The mean streets of San Bernardino County, which had already descended into what is a sadistic existential reality for many, have in recent months weeks and days grown even crueler.
The homelessness issue in San Bernardino County has worsened considerably over the last two-and-a-half decades, owing to a number of factors, including the year-around livable weather of Southern California and its location immediately adjacent to Los Angeles County, itself a haven for the dispossessed.
An intensive effort on the part of many, from federal to state to regional to county to local governmental officials as well as by volunteers and well-intentioned do-gooders to address the issue has been ongoing, with greater degrees of commitment and financial expenditure throughout the era. Nevertheless, for a multitude of reasons, the foremost of which are a lack of comprehensive coordination and the diversion of much of the money that has been expended to entities – individuals, companies and organizations – which have consumed the monetary layouts with little in the way of tangible reduction of the homeless epidemic.
Within San Bernardino County, the political resolve needed to forge a comprehensive solution to the homeless crisis has not come about because of a basic philosophical clash between on one hand, those who feel that homelessness verges on criminality and that the destitute should be dealt with harshly as part of a strategy to have them leave the local area altogether and on the other hand those who have been labeled as “bleeding hearts,” who envision public/private efforts to house and care for those who live on the streets. This clash of intentions and viewpoints, with individuals who are often influential, efficient and energetic working at cross purposes, further accounts for why few meaningful inroads have been made into the homeless dilemma, both locally and statewide.
All of this has played against the general backdrop of American life, steeped in the work ethic of the English, Dutch, Spanish and French settlers who arrived in North America in the 1600s, African slaves and the succeeding waves of German, Scandinavian, Italian, Irish, Polish, Russian, Oriental, Mexican and other immigrants, which holds that a strong communal and societal collective must be based on a rugged individualism in which each person must fend for himself and his family, support himself and work, work, work toward achieving the American Dream of home ownership and self-sufficiency. The idea that a home should be given to those who are not willing to or have squandered the opportunity they had to work for and earn one is antithetical to that ethic. This has undercut the concept of charity which forms the basis of programs advocated by the “bleeding hearts” to simply place those who have proven unequal to the task of competing in a cut-throat society into housing they are incapable of paying for.
With only a few notable exceptions, the owners and property managers of commercial properties in San Bernardino County have no use for the homeless, who crowd onto their strip malls, shopping centers and larger mercantile, retail and market, often bothering, confronting, begging or asking for handouts from paying customers, utilizing the facilities intended for employees and customers, pitching tents or establishing sleeping quarters on the property, sidewalks or parking lots thereof and leaving trash and offal in their wake and sometimes engaging in vandalism or break-ins and theft.
Likewise, other property owners, including those of an industrial or related nature, consider the homeless or their presence to be a bane. Homeless encampments beneath railroad trestles, in storm drains, the banks of local rivers, streams and tributaries, under freeway and road overpasses have proven problematic.
Similarly, the homeless have imposed themselves on public property and public facilities, including sidewalks, alleyways, parkways, parks and the like.
Accordingly, some public officials have gravitated toward a policy of seeking to intimidate, frighten, verbally and physically confront, muscle, beat, assault and arrest the homeless into leaving their jurisdiction for another, where the homeless convert themselves into someone else’s problem.
In San Bernardino County, 10 of the cities – Chino, Montclair, Ontario, Upland, Fontana, Rialto, Colton, San Bernardino, Barstow and Redlands – have municipal police departments. Twelve of the cities – Chino Hills, Rancho Cucamonga, Grand Terrace, Loma Linda, Highland, Hesperia, Victorville, Adelanto, Big Bear Lake, Yucaipa, Twentynine Palms and Needles – and its two incorporated towns – Apple Valley and Yucca Valley – contract with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department for law enforcement services. The sheriff’s department further provides law enforcement within the unincorporated county area of the county, which covers 94 percent of the county’s total 20,105 square miles. While the attitude of police officers toward the homeless varies substantially from city to city and the attitude of sheriff’s deputies varies slightly depending upon where in the county those deputies are employed, there has long been a general attitude that those cities and towns and San Bernardino County in general would be a better place if the homeless would just leave.
