San Francisco has now joined a host of other complainants, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, in urging the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn an earlier Circuit Court decision requiring municipalities to offer homeless people shelter before clearing encampments.
The Coalition for a Better Oakland has been reporting for years that the 2018 decision by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, commonly known as Martin v. Boise, was bad law that needs to be repealed. The ruling held that cities cannot enforce anti-camping ordinances if they do not have enough homeless shelter beds available for their homeless population. The decision effectively halted all anti-camping ordinances across the country, resulting in an explosion of encampments. Every once in a while, a city tries to figure out a way around Martin v. Boise, but these efforts are generally unsuccessful.
Last month we reported on Gov. Newsom’s Friend of the Court brief to the U.S. Supreme Court, filed on behalf of one such city, Grant Pass, Oregon. Newsom argued that “state and local leaders need the flexibility to craft policies that balance competing interests…courts are not well-suited to micromanage such nuanced policy issues.” The Governor now is joined in a SCOTUS appeal by the city he used to lead, San Francisco, whose City Attorney, David Chiu, argues that “San Francisco’s compassionate efforts to address the homelessness crisis have been severely hamstrung” by Martin v. Boise, with the result that San Francisco’s encampment problem, like Oakland’s, has only gotten much worse.
We can’t know what SCOTUS will do regarding these appeals. They previously refused to hear the city of Boise’s 2019 appeal. The High Court is much more conservative than it was even four years ago, but it’s unclear how their “original intent” philosophy will bear on a problem that hardly existed in America in 1787, when the Constitution was drafted. If, however, the Court is as favorably inclined toward “law and order” as it claims, it seems likely that Martin v. Boise will be overturned. That would free San Francisco, Grants Pass and other cities to deal with encampments however they wish, which we have to assume would be fairly harshly. And then there’s Oakland.
Our city is far more leftwing than San Francisco. If and when Martin v. Boise is overturned, it seems likely that our ruling politicians, from Mayor Thao on down to the City Council, would still be opposed to any sort of anti-camping ordinances. The City Council has repeatedly sided with homeless people’s “right” to erect tents or flimsy structures anywhere they want—beneath overpasses, on sidewalks, in parks, near schools—despite the legitimate objections from neighborhood residents. Because the mayor and City Council are answerable to no one (with the exception of the labor unions that fund them), the situation drags on from year to year. We, the Coalition, have argued that it’s long past time for the City to establish a large refugee-style homeless camp on the far western stretches of Oakland, at the old Army Base; all campers would be prohibited from dwelling anywhere else besides that officially-sanctioned spot. The City also would offer wraparound services to campers who agree to move, provided those services fit into the budget.
Clearly, political attitudes towards the homeless have dramatically shifted in America. The public is much less tolerant of dirty, disorderly and illegal encampments; people are insisting that some sort of management be imposed on them. Oakland, however—and as usual—seems intent on marching to the beat of a different drummer. Why this City Council should side with homeless people, many if not most of whom are drug addicts who have chosen their disreputable lifestyle, over the rest of us, is difficult to determine. In the end, the motives of the progressives in City Hall are irrelevant; it’s their behavior that counts, and for that harmful, dangerous behavior, they must be made to pay a political price.
Steve Heimoff