For several days at the end of June, there was an avalanche of new Supreme Court decisions that will have a major impact on the direction of the country in the coming years. The reversal of the Chevron Deference decision will roll back the powers of the administrative state. Hundreds of January 6 peaceful protesters had their main (bogus) felony charge overturned. President Trump is immune from prosecution for his official acts. But the decision that is likely to hurt the Democrats the most has been largely overlooked. In a 6-3 decision, the court ruled to uphold bans on outdoor sleeping to curb homelessness in public areas.
A San Francisco-based appeals court had earlier ruled that outdoor camping bans amount to a violation of the 8th Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment. That’s the sort of silly argument that liberals always use when they are cloaking their cruelty as compassion. It’s horrible that so many Americans have ended up homeless because of Joe Biden’s disastrous economy and the drugs that he’s allowing the cartels to smuggle into the country. But have you seen the tent cities that have popped up all over the place in blue cities?
Democrats have built up an entire Homelessness Grifting Industrial Complex in blue states and cities. Scores of liberal nonprofits and government agencies purport to be trying to “solve” homelessness while they hoover up tons of cash. Their ideas universally suck.
Since many of the homeless do have substance abuse problems, Democrats try to “help” by passing out crack pipes and tinfoil to them. They build luxury skyscrapers filled with apartments for the homeless so that one of the government’s favored developers can make a billion dollars while providing zero actual services to the homeless after they move them into the building.
They let them build tent cities that become “no-go zones” for the police, where drugs and crime flourish. These outdoor campgrounds often tend to be in parks where families used to bring their kids to play. There’s absolutely no compassion for the homeless or for the taxpayers whose lives are disrupted by the tent cities.
Democrat solutions to homelessness amount to collecting a paycheck for doing nothing, while pretending to care. The huge irony in all this is that many large cities in red states have figured out how to solve homelessness. If California, which is home to one-third of the nation’s homeless, was actually serious about solving the problem, maybe they’d send a delegation to the faraway land of Texas to see how they do it.
Homelessness has dropped by 28% over the past ten years in Texas. During that same period, homelessness ballooned by 43% in California. In Houston, they’ve cut the rate of homelessness in half over the past decade.
Why is Texas succeeding while California is failing? In Texas, people care. They view the homeless as their fellow Americans and as fellow humans, created in the image of God. The politicians don’t pocket the money intended for homelessness solutions (well, not all of them, anyway). It takes hard work, compassion, and a bit of taxpayer money to transition a person from homelessness back to real life as a productive citizen. Those are all things that California’s Homelessness Grifting Industrial Complex is not willing to do.
At any rate, outdoor camping bans are now legal according to the Supreme Court. That takes one additional tool away from liberals that they were using to pretend they’re being compassionate while making a problem worse for everyone.
