With nearly a third of America’s homeless crowded into the state, California’s major league homeless problems are more likely to receive experimentation than any other region on the continent. Good news, all that research? Possibly. If only you make something of the results.
This post considers the impact of a homelessness ‘solution’ when a large urban centre, in a fit of exasperation, simply bans people who are unhoused from its parks, streets, and sidewalks. But let’s not get caught assessing this experiment from a local context alone. There’s value in considering its regional impact.
So the City of San Diego has recently sought to solve its growing homelessness problem by the controversial decision to ‘banish’ people who are unhoused . . . to somewhere — who cares where? Bully for San Diego, in every sense of the word.
Now step next door to the city of Chula Vista, which suddenly was — still is — overwhelmed by a sudden influx of people who are unhoused and who have been ‘encouraged’ to move along from San Diego.
If it takes a page from San Diego’s playbook, Chula Vista will move to ban people who are unhoused.
We might imagine San Diego’s unhoused passing through Chula Vista and onward, community after community, until like lemmings they tumble off a cliff. (But in this sanitized civic fantasy they fall, not onto murderous rocks below, but into comfortable housing.)
Sounds a little improbable, doesn’t it? And indeed California can look to none other than California for earlier evidence of the ultimate futility of this scenario.
Los Angeles has attempted to drive people who are homeless out of the funky enclave of Venice. Following encampment sweeps, there were self-satisfied cries of ‘done and dusted,’ which celebrated the removal of all the people who were unhoused in Venice. But that gave way to disappointment. Encampments have been appearing pretty much right under everybody’s noses again1.
No, California itself, contemplating city by city how to banish people who are unhoused along some convenient trail of tears, already knows about the futility of fantasy migrations. People who are unhoused need housing. Other North American jurisdictions might well take note before chasing people who are unhoused willy-nilly into surrounding communities.
Read more in hoodline: Chula Vista Considers Encampment Ban After San Diego’s Ban Sends Unhoused to Its Neighbor
