Only Los Angeles could spend billions combating homelessness, watch tents swallow sidewalks and parks, and then resolve the metropolis has been too aggressive protecting folks from tenting.
That is what the Los Angeles City Council did this week.
By a 10-3 vote, council members stripped anti-camping protections from a dozen places. Parks. A senior heart. Gone.
This is not compassion.
Barnsdale Art Park is pictured on Wednesday, August 19, 2026, in Los Angeles, California. The metropolis council voted 10-3 to remove 12 designated anti-camping zones in Council District 13. Jonathan Alcorn for CA Post
It is give up.
Councilman Hugo Soto-Martínez, the socialist who pushed the rollback, says implementing the anti-camping legislation just strikes homeless folks from block to block instead of housing them.
Fine. Then where do they go?
Download The California Post App, comply with us on social, and subscribe to our newsletters
California Post News: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube, WhatsApp, LinkedIn
California Post Sports Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X
California Post Opinion
California Post Newsletters: Sign up here!
California Post App: Download here!
Home supply: Sign up here!
Page Six Hollywood: Sign up here!
Not wherever they need.
Public parks belong to the public. Sidewalks belong to pedestrians. Senior facilities belong to seniors. Being homeless doesn’t grant a everlasting claim on public property.
Take Barnsdall Art Park, dwelling to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House — Los Angeles’ only UNESCO World Heritage web site.
A homeless man is seen in the Madison West Park neighborhood in Los Angeles, California, on Wednesday, August 19, 2026. The Los Angeles City Council voted 10-3 to remove 12 designated anti-camping zones in Council District 13. Jonathan Alcorn for CA Post
Before anti-camping restrictions went into impact there, the park battled fires, vandalism and blocked pedestrian entry, according to the Barnsdall Art Park Foundation, which pushed for a carve-out from Tuesday’s vote.
“This park needs to be treated differently than other public spaces in Los Angeles,” basis president Daniel Gerwin instructed The Post. One neighbor described years spent dousing fires, scrubbing waste and patching graffiti on Wright’s buildings.
Ten council members voted to take away the safety. Residents close to the Las Palmas Senior Citizen Center bear in mind the pandemic-era encampments. They don’t need a rerun.
Councilwoman Traci Park objected loudly, and it’s simple to see why. She’s the closest factor Los Angeles has to an grownup on the City Council.
“These protections need to be expanded citywide,” Park instructed The Post.
Four months earlier, the council voted 11-4 to designate a no-camping zone in Park’s district. Councilwoman Nithya Raman was one of the 4 no votes. Now a 10-member majority has voted to erase the protections solely in Soto-Martínez’s district.
Four months earlier, the council voted 11-4 to designate a no-camping zone in Park’s district. Councilwoman Nithya Raman was one of the 4 no votes. for CA Post
So whether a neighborhood gets to maintain encampments out of its parks relies upon on whether its council member, like Soto-Martínez, decides implementing public order is politically inconvenient.
That’s not a homelessness coverage. That’s one council member getting his method.
Then there’s Nithya Raman.
Raman, operating to change Karen Bass as mayor, voted for the rollback. She’s opposed increasing the anti-camping legislation for years, insisting it pushes folks somewhere else.
Voters should listen. Tuesday wasn’t a stray council vote. It was a preview.
Bass formally backs the anti-camping legislation as an enforcement software.
Bass is the mayor of all of Los Angeles — every council district included. Her own City Council gutted the legislation in one of them. She said nothing.
Raman, operating to change Karen Bass as mayor, voted for the rollback. She’s opposed increasing the anti-camping legislation for years, insisting it pushes folks somewhere else. Jonathan Alcorn for CA Post
No mayor wins every council vote. But a severe one says something when her own signature subject collapses.
Bass has been mayor for practically 4 years — lengthy enough to construct the gravitas and management to drive an agenda through her own City Council. She hasn’t.
Los Angeles has a City Council pushing an activist-left agenda and a mayor too weak to steer them.
Taxpayers have poured billions into this.
A court-ordered audit of roughly $2.3 billion in homelessness spending discovered severe weaknesses in oversight, record-keeping and the metropolis’s capability to inform whether any of it labored.
Call it the homeless industrial advanced.
A court-ordered audit of roughly $2.3 billion in homelessness spending discovered severe weaknesses in oversight, record-keeping and the metropolis’s capability to inform whether any of it labored.
Agencies. Nonprofits. Contractors. Consultants. An ecosystem gets paid to handle the downside. Nobody pays a value when it stays the same.
For a comparability, drive 30 miles south.
Santa Ana has a Democratic mayor and an all-Democratic City Council. Mayor Valerie Amezcua reached a totally different conclusion.
Santa Ana provides shelter, detox, providers. But refuse assist and maintain breaking the legislation, and you can be arrested.
“It’s inhumane” to go away folks unsheltered, Amezcua says.
Imagine that. A Democrat who thinks leaving folks to rot on the sidewalk is the merciless choice.
Santa Ana’s unsheltered homeless depend dropped from 871 in 2024 to 714 this 12 months. In one enforcement operation, 11 folks accepted shelter, one reunited with household, and 69 went to jail for refusing providers and persevering with to break the legislation.
Imagine that. A Democrat who thinks leaving folks to rot on the sidewalk is the merciless choice. Jonathan Alcorn for CA Post
That’s not cruelty.
That’s a metropolis saying two issues can be true at once: We’ll assist you, and you don’t get to stay on the sidewalk ceaselessly.
There’s nothing compassionate about watching someone in the grip of extreme psychological sickness deteriorate in a tent.
There’s nothing compassionate about telling households and seniors that giving up their parks is the value of enlightened authorities.
The most disturbing half of this vote isn’t that Los Angeles has failed to remedy homelessness. We knew that.
It’s that 10 council members voted to make peace with the failure.
Raman and Soto-Martínez provide the ideology. Bass provides the silence that lets it win.
Los Angeles City Hall has confused tolerance with mercy, dysfunction with compassion, give up with coverage.
The homeless deserve higher.
So does everyone else who lives there.
Jon Fleischman, a longtime strategist in California politics, writes at SoDoesItMatter.com