The governments of California and many of its cities have made housing so expensive, homeless encampments have become part of the landscape. And what is the Cali Assembly's answer to the problem?
They want to mandate that some of the state’s biggest population centers provide giant parking lots and access to bathrooms for many of these unfortunate folks who can’t find affordable homes.
That’ll help solve the core problem, surely.
According to CBS 13, Sacramento:
Assembly Bill 891 passed the full Assembly Friday and now goes to the Senate. It would require cities and counties with more than 330,000 people to establish a safe parking program by June 1, 2022. The safe parking programs would be required to have a bathroom facility and onsite security. Those wishing to use the safe parking would need to apply and possibly undergo a background check.
This is the brilliantine answer to the homelessness, septic conditions, disease, and the drug problems that the state’s own policies have helped foster.
This is the state that last year passed a “50 Percent Solar” mandate on all homes, ordering builders to gradually increase the “solar power” supply of their new homes through 2030, even if the builders and home-buyers found that solar tech increased their costs far beyond what they desired.
This is the state that in 2017 imposed a minimum wage mandate that will grow to $15.00 per hour by 2022 – a mandate that was estimated at the time as putting at risk 400,000 low-skill jobs. Those workers either have to leave CA, deal in drugs and prostitution on the black market, or become homeless.
This is a state that saw former Governor Jerry Brown in 2017 sign into “law” a “cap and trade” energy tax imposition that would increase costs of everything from fuel to heating.
This is the state that’s taking money from the market – money that could employ people, and is spending it to hand out even more health benefits that people never earned themselves.
This is the state that started a multi-billion-dollar “high-speed rail” boondoggle that Donald Trump was wise enough to defund a few weeks ago.
But, hey, at least the wasteful overpasses the state built for it will serve to shelter homeless low-skilled people who can’t get legal jobs or afford solar homes.
In all seriousness, so many California residents have been forced from their jobs and homes that they are living in tent cities and in their cars.
But thanks in part to former San Francisco Mayor-now-Cali Governor Gavin Newsom’s efforts, gas taxes have punched up the price of fuel so much, many of the car-residents will be forced out of those and into tents.
So, in typical government fashion, the politicians aren’t looking at their own long march of statutory malfeasance, they want to impose more mandates.
And you can bet that the cities and counties will, in turn, impose their own mandates on private businesses with large parking lots, turning those into tent cities. Maybe they’ll supply tax-funded porta-potties, or perhaps they’ll mandate private businesses open their doors to let the homeless use the toilets – which, of course, will be mandated “genderless” and have to accept bearded men into the Ladies Rooms.
Perhaps, in this dystopian California, the politicians who are so hungry to regulate Air BnB hosts will break-down private property even more, mandating that private homeowners host the home-less. After all, the homeowners will be indirectly paying to care for the homeless via taxation, and the government has already strong-armed businesses so much the idea of private commerce or even private existence sans political strong-arming is virtually unknown to most Californians alive today.
So why not impose more centralized control? If policies are pushing more people onto the streets, why not add more policies?
Heck, LA Mayor Eric “The Artist” Garcetti recently had the style to tell folks they’d spend taxpayer cash on painting the streets white to save the planet from climate-warming-global-change, or whatever they’re calling it this year to hide the fact that it’s not happening the way the politicians told people.
So, Californians, have no fear. Let the state push you around, get in the way of your business, block you from working, force you into homelessness, and put you out of the car you might use as a bed.
At least the streets will be cool.