A year ago, when I began calling for more aggressive treatment to get rid of encampments, I was almost afraid to express that view explicitly. It seemed to go against public sentiment, which was sympathetic towards homeless people. So I had to choose my language very carefully.
Now here we are on April 8, 2022, and a new poll from the Bay Area Council shows how much things have changed: 70% of respondents agree with the statement, “It’s time to get tough on the unsheltered who refuse shelter and treatment.”
Not only that, but 87% support an increase in government authority to place homeless people into conservatorship, which Governor Newsom has made tentative steps toward with his CARE Courts.
Those numbers, my friends, are super-majorities. They occur, not in red-state Alabama or Idaho, but in the Bay Area, one of the most liberal parts of the country. Even lefty libs are fed up with the camps and their inhabitants. Surely our politicians have to listen to us!
But just as surely, they won’t. Not in Oakland, which remains in the iron grip of authoritarian radicals on the City Council who have no problem with encampments. I have to admit that Mayor Libby Schaaf has, on occasion, tried to be the grownup in the room, supporting the Oakland Police Department and calling out the likes of Bas, Schaaf, Thao and Kaplan for their lunatic antics. But because Oakland has a “weak mayor” system, Schaaf is usually on the losing end of these issues.
A main reason for the supermajority is because we Bay Area residents have watched the encampments closely for a long time. We look at their inhabitants. We check out the surrounding conditions. In our compassion and fairness, we can’t help but make certain inferences. One is that these people, for the most part, have chosen to live outside society’s norms. I don’t doubt that some were forced into homelessness by poverty. But there’s a good percentage that have led lives that flaunted societal norms, for which they have paid the price. As a law-abiding taxpayer, I don’t want to support people who have chosen to live outside the law. They “made their bed, and now they can sleep in it.” Apparently, 70% of the people in the Bay Area agree with me. It’s time to get tough: if someone won’t leave his tent when he’s given the opportunity to do so, cite him under the law!
Steve Heimoff