A handful of the county’s police departments and the sheriff’s department have taken in recent years a hard-edged approach to dealing with homeless, while simultaneously applying window dressing to obscure just how rough those tactics can be. To counter criticism of the harsh treatment, the law enforcement officers use euphemisms and have adopted a code that masks what is actually being done. Simultaneously, those departments, the sheriff’s office in particular, adhere to a public relations program which propounds that that homeless are being “helped” or “assisted,” as in “helped to leave” or “assisted in departing.” The nomenclature used by the sheriff’s department in describing what it is doing is designed to give the public the impression that there is a benign intent at play and a humanistic heart involved in its work. Between 2021 and late this spring of 2024, the sheriff’s department has used at least three separate descriptions of the effort. One is Project HOPE, with HOPE being an acronym for Homeless Outreach Proactive Enforcement. Another is Operation Inroads. More recently, the department talks about employing its SOP team, with SOP being another acronym standing for solution-oriented policing.
Under the guise of “helping” the homeless, deputies assigned to Project HOPE, Operation Inroads or the SOP team would arrive at homeless encampments and shanty towns, where they insisted that layers of cardboard used as insulation from the ground as well as blankets, bedding, sleeping bags and tents which those who are destitute use to make it through the night are declared, in their words, “debris,” and discarded.
In certain cases, the homeless would be given an assurance that some form of assistance or shelter was to be made available to them. Those offers occasionally succeeded in having the targeted population willingly or of their own accord allowing their possessions to be discarded. Occasionally, the deputies would follow through with delivering the homeless to an actual shelter or homeless assistance facility where they could make an application for inclusion in some type of program aimed at assistance. More often those would prove to be empty assurances but would be useful in getting the homeless to cooperate in giving up their belongings.
In those circumstances where the targeted population proved uncooperative and was unwilling to part with bedding, tents or cooking/eating utensils, cookware and the like, the deputies proceeded with a heavy-handed show of force in which they set hands upon the homeless, roughed them up or beat them, ultimately seizing their property, which would then be discarded.
Because the ground is an excellent conductor of heat, those who must sleep on it without a layer or two or three of cardboard, blankets or sleeping bags are very cold and very uncomfortable at night, particularly during the winter, early spring or late fall. Subjecting the homeless to such sleeping arrangements proved to be a useful way of convincing them to move on to some other location.
At least since the tenure of John McMahon, who became sheriff in 2013 and remained in that post through two election cycles in 2014 and 2018 until he resigned from the post in 2021, the department made a practice of assigning generally young and physically fit deputies to its Project HOPE, Operation Inroads and SOP teams and their prior incarnations. The majority of those deputies were ones who engage in body building practices involving the use of anabolic steroids. This proved triply effective. The overt physicality of the deputies intimidated whoever was confronted by them, heightening the deputies’ command presence, which in most cases resulted in compliance with their demands. Further, one of the side-effects of anabolic steroid use is “roid rage,” which is a state of irritability that accompanies the prolonged use of steroids and will manifest in an outburst of anger, aggression, or violence on the part of the user if he encounters a challenge or any difficult situation. In this way, a homeless individual’s refusal to depart with, for example, his sleeping bag or blanket or tent, would generally trigger an act of aggression on the part of the deputy that would ultimately be resolved with the homeless person being convinced or forced to part with his or her possessions or, as the department termed them, “debris.” Thirdly, by utilizing young deputies who utilize anabolic steroids for assignments in which they deal with the homeless as opposed to more economically and socially well-adapted individuals, the department was able to minimize the liability risk that can arise from the aggression of those deputies and the excessive force they are prone to using, given that the homeless generally do not possess the wherewithal to retain, hire or obtain an attorney to make a legal issue over their treatment by a member of the department.
San Bernardino County’s current sheriff, Shannon Dicus, appeared to be every bit as indulgent of the more sadistic element of his department’s deputies who have been given license to persuade the homeless to leave the communities where his department serves as the primary police force.
