00:00The Los Angeles City Council has voted to allow homeless encampments to return to parks across
00:05the city. That's right. Despite the fact that homelessness has gone up over the last year by
00:113.4%, the LA City Council decided to overturn LAMC 41.18, the ordinance that banned encampments
00:19in public parks, and voted 10-3 for a proposal by council member Hugo Sotomartes to allow the
00:26encampments to return. Sotomartes is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, and he was
00:32under pressure himself by left-wing activists who said they wanted to stop law enforcement from
00:37removing homeless people. Sotomartes says that it's no good just to move homeless people from
00:43an encampment to a sidewalk and to other parts of the city, and that homeless people need to be
00:47brought indoors. But that was the approach taken by the city and the state's failed housing first
00:53policy, which only housed a few homeless people at the cost of billions and billions of dollars.
00:58You might think this would be an unusual step to take, given how serious the problem of homeless
01:03encampments has been for Los Angeles, and given the fact that in two years' time, LA will host
01:08the Summer Olympic Games. It won't look very good to have the rest of the world landing in LA and
01:14finding homeless encampments in public parks everywhere. This is a sign of the increased
01:19political muscle of the Democratic Socialists of America. This is a priority for them, allowing
01:24these encampments to continue and using homelessness as a way to redistribute income, rather than seeing
01:30it as a matter of public safety and public order. But while the activists might be satisfied, the residents
01:36feel rather differently. And when this issue comes into the political races in the fall, especially the
01:43mayor's race between Karen Bass and socialist Nithya Raman, the residents are finally going to have their
01:48say on this. And my instinct is they're not going to be too happy about the city council allowing the
01:53homelessness problem to get worse instead of better.
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