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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 9, 2023

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SF voted to ban homeless tents on streets years ago, a judge stepped in and forced them to allow it.

These sort of things aren't decided democratically in California. The bill will fail but then a left wing group will get a friendly judge to mandate it's major points.

There's a specific ruling for the 9th circuit where you can relocate the homeless, but only if you have a place to relocate them to, which SF didn't. (And regardless of whether that's a good ruling, if you don't have a place to put homeless people you're probably not really getting rid of tent cities, just moving them around.) AFAIK there's no similar law/ruling that would apply to the above situation, though IANAL.

To be more precise about that ruling, SF didn't have to merely have a place for an individual person to move to, but places for the entire estimated homeless population. I.e. it could have a space open for someone, but unless it had spaces open for every homeless person on the streets that night, it wasn't allowed to force that individual to move his tent. Given that many homeless refuse any offer of shelter, the ruling requires SF to have a substantial overcapacity of shelter beds before doing anything.

Gotcha, thanks for the added context.