Despite having to dodge being physically abused by the various police departments in San Bernardino County, those who are homeless here had, at least until relatively recently, a layer of protection consisting of the law and the courts. Previously, up until slightly less than a month ago, the law of the land with regard to homelessness was embodied the 1962 case of Robinson v. California and the 2018 case Martin v. Boise. In Robinson v. California, the Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment prohibits criminalization of a status, as opposed to criminalizing criminal acts, in striking down a California law that criminalized being addicted to narcotics. By extension, this applied to being homeless, such that it made applying traditional vagrancy laws difficult, problematic or even impossible, such that someone could not be prosecuted for being homeless. In Martin v. Boise, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that city officials in Boise, Idaho, could not enforce an anti-camping ordinance whenever its homeless population exceeds the number of available beds in its homeless shelters. Since the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal to this case in 2019, it became binding precedent within the Ninth Circuit.
Both Robinson v. California and Martin v. Boise had the practical effect of preventing government in general and local governments in particular from declaring open warfare on the homeless. So, while in San Bernardino County the homeless were mistreated and essentially everyone knew that to be the case, it was not done openly out of concern that some do-gooder lawyer would take the case of some abused homeless person if documentation of what occurred was available.
On June 28, 2024, however, entered a ruling in the case of City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, which has pretty much erased the protections under the law that the homeless had. In 2013, the Grants Pass City Council, with its president openly stating the city wanted to “make it uncomfortable enough for [homeless individuals] in our city so they will want to move on down the road,” began enacting a series of anti-camping, anti-sleeping, and parking exclusion ordinances, which were augmented with civil fines ranging from $295 to $537.60 if unpaid, along with imposing criminal penalties of trespassing on repeat violators who continued to reside on public land. The Oregon Law Center filed suit against Grants Pass on behalf of homeless individuals Gloria Johnson, John Logan and Debra Blake in the U.S. District Court in Oregon, challenging the ordinances. The district court and The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, relying on Martin v. Boise, rejected the city government’s assertion it its defense of its ordinances preventing the city from enforcing its anti-camping ordinance against homeless people. The U.S. Supreme Court took up a review of the Ninth Circuit ruling, finding, ultimately, the punishments of fines, temporary bans from entering public property, and one-month jail sentences were neither cruel nor unusual; that the Grants Pass’s anti-camping ordinances were neutrally applied against both the homeless and those who are not homeless; that it was not established that the homeless had no place other than parks or parking lots in which to sleep; that local and state officials and courts are free to determine whether the homeless by violating anti-camping were conscious of their guilt by violating anti-camping ordinances and that remedies to the homeless issue throughout the United States are too complex to be addressed by unelected members of the federal judiciary. The upshot was that local governments can ban the homeless from public areas.
At once, police officers and sheriff’s deputies adopted a swagger even more pronounced than the one they had before and began to push San Bernardino County’s homeless around with newfound relish.
For the homeless, however, the worst was yet to come. Among those with no place to go, there was hope that Governor Gavin Newsom, whom many homeless believed had their back and was sympathetic to their plight, would not abandon them. They were conscious that he had championed their cause and had pushed multiple programs intended to get them off the street.
At this point, however, Newsom’s indulgence of the homeless had hit its nadir.
Newsom was elected governor in 2018. Between 2018 and 2021, the state spent $9.6 million trying to alleviate homelessness. According to observers, critics, Newsom’s supporters and Newsom himself, much of that money was squandered, with nowhere near $9.6 billion worth of improvements in the situation having come about.
One shortcoming is that while some of the money – approximately $5.5 million – went toward the construction of housing or converting existing buildings into livable space, a good portion of the remaining $4.1 billion was squandered on employing individuals – counselors, homelessness advisors, homeless service providers, advocates and the like – who provided nothing tangible toward solving the underlying issue and left nothing in place that approximates any sort of progress toward a solution.
In 2020, Newsom initiated Project Homekey, which has since received over $3.7 billion to fund local governments in their efforts to combat homelessness, most notably purchasing properties such as motels and commercial buildings to be turned into permanent, affordable housing.
