Housing Is A Human Right (HHR) applauds the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit for an important ruling that outlaws sweeps of unhoused residents in San Francisco while there continues to be a lack of safe shelter and affordable housing. We believe permanent housing is the best solution to help the unhoused population.

We are unclear how this will affect the city of Los Angeles. But as cited in a recent New York Times article, California has struggled for years with severe income inequality, expensive living costs, and a lack of affordable housing, and the state now has more than 171,000 people who are homeless. Los Angeles has been conducting sweeps at a very high cost to the city’s residents since 2019. If this was an actual solution wouldn’t the numbers have gone down instead of up? Anger has been misdirected toward the people living in encampments instead of directed toward the actual policies and elected officials who have contributed to the worsening homelessness situation.

Criminalizing homelessness will never solve anything, and the numbers of unhoused people will only continue to rise. We urge state elected officials to see the big picture and realize that sweeps have failed. Instead, we need more affordable housing for all.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230906966389/en/

If encampment sweeps were an actual solution, homeless numbers would have gone down instead of up. Anger seems to be misdirected toward the people living in the encampments, instead of toward the policies and people who are contributing to their situation.