I know there will always be people who believe the homeless have a right to live anywhere they want. I am not one of those people. The homeless have no such right, as the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 28 ruling in Grants Pass makes clear.
Whether you like the Court or not, their decision was proper from a legal and a commonsense perspective. Beggars, scroungers, vagabonds, deadbeats, bums—call them what you will—simply do not have the unlimited right to pitch camp on either public or private property. Nor is rousting them “criminalizing homelessness,” as encampment sympathizers allege. As SCOTUS noted in their decision, “Grants Pass’s public-camping ordinances do not criminalize status. The public-camping laws prohibit actions undertaken by any person, regardless of status. It makes no difference whether the charged defendant is currently a person experiencing homelessness, a backpacker on vacation, or a student who abandons his dorm room to camp out in protest on the lawn of a municipal building.” That’s pretty clear: cities have the absolute right and authority, not to mention the duty, to evict homeless people.
But, as I said, some diehards refuse to accept this reality. One of them is a lawyer and self-described “homeless advocate” named Andrea Henson, who identifies herself as executive director of Where Do We Go, Berkeley, a 501(c)3 nonprofit. “Our goal,” Henson writes, “is to fulfill all needs of the [homeless] whether that be supplying tents, clothes, and food, or driving an injured person to the emergency room. We also provide advocacy for people residing in shelters, hotel programs, and community cabins to ensure they are receiving safe and dignified care.”
That’s all very praiseworthy. Our friend Vincent Ray Williams, at the Urban Compassion Project, does the same thing. But Henson broke the law yesterday when she chained herself to a fence next to a homeless encampment on property CalTrans owns in Oakland and was trying to clear. Although Henson claimed her act was “civil disobedience,” the California Highway Patrol didn’t quite see it that way. They arrested Henson when she refused to unchain herself and leave.
Henson has a long history of defending encampments. She calls sweeps “a reign of terror on our most vulnerable,” although that is patently untrue. CHP officers are polite and respectful and are thoroughly professional in going by the book. CHP’s training manual says specifically that all their interactions with the public must be “exercised judiciously with respect for human rights and dignity.” Officers must act with the “understanding that respect must be mutual between law enforcement and the public.” CHP officers well know the serious consequences if they fail to treat all subjects legally. So it’s ridiculous to claim that evicting homeless people is “a reign of terror.” Frankly, that’s the sort of hysterical hyperbole I expect from Cat Brooks.
A lot of homeless advocates seem to think of themselves as Christlike, happy to become martyrs for a cause they devoutly believe in. That’s fine, but if they’re serious, they have to be willing to accept the consequences when they break the law. This isn’t to denigrate Henson in any way. I respect her tenacity and idealism. But I really can’t see that she’s doing anyone any good, especially the homeless. Henson and others like her are eventually going to have to accept the fact that society has concluded that homeless tents are unacceptable. For years, we’ve heard all the arguments about compassion, about “they have nowhere else to go” and so forth. We citizens have pondered these things for a long time, in our intellects and in our consciences, and tried to arrive at fair conclusions. But even liberal leaders, including London Breed and Gavin Newsom, have decided that enough is enough.
The tide has turned against uncontrolled homeless encampments befouling our neighborhoods, creating unsanitary and dangerous conditions. People like Ms. Henson will no doubt continue to fight against that tide, but someone should tell her she’s already lost her war. The citizens of the United States are tired of seeing their hard-earned money thrown at homelessness, with no results and no prospect of results. And besides, they increasingly believe that most homeless people—maybe the great majority—are drug addicts and willful misfits. Ms. Henson, you can waste your time, and the cops’ time, chaining yourself to anything you want, but it won’t do homeless people the slightest good, and might even land you in jail.
Steve Heimoff