Despite Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent 2-hour-and-50-minute budget announcement – where he boasted of his administration’s “successes” – there are many troubling signs the state is slowing down. Chief among them is news that California may lose a congressional seat for the first time in its history.

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Joseph Tartakovsky, a PRI adjunct fellow and with the law firm Gibson Dunn, discusses the homeless case Martin v. the City of Boise.  It involves five homeless people who sued Boise, Idaho for fining them for violating a city ordinance prohibiting people from living in the streets. The homeless group believed that Boise violated the 8th Amendment’s cruel and unusual clause. The LA City Council sided with Boise filing an amicus brief in support of Boise’s position.  The ruling has tremendous implications for the homeless crisis in California and other western cities.

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Using his best class warfare rhetoric, Chiu told the San Francisco Chronicle that, “these are the individuals who own the most expensive homes in California.  It’s a small price to pay among a small number of wealthier homeowners to establish a permanent fund for homeless prevention.” While some wealthy Californians are shelling out big sums to buy a house, a lot of regular folks are too, thanks to the government-created housing crisis. 

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Kerry Jackson, a fellow at the Pacific Research Institute who has written on public safety issues, told the Free Beacon that Boudin’s choice to end cash bail is part-and-parcel with his unwillingness to address San Francisco’s crime problems. “It fits with his decision to look the other way at the quality-of-life crimes that are driving the city downward,” Jackson said.

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The governor’s plethora of working groups and commissions are a mixed bag. Some may be beneficial, others unfortunately appear to be a echo-chamber for big government policies with over-representation from allies and government officials and little to no representation from industry experts or private companies.

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Some local governments have already found a way to cut their homeless populations. They herd their homeless residents out of their jurisdictions and into other cities, where they become someone else’s problem. It’s not hard to envision an environment in which an amendment weaponizes the practice and cities play a numbers game, moving the homeless around from locality to locality as if they are pieces in a game of hot potato.

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