California’s liberal governor, Gavin Newsom, has asked the Supreme Court to help him solve the state’s homelessness crisis by allowing him to ban rough sleeping.
The justices agreed Friday to consider whether a lower court was wrong to rule that a ban on homeless people in public places was unconstitutional.
It comes after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that anti-camping ordinances in San Francisco violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment.”
Newsom has repeatedly pledged to “take matters into his own hands” as the city faces an exodus of businesses from a drug-plagued city, and has urged the nation’s highest court “not to tie its hands tie’.
“California has invested billions to address homelessness, but court rulings have tied the hands of state and local governments in tackling this problem,” he said Friday.
California Governor Gavin Newsom claims ‘court rulings have tied the hands of state and local governments to address this issue’
The city is expected to record more than 800 drug deaths by 2023 – which would be the highest year ever: 2020, when 726 people died
Pedestrians must make their way through streets full of unconscious and semi-conscious people in the streets of San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood
“The Supreme Court can now correct course and end the costly delays caused by lawsuits that have plagued our efforts to clear camps and provide services to those in need.”
A quarter of a million people have fled the Bay Area since the start of 2020, Newsweek reported in June.
The governor said the state is investing in behavioral health and mental health reforms, claiming he has taken 68,000 people off the streets and removed 6,000 encampments since he became governor in 2019.
But many of those encampments were removed for the APEC summit in November, where Joe Biden and Xi Jinping, among other world leaders and thousands of delegates, descended on the city.
And residents told Dailymail.com the problem has returned with a vengeance since safety barriers were removed.
“It’s really bad, worse than I’ve ever seen it,” said Howard Ul, 60, manager of the Golden State Donut Shop in Tenderloin.
“Every corner around here is like trash now. They’re all back.’
The court’s ruling limited interventions in Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.
A separate court ruling ended the ban on homeless people “using a blanket, pillow or cardboard box for protection from the elements.”
A map shows the major companies that have left or are planning to leave San Francisco in recent months
California currently reports more than 170,000 homeless, including 7,800 in San Francisco
Drugs are openly traded on the streets of the area plagued by homelessness
Newsom insists he takes responsibility for California’s growing homelessness crisis
In San Francisco, 620 overdose deaths were reported in the first nine months of the year
Newsom’s office filed an amicus brief in September urging the Supreme Court to clarify “that state and local governments can take reasonable steps to address the homelessness crisis, which poses health and safety risks to individuals living in encampments and for our communities’.
Theane Evangelis, an attorney for Grants Pass, the Oregon city that launched the appeal, told Fox News: “The tragedy is that these decisions actually harm the very people they claim to protect.
Lawyer Theane Evangelis said: ‘The tragedy is that these decisions harm the very people they claim to protect’
“We look forward to presenting our arguments to the Supreme Court this spring.”
About 100 retailers in downtown San Francisco have closed since the COVID pandemic began — a drop of more than 50 percent from 2019.
Office vacancy rates hit a record high of 34 percent in September as shops were pushed out of the city center by increased crime and economists warned the city was entering an “urban doom loop.”
Looting specifically became a major problem for the city, while rampant theft caused the demise of San Francisco’s main shopping district – Union Square – and forced many major chains and local businesses to close their doors permanently.
Starbucks, Whole Foods, IKEA, Nordstrom and the Disney store have all closed some of their San Francisco locations due to the city’s drastic crime problems.
In October, LinkedIn put the top five floors of its 6,000-square-foot, 26-story building up for lease until December 2027 and laid off 668 employees.
A few months earlier, Meta announced it was prepared to vacate its 40,000-square-foot building in San Francisco once its lease expired in 2031.
Companies like Airbnb, Paypal, Slack, Lyft and Salesforce have also left tens of thousands of square feet of buildings in the city in the past year.
The city is expected to record more than 800 drug deaths in 2023 – which would be the highest year on record: 2020, when 726 people died.
A DailyMail.com analysis of the cuts facing key departments in San Francisco shows police need to find savings of $18.5 million and public health budgets could lose $26 million
Last year there were almost 8,000 people on the streets or in shelters in the city
August was the deadliest month, with an average of someone dying from an overdose every nine hours, while in October an average of two people died per day.
Grants Pass has argued that homeless encampments lead to increased crime, fires and even the “resurgence of medieval diseases.”
But attorney Ed Johnson, who has challenged the city in court, said, “The question is whether cities can punish homeless residents simply because they don’t have access to shelter.
“Nevertheless, some politicians and others are cynically and falsely blaming the judiciary for the homelessness crisis in order to distract the public and deflect blame for years of failed policies.”