Kevin Kiley: “We recently received some good news, as the United States Supreme Court has decided to hear a case called City of Grants…”

“We recently received some good news, as the United States Supreme Court has decided to hear a case called City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, which could mark a turning point for the homelessness crisis in California. Just to provide some context, let's consider the full breadth of that crisis. {time} 1900 It has been 20 years since Governor Newsom rolled out his plan--he was then the mayor of San Francisco at the time--to end homelessness in San Francisco within a decade. It has now been 20 years since he announced that, and this anniversary happened to coincide with the Department of Housing and Urban Development's annual homelessness report to Congress. Among the findings of the HUD report are that California has the highest homelessness rate of any State. California has had a 30.5 percent increase in homelessness from 2007 to 2023. That is the highest increase of any State. California accounts for 28 percent of America's homeless and about 50 percent--that is half--of the Nation's unsheltered homeless. San Francisco, for its part, has the second highest percent of unsheltered homeless youth and unsheltered veterans of any city in the country. So there are a lot of reasons for these appalling statistics and the tragic realities that they represent. It is political failure where we have had policies dealing with crime, for example, that have released many people from prisons too early and don't have appropriate consequences for criminal activity.…”