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.”
The other issue that you forgot to mention is a lot of red states take their homeless people and send them to California.
I live in LA. I’ve been threatened by people who are homeless. Multiple times. Yes, these people deserve help. But there’s a billion reasons why our current system isn’t working and part of that is the state can’t institutionalize these people to get them clean from drugs and to help start them on the pathway to being a productive citizen again.
I live in the Miracle Mile area, and I do not give a shit about someones ‘right’ to camp on the sidewalk with a huge ass tent that smells of shit. Sorry, but that’s a public health hazard.
Do I want people to get help? Absolutely. Do I think that people who live in these areas also deserve to live in a safe and clean environment? Absolutely.
Something has to be done, at least Gavin is trying things.
This is fascist thinking - the cult of action for the sake of action. You can’t identify any real solution to the problem, but by God, you want SOMETHING done. And that something, when undefined, inevitably just means, “send law enforcement to torture them until they kill themselves.”
TIL wanting people to not live in homeless encampments that are dangerous is fascist. Thanks for that. Lets see you take in the guy who mumbles to himself and is addicted to heroin into your home and treat him how about that?
Do you not know what fascism is? The cult of action is one of the hallmarks of Fascism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism
This policy has all the marks of the cult of action. It does nothing to actually solve the homelessness issue. It focuses on using cruel brute force to punish the undesirable members of society. It’s a performative action not meant to actually achieve any noble end, but simply to show that the regime is “doing something.”
How is this actually helping anyone? What good actually comes from spending millions in public resources to endlessly shuffle homeless people from one location to another?
The state is using performative violence simply as a propaganda tool to make citizens think the government is “doing something.” That is the cult of action for action’s sake. It’s literally one of the textbook characteristics of fascism.
This isn’t hyperbole. We’re talking fascism 101 here. California is sending in the jack boots to terrorize the undesiables. How is that not fascism?
You have no idea what you’re talking about.
Banning homeless encampments is not fascism 101.
Let’s look at the series of events:
California severely restricts the supply of housing to benefit the wealthy. Existing homeowners and corporate landlords get rich as the price of housing soars, as the state actively restricts people from building enough to keep up with the need.
Homelessness rates soar. Millions find that the market value of their labor is now exceeded by the market value of rent. They become homeless through no fault of their own.
Instead of providing adequate services to the homeless, the state responds by demonizing the homeless. Homeless people are stereotyped. Any crime committed by a homeless person is shouted about from the rooftops. A hate campaign is enacted to portray the homeless as violent, drug-addicted, and insane. The homeless use drugs at a lower rate than the housed, but public opinion believes the opposite. Their disheveled state is portrayed as a deep character flaw rather than simply an inevitable consequence of their material reality. People are made homeless through no fault of their own. But the public is convinced through a vast propaganda campaign that the homeless deserve to be homeless and are fundamentally evil people.
The state unleashes a campaign of performative terror on the homeless population. Police disband camps and force people out, without providing anywhere for these people to go. It is simply action for action’s sake. Newsom can proudly state, “I didn’t solve homelessness, but I sure made their lives a living hell by forcing them to endlessly move from place to place! The dirty hobos deserve it!”
That’s textbook fascism. Newsom doesn’t have a solution to this problem. Solutions do exist, but they would require building enough housing to drive down its cost. And that would hurt the bank accounts of rich people. So instead, Newsom has unleashed a state terror campaign against California’s homeless population. The goal of this terror campaign isn’t to solve homelessness or to help anyone in any manner. It is meant to show middle class and wealthy people that Newsom is making those “dirty homeless people” pay for their sins. Well off folks are tired of seeing the homeless that they created in public view. So Newsom is promising to use state terror to drive them out of the public sphere entirely.
If you think this isn’t fascism, well…you need to learn what fascism actually is.
Not the right things. It’s like if Gavin went and confiscated everyone’s dogs to sacrifice them to Zorak to fix the homelessness issue. It’s not going to work, it’s never going to work, and then when people complain, you say “well, at least he’s trying something.” The fact of the matter is that California has an extremely deep deficit of affordable housing. The cheapest rent in Merced should NOT be $800 for a room in a single family house, that’s zonko bananas, but it is. We’re never going to fix the homelessness crisis without addressing the affordability crisis, and the hell of it is that affordability is actually fairly easy and cheap to address from the government’s side, we just don’t because it hurts the NIMBY’s feelings.
Where you going to build affordable housing in west LA?
There’s literally no place for it. Should people living in Venice just be given beachfront housing for free to live in?
Whats your SOLUTION to the problem? Because like I said. There are multiple reasons there’s a homeless epidemic across the entire country.
Okay, do you want the lecture, or the tl;Dr?
Tl;Dr: bulldoze every single family home and put up commie blocks with commercial spaces on the bottom floor.
Lecture edition: it doesn’t have to be that extreme, and we can do it without bulldozing homes with pretty simple and cheap zoning reforms. Bonus: we can also stop our cities from being constantly bankrupt, fix traffic, protect the environment, and make our cities stop sucking. Here’s the lecture, in case you’re interested: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN69ehUTVa
Honestly I wish we had the balls to turn LA into New York West Coast Edition. I’m right by the Wilshire line being built, and I cannot wait to be able to take public transit from my place to LAX to Grand Central in NYC.
Thanks for giving a real answer and not jingoistic slactivism nonsense you see so many people spouting on here. <3
I’ll take a look at that video later when I have more time on my hands.
Hey, bro, it’s always cool when you find someone willing to have an actual discussion, thanks for being open to it! In case that playlist is too time consuming, check out Strong Towns. They’re an advocacy group focused on local-first evidence-based policy changes to make our cities stop sucking. Those policies almost always include fixing our busted ass zoning system and improving public transit and walk ability/bikeability among other things. I’m part of Strong Towns up here in Merced, and we’re pushing the city, kicking and screaming, into being a better place to live for everyone. They’re free to join and offer a lot of really great resources and support, and I’m almost certain that there must be a local group in LA.
For sure! I just hate that so many people have strong opinions on this shit then do nothing, don’t educate themselves on the problems at hand, and then acknowledge that people on the ‘other side’ of an issue have actual concerns that do need addressed.
I’d fucking love it if we had our homeless problem under control, and I firmly do believe we would if all the fucking red states would stop bussing THEIR problems here.
I’ve been in LA for 9 years and I’ve seen the changes that are taking place. Bike lanes are rampant on the west side, and they’re starting to come to places like Weho and others as well which is awesome. We’re expanding our subway lines, and things slowly are getting better. I wish we would take a big TVA style initiative, and make some dense public housing districts that were affordable, but that’s a HUGE endeavor.
I’d love to get involved with local stuff like that, but I’m currently in a new job, and don’t have much free time right now. =(
A lot of times you can get involved by just emailing public comments to municipal authorities ahead of council meetings
Oh cool.