Homeless Encampment. (Photo: Kevin Sanders for California Globe)
Here’s What You Can Do About Fentanyl, Gavin Newsom
Housing without behavioral conditions creates unquenchable demand, whereas housing with behavioral conditions reduces demand
By Edward Ring, April 23, 2023 2:45 am
On April 19, during his excursion into one of California’s countless drug infested neighborhoods, a man on the street asked our governor a very explicit question.
Question: “Gavin, tell me what you’re going to do about the fentanyl epidemic?”
Newsom’s answer: “What should I do, JJ? What do you want me to do? You tell me what we need to do.”
There are plenty of answers that could have been offered, since what has been allowed to happen in San Francisco and almost everywhere else in California is one of the most appalling cases of political malpractice in the history of the world.
Two days later, on April 21, the governor announced that he “is directing California Highway Patrol and California National Guard to identify personnel and resources to assist the city in combatting fentanyl trafficking.”
That’s a start, but absent a more comprehensive strategy that involves every afflicted region and affects the consumers along with the distributors, it isn’t going to solve the related problems of addiction and homelessness.
So if you’re serious about handing California back to law abiding citizens, here’s what you can do next, Governor Newsom:
You should now announce that you will extend this “public safety partnership” throughout the state, and send the California National Guard into every remote county and overwhelmed rural municipality in California and root out the drug cartels. Flood the zone. Smoke them out. Lock them up.
Next, you can clean up the neighborhoods throughout California’s cities that are overrun with the “unhoused.” It is in these lawless enclaves where drugs like fentanyl find their way to retail distributors and end users. To do this, begin by instructing your attorney general to identify and aggressively challenge every court ruling and misguided statute that prevents law enforcement from getting vagrants, addicts, drug dealers, thieves and violent thugs off the streets. Wage lawfare. Don’t quit.
Meanwhile, and remaining in compliance with existing law, construct low cost, minimum security detention facilities, and classify them as “permanent supportive housing.” Locate them on state owned land in rural areas with mild winters, and set up at least three types. One for criminals, one for drug addicts and alcoholics, and one for the mentally ill. The remaining small fraction of homeless individuals who are none of the above will be easily accommodated in already built shelters and already built supportive housing in urban areas.
By taking this approach, you will create a deterrent. A sizable percentage of the entire homeless population in California will melt away once this program is implemented. Once they aren’t permitted to sell drugs and consume drugs while having access to free social services including needles and “safe injection” sites, they’ll find family or friends to stay with. Once they can’t steal without facing certain incarceration, they’ll stop stealing.
There will be plenty of money to pay for these facilities, as well as to pay for supervision and counseling personnel. As it is, California’s taxpayers spend, on average, well over $500,000 for every unit of “permanent supportive housing.” This money, with the full complicity of politicians, goes into the hands of politically connected real estate developers, often to build on some of the most valuable coastal real estate on earth. The magnitude of this corruption defies description. End it. End it now.
Why, governor, does a methamphetamine addict from Tulsa have a “human right” to a free apartment in an expensive neighborhood on the California coast? Instead, give them free housing in a tent. Since a spacious, durable tent will cost under $1,000, that leaves $499,000 to pay for other amenities including supervision and counseling. If you did this, governor, even in a state as corrupt as California, most of that money could be given back to the taxpayers.
Consult with the UN Commission on Refugees to learn how to construct tent cities at minimal expense. The work they’ve done in Syria, for example, shows that semi-permanent encampments, providing all of life’s essentials, can be built and managed at a reasonable cost.
There is a fundamental moral imperative here that eludes almost every progressive politician and analyst. It is not compassionate to let people die on the street. If you accept this, there is only one solution: build low cost tent cities on inexpensive real estate and move the homeless off the streets and into these encampments. Force them to withdraw from drug and alcohol addiction. Compel them to take their anti-psychotic medication. Hold criminals accountable by making them pay their debt to society.
