed by City Attorney Ann Davison, though not by
other Seattle officials such as the mayor. (San Francisco’s was joined
by its mayor, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom also submitted a brief.)
Seattle’s brief notes the “massive budgetary ramifications” of trying to
house everyone.

“Los Angeles is devoting a staggering $1.3B (10% of its total budget) to
homelessness,” Seattle argued. “Seattle similarly spent $153.7M in 2023.
In the last four years, the State of California allocated $17.5B for
homelessness responses.

“The reality (is) that homeless populations continue to rise.”

The city of Los Angeles said this about the premise of providing enough
shelter for every homeless person, or knowing how many are living on the
streets at any given moment: “Even if a relatively small town or city
could potentially comply … cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, San
Diego, Sacramento, Seattle, Portland, Las Vegas, Phoenix — and a host of
others — simply cannot.”

This is a far cry from the days of 10-year plans to end homelessness or
“no person left outside” campaigns. Seattle still lists that its first
goal “is to ensure all Seattle residents have access to shelter.” The
King County Regional Homelessness Authority states it this way: ”We
believe that it is possible to end homelessness.”

Maybe they do believe. But it’s notable that the cities of the West now
are arguing in court that they simply can’t. The problem’s too big, too
complex, too daunting. Portland, again in its legal brief, said that
combined with the right-to-camp rulings, “local governments face an
impossible choice.”

“They can, on one hand, spend more and more to build housing for growing
homeless populations so that they may enforce local ordinances
prohibiting sleeping and camping in public areas.” Or: “Local
governments can forego enormous spending on building shelters, but, if
so, they can no longer enforce ordinances designed to protect public
spaces for all communities.”

This dilemma “poses an imminent threat to the livelihood of local
governments,” Seattle argues.

These are exaggerations, of course; court briefs are debating points,
not sober statements of policy. Cities like Seattle may still clear
encampments in some cases, and often do, such as when the camps are
imminent threats to safety or are blocking rights of way (though Seattle
has been dinged by courts for doing this too zealously).

It’s revealing though how much the ground is shifting here. Ending
homelessness appears to be out. It’s now about managing homelessness — a
huge difference, and not just a semantic one.

I’ve been arguing in this space for more than a decade that Seattle’s
approach is both too utopian (apartments for everyone) and too lowly
(while we look for money and time to build the apartments, you can go
live or die in wretched, dangerous conditions under this bridge).

We should have stood up temporary, cheaper, emergency-style shelter —
FEMA tents, tiny houses, tilt-ups — and then had a backbone about
getting people into them. You can’t force anyone, and there’s no need to
criminalize the issue. But you can say: “You can’t sleep here, in this
park or on this sidewalk. You can sleep over there. Those are the
Seattle rules.”

We could still do this today. It would be a step to get many people up
off the streets, hopefully to start stabilizing their lives. It wouldn’t
be utopian. It wouldn’t be permanent, or, unfortunately, universally
effective. What it would be is doable.

Instead, here we are: Making “urgent pleas” to the Supreme Court, as The
New York Times put it. Joining the many West Coast cities and other
groups that collectively filed more than two dozen briefs this past week
expressing a sense of desperation about “desolate scenes” and “pits of
squalor.” As well as acknowledging that the well-intended liberal dream
of housing for all is maybe just that — a dream.

Mugged by reality, as the conservatives like to say.

Danny Westneat: dwestneat@seattletimes.com; Danny Westneat takes an
opinionated look at the Puget Sound region's news, people and politics.
View 1,367 Comments / 1367 New

On 10/3/23 20:19, a425couple wrote:
> “In Rare Alliance, Democrats and Republicans Seek Legal Power to Clear
> Homeless Camps,”
>
> from
> https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/west-coast-cities-start-to-confront-the-limits-of-the-liberal-dream/
>
> West Coast cities start to confront the limits of the liberal dream
> Sep. 30, 2023 at 6:00 am Updated Sep. 30, 2023 at 6:00 am
>
> People pack up some belongings during the removal of a homeless camp on
> Third Avenue South in Seattle in June 2022. In new court briefs,
> Seattle, San Francisco, Portland and other cities argue that their
> oft-stated goal of housing all the homeless is actually not possible.
> (Ellen M. Banner / The Seattle Times, 2022)
>
> Danny Westneat By Danny Westneat
> Seattle Times columnist
>
> The news this past week on the homelessness front is that some cities
> across the West are banding together to try to more aggressively tackle
> the vexing issue of urban encampments.
>

Comments include:

Summarizing VDH this week.

In 2008, CA voted $33 billion for a 800 mile high speed rail from
Sacramento to San Diego. Scaled down to 178 miles from Bakersfield to
Merced, the project won't be completed until 2030. At 1/5 size, costs
now exceed entire original cost. Experts project little rail demand
between Bakersfield and Merced.

Voters passed $10.2 billion dam and reservoir projects. Not a single dam
or reservoir has been built.

