On May 12, California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, demanded that cities throughout the state adopt anti-camping ordinances that would effectively ban public homelessness by requiring unhoused individuals to relocate every 72 hours.
While presented as a humanitarian effort to reduce homelessness, the new policy victimizes California’s growing unhoused population—approximately 187,000 people—by tying funding in Proposition 1 to local laws banning sleeping or camping on public land.
In his announcement, Newsom pushed local governments to adopt the draconian ordinances “without delay.”
Homeless people are human beings. If we housed them, and had a proper social safety net, we wouldn’t even be talking about it’s. Homeless or not, they need a place to live.
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Housing is usually not the issue itself. If I’m not mistaken California actually has enough shelter available to not have homeless people at all. The employed, high functioning, productive yet homeless member of society is a rarity and often remain homeless very temporarily. Most homeless people have mental and/or drug abuse issues, which leads them to decide to be homeless because they don’t like the rules, can’t stick to a schedule, have antisocial tendencies etc etc etc.
My city of Fresno does not have enough beds, so maybe that is true for wealthier cities with lower unhoused rates. The beds offered are sometimes less safe than the street: https://calmatters.org/housing/2025/02/california-homeless-shelters-purgatory/
Merced checking in, we made homeless camps functionally illegal while having HALF of the required beds to house everyone.
Housing really is the main issue though. People get the cause and effect backwards. People don’t become homeless because they do drugs; they do drugs because they’re homeless. If you were stuck sleeping on the sidewalk, wouldn’t you want to be high 24/7? I sure would.
Many of those people don’t start out as drug user or being mentally unwell, that’s what you get in a system where you are not safe in shelters, building for homeless people means adding spikes to benches and now you will be driven from the location that is now closest to “home” like some lepers being run out of town.
Housing and the cost of it is definitely a big part of the problem.
They did a large study of homelessness in California that ended a year or two ago and it concluded that it was mostly the price of housing.
Exactly. People of all income levels struggle with mental health and drug issues. The drug use and mental health struggles of the homeless are just much more publicly visible.
Needing housing is unfortunately only part of the problem. Whether it’s part of the reason they became homeless, or damage incurred in the course of being homeless, mental illness and co-occuring substance abuse go hand in hand with homelessness. (Though that majority dynamic may change with the way things have been going, it’s becoming easier to fall through the entire net or what’s left of it). If those issues aren’t addressed simultaneously, the person ends up right back where they were, or even worse off.
This is one of those comforting lies people tell themselves. It’s the just world fallacy.
Drug use and homelessness are mostly orthogonal issues, but people latch onto it as a quick and easy way to dismiss providing housing for the homeless. People of all income levels have mental illnesses and drug use issues. But for the homeless, we decide that their drug use issues are such a moral failing that it’s OK to deny them housing as punishment.
Also, people confuse cause and effect. Being homeless causes mental health and drug abuse, not the other way around.
Maybe I miscommunicated my position. I’m not interested in withholding housing or support from anyone. As a previous recipient of such services, I will always advocate their value. I think we should be doing more, not less. I simply think the value of housing and mental health services is multiplied exponentially when they are combined.
You’re saying this with authority as if it’s some sort of universal truth when it is not. Speaking from experience having been homeless myself (2 years between Seattle and LA), both are true. Many people end up homeless because of how their mental illness has affected their ability to go about daily life. For these individuals specifically, housing alone is not a cure-all. If that person doesn’t receive some other kind of support, their life is still unmanageable for them.
To treat the general problem of homelessness, both types of people in this binary have to be considered.