When I first started out, it was three unhoused people dying a day. It was a number that could easily be dismissed or ignored, with the atrocities that we’re seeing in real time overseas. Now, it’s seven unhoused people that are dying a day. We are walking past people who are dying, and we don’t have the same outrage. We are very quick to criminalize. But we don’t talk about the nuances that put people in such a perilous position.

Look at what they’re doing with the undocumented community. They’re putting them in concentration camps and calling them “detention centers,” putting children in these places, making them feel it is their fault. That is the same narrative that they use with unhoused people: “The reason you’re out here is because you refuse help or you like being out there.”

Once you’re able to demonize people, then it’s much easier to criminalize them.

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California is a Democratic state that is basically aligned with Republican policies. They just hide it because they couch it in language of care. Democrats and Republicans are united in demonizing unhoused people.

Gov. Gavin Newsom is out there attacking Trump, but he’s not talking about how he’s also OK with targeting unhoused people. Before Trump’s executive order targeting unhoused people, Newsom had his own executive order along the same lines, that if unhoused people do not accept treatment, then they can be arrested on state property.

Newsom is no friend to unhoused people. He’s got this “encampment resolution fund”: If you criminalize unhoused people, then you’re able to get funding. If you don’t, then the funding gets taken away. So cities adopt these aggressive policies. This kind of extortion is commonplace.