SAN FRANCISCO
Lee Heidhues 8.16.2025
The Supreme Court effectively criminalized homelessness.
San Francisco, the City of St. Francis, was shamefully in the lead.
I have lived in San Francisco most of my life. I have never felt intimidated, afraid, concerned or fearful being around and amongst the unhoused.
The problem is not with our marginalized citizens. The problem is with the uptight, paranoid citizenry which has been unleashed to put their obsessions on full display. Shame!!!
A long time subscriber I posted this ‘Comment’ in the Wall Street Journal response section. I was deluged with responses attacking the unhoused in general and my thoughts in particular.
Below you will find these comments. I have deleted the names of the authors to spare them the personal embarrassment of having their intolerance publicly exposed.
Excerpted from The Wall Street Journal 8.16.2025
San Francisco Has Embraced a New Tool to Clear Homeless Camps
In San Francisco, homelessness became a defining issue in last year’s mayoral race, won by Daniel Lurie. The Levi Strauss heir, allied with the city’s tech sector, won on a platform emphasizing cleaning up streets to boost economic growth.
City officials point to cleaner streets as evidence that a more active approach is working. Some say the tactics are making conditions worse.
Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court granted cities more power to penalize people for sleeping outside, handing city leaders a new tool with which to clear homeless people from the streets.
Since then, San Francisco has been among the most aggressive in wielding it.
Between July 2024 and July 2025, the city arrested or cited more than 1,080 people on illegal-lodging charges, over 10 times the number of illegal-lodging arrests during the same period a year earlier. In April 2025, illegal-lodging citations and arrests hit 130, the most in a single month since the Supreme Court’s ruling.
In the 12 months following that ruling, around 220 new anticamping ordinances have passed across the country, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Nowhere has the ruling had a bigger impact than in California, which accounts for a third of those ordinances. The state is home to nearly half of the unsheltered homeless people in the country and includes about 70,000 shelter beds to accommodate more than 187,000 homeless people.
Top photo: The rich, famous and powerful of San Francisco who can blithely party on and ignore the plight of the unhoused in their midst.
Lee's Perspective 