There is no way around this. Everything else costs too much, takes too long, and won’t work anyway.
The reason you don’t solve the problem of homelessness in California, Governor Newsom, is because you’re afraid to stand up to the Homeless Industrial Complex. And until you do, they are going to take all the money, corrupt all the laws, and California will remain a magnet for every junkie in America.
Housing without behavioral conditions creates unquenchable demand, whereas housing with behavioral conditions reduces demand. And to build publicly funded housing at a cost of $500,000 per unit, when that amount of money would pay for 500 tents (or more), is a scam. You don’t just give drug addicts housing units that are better than the housing units that working people scrap their lives away to pay for and can barely afford. When you do this, you turn society upside down. You reward indolence, and disrespect diligence.
The reason the fentanyl problem just keeps getting worse, governor, is because you haven’t been willing to prosecute and convict the people who manufacture, traffic, and sell hard drugs. Harsh penalties are a deterrent. You don’t have to lock everyone up. Once a few thousand of the hard core culprits are locked up and doing hard time, the rest will decide the risk outweighs the benefits.
This is how you attack the truly genocidal impact of fentanyl, and salvage the lives of countless victims of this epidemic. If you want to ever become U.S. President, Governor Newsom, you’d better quit using your Twitter account to incessantly complain about the phantom menace of MAGA, and actually fix something.
The fentanyl epidemic, and the homeless crisis, are fixable. Get busy.
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Mr Newsome can do all that but his campaign contributions will dry up so his visits to fancy restaurants will as well.
The recent videos of the California Insider by a Homeless Advocate shows we do not get the whole story. Gangs and drugs are rampant and are higher than “official” figures.
If they will not fight the problems, because the problems will fight back, then there are, as I have experienced, no standards of living in California, which is what they profit from.
Nothing is going to work until addicts can no longer access these drugs. The endless banter is always “The war on drugs has been a failure.” Well, that simply indicates we need a better battle plan. Perhaps the most ridiculous claim is that we should make drugs legal like Portugal or Holland and have the government provide the drugs, thereby cutting out the drug dealers. I’m pretty sure those countries aren’t handing out fentanyl. The drug dealers won’t stop until the punishment for dealing is so swift, severe and guaranteed that it becomes an effective deterrent. The same holds true for the places where the drugs are being manufactured. We are constantly anesthetized by phony so-called existential threats like climate and Covid that we ignore the very real existential threat of deadly drugs. We’re like former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain waving a piece of paper with Hitler’s signature on and telling the British people “We have peace in our time”.
completely agree
If only….
Mr. Ring if only he would heed your advice and implement your solutions; California would be on it’s way to being golden once more.
Unfortunately, Newsom is not that leader!
He follows the money that Soros et al. distribute. Humane decision making does not seem to be part of the deal.
Mr. Ring, thank you for your cogent thoughts. Gavin Newsom is a grandstander. He wants publicity and he enjoys performing for the press. He also loves the money flowing his way from people like Soros. He has been mysteriously silent since it was announced that CA went from a huge surplus to a huge deficit, No broadcasted State of the Union address. Too embarrassing for him. As for ANY effective action, he was a failure as mayor and is now a failure as governor. However, the populace keeps voting for him and politicians of his ilk. We are wondering when people will wake up. Just how bad does it have to get in CA?? Your plans make total sense. You are a breath of fresh air.
Nice try, Mr. Ring. But if Newsom and the Demon-crats are your intended audience, your words are wasted. (No Exit: Trapped in California’s labyrinthine bureaucracy. https://rufo.substack.com/p/no-exit)
Thanks for the link Raymond.
Christopher Rufo has a great mind and perspective. A few years back he wrote some great articles on the homeless and drug crisis in Seattle.
California has now become one big tar pit. The “tar” is now derived from bureaucracy and group think.
I just now have to wonder am I a wooly mammoth or sabertooth tiger ‘cause I am still here, holding out hope but oh so fed up.
