http://nypost.com/2025/08/24/opinion/dc-dismantled-in-a-week-the-homeless-encampments-californias-endured-for-decades/
By Susan Shelley
New York Post
Published Aug. 24, 2025
Hell, even reliably blue Dallas cleans up homeless encampments on a regular basis.
Videos of the nation’s capital being swept clean of homeless encampments in just one week may have Californians adding Washington, DC, to the unofficial list of top-10 U-Haul destinations.
In Los Angeles, the problem of tent encampments has persisted for almost 20 years.
They began to pop up after city officials settled an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit in 2007 by agreeing to stop enforcing a ban on sitting, lying or sleeping on the sidewalk.
More lawsuits, settlements and court rulings led to the entire city and much of the state becoming the site of homeless encampments on sidewalks, streets, freeway embankments, overpasses, underpasses, median strips, parks, parking lots, public plazas, beaches, bicycle paths and concrete flood-control channels.
One lawsuit against the city and county of Los Angeles over the failure to shelter the downtown homeless population despite massive spending is in its sixth year in the courts.
California makes it near-impossible to clear homeless encampments, like this one in Los Angeles. | AP
President Trump’s method is faster.
The Interior Department announced this month a no-tolerance policy for homeless encampments while vowing to “provide resources to shelter, pathways to housing and access to behavioral health services to individuals at these locations.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “Homeless individuals will be given the option to leave their encampment, to be taken to a homeless shelter to be offered addiction or mental health services, and if they refuse, they will be susceptible to fines or to jail time.”
That’s consistent with the US Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling that cities may enforce a generally applicable anti-camping ordinance.
But in Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass denounced that decision and said she would do no such thing.
California’s policy is to throw billions of dollars of taxpayer money at the problem.
After the 2015 Los Angeles homelessness count showed a 12% increase in the county’s homeless population in just two years, LA voters were persuaded to approve a $1.2 billion city bond for homeless housing and a 0.25% temporary county sales-tax increase for related services.
Voters agreed last year to double that tax hike and make it permanent.
Two years earlier they approved a city tax of 4% to 5.5% of the sale price of high-value real estate to fund more homelessness programs.
How has it worked out? LA County reported a 2015 homeless population of 44,359. In 2025, it’s 72,308.
That was down slightly from the 2024 count of 75,312, enough for Gov. Gavin Newsom to send out a news release Monday bragging about “California’s progress in reducing homelessness as national numbers increase even higher, and as President Trump flails in his attempts to address it.”
Flails?
“We’re going to help them as much as you can help. But they’ll not be allowed to turn our capital into a wasteland,” Trump told reporters.
Washington, DC, cleared homeless encampments in just a week. | AFP via Getty Images
After giving residents a day’s notice that they would have to leave, bulldozers and trash trucks cleared away the tents at more than 40 encampments in one week.
Compare that with the typical process in California, as detailed in a 2022 state Department of Transportation directive.
Caltrans may take rapid action to clear an encampment only if it “poses an imminent threat to life, health, safety or infrastructure,” such as being on an “unstable structure at risk of collapse” or at “immediate risk of getting hit by vehicles.”
Otherwise, the process begins with the California Highway Patrol assisting the department in a site assessment, followed by outreach to service providers and a “Hazmat Coordinator” evaluation.
President Trump took swift action to clean the capital. | AP
Then a “Notice to Vacate” is posted at “each major point of ingress/egress in a conspicuous manner,” again with CHP’s assistance in case of “interference,” a euphemism for screaming pro-encampment protesters who call hotel rooms for the homeless “carceral.”
After a minimum of 48 hours, CHP, Caltrans and contractors may arrive for removal operations. Personal property must be collected, photographed, inventoried, bagged, tagged and stored for not fewer than 60 days.
To do this, workers must separate the personal property from everything they’re not required to collect and store: toxic sharps, knives, chemicals, soiled bedding, combustibles, propane tanks, unidentified liquids, controlled substances and weapons.
They’re also not required to collect and store “moldy, mildewed items,” “items that may be infested by rodents and insects” or anything “co-mingled or littered with needles, human waste or other health risks.”
The necessary requirements for an encampment cleanup are the sad consequence of an insane policy to tolerate public camping in the first place.
There’s a business opportunity here. Many LA residents would probably be willing to pay thousands of dollars to attend a fantasy camp in Washington, just for the thrill of hanging around people who are big-league problem-solvers.
Susan Shelley is a Southern California News Group columnist and Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association VP of communications.
The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted. ~ D.H. Lawrence
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