In 2017, a $15 billion bond was passed to remodel LAX. Costs now
projected at $30 billion with a date of 2028—11 years after the project
was authorized.

In 2002 CA began replacing the eastern span of Bay Bridge, less than
half of the bridge’s total length. Scheduled for 5 years and $250
million, it took 11 years and cost $6.5 billion—a 2,500% increase over
the estimate. Original construction of the entire Bridge began in 1933,
completed in three years. The Empire State Building took 1 year and 45 days.

CA largely ceased forest management, resulting in fires that pollute
skies for months, sicken residents, destroy thousands of
homes/businesses and wipe out billions of dollars of timber.

CA still does a few things well. Demolition is one. Currently it is
destroying four dams on the Klamath that provide hydroelectrical power,
water storage, flood control, and recreation - using money voted for
reservoir construction.

If you want to topple a statue or rename a historic school, or burn
millions of fir trees or turn public spaces into squatter towns, then CA
accomplishes this in record time.

By 1980, baby boomers were bequeathed a well-run state, renowned for its
state-of-the-art infrastructure.

What happened?

Coastal elites passed stringent environmental and zoning regulations.
Public unions and bloated bureaucracies produced Soviet-style overhead,
incompetence, and unaccountability. Income tax rates rose to a top rate
of 13.3 percent. The higher the tax rates, the more CA borrowed, spent,
and ran up deficits. The nation’s highest gasoline taxes along with high
sales and property taxes produce unaffordable fuel and housing.
Homelessness, poor public schools, out-of-control crime, and mass
immigration - led to a bifurcated state of rich and poor.

The average salary for a state employee is $143,000 per year with
$80,000 in tax-free or tax-deferred benefits. More than 340,000
employees earn more than $100,000. More than 3,800 in the UC system
alone earn more than $200,000.

The private sector middle class either joins the poor or flees, taking
experience, knowledge and capital with them.

Replacing the middle class are millions of impoverished immigrants -
arriving without legal status, English, or high school diplomas. Needing
health care, education, housing and food. More than a third of
Californians and half of all births on Medi-Cal.

California is broke. A single-party, medieval society consisting of
leftwing ultra-rich and leftwing ultra-poor without the skill,
expertise, or capital to run it.

---------

Let's try this again: we've an expanded 520, light rail system, a new
SR99 tunnel that freed up the waterfront for the public, a full
connection from sculpture park to stadium in progress in the past decade
only? Something like that? We've done so with being welcoming to people
from all different experiences. I remember Seattle even passed a law
against Caste based discrimination.

We've Zero state taxes. Property tax rate is effectively 1% or lower and
lower than Texas.

WA also passed a law redefining zoning laws. I don't know, there's
probably more. This is just what comes to mind.

----------

I would love this and have been saying it for years. It would me MUCH
more humane than allowing people to sleep anywhere and trash our
wonderful city as it would force action. But, like you say, it would
take someone in the City with backbone to do it. "You can’t sleep here,
in this park or on this sidewalk. You can sleep over there. Those are
the Seattle rules.”

---------

.....solutions only viable with a view towards the reality that, clearly,
is hands off; what is the all-encompassing power behind the scenes that
completely squelches public discussion ?

Economic balance must be returned; otherwise, find a light pole and
begin with the head pounding.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/income-inequality-in-america-how-98-trillion-of-household-wealth-is-distributed/

---------

I think we need more accountability for all the money spent on providing
so-called solutions to the homeless problem. The Regional Housing
Authority has been a disaster. It clearly shows what putting people in
charge whose only qualification is "lived experience." The mayor is
asking us to pass this fall a measure to spend more than another $1
billion on affordable housing solutions. It will be interesting to see
how that vote goes.
The number of homeless that flat out refuse services can no longer be
ignored.

Many homelessness advocates have an underlying incorrect working
assumption: that the homeless want to change and would change if only
given the opportunity.
Because Amazon forced them out of their lovely homes.
Whoosh!
Danny’s article shows how-misleading it is to talk about a “homeless
problem.” We have three problems, a mental health problem, an “economic
homeless” problem, and a huge fentanyl problem. Each of these leads to
homelessness, but each has very different solutions.

The first two problems are relatively small and can be controlled with a
traditional mix of shelter and treatment.

The fentanyl problem is different. The addictive power of the drug is so
strong that most addicts have no wish to begin or stay in treatment.
They also have little wish to move away from open air drug markets into
shelter.

So Danny is right. We are beginning to see a fascinating social
experiment. For how long is a democratic society willing to tolerate a
minority openly defying all the normal social conventions? The tide of
public opinion is beginning to turn.
Well stated. There is a tendency to paint them all with the same brush
which isn't really fair. I've read plenty of stories about people who
have been able to get back into a better situation. Not all homeless
live in encampments either. There are those who for whatever reasons
live in cars, RVs, etc.

All most of can really do is watch it all unfold and hope for a better
future