The homelessness crisis in America’s West Coast cities is beginning to draw national attention. There are now an estimated 166,752 people on the streets in California, Oregon, and Washington, and sensational stories of human despair and the return of medieval diseases have captured the public imagination.

Even President Donald Trump has tweeted about the “very bad and dangerous conditions” in San Francisco and warned that leaders must take action “to clean up these hazardous waste and homeless sites before the whole city rots away.”

There has been remarkably little clarity, however, on the key question: What’s really driving the homelessness crisis in West Coast cities?

For the past decade, progressive political leaders, activists, and media organizations have insisted that housing costs are the primary cause of homelessness. There is some truth to that: It’s obvious that in the largest West Coast cities, where a one-bedroom apartment rents for at least $2,000 a month, it’s more difficult for low-income individuals to afford stable housing.

However, as an emerging body of evidence shows, homelessness in America’s West Coast cities—particularly unsheltered homelessness—is not driven primarily by high housing costs, but rather by three interrelated phenomena: addiction, mental illness, and permissive public policies.

In cities such as Los Angeles, Seattle, and San Francisco, residents have complained about rampant public drug consumption, psychotic episodes, and millions of used hypodermic needles that have been discarded on city streets.

Still, despite the obvious visible evidence, progressive political leaders have insisted on the fiction that addiction and mental illness are only a small part of the homelessness crisis. Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan insists that only “1 in 4” of the homeless struggle with drugs and alcohol, while Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti does not even list addiction as one of the major causes of homelessness on his official website.

However, as the Los Angeles Times has demonstrated in a recent investigation, “mental illness [and] substance abuse … are much more pervasive in Los Angeles County’s homeless population than officials have previously reported.”

While the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority reported substance abuse for only 14% of the homeless population, according to a UCLA study, the real figure is likely to be 75%—more than five times higher than the official estimates.

The figures are similar for mental illness. Government authorities have estimated that 25% of the unsheltered population suffers from mental illness, while the UCLA study suggests that the true number is likely to be 78%.

As the Times points out, “the findings lend statistical support to the public’s frequent association of mental illness, physical disabilities, and substance abuse with homelessness.”

Put another way, the politically incorrect perception that homelessness, substance abuse, and mental illness are deeply intertwined is, in actuality, factually correct—and political leaders who insist otherwise are in a state of deep denial, preferring an ideological fiction to the harsh reality of life on the streets.

Unfortunately, the progressive political class in major West Coast cities is compounding the homelessness crisis with a set of permissive public policies.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, homelessness is not a national crisis. In fact, homelessness has declined 14.6% nationwide over the past decade, while at the same time increasing dramatically in major West Coast cities, such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle.

In part, it’s because these cities have adopted permissive policies on public camping, drug consumption, and property crime, which has created an attractive environment for the homeless.

In Los Angeles, more than one-third of unsheltered adults migrated to Los Angeles County after becoming homeless. In Seattle, even the former homelessness czar has admitted there is a “magnet effect” because of the city’s policies and availability of services. (As I have reported for City Journal, 9.5% of Seattle’s homeless population moved to the city “for legal marijuana,” 15.4% “to access homeless services,” and 15.7% were “traveling or visiting” and decided to stay.)

If political leaders in West Coast cities truly want to reduce street homelessness, they must first break through their denial about its causes.

Although reducing housing costs is a critical public policy goal, it will not significantly reduce the number of people on the streets. The compassionate response is not to maintain the fiction that homelessness can be solved with new housing developments, but to grapple with the complex human challenges of addiction and mental illness.

Christopher F. Rufo is a documentary filmmaker, contributing editor at City Journal, and research fellow at Discovery Institute’s Center on Wealth, Poverty, and Morality. He has directed four films for PBS, including “America Lost”.

His article first appeared in The Daily Signal on February 24.

Source: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/crisis-why-are-liberal-west-coast-cities-plagued-homelessness-126562

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The Justice Department explored possible criminal or civil charges against local officials in Portland, Ore., after weeks of clashes between federal law enforcement and violent protesters, spokeswoman Kerri Kupec told Fox News.

Kupec declined to comment on whether the department ultimately will bring charges. She said there were no specific charges in mind, rather, DOJ officials were looking at the way Portland officials “were handling, or not handling” the riots and violence.

PORTLAND MAN ALLEGEDLY SET DUMPSTER ON FIRE ALONGSIDE POLICE BUILDING WITH 19 PEOPLE INSIDE 

The spokeswoman also did not confirm whether DOJ officials were focusing on specific city officials. The office of Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler did not immediately respond to a Fox News request for comment.

Separately, Justice Department officials disputed news reports that Attorney General William Barr told prosecutors in the department’s civil rights division to explore whether they could bring charges against Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan for allowing some residents to establish a protest zone this summer.

President Trump has criticized Democrats, and specifically, Wheeler, who he says have not done enough to stop nights of looting and unrest in cities across the U.S. Trump has called Wheeler a “wacky Radical Left Do Nothing Democrat Mayor” and has said the city “will never recover with a fool for a Mayor….”

Just days after the death of George Floyd while in the custody of police in Minneapolis at the end of May, large demonstrations reached Portland’s streets and nightly clashes between protesters and police officers continued for over a month until federal law enforcement was sent in to protect federal properties.

After arriving over the July 4 weekend, federal officers with the U.S. Marshals Service and other agencies were told Portland police was explicitly ordered not to respond to the federal courthouse as hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside, some throwing bricks, rocks, and Molotov cocktails at officers, and not to assist federal officers who were sent to try to quell the unrest.

