I recently was interviewed by Opportunity Now, an online nonprofit publication that reports on “challenges facing Silicon Valley policymakers.” The topic was San Jose’s controversial new policy that expands prohibitions on sidewalk sleeping downtown.
San Jose, like Fremont and other California cities, decided to get tougher on homeless people who choose to sleep on the streets. The city had previously outlawed street sleeping from 10 a.m. to midnight. Now, San Jose has moved the ban back two hours, to 8 a.m. until midnight. This was in response to local business owners who complained that they had homeless people blocking access to their stores well after opening time in the morning. The City Council unanimously agreed and approved the extended hours.
Still, pro-homeless advocates trotted out their same old arguments. One, identified in the article as the chair of the San Francisco Libertarian Party, claimed the revised law “only further criminalizes poverty.” As I’ve pointed out many times, this allegation is easily rebutted. For one, society criminalizes many things it considers inimical to its wellbeing and, in fact, we wouldn’t want it any other way. Littering, loitering, dumping and impeding public walkways are all illegal, and so is public sleeping on sidewalks. Secondly, it is not income level that is being criminalized, it is behavior. If a billionaire slept on the sidewalks of downtown San Jose during prohibited hours, she would be cited. So pro-homeless advocates should stop using this flimsy excuse.
Another person quoted in the article, Edward Ring, an editor at California Policy Center, agrees that the revised sleeping ordinance is justified. “The City of San Jose,” he argues, should “stand up to the homeless industrial complex that has by now wasted billions of dollars and only made the homeless problem worse.” I think we can agree that for years, the State of California and Bay Area city and county governments have been dumping money into the homeless problem, with absolutely no positive impact. In fact, nearly every week we hear another story about corruption and theft in publicly funded homeless programs, many of which appear to be run by cynical grifters.
Ring is correct that the homeless “need to be gathered [and] brought to new, cost-effective…congregate shelters in less expensive regions of the county,” where they could be offered “counseling, therapy, recovery from drug and alcohol addiction, and job training.” Such forced relocation might seem harsh, and would be resisted by pro-homeless advocates, but it’s the only way we’ll ever end homeless encampments, reclaim our parks and streets, and, ultimately, help these poor, misguided souls to get their lives back.
Steve Heimoff