Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order on Thursday telling state agencies to begin dismantling thousands of homeless encampments across the state.
The move follows a recent Supreme Court ruling that allows cities to ban people from sleeping in public places, even if there isn’t adequate shelter to direct them to. Newsom can’t force individual cities to participate, but he can pressure them by withholding state money.
Carla Orendorff, an organizer with Aetna Street Solidarity, told KNX News that removing encampments without providing a path to housing will never solve the problem.
“This is essentially a policy of disappearance where people will move further and further away from public sight,” she said. “It means that people will go underground, literally, into tunnels, into cracks in the L.A. River, into places where they can no longer be seen or detected, which is incredibly dangerous for those who are actually living it.”
Want to get caught up on what's happening in SoCal every weekday afternoon? Click to follow The L.A. Local wherever you get podcasts.
Orendorff says the state has so much power to address the housing crisis, but Newsom’s order sends “the opposite message, that we have no creativity and no will other than forcing people out of public space.”
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has been critical of the Supreme Court ruling allowing cities to criminalize homelessness, saying cities can’t “arrest their way out of this problem.” Her Inside Safe program is committed to finding temporary housing for the unhoused before clearing encampments, but critics, including Orendorff, question the program’s cost and effectiveness.
Follow KNX News 97.1 FM
Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | TikTok