Opinion: On homelessness, liberal California and the ultraconservative Supreme Court largely agree

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What does a small, solidly Republican city in Oregon have in common with California’s largest liberal enclaves? All breathed a sigh of relief this year thanks to the far-right U.S. Supreme Court.

The court’s conservative bloc ruled in favor of the city of Grants Pass, Ore. , in June, overturning a key lower court ruling on homelessness and clearing the way for local governments to crack down on sleeping in public spaces regardless of the availability of housing or shelter. California’s response to the ruling has become a vivid reminder of not just the intractability of the homelessness epidemic but also the tension between national liberal politics and local policy in Democratic-dominated states and cities.

Some 186,000 people across California lack consistent shelter. Roughly 84% of the state’s voters believe homelessness is a “very serious” problem, a Quinnipiac University poll found, and Democrats and Republicans were in similarly broad agreement on that assessment, at 81% and 85%, respectively. In that light, it’s not surprising that California officials have wasted no time since Grants Pass in implementing their preferred “solution” to the homelessness problem.

From San Diego to San Francisco , state and local workers began disassembling makeshift shelters and camps and displacing the homeless people living in them. Within days, entire blocks were remade across the state. Residents rallied to social media platforms such as Reddit and Nextdoor to exchange strategies for getting homeless encampments removed from their own neighborhoods.

Other California residents have taken the Supreme Court’s ruling and Democratic officials’ exuberant co-sign as further evidence of the nation’s growing disdain for society’s most marginalized. Reports spread of homeless people being ejected from campsites with little or no warning , their pets taken away and medications lost , among other indignities.

The American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups have condemned the Grants Pass ruling. The chief executive of the National Alliance to End Homelessness said it set a “dangerous precedent .” But the precedent set by California Democrats has arguably been far more dangerous.

During the initial waves of the Golden State’s housing crisis, in the late 1970s, Democratic politicians were reluctant to be seen as overtly antagonistic to the state’s homeless people, many of them veterans of the nation’s wars in Vietnam and … Read More