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.”
One of the points is to try to get homeless people to move north or east, out of the state. Another point is to not deal with the housing crisis on the whole. There’s a lot of money that property owners stand to lose. If property values across the state go down to where they should be.
In my opinion, property should be cheap enough where anyone who works a full-time job can afford it. In other words, minimum wage should be enough to buy an apartment. Ideally. But you know the landlords will never let that happen. You know the real estate speculators will block that from becoming reality. At least that’s the situation right now.