Trump risks roaming during a trip to California

President Trump is due to arrive in California on Tuesday with little clarity on his plans to address the homelessness crisis in the state and growing doubts about what the federal government could actually do to change the situation on the streets.

Trump is in the state for a two day swing with stops for fundraising in Palo Alto, Beverly Hills and San Diego. Although no public event is scheduled, he will likely tackle the issue of homelessness, which he has used in recent months to criticize the deep blue state before the elections of 2020.

Last week, officials from his administration spent several days in Los Angeles to meet with city and county officials and homeless advocates. To the dismay of some local officials, the administration has not spoken publicly about its plans. Some believe that the goal is to eliminate homeless camps by transferring people to government-run shelters on federal lands.

On Monday, the Trump administration announced a new goal: the deregulation of the housing market to increase the supply of apartments, condos and housing.

Tom Philipson, acting president of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, presented a new report highlighting the failures of Los Angeles and other coastal cities – most of which are led by Democrats – to crack down on their growing population of homeless people.

With the deregulation of the housing market, he said, homelessness in the United States would drop by 13 percent overall, with 54 percent in San Francisco and 40 percent in Los Angeles. He refused to develop these statistics and what "deregulation" could entail. He also refused to detail how the federal government could help California and refused to process information on the use of federal property for new homeless shelters.

"This report does not address the ongoing deliberations on our political agenda for the future, and I will not talk about it today," Philipson said during a conference call.

He also suggested that law enforcement should play a bigger role in the fight against homelessness.

Nevertheless, legally, there are some things that the Trump administration can not do.

"There is no legal basis for forcing people into shelters," said Nisha Vyas, Senior Counsel for Public Counsel's Homelessness Prevention Bill. "The state does not have the power to seize persons or their property and the State Constitution and the Federal Constitution prohibit illegal searches and seizures."

This is yet another example of a Trump policy that could appeal to its political base, but will be difficult if not impossible to implement.

In the past, these efforts have been the domain of local governments, which in recent years have been barred by the courts from resorting to law enforcement to enforce anti-camping laws in city streets. These laws had been widely used as a cudgel to move homeless people from public spaces.

After a controversial debate, San Francisco set up in June a pilot program allowing the city to forcibly remove drug addicts with an obvious mental illness. But most homeless people do not reach the threshold.

Last week, justice ministry officials discussed possible "workarounds" with LA law enforcement officials in Los Angeles to resolve the court cases, rulings and lawsuits that have limited the manner in which the Los Angeles Police can carry out law enforcement efforts in the camps.

Of the estimated 130,000 homeless people in California, about 90,000 had been homeless since last year. In the city of Los Angeles, the number jumped in 2019 to more than 36,000, an increase of 16%. In the county, the number is only 59,000, an increase of 12% over last year.

Politicians have sought solutions.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas and Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, co-chairs of the Governor's new homestead and supportive housing advisory working group, Gavin Newsom, have proposed the promulgation of a "right to housing".

The idea is still in its infancy and Newsom did not approve the plan. But Ridley-Thomas and Steinberg want to force cities and counties to build enough large shelters to accommodate any homeless person who asks to come inside. They also want to demand that homeless people be forced to accept this shelter if they are offered. The way this would be applied is not clear.

For Trump, he said in interviews that scenes of homelessness that appear to be suffering from mental illness and walking around garbage mounds in cities are unacceptable. In fact, he said, they are "inappropriate".

During a speech last Thursday at a Republican conference in Baltimore, Mr. Trump asserted that his administration had given "notice" to California, although "notice" did not not clearly defined.

"Clean it up," he said. "You have to do something. You can not have it. These are our big American cities and they are embarrassing. "

Harmeet Dhillon, a member of the Republican National Committee living in San Francisco and a Trump fundraiser in Palo Alto, was pleased that the president is focusing on the issue.

"The quality of life has dropped for everyone," she said. "It's dystopian."

Speaking of homelessness, Trump's assistants like to quote an executive order the president signed in June to "fight the regulatory barriers to affordable housing development, one of the main causes of homelessness".

Although homelessness was not discussed regularly during the election campaign, the issue became an easy way to criticize the pitfalls of cities with Democratic leaders who did not vote for him.

In the past, Trump has pushed back the limits of his authority by regularly issuing decrees and proclamations that have run into legal difficulties or have proven hollow. Accustomed to being CEO of a private company, he sometimes had trouble understanding how to use the bureaucratic levers of a sprawling federal government.

Maria Foscarinis, Executive Director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, said Trump was taking the wrong approach to homelessness as a criminal justice issue, adding that the federal government did not have the legal authority to sweep people and force them into shelters.

"The reason people are on the street is not because people refuse refuge," she said. "It's because there's literally no place to go. Gathering people and forcing them to shelter would be a very bad idea, and it would probably violate all kinds of rights. "

Californian politicians, however, are willing to help the federal government – if it is a new number of vouchers for state tenants.

In a letter issued Monday and signed by Governor Newsom, as well as by mayors and county supervisors from across the state, they asked for 50,000 additional vouchers to help those most affected by the housing crisis. in California. They also urged the Trump administration to entice homeowners to accept the vouchers.

"This is a pretty remarkable opportunity, if they are sincere in their desires," Newsom told a news conference. "They are not sincere and that is, God forbid, another subject – politics, not good politics – they will reject it from the outset." I hope that's not the case. "

Times editor Phil Willon contributed to this report.