On July 25, California Governor Gavin Newsom declared war on unhoused people statewide. First, he ordered encampments removed from state land, with no regard for whether displaced people have somewhere else to go. Then on August 9, he doubled down and threatened to cut housing funding to any city or county that failed to sweep away its unhoused people.

Newsom’s order will actually increase the number of people living in encampments, not decrease it. California has a shortage of 2.5 million housing units and 110,000 shelter beds. There is literally no place for unhoused people to go. Newsom’s order will spend millions of dollars moving people around from place to place, and actually make it harder for them to get off the streets.

Resistance in California was immediate. San Francisco’s unhoused and their supporters protested on July 30. Members of Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN) prepared plans to thwart Newsom by using pre-existing consent degrees and other legal protections. Oakland attorney Andrea Henson was arrested for blocking a Caltrans sweep on August 7.

“Sweeps are destroying morale, leaving folks without supply, and scattering people to other locations,” said Debra Townley from Survivors of the Street in San Jose on August 9. “Ultimately they contribute to their demise and kill them by leaving them emotionally devastated and physically more vulnerable, without supplies.”

Oakland’s Wood Street Commons organization raised the following demands on August 12:

• Stop the Sweeps: Reverse course on Executive Order N-1-24. Encampment evictions are not a solution to homelessness.
• Stop criminalizing homelessness: Fight poverty not the poor, stop arresting people for being poor or homeless.
• Accommodation now! There are over 30,000 vacant units of housing in Alameda County and roughly 10,000 people that are homeless. Use eminent domain or other means to house people today.
• Use public land for public good: Utilize the north gateway parcel of the old Army base and the three Caltrans-owned lots near Wood Street to build a self-governed community for low-income and unhoused residents.
• Utilities and services now! Every person needs clean water, access to electricity, and trash services, especially if a person is poor and trying to survive while homeless
• Stop blaming the poor for illegal dumping: People who are homeless are constantly being blamed for individuals, businesses, and governments that illegally dump trash near houseless communities. Shame. 

In spite of his national reputation as a liberal, Newsom’s order has nothing to do with helping unhoused people. His real aim is to make homelessness as invisible as possible, in order to increase property values and profits for his investor supporters. He lobbied hard for the Trump Supreme Court Grant’s Pass decision, that allows cities to outlaw homelessness. Newsom’s order also serves the ruling class agenda by diverting attention from the real cause of homelessness – unaffordable rents.

“The politically elite and the wealthy continue to push forward initiatives that bolster their own interests,” wrote the Western Regional Advocacy Project. “California’s housing crisis, for example, is a gold mine for those who control and profit off of the exorbitant rent.”

Newsom claims the $24 billion spent by the state since 2019 should have reduced homelessness, but he covers up the fact that most of that went for temporary solutions, and in any case, it was not nearly enough. California’s already astronomical rents rose by 14% or about $80 billion during that same time period.

PRO-CORPORATE DEMOCRATS ABET FASCISM

Newsom’s order is part of a national offensive by the ruling class to expand profits by stripping the working class of every democratic right it needs to resist rent increases and evictions. This offensive has already outlawed encampments by unhoused people in Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, Utah, Texas, and Tennessee. Kentucky even extended its “stand your ground” law to protect anyone who murders people who are engaged in “unlawful camping.”

The Newsom attack strengthens the Cicero Institute and Project 2025’s narrative that homelessness is caused by bad people who need to be punished. It aims to separate unhoused people from their natural allies – other tenants – and promote the system’s real “final solution” to social problems: mass incarceration.

Project 2025 is a Ruling-Class plan for establishing a corporate dictatorship if they can get a so-called “conservative president” elected this November. Project 2025 tries to prevent low-income workers from uniting and fighting for their rights.

It calls for reinforcing segregation by ending the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing program. It calls for mass evictions of non-citizens, documented or not, and for creating Section 8 time limits for everyone else. It calls for increasing homelessness by abolishing the Housing First low-income housing program. Finally, it calls for allowing investors to acquire public housing, raise rent, and evict anyone who cannot afford it.

While it is essential to defeat these and other Project 2025 policies at the ballot box in November, Newsom’s actions are a warning that pro-corporate Democrats like him are as much the enemy of the working class as Republicans. Newsom’s order extends the reach of fascist, anti-unhoused measures into “blue” states controlled by Democrats.

This is a direct challenge to the working-class base of the party. Will it continue to follow politicians who represent the billionaires, or will it break with them and fight for the rights of all workers, including the low-wage, migrants, and the unhoused? Will it submit to the dark future the system is preparing? Or will it rise and fight for the political power it needs to make the human right to housing a reality?

California’s revolutionary housing leaders are encouraging people to go out to the encampments, and reach out to unite the unhoused with tenants and community organizations around the state. Let people know there is hope that if we the people unite, take the future into our own hands, then we can build the sustainable, cooperative, and beautiful world that we know is possible.

Published on August 28, 2024
This article originated in Rally!
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