Ben Shapiro

It said that the city could not arrest someone for sleeping on the sidewalk, quote unquote, if there was nowhere for them to go.

Now, again, maybe this started with good intentions.

It's always about empathy, right?

But the logical response to the ruling would have been to build a lot more shelters and force people to go to them or go to jail.

That's not what happened.

What happened is that L.A., under a succession of Democratic mayors and city councils, chose to treat the ruling as a permanent excuse for never enforcing the law again for 20 years.

They created a gigantic bureaucracy called the LA Homeless Services Authority, LAHSA.

They handed the LAHSA hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

And then when a court-ordered audit was finally conducted in 2025, they discovered that that organization had failed to verify whether the services it was paying for were even provided.

The auditors said the documentation was so poor that tracking the spending was nearly impossible.

$2.3 billion over four years.

47% of program participants exited back into homelessness.

Only 22% found permanent housing.

A city councilwoman called the LAHSA a modern day Titanic.

That same woman, by the way, was on the same city council that funded it for decades.

Nobody resigned.

Nobody was fired.

The city asked for more money.

Meanwhile, on the state level, the California legislature is now super majority Democratic.

That means Democrats can pass literally any bill, override any veto, place any measure on the ballot without a single opposition vote.