signalmankenneth
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Homelessness became prevalent in America under the Reagan administration?!!
FOLSOM, Calif. — K.C. Alvey treads carefully when she and her dog, Stuart, walk the dappled trail behind their apartment in Folsom, California. Since the pandemic, her neighbors have included homeless campers along a brook known as Humbug Creek.
There’s the man who periodically emerges from the brush, yelling in fear and tearing at tree limbs. There’s the hoarder who fled with his dog as a cleanup crew again cleared his massive campsite — shopping carts, three beds, throw pillows, art, books, mirrors on trees, rugs, torch fuel. Rogue campfires have been frequent.
Until recently, federal appellate courts limited how far cities could go to clear encampments. But late last month, the Supreme Court ruled that they could remove homeless residents sleeping outdoors, a decision that has already begun to reshape how they deal with homelessness.
Three days after the decision, the Folsom police announced they would start citing recalcitrant illegal campers, though they also would team up with nonprofits to provide more homeless outreach.
Alvey, 57, a marketing manager, is waiting to see what happens. There have been times when the homeless campers “really creep me out,” she said. But she also wants “to be sure they have somewhere they can go where they feel safe.”
In the two weeks since the Supreme Court decided that the city of Grants Pass, Oregon, could penalize sleeping and camping in public places, city leaders across the country have responded by revising local ordinances and preparing to take a harder line on homeless encampments. Nowhere has the homelessness crisis been more severe than in Western states, where tent communities have proliferated since the pandemic.
Some cities are particularly eager to get moving.
“I’m warming up the bulldozer,” said Mayor R. Rex Parris, a Republican, of Lancaster, California, an exurb 62 miles north of Los Angeles. “I want the tents away from the residential areas and the shopping centers and the freeways.”
Shelter populations increased last year in the Antelope Valley, which includes Lancaster, but unsheltered homelessness rose more, according to the area’s latest point-in-time count, with more than 5,500 people sleeping unhoused in a stretch of high desert prone to extreme cold and heat.
“I get that some of these people have fallen on hard times,” the mayor said, “and we have a state-of-the-art shelter with beds available. But the population we’re talking about doesn’t want a bed.”
That sentiment is not limited to Republican leaders. In San Francisco, where Mayor London Breed has faced a tough fight for reelection, businesses have waged a furious campaign to eliminate homeless encampments even as civil liberties groups have sued the city over enforcement.
“My hope is that we can clear them all,” the staunch Democrat said at a news conference after the ruling. She has said that homeless people who refuse services are partly to blame for the city’s economic struggles downtown.
In the Seattle suburb of Burien, Washington, city leaders are battling with the county sheriff, who runs the police force, over the enforcement of public camping bans. Citing concerns about constitutionality, the sheriff’s department has declined to take action, even after the Supreme Court ruling.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/homelessness-ruling-cities-weigh-whether-144609377.html
FOLSOM, Calif. — K.C. Alvey treads carefully when she and her dog, Stuart, walk the dappled trail behind their apartment in Folsom, California. Since the pandemic, her neighbors have included homeless campers along a brook known as Humbug Creek.
There’s the man who periodically emerges from the brush, yelling in fear and tearing at tree limbs. There’s the hoarder who fled with his dog as a cleanup crew again cleared his massive campsite — shopping carts, three beds, throw pillows, art, books, mirrors on trees, rugs, torch fuel. Rogue campfires have been frequent.
Until recently, federal appellate courts limited how far cities could go to clear encampments. But late last month, the Supreme Court ruled that they could remove homeless residents sleeping outdoors, a decision that has already begun to reshape how they deal with homelessness.
Three days after the decision, the Folsom police announced they would start citing recalcitrant illegal campers, though they also would team up with nonprofits to provide more homeless outreach.
Alvey, 57, a marketing manager, is waiting to see what happens. There have been times when the homeless campers “really creep me out,” she said. But she also wants “to be sure they have somewhere they can go where they feel safe.”
In the two weeks since the Supreme Court decided that the city of Grants Pass, Oregon, could penalize sleeping and camping in public places, city leaders across the country have responded by revising local ordinances and preparing to take a harder line on homeless encampments. Nowhere has the homelessness crisis been more severe than in Western states, where tent communities have proliferated since the pandemic.
Some cities are particularly eager to get moving.
“I’m warming up the bulldozer,” said Mayor R. Rex Parris, a Republican, of Lancaster, California, an exurb 62 miles north of Los Angeles. “I want the tents away from the residential areas and the shopping centers and the freeways.”
Shelter populations increased last year in the Antelope Valley, which includes Lancaster, but unsheltered homelessness rose more, according to the area’s latest point-in-time count, with more than 5,500 people sleeping unhoused in a stretch of high desert prone to extreme cold and heat.
“I get that some of these people have fallen on hard times,” the mayor said, “and we have a state-of-the-art shelter with beds available. But the population we’re talking about doesn’t want a bed.”
That sentiment is not limited to Republican leaders. In San Francisco, where Mayor London Breed has faced a tough fight for reelection, businesses have waged a furious campaign to eliminate homeless encampments even as civil liberties groups have sued the city over enforcement.
“My hope is that we can clear them all,” the staunch Democrat said at a news conference after the ruling. She has said that homeless people who refuse services are partly to blame for the city’s economic struggles downtown.
In the Seattle suburb of Burien, Washington, city leaders are battling with the county sheriff, who runs the police force, over the enforcement of public camping bans. Citing concerns about constitutionality, the sheriff’s department has declined to take action, even after the Supreme Court ruling.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/homelessness-ruling-cities-weigh-whether-144609377.html
