LETTER FROM SAN FRANCISCO
A turning point in the homeless crisis? Since the Supreme Court ruled at the end of June that there was no constitutional right to sleep on the street, municipalities in the American West have begun to dismantle camps, especially in California, a state with about 186,000 people. homelessor one-third of the homeless in the United States.
On June 28, the Supreme Court overturned a 2019 case law that prohibited cities from criminalizing sleeping in a public place if they could not provide shelter to homeless people, this in the name of the 8my amendment to the Constitution that prohibits penalties “ cruel and unusual ».
The Court held that the 8my The amendment did not apply to the situation of homeless. An important decision that once again allows municipalities to impose fines or even prison sentences on homeless people, even if no accommodation solution exists.
24 billion dollars invested
Criticized by humanitarian associations, the judges’ position was well received by elected officials, particularly Democrats, mostly in the large cities of the West and overwhelmed by the increase in the number of homeless people in their territory, also decreasing in the rest. of the country. During election periods, elected officials cannot ignore the spectacle of homeless Prostrating yourself on the sidewalks represents an increasingly intolerable heartbreak for your fellow citizens.
At the end of July, the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, one of the spokespersons for the progressive left in the United States, issued a decree ordering his services to begin removing tents installed on state-owned land: parks, beaches, public buildings, roadsides. , areas under road interchanges. The officers were asked to proceed “ humanly » : Evictees must be notified forty-eight to seventy-two hours in advance, contact social services, and their personal property must be tagged and preserved for at least sixty days.
The governor himself set an example: he collected tents and garbage under a highway bridge with municipal transportation agents. Gavin Newsom is getting impatient. Since taking office in 2019, the Golden State has spent about $24 billion trying to solve the homeless problem. The statistics have barely changed: there are still 186,000 people on the streets, according to the census carried out in January, or five thousand more than in 2023.
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