While Newsom’s vision in that regard appears to have been sincere, there have been many who come in and represent themselves as being able to help the government find a way to house the homeless, but are merely interested in obtaining the funds the government is handing out and utilizing for their own purposes without actually putting roofs over anyone’s head.
A case in point is Cody Holmes, originally a junior financial officer and then later the director of finance with Shangri-La Industries, a participant in a multitude of the Homekey projects, including the conversion of the Good Nite Inn at 1675 Industrial Park Avenue in Redlands into 98 living quarters for the homeless entailing a kitchenette, living room, bedroom and bathroom opened in January 2023, and the conversion of the All Star Lodge in San Bernardino into 76 similar units available for the chronically homeless opened in March 2023 as well as one other such conversion in the City of King, on in the City of Thousand Oaks and three such conversions in the City of Salinas. Through a series of subterfuges, including setting up an email account in the name of the owner Shangri-La, Andrew Meyers, and routing Meyers’ physical mail to an internal Shangri-La mailbox to which he had first access and other diversions, Holmes was able to set up at least seven accounts into which he deposited Project Homekey money. Holmes then utilized those accounts to make a $4.3 million down payment and principal payments in July 2022 through a company he created, Holmes Capital, toward the purchase of a seven-bed, 11-bath 11,000-square-foot mansion at 9301 Cherokee Lane in Beverly Hills valued at $13.4 million, make over half of a million dollars in $48,000-per-month lease payments on another Beverly Hills property for over a year, lay out $54,400 in company funds on 20 VIP passes to the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and another $43,475 for private jet travel, and purchase his then-girlfriend, Madeline Witt, a $111,000 Birkin bag, buy her another $16,839 Hermes Orange Togo Birkin, purchase a $35,000 Audemars Piaget diamond watch and a buy a $127,073 53-carat weight diamond necklace. Simultaneously, Holmes was leasing, using Project Homekey funds, a 2021 Bentley Bentayaga and a Ferrari Portofino.
At several points along the way, Newsom became frustrated with the lack of progress being made toward conquering the homeless problem. In 2022, after he had turned back an effort by Republicans to remove him as governor through a recall, Newsom, a Democrat, succeeded in being reelected. Republicans in that year’s election had assailed him as a spendthrift who was burning through taxpayer money without much to show in the way of accomplishment. Prior to election day that year, on November 1, 2022, Newsom had lashed out, charging that cities and counties had fallen down in the effort to get the dispossessed housed. He maintained that with the billions of dollars in state spending that has been made, nothing worthwhile was occurring.
He then withheld $1 billion in funding for cities and counties that was to go toward homeless housing projects for more than two weeks, thereafter relenting and passing the money through.
Audits performed at various stages showed the hit-and-miss nature of the homelessness eradication efforts. One report provided by the California Interagency Council on Homelessness, which looked at what had become of the $9.6 billion spent between 2018 and 2021, and what had been accomplished with that money, showed the State of California managed to sustain 58,714 affordable housing units during that three-year period, and was able to increase shelter beds throughout the state by 17,000. Some of the spending had an ephemeral or fleeting impact. Other applications of the money had a more lasting effect. In this way, some homeless individuals seemed on track to make their way toward a more normative lifestyle. Some programs were ultimately ineffective.
According to the statistics, roughly 75,000 people were placed into permanent supportive housing of some kind, with 69,000 of those or thereabouts remaining off the streets six months later. At the same time, however, nearly 16 percent of those who left a state funded program to take up residence with a family member or friend were homeless again within six months. Of those who were placed into a rental with only a temporary subsidy, 23 percent were again homeless in less than half of a year.
Of the 571,246 Californians who received state-funded homelessness services between 2018 and 2021, as of the time of the accounting in 2022, 16.9 percent were yet in “permanent” subsidized housing; 23.3 percent went into permanent unsubsidized housing; 24.7 percent had an “unknown” outcome, meaning, most likely they were back on the streets, untracked and unaccounted for; 16.9 percent had definitely returned to homelessness; 5.2 percent had gone into a medical or correctional facility temporary host home or the like, all of which amounted to temporary solutions; 8.9 percent remained on the streets but were enrolled in some program or other and were awaiting housing; and 4.3 percent remain unhoused but were enrolled in a no-housing service program.
