Posted on 08/21/2025 7:42:17 AM PDT by karpov
President Trump has taken extraordinary measures in the nation’s capital to fulfill an ordinary function of local government: keeping clean, orderly streets. His actions seem unusual because government officials in America’s cities long ago abandoned the basics. They have been led astray by academics and activists who promised them crimeless cities and an end to homelessness if only they established a right to housing and eradicated income inequality.
These idealistic public-policy frameworks have failed to achieve the desired outcomes anywhere in the U.S. Instead, they’ve ushered in the worst homelessness crisis on record.
President Trump’s strategy is straightforward: Everyone living outside must go inside, no exceptions. The president’s recent executive order, “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” goes even further, jeopardizing federal funding to cities and states that don’t follow a similar strategy. These efforts mark the end of a decade of national tolerance of street sleeping, tent cities and public drug use.
Organizations like the National Homelessness Law Center and the National Alliance to End Homelessness criticize laws against homeless encampments as harsh and counterproductive. But their criticisms ring hollow to many Americans. According to a Cicero Institute poll late last year, 72% of Americans from both parties said it is more compassionate to move homeless people into shelters than to allow them to camp wherever they choose.
Many advocates for the homeless assume that homelessness is primarily due to the unaffordability of housing, rather than drug use, antisocial behavior, criminal activity or mental illness. From this assumption flows misguided confidence that living on the street is an unfortunate but preferable alternative to institutions that curb the civil liberties of individuals who are simply poor.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Trump is proving once again that politicians are ill equipped and incapable of running any government function. Getting/buying votes is not a usable skill.
EC
One should be free in the USA to be a nomad if one wishes, but not to make a pest of oneself by tenting, crapping and urinating on the streets and roads, vacant lots, etc.
That doesn’t mean you should be able to set up shop on some city street and stay there indefinitely.
Good point.
An out of town friend asked my yesterday why home prices were particularly high in my California town.
I told her we are mostly conservatives here with our own police dept. school system and fire dept. - we do not have to depend on LAPD, LAUSD or the LA Fire dept.
Also, homelessness is not tolerated here. Our beautiful parks are free and clear of tents, full of families, old people and children playing - unlike nearby Los Angeles parks and sidewalks which are covered with tents - I have seen homeless try to set up tents underneath freeway bridges - and by the time I returned, they were cleared out.
Quality of life is what makes the homes here so pricey.
I believe the core mission of any “homeless advocacy” group is to grow their own organization, get more funding and perpetuate and grow homeless numbers to make their org bigger and better funded.
Just like any and all government.
treat the symptom, never cure the problem.
This cancer is giving me awful headaches..
MD. well, lets get you an ice pack and a Tylenol!
Exactly, that isn't being a "nomad", more like being a pest.
American states and cities used to have laws on “negative takings” and “inverse condemnation” under eminent domain laws.
Ie) if government indirectly permitted (or possibly encouraged) events to happen, such as political riots, mob action, homeless living on the street - which caused a loss to private property, the government could be sued for damages.
Such laws were removed or greatly restricted in the 1950s and beyond, with the rise of “progressive” and Democrat governments in most American cities.
“”I hope this doesn’t extend to law abiding people who choose to live in van campers, trucks and motorhomes, things with actual walls and a toilet.””
It’s nowhere near the same thing. If you live in a camper, truck or motorhome, you have to pay to park those vehicles somewhere...just as you have to pay to ‘hook up’ to the utilities. If you’re in a national park, you also have to pay... per day. You are paying, not costing, the city you’re living in, IOW.
The homeless ‘squatters’ are not paying a thing, but are costing the cities they’re in by creating a hovel/pigstye environment and in some cases, a hostile environment... all of which kills tourism and drives up the cost of city police.
I believe you are spot on.
Think about how evil and depraved that really is!
I believe in different approaches for every group (and there ARE overlaps btwn them), but that is for another time.
And taxpayers paid to defend the government.
Why is this so hard? (previously answered). Thank God someone is "getting real"! Thank God for Trump!
BPD disease. Make a bad personal decision and blame others for it.
We won’t have a real fix for all of this until we get low-skill wages jacked up to about twice their current rate (where they were a couple of generations ago) and the housing crunch seriously loosened.
The one way to do that is to deport 10s of millions of illegals. Two bad Trump’s gone all RINO amnesty instead.
dems love to have millions of people sleeping on the sidewalk so they can justify spending more money to not solve the problem.
I guess you aren't aware of "stealth camping", something I have done a few times and might do more.
Search on Youtube for it, quite interesting.
Tax the homeless industry based on empty beds.
“”I guess you aren’t aware of “stealth camping”, something I have done a few times and might do more.””
Stealth camping? lol...nope. Never heard of the term. And I have family that are ardent campers. I’ll have to ask if they’ve heard of it... probably not.
Is that where you’re parked somewhere you’re not supposed to be and you’re having a nice dream and next thing ya know a knock on your camper window, rudely awakening you from the exact PERFECT moment in that dream.... and it’s a cop writing you a nice, fat, trespassing/illegal parking ticket? (that would be my experience, no doubt)
The whole idea of stealth camping is to build up a vehicle that doesn't resemble a camping vehicle.
Something that doesn't look out of place that nobody would notice or care about.
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