Leftwing radicals who resist doing anything to control encampments for years have accused those of us who wish to manage the damn things of waging “a war on the homeless.” It’s a clever line, implying not only that we’re heartless sons-of-bitches but also associating us with Richard Nixon’s “war on drugs,” a massive failure by an unpopular president.
The latest to be on the left’s firing line is City Councilman Ken Houston, whose proposed Encampment Abatement Policy (EAP) makes perfect sense, which is why the Oakland City Council hates it. Houston has come under attack from all the usual suspects: the progressives who allowed homeless encampments to metastasize all over the city, and continue to fight every effort to manage them. At the latest City Council meeting, at which Council president Kevin Jenkins allowed public comment on the EAP, most of the 150 people who spoke were, predictably, against the EAP; I say “predictably” because the same radicals, spurred on by the unions, pack the chambers every time there’s a contentious issue. Some of the speakers were downright rude, presenting ad hominem attacks on Houston because they were intellectually unable to respond to his facts. And, of course, their main attack line was that Houston is conducting a “war on the homeless.”
Oakland’s political left always hauls out this slur to critique anyone who wants to control encampments. The list is long and sad: Rebecca Kaplan. Carroll Fife. Nikki Bas. Cat Brooks. Their far-left drone worker bees have joined up with them to intimidate City Council members and make it sound like an overwhelming majority of Oaklanders hate the EAP. For example, Native American activists in Oakland (which they term “Occupied Huchiun” or “Xucyun”) urged their followers to pack the City Council meeting at which Houston presented the EAP in order to “tell them to vote NO on the Encampment Abatement Policy.” The remnants of Fife’s discredited Moms for Housing (which illegally seized that West Oakland house) similarly have besieged City Hall to instruct council members to kill the proposal. A thing called the Sustainable Economies Law Center, a lavishly-funded Oakland nonprofit whose financial backers are a rogue’s club of virtue-signaling foundations, claims that the housing shortage is “government manufactured” in order to conduct an “aggressive criminalization of unhoused people.”
The ACLU has joined the fray, arguing that “the legal war against unhoused people” violates the Constitution’s right to freedom of assembly, as if Thomas Jefferson and James Madison wrote our Founding Document in order to protect homeless people who were squatting in the public common. The disgraced and recalled Pamela Price (who—cue the laugh track—just announced she’s running to regain her lost office) has actually questioned the U.S. Supreme Court’s “Grants Pass” decision, suggesting that it ignores “historical truth” in making it easier for municipalities to manage homeless encampments, although she neglected to explain just which “historical truths” justify allowing homeless people to degrade our parks and streets. And our very own Mayor, Barbara Lee, just created a new Office of Homeless Solutions in order to stop or mitigate the effects of encampment shutdowns—as if over the last five years Oakland has had a dearth of such agencies. Really? How many hundreds of millions of dollars has Oakland spent on agencies meant to ensure that “everyone has a safe, clean place to call home”? You’d think that, at some point a budget-conscious City Council would say, “No more!” but, no, not in this town where politicians (Ken Houston excepted) seem to have a favored constituency, the homeless, while the desire of the rest of us for public safety, cleanliness, order, and the use of our parks and public walkways is merely a selfish wish.
The point is that every time someone puts forth a responsible, effective solution for the homeless mess in Oakland, the same woke radicals emerge from their parlors, ready to tear it to shreds. And this City Council, this Mayor, this regime allow them to get away with it. Let’s face it: there’s an organized, deep-pocketed cult of powerful insiders who are bound and determined to make Oakland the homeless capital of the Bay Area. Years ago, Libby Schaaf invited them all to move here. It was an insane suggestion then, and it’s insane that our current so-called leaders refuse to allow Oakland to be a lawful, secure place for us to live.
Steve Heimoff