Throughout what had been the more than five-and-a-half years of Newsom’s gubernatorial run, he had remained committed to curing the housing and homelessness crisis. With the City of Grants Pass v Johnson decision, however, something in the governor appears to have snapped, and he is reacting in a way that for him appears to be completely out of character. Whereas in 2022, when he grew frustrated over the lack of progress with regard to the homelessness solutions he was seeking, he, temporarily, took things out on city and county officials, this time the bleeding heart-in-chief’s wrath is aimed at the homeless themselves, or so it seems.
Yesterday, July 25, Governor Newsom issued an executive order directing state agencies to “urgently address homeless encampments,” which he said should be accomplished “while respecting the dignity and safety of Californians experiencing homelessness. His office referenced the Supreme Court’s decision in Grants Pass in announcing the order. The text of the order states, “Agencies and departments subject to my authority shall adopt policies, generally consistent with California Department of Transportation’s Maintenance Policy Directive 1001-R1, to address encampments on state property, including through partnerships with other state and local agencies, and shall prioritize efforts to address encampments consistent with such policy. Such policies shall include the following: a. Whenever feasible, site assessment in advance of removal operations to determine whether an encampment poses an imminent threat to life, health, safety or infrastructure such that exigent circumstances require immediate removal of the encampment. b. Where exigent circumstances exist, as much advance notice to vacate as reasonable under the circumstances. c. Where no exigent circumstances exist, posting of a notice to vacate at the site at least 48 hours prior to initiating removal. d. Contacting of service providers to request outreach services for persons experiencing homelessness at the encampment. e. Collection, labeling, and storage for at least 60 days of personal property collected at the removal site that is not a health or safety hazard.”
According to the order, “All departments and agencies not under my authority are requested to adopt policies consistent with the guidelines in Paragraph 1. Local governments are encouraged to adopt policies consistent with this order and to use all available resources and infrastructure, including resources provided by the state’s historic investments in housing and intervention programs where appropriate and available, to take action with the urgency this crisis demands to humanely remove encampments from public spaces, prioritizing those encampments that most threaten the life, health, and safety of those in and around them. The California Interagency Council on Homelessness shall develop guidance and provide technical assistance consistent with this Order for local governments to follow in implementing their local homelessness programs.”
Notably, Newsom’s order is in effect whether or not there are homeless shelters available in surrounding areas.
In its preamble, the order states, “California is experiencing a homelessness crisis decades in the making, with over 180,000 people estimated to have experienced homelessness on any given night in 2023, including 123,000 people who experienced unsheltered homelessness, living in tents, trailers, and vehicles across the state. [S]ince the beginning of my administration, the State of California has made unprecedented investments to address the homelessness crisis head on, investing more than $24 billion across multiple state agencies and departments. It is imperative to act with urgency to address dangerous encampments, which subject unsheltered individuals living in them to extreme weather, fires, predatory and criminal activity, and widespread substance use, harming their health, safety, and well-being, and which also threaten the safety and viability of nearby businesses and neighborhoods and undermine the cleanliness and usability of parks, water supplies, and other public resources.”
One homeless man, who told the Sentinel he did not need to hear any more after the first several sentences of the governor’s order was read to him, said, “Those sheriffs [sic] will be beating the fuck out of us now.”
Immediately, upon Newsom’s order having gone out, the sheriff’s department Community Service and Reentry Division, Homeless Outreach Proactive Enforcement Team (H.O.P.E.) intensified the “Operation Shelter Me” program it had initiated on July 12 in the Rancho Cucamonga and Fontana area to “help homeless people,” which included transporting them and their backpacks and/or duffel bags on a one-way trip in the back of caged patrol cars to mental health treatment centers or medical facilities outside the county. In carrying out Operation Shelter Me, deputies insist that the homeless they encounter are “significantly mental ill” and that they are in need of psychological treatment, such that things are going to not go well for them if they resist the opportunity they are being provided.