US ATTORNEY DENIES REPORT THAT BARR ASKED PROSECUTORS TO CONSIDER CRIMINAL CHARGES AGAINST DURKAN 

Federal law enforcement remained in the city for about four weeks until the Department of Homeland Security and Oregon’s Democratic Gov. Kate Brown agreed on a plan to bring Oregon State Police into downtown Portland and for federal officers to begin leaving the city.

More than 100 people have been arrested in Portland on federal charges related to the unrest over the last few months. The FBI has said it was also shifting the agency’s resources to focus more heavily on violence and federal crimes committed during nearly three months of unrest during nightly racial injustice protests in the city that often ended in vandalism, clashes with police, and dozens of arrests.

Wheeler and Portland Police Chief Chuck Lovell publicly clashed last week after the mayor ordered police to stop using CS or tear gas for crowd control. The Portland Police Bureau argued in a press release hours later that amid “repeated violence by a group of motivated and well-organized individuals” carried out for more than 100 consecutive nights, officers used tear gas to “disperse crowds only when there is a life safety event.”

“Most recently, it was used to disperse a crowd from which a Molotov cocktail was thrown at officers and ended up injuring a community member who was on fire,” the police bureau said, expressing regret that some gas seeped into nearby homes. “However, the community should be asking the rioters why they are committing violence that threatens the very lives of others nearby. When people gather lawfully, peacefully, there is no need for intervention by police, much less the use of CS gas.”

In an email to Lovell and assistant chiefs, Wheeler said: “While I do not often issue directives to the Portland Police Bureau, when I do I expect them to be followed. Civilian oversight of the Police Bureau is set in the Portland City Charter, and every sworn officer takes an oath to abide by that charter. Professionalism and public service demand nothing less,” a copy obtained by the Portland Tribune said.

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The mayor’s office added in a statement: “PPB’s decision to put out a press release questioning my direction was a serious breach of protocol and an inappropriate use of City communications resources. I made it clear, in no uncertain terms, to the Chief that this cannot happen again.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/portland-riots-justice-department-considered-pursuing-charges-against-city-officials-in-violent-unrest

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“If there were more toughness, you wouldn’t have the kind of devastation that you had in Minneapolis and in Seattle. I mean, let’s see what’s going on in Seattle,” Trump told Faulkner. “I will tell you if they don’t straighten that situation out, we’re going to straighten it out.”

The full interview will air on “Outnumbered Overtime” at 1 p.m. ET Friday.

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After days of protests following the death of George Floyd, Seattle police left the boarded-up East Precinct building Monday night as a crowd of anti-police protesters set up barricades in the surrounding area, declaring six blocks in the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood to be “autonomous” and a “cop-free zone.”

The president also described Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan’s handling of the situation as “pathetic,” and asked, “Has she ever done this before?” He also called on Washington Gov. Jay Inslee to send in National Guard troops to restore order.

“He’s got great National Guard troops so he can do it,” Trump said of Inslee. “But one way or the other, it’s going to get done. These people are not going to occupy a major portion of a great city.

Faulkner also raised the unrest following Floyd’s death, asking Trump to explain what he means when he describes himself as a “law and order president.”

“Well, we are going to do lots of things, good things, but we also have to keep our police and our law enforcement strong,” the president answered. “They have to do it right. They have to be trained in a proper manner. They have to do it right. Again, the sad thing is that they are very professional.

“But when you see an event like that, with the more than eight minutes of horror — that’s eight minutes truly of horror, a disgrace,” Trump said of video showing then-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck on May 25.

“Then people start saying, ‘Well, are all police like that?’ They don’t know,” he added. “Maybe they don’t think about it that much. It doesn’t make any difference. The fact is they start saying, ‘Well, police are like that.’ Police aren’t like that. I mean, I’ve seen so many incredible things that they do. But you don’t see that … You don’t put it on television.

After playing a clip of the interview on “Special Report,” anchor Bret Baier asked Faulkner if Trump understood the “frustration, the anger, the fear” in the African-American community.

“He watched the eight minutes and 46 seconds, he said, of George Floyds death,” Faulkner said. “He, he taps into the loss and the hurt and the pain, and he understands that.”

However, Faulkner added that the traditional presidential role of  “consoler-in-chief” didn’t appear to be as important to Trump.

“He thinks that fixing the economy is how you bring everybody together and bring them forth. He wants to restore the markings of black wealth and that rise that was happening in black communities economically,” Faulkner said. “And that’s how he wants to go for it.”

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Elsewhere in the interview, Faulkner pressed Trump on his controversial “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” tweet during last month’s riots following Floyd’s death.

“Why those words?” asked Faulkner, who later explained that the phrase was first uttered by then-Miami police chief Walter Headley during the 1967 race riots.

“He was cracking down and he meant what he said,” Faulkner told Trump. “And he said, ‘I don’t even care if it makes it look like brutality. I’m going to a crackdown. When the looting starts, the shooting starts.’ That frightened a lot of people when you tweeted that.”

“It means two things, very different things,” Trump responded. “One is if there’s looting, there’s probably going to be shooting. And that’s not as a threat. That’s really just a fact because that’s what happens. And the other is if there’s looting, there’s going to be shooting … very different meanings.”

Fox News’ Michael Ruiz contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/media/trump-seattle-occupied-anarchists-straighten-it-out

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