CITY OF TENTS

HOW MAYOR, COUNCIL ENCOURAGE HOMELESSNESS

For years, I’ve tried to figure out why the local homeless population grew from 2,700 to roughly 10,000 since Darrell Steinberg became mayor.

I’ve finally figured it out. The answer is obvious. I just couldn’t see it.

Steinberg and the City Council promote homelessness. They encourage an unhoused culture. The city has authority to stop or at least slow the problem. Instead, the mayor and friends search for excuses to help homelessness thrive. They bring gasoline to the bonfire.

With policies and willfulness, the mayor and council accepted tents along X Street and Alhambra Boulevard. They ignored doorway sleepers and sidewalk encroachments. They declined to enforce rules about property crimes, open fires, drug sales, public drunkenness, prostitution, inoperable vehicles, health, safety and indecent behavior when homeless people were involved.

Mayhem ensued. Of course it did.

Under Steinberg’s leadership, local authorities respect camping as a lifestyle. If people refuse services and wish to live in tents on sidewalks and hoard bicycles and trash, the city rarely, reluctantly interferes.

By R.E. Graswich City Beat

In 2020, Downtown City Council member Katie Valenzuela arrived to help the mayor preserve the inviolability of homelessness. Compassion became acceptance.

As irresponsible as this sounds— what kind of civic leadership sanctions homelessness?—tolerance of street camps continued until Sacramento became a national disgrace.

Now when residents look past the parade of modest remedies such as transitional shelters, tiny homes, trailers, sprung structures and motel vouchers, they realize the city’s shameful homeless predicament makes sense. Tents are the inevitable result of policies that see no evil in sleeping rough.

Steinberg, Valenzuela and the council will reject accusations that they condone homelessness. No doubt they hope the problem vanishes. But their solutions, which involve building 10,000 homes for unsheltered people, and another 10,000 for the next wave, into perpetuity, are fantasies.

As for condoning homelessness, the mayor and council’s actions prove them guilty. Steinberg and friends hid behind a court ruling and abdicated responsibility. They used the court as an excuse to support street campers while feigning helplessness.

The decision, from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, is called Martin v. Boise. The 2018 ruling prohibits Boise police from criminalizing certain people who sleep on public property. The decision encourages cities to open shelters and structured campgrounds, similar to Haven for Hope, the San Antonio program I’ve written about several times.

Steinberg and the council based their policies on the fiction that Martin requires shelter beds for every homeless person before tents can be cleared. Immune from laws and ordinances, homeless camps spread like weeds.