'“People should not be going to jail for possessing or using drugs,” Wiener told the Guardian. “It’s a health issue, not a criminal issue, and I hope that we get all the way there.”
Unfortunately California's homeless population is absolutely exploding in size, and many of the tent dwellers are openly being dealt (decriminalized) and using drugs of all types. This is not a viable social situation for anyone.
If you want to make sure there are no homeless people then you simply give everyone a home. Shelters don't count because they are designed for homeless people. If you are in a shelter you are homeless, if you are not homeless you aren't in a shelter.
How would 'simply give everyone a home' work? California is the most expensive real estate in America. The state is spending 13 billion a year on triaging itinerants, many of whom refuse sobriety rules that may put them on the path to free housing.
There is a giant homeless industrial complex siphoning out money intended for the homeless on management, top price union labor to modify motels bought with tax payer funds at way over valuation price that will 'house' a few dozen people in former hotel rooms.
What would you do to house anyone who wants a home?
The difference is they will be using the same substances but potentially much more harmful and you will have more people needlessly in prison. I don't see the positive to your argument.
There is no positive. It's a massive humanitarian crisis. Half the US homeless are in California, which spends 13 billion a year with no measurement, goals, metrics or evidence of positive results. Add in the opioid crisis, economic depression and housing shortages and you have a squalid pressure cooker of tents , crime and sanitation dangers.
Unfortunately California's homeless population is absolutely exploding in size, and many of the tent dwellers are openly being dealt (decriminalized) and using drugs of all types. This is not a viable social situation for anyone.