Democratic officials in California have circled back from their coddling of drug addicts and homeless people to the understanding that they can use criminal law as leverage to eliminate the kind of antisocial behavior that destroys the quality of life in their cities.
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan was the latest to discover this groundbreaking philosophy. Mahan wants it to be a crime for homeless people to refuse shelter when it is offered to them three times in an 18-month span. The logic is pretty straightforward: San Jose has shelter spots available and homeless people on the streets who can be in those shelter spots, and the city pays an average of $6,500 on hospital visits and emergency responses per homeless person each year, on top of all the other homeless spending the city has (including those vacant shelter spots).
Homeless people should not be using sidewalks and other public spaces as their beds and toilets, especially when there are shelter beds available. The added financial burdens for city residents (whose paychecks are already helping fund vacant shelter beds), along with the public safety and health problems that come with rampant homelessness, are not acceptable. Again, there are still homeless shelters with vacancies. All of this seems reasonable.
It seems reasonable to everyone but “homeless advocates,” who want homeless people to have their lifestyles affirmed as they turn city corners into dumps full of trash and feces. And so cities are forced to wrestle with legal fights over homeless cleanups similar to San Francisco’s, despite 60% of homeless people rejecting shelter when offered it. In Los Angeles, that number is 45%, while San Jose’s is 33%.
This is the same problem that has played out in these cities regarding drug addicts. San Francisco, in particular, embraced the coddling strategy and created “safe-injection sites” where drug addicts could shoot up and fall further into the throes of addiction. Unsurprisingly, those areas became nightmares for nearby residents, as drug addicts used sidewalks as their toilets and threatened to assault residents on a daily basis.
SAN JOSE FORCED TO MOVE 500 HOMELESS PEOPLE FROM WATERWAYS
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins rediscovered the solution that many left-wing cities forgot about: prosecuting drug users. This allows the authorities to offer the same off-ramp that Mahan proposed for the homeless and gives them the choice between going to jail or being redirected to shelters (or, in San Francisco’s case with drug addicts, rehabilitation programs). You can get help on the taxpayer dime, or you can go to jail, but you can’t keep destroying public spaces with your destructive choices.
There are solutions to these problems, and they are the ones that are best for homeless people, drug addicts, and the people living in these cities. San Jose and other cities should not have to tolerate hundreds of homeless people contaminating water sources or otherwise destroying public spaces when shelters aren’t at full capacity. It is safer, healthier, and more cost-effective, but it is also better for the homeless people that “advocates” want to help continue to live in filth and squalor out of their misplaced empathy.