Politicians point fingers as homelessness problem persists

Many political guarantees have been made, many billions of taxpayer {dollars} have been spent and plenty of applications have been launched, however the state’s homelessness disaster continues to worsen and Californians’ tolerance has worn skinny.

Just a few months in the past, the Public Coverage Institute of California took the general public’s temperature on the problem and located that overwhelming majorities of the state’s adults need one thing achieved, pronto. It’s one of many few main points that bridges the state’s in any other case broad partisan divide.

“Issues have shifted, and all people’s jobs are on the rattling line, and they need to be,” Gov. Gavin Newsom advised a Dreamforce convention in San Francisco final week. “We’re solely considering actual outcomes, and that’s our dedication to all of you.”

Underscoring the scenario’s fraught politics, Newsom has denounced a federal Justice of the Peace who blocked San Francisco’s plans to wash up squalid encampments, pledged that the state will intervene within the case and expressed hope {that a} very conservative U.S. Supreme Court docket may elevate the ban.

“That’s a hell of a press release coming from a progressive Democrat from California that claims we’d like assist from the Supreme Court docket,” Newsom mentioned throughout his Dreamforce interview.

Newsom mentioned that in an unannounced go to to San Francisco – a metropolis he as soon as ruled as mayor – he noticed a disgusting degree of drug abuse close to a metropolis police station.

“Individuals aren’t giving a rattling that any of us are there,” he mentioned. “They had been dealing, had been utilizing, had been abusing, and there was a police division substation, and it was all occurring throughout the road. All I believed was, how rattling demoralized all people should be. There go all our tax {dollars} and who the hell is working this place?”

Who certainly?

The social and political angst in San Francisco over the best way to do one thing efficient about homelessness just isn’t confined to that metropolis. There are at the least 170,000 folks dwelling on the streets in California and each massive metropolis faces its model of the syndrome.

Karen Bass was elected mayor of Los Angeles on her pledge to wash up its streets however has solely been in a position to tinker on the margins, whereas the numbers of the unhoused have continued to climb.

The sidewalks of Sacramento close to the state Capitol are full of encampments of homeless women and men, sparking a pointy conflict between the town’s mayor, former state Senate chief Darrell Steinberg, and Sacramento County’s newly elected district lawyer, Thien Ho.

For weeks, Ho issued public denunciations of metropolis officers for, he mentioned, failing to implement anti-camping legal guidelines and at one level even threatened to problem prison costs towards them.

This week, Ho filed a civil lawsuit towards the town, alleging its inaction is making a public nuisance. A companion swimsuit was filed by a coalition of metropolis residents and enterprise house owners.

“Sufficient is sufficient,” Ho advised The Sacramento Bee. “We have to deal with this public security disaster for each the housed and the unhoused.”

The 36-page lawsuit describes Sacramento as a once-thriving metropolis that faces “descent into decay and this utter collapse into chaos,” threatening each housed and unhoused residents.

“The frustration that members of our neighborhood really feel is totally justified,” Steinberg mentioned in a press release, defending steps the town has taken to cope with the problem, and criticizing Ho’s intervention.

“Frankly,” Steinberg mentioned, “we’ve got no time for the district lawyer’s performative distraction from the onerous work all of us must do collectively to unravel this complicated social drawback plaguing city facilities all through the state and nation.”

The carping amongst politicians – all from the identical occasion – tells us that they know the general public will precise retribution if the disaster continues to worsen.

Dan Walters is a CalMatters columnist.