Divided localities agree on an enemy: those camping outside.
This was originally published as a Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square. Photo: of downtown Los Angeles, by Russ Allison Loar, via Flickr: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Lock up your tents, California!
Toss out your old camping gear!
Hide your pillows and blankets where the cops will never find them!
Because the people who run California have finally seen clearly that the greatest scourge in today’s Golden State is not climate change and not crime, not COVID and not corruption, not the rising cost of living nor grinding poverty.
No, what most threatens our way of life is people who camp.
And so, in this the year 2024, the great state of California has gone to war against campers and their encampments.
This war effort is unlike anything seen here in generations. The wheels of 21st century California government move painfully slowly. It takes state and local agencies days to respond to a police call, a minimum of six months to permit a coffee shop, five years to add a carpool lane on a highway, and three decades (and counting) to construct a promised high-speed rail line.
But the war on encampments is proceeding with a shocking speed, a real blitzkrieg. This summer Gov. Gavin Newsom, known more for issuing plans than following through on them, didn’t merely order state agencies to take down encampments on land they control. He donned gloves and work clothes to throw away the tents and trash of the unhoused himself.
Newsom also issued guidance on removing encampments to cities and counties. Local governments usually do their best to ignore state orders, but not this time. Cities from Arcata to Vista have ripped down encampments with alacrity and vigor. CalMatters counted at least 14 cities, from San Francisco to Long Beach, that have either passed new laws to prohibit camping or updated old ones; at least four cities revived camping bans they previously didn’t enforce.
San Diego, a leader in the anti-encampment war, has made “No Camping” signs as ubiquitous as fish tacos, and shut down the massive “island” encampment—surrounded by water—under the 5 freeway. Meanwhile, once-progressive paradise Santa Monica toughened its anti-camping ordinance, too. Possession of cannabis may be legal, but possession of pillows and blankets can get you locked up. (Don’t let the grown-ups see your blankie, kids!)
One great thing about the anti-encampment war is that it’s unifying, an example of the enduring power of bipartisan consensus. Sure, California’s exclusively Democratic leaders have fought bitterly against the U.S. Supreme Court when it strips away gun laws, or the rights of women or immigrants. But in this war, the Golden State’s top progressive leaders are making common cause with the six conservative justices and their recent decision to allow cities to prohibit people from sleeping on the streets.
As Republicans and Democrats join forces in favor of this righteous war, a few apologists for the status quo remain. Some dead-end liberals are prone to quoting the 1894 novel Red Lily, by the Frenchman Anatole France: “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”
But France is easily dismissed these days. He was a practitioner of irony—which has been outlawed across this formerly self-aware country—and of critical and independent journalism—which is being killed off by the bipartisan consensus that we shouldn’t have to listen to uncomfortable truths that offend our partisan biases.
Now, you might think California’s intellectuals would challenge the encampment bans. Instead, our state’s scholars are leading their own anti-encampment campaign.
The University of California and California State University systems have announced strict new bans against encampments anywhere on their campuses or properties. Their goal is to prevent a recurrence of the protests of the previous academic year that produced anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and violence—including when some universities called in the police to bust up the encampments.
In announcing this oh-so-principled policy, the universities are not just saying that opposition to the scourge of encampments is more important than the First Amendment. They are also eliminating a potential on-campus housing solution—tents—when thousands of their students are unhoused.
But ignore the lonely critics out there. The logic of the universities, and the state and its cities, and the nation’s highest court, is inarguable:
Californians shouldn’t have to sleep outside.
The only way to make sure we don’t have to sleep outside is to arrest or relocate those of us who sleep outside.
And such enforcement will solve the problem because someone else, under intolerable pressure, will step in and provide shelter to those displaced by encampment crackdowns.
Who is that someone? The state points to local governments, which have money and authority to build housing. The local governments point back to the state, which could change laws that make it too easy for opponents to block housing for the unhoused.
Don’t worry. I’m sure they’ll sort it out soon. Please don’t lose any sleep over it.
