Commentary
There is an easy explanation for Los Angeles’ out-of-control homeless encampments: The city’s leaders allow them. They instructed the LAPD years ago to stop enforcing its no camping laws, which had prevented tents or sleeping on city sidewalks, in parks, beaches, and other public spaces. Incredibly, it also instructed police that such tents must be treated as private homes!
The problem started in 2018 with the case of Martin v. City of Boise wherein the Ninth Circuit ruled that a city may not enforce simple camping, vagrancy, or loitering laws to remove people from sleeping on public property unless the city can demonstrate that it provides sufficient homeless shelters. Otherwise, enforcement of such a law, the court ruled, would constitute “cruel and unusual punishment.”…