Something tells me that we should “stick around” this “tar pit” just a little while longer. I have a hunch that the “reckoning” is coming soon…….triggered by the proverbial “black swan” that no one sees coming and few are prepared for. 😉
Hi Raymond,
There are many of us who will not see this as a black swan event. How long can the can be kicked down the road? I just hope the uniparty gets out of the way and America First leaders step up and turn this state and country around so we do not end up like the saber tooth tiger.
We are a great nation that needs to wake up to the reality that the progressives want to control every aspect of our lives unless you are a drugged out vagrant.
1) Newsom wants fentanyl legalized, along with every other possible soul-deadening and body-deadening drug you can think of, and he thinks it will happen soon. So CA can be just like psychotic Portland Oregon.
2) Newsom wants the zombies living on the street in their own fever dreams and filth to overdose and die.
Is that plain enough?
Which greasy haired goobenor is in the pay of the Chinese? Which hair sniffing prezzy of the steezy is in the pay of the Chinese? Where does fentanyl come from? Get rid of the enablers and enforce the law and you pretty much solve the problem.
AMEN.
“…and send the California National Guard into every remote county and overwhelmed rural municipality in California and root out the drug cartels. Flood the zone.” This should include raiding the armed rogue marijuana growers in Northern California – the growers featured on Netflix & Hulu documentaries.
Newsom and the whole community of so-called Progressives (Teddy Roosevelt is spinning in his grave) are, for whatever reason, committed to a destructive path and are thoroughly convinced that they cannot be wrong. Make no mistake about this. They know about the facts but are willfully blind. To offer advice is fruitless. The “silent majority” must step up and replace them.
100%
Yes, Kenneth Benesh. Willful ignorance is a requirement for membership in their group. Anyone questioning their woke agenda is branded and immediately ostracized. Meanwhile, the “silent majority” is being led down a primrose path toward what some have predicted will be another worldwide financial crisis like 2007-2008; only much worse. However, this discussion (e.g. the debt limit) is much too abstruse and theoretical for the average Jane and Joe, who must deal with the trials and tribulations of daily life. They rely on their leaders – many who are the very same progressives – to take the proper preventative measures. So we have the blind leading the blind. We all know from experience now that a pandemic can result in economic and political dissolution. Is life in your town better now than it was pre-Covid? My guess is that the answer is NO. Well, don’t look now, but there’s another pandemic coming and it has already impacted our daily lives. “Why are the price of eggs so high?” a man asked me, standing in the grocery checkout line. Answer: Avian Flu. Where did it come from? China, of course. Where else? The condors are California’s canary in the coal mine: https://www.businessinsider.com/bird-flu-avian-influenza-outbreak-us-h5n1-wiping-out-everything-2023-4?op=1
P.S……and then, there are places like this. The so-called “shit hole” countries where disasters are frequently born: https://justthenews.com/world/africa/who-warns-high-risk-biological-hazard-lab-seized-sudan-warring
Camping on the street to be legalized?
PORTLAND, Ore. — A new bill in the Oregon legislature is proposed as the Right to Rest Act. House Bill 3501 would decriminalize camping in public places. https://katu.com/news/local/right-to-rest-bill-proposed-in-oregon-legislature-would-decriminalize-public-camping
Yup, and a nice fat $1,000.00 fine for any business owner or taxpayer who “harasses” the homeless/vagrants. Guess who defines what constitutes harassment? That would be the same brain-dead zombie Oregon legislators who came up with “decriminalizing” camping in public places and decided to name it “The Right to Rest Act.”
Portland used to be such a lovely city, once upon a time. Now its fate is to be a ghost town just like S.F. Oh, except for the Walking Dead who will be left alone and free to stumble around what’s left of the city as per usual.
Put a dent in the supply of fentanyl, Gavie-Poo…take a handful of the pretty pills yourself, and all at once, please. Thanks in advance for your proactive intervention.