California Gov. Newsom Enforces Controls on Homeless Encampments in Los Angeles

California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has launched a sweeping effort in Los Angeles County to get rid of the homeless after issuing an executive order on July 25 ordering “urgent action to address dangerous homeless encampments.”

California Governor Gavin Newsom speaks at a news conference in Sacramento, California, January 10, 2022. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

In California alone, a state with a gross domestic product of $3.23 trillion, more than 181,000 people experience homelessness daily, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. In Los Angeles alone, more than 75,000 people are homeless, 70 percent of whom are unsheltered.

According to the State of Homeless 2024 report recently released by the University of California, San Francisco, California is home to 12 percent of the nation’s population, 30 percent of the nation’s homeless and half of the nation’s unsheltered population.

Linking homelessness to skyrocketing housing costs, the report notes that nine out of 10 participants had lost their last housing unit in California, while 82 percent reported a time in their lives when they experienced a serious mental health condition. Additionally, the most common reasons for leaving their last housing unit were economic hardships for renters (loss of income) and social hardships for non-renters (social and health crises).

Newsome’s brutal law-and-order actions were accompanied by a media blitz that featured photos and videos of the Governor taking down tents and arranging abandoned belongings. Newsom bragged that, “The people are finished. If we don’t get this done, we don’t deserve to be in office.”

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He speaks for the upper middle class, who see homelessness as an inconvenience to their standard of living. The idea of homelessness for them is at odds with eating at fancy restaurants and taking expensive yoga classes. The truth is that neither Democrat nor Republican deserves to hold office because they are solely responsible for the policies that have led to the social catastrophe that has put tens of thousands of people on the streets.

In light of this dire record, to further deflect accountability, Newsom has sharpened his reactionary tone, threatening fines to counties that fail to reduce homelessness while simultaneously preparing to take government money away from social programs, shifting the burden onto local and city governments whose leaders have passively supported his aggressive attack on the homeless.

Newsom is a full supporter of the Biden administration’s war policies, pledging support to Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, the current vice president and former attorney general of California, who has promised to continue the warmongering and genocidal policies that have sparked an explosion of opposition among the working class and youth.

The message is clear: the state has no intention of solving a serious social problem like homelessness, because the money has to be spent on defending the interests of the ruling class and, more importantly, on maintaining the profit system that has led to the highest level of social inequality since the 1930s, despite the unprecedented wealth created by workers.

Significant resources have been devoted to the capitalist solution to homelessness, i.e., removing it from the public eye. Newsom has allocated more than $24 billion during his administration to clear encampments, remove the homeless from the streets and sidewalks, and convert hotels and motels into temporary shelters. But these measures are nothing more than aspirin to a cancer patient, because they do not address the root cause of social inequality: the capitalist system.

The Supreme Court ruling of June 28 by a majority vote of 6 to 3 City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnsoncleared the way for governors and local governments to crack down on and ban encampments. The far-right decision cynically determined that outdoor sleeping bans did not violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

The ruling was welcomed by Newsom, who wasted no time in criminalizing victims of the policies dictated by the two big business parties. In recasting homelessness as a safety issue, he hailed the decision because it gives administrations the authority to remove “unsafe encampments” and said, “This decision removes legal ambiguity that has tied the hands of local officials for years.”

The right-wing attack on the homeless by California Democrats has become so blatant that some of their own officials have gone into damage control mode. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass had the temerity to try to distance herself from Newsome’s move, saying that “strategies that simply move people from one neighborhood to another or issue tickets instead of housing don’t work.”

Last March, Bass and Newsom formed a “new partnership to help keep areas near highways clean and safe as both the state and city continue efforts to bring the homeless into housing.” Also on the Sacramento trip were two of the three Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) members on the City Council.

On that occasion, Bass thanked “Governor Newsom for joining forces with us to get things done for the people of Los Angeles.” To which Newsom added, “This agreement between the city of Los Angeles and the state underscores our shared commitment to addressing the encampment problem and ensuring clean and safe public spaces for all Californians.” Now we know what they meant.

Bass only fears that the burden will now be shifted to municipalities that have no solution to a problem that has significantly changed the physiognomy of the City of Angels’ population over the past five years of the pandemic. Under Bass, there has been a lot of police repression of the homeless, in addition to a series of City Council measures implemented to selectively ban encampments.

What’s more, while Bass has provided increased funding for the police department (an additional $138 million), last April she announced drastic cuts to her already inadequate Inside Safe homeless program, reducing funding from $250 million to $185 million—an action that has won the support of the DSA, which has supported Bass and her City Council from the beginning.

California isn’t the only state to take the Supreme Court’s hardline approach. The attack on the homeless population is a nationwide effort spearheaded by Democrats. In Oregon, another Democratic-controlled state, the Grants Pass City Council unanimously banned camping on public property last Wednesday and created a designated area to confine the homeless.

Last October, Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul backed a legislative effort by New York City to suspend emergency housing for the homeless. In recent months, a large influx of migrants has been blamed for the failure of the city’s vastly inadequate shelter system.

It was an opportunity for anti-immigration and xenophobic attacks on an already vulnerable population. Hochul herself made it clear that no one was welcome unless they brought money to Wall Street, stating, “I don’t know how the law of sanctuary… can or should be interpreted as an open invitation to the 8 billion people who live on this planet that if you show up on the streets of New York City, the city of New York has an obligation to provide you with a hotel room or shelter.”

A measure of Hochul’s total failure to combat homelessness was her own Safe Options outreach program, which has seen a paltry 450 people receive some form of long-term or permanent housing in the past two years—all in a city with more than 100,000 homeless people, or one in 83 New Yorkers.

Homelessness, like every social problem facing the working class, can only be solved by dismantling not the encampments but the entire scaffolding of the profit system that provides unlimited funding for the most horrific wars abroad and attacks on democratic rights and living standards at home, while facilitating increasing social polarization. Only a socialist society, one that guarantees civilized living standards for everyone, can solve such problems by putting human needs first, not profit.