Over the last few years, cities in California have been mired by a widespread homeless crisis that has resulted in the state government and cities across the state spending billions to address the problem, with little to no success. In fact, most cities haven’t even bothered to take down homeless encampments.
One city in California has decided to buck this trend, however. Under Republican Mayor Richard Bailey, the city of Coronado is currently reporting the lowest level of homelessness in the Golden State.
During an appearance on “Fox & Friends First”, Bailey explained how his city has no vagrants at all. Namely, he highlighted how his government implemented a no-encampment policy that still upheld the rule of law.
“The policies that are in place at the regional and statewide level that are tolerating this type of behavior that is personally destructive and also destructive to the surrounding communities are really enabling this situation to increase throughout our entire state, and throughout our entire region,” Bailey said to Ashley Strohmier.
“Changing these policies will actually have a major impact,” he added.
Bailey explained that the city of Coronado is cooperating with the police department and a homeless service provider to give homeless people help so that they can ultimately stay off the streets.
“We also make it very clear that we don’t tolerate encampments along our sidewalks, and we don’t tolerate other code violations such as being drunk in public or urinating in public or defecating in public,” Bailey stated. “We just simply don’t tolerate these basic code violations. What ends up happening is an individual either chooses to get help or they end up leaving.”
Per data from the San Diego Regional Task Force on Homelessness, Coronado reported only one homeless person in the city. Bailey claimed that this homeless person was able to receive the help they needed and is no longer sullying the streets of Coronado.
“The fact of the matter is there, although there are a myriad of reasons that people end up homeless, they eventually only fall into two camps — those that want help and those that do not want help,” Bailey commented. “And if those that are refusing to get help… shouldn’t be granted additional the ability to break laws such as tent encampments on the sidewalk or urinating or defecating in public.”
“We need to be enforcing these policies to ultimately kind of help them get into that other camp that eventually get help,” he added.
From 2018 to 2021, California allocated $10 billion to addressing the homeless crisis. As Fox News reported, despite the large sums of money the Californian government has spent on the homelessness crisis, it still contains 30% of the US’s homeless population.
Indeed, the growing homeless crisis in America cannot be addressed by simple coddling. These people ultimately need help from civil society and local governments willing to rehabilitate them. On top of that, the US needs to address its housing affordability policies and revamp its mental health institutions to ensure that less people end up on the streets.
One thing is certain though: Politically correct approaches to homelessness, where people won’t be willing to discuss the mental health facet of it or where people allow cities to be tarnished by vagrants, are simply not going to cut it.
Original Article: https://bigleaguepolitics.com/california-city-gets-rid-of-homeless-population-problem-with-zero-tolerance-measures-against-homeless-encampments/