Public, Not Personal
There’s a sidewalk near the grocery store that’s been blocked for weeks. Not by construction. Not by protest. By a camp. Blue tarp. Pile of bikes. A rusted shopping cart with what looks like someone’s entire living room balanced on top.
The city came once. Cleared it out. Two days later, it was back — like nothing had changed. Because nothing really had.
This is what we’ve accepted in California, that public space is negotiable. That sidewalks are not for walking, but for waiting — waiting for housing, waiting for treatment, waiting for the next sweep.
Now the governor wants to do something about it. Or at least sound like he does.
On Monday, Gavin Newsom urged cities across the state to adopt a model ordinance banning public camping. Three nights in one spot, and you’re out. No tents. No structures. No permanence. Just motion. Disruption with rules.
He framed it as compassion. Clarity. A final push after years of funding and litigation. He said there are no more excuses.
But the real problem is that there are still too many apologies.
Because for all the bluster, Newsom’s proposal still pulls its punches. It tells cities not to enforce bans if there aren’t enough shelter beds. It warns against sweeps without notice. It asks for belongings to be stored and returned “humanely.”
In other words, it’s not a crackdown. It’s a compromise. One that continues to reward the exact dynamic that created this crisis: a refusal to confront the basic truth that some people choose to live this way.
We’ve poured billions into shelters, treatment beds, wraparound services. And yet, time and again, the same excuse emerges — they don’t want it. The shelters have rules. The programs require sobriety. The housing is too far from their chosen community.
And somehow, their preferences are treated like policy constraints. As if society must bend around those who’ve opted out of it.
The timing of Newsom’s push isn’t accidental. It comes just after the Supreme Court ruled in Grants Pass v. Johnson that cities can ban public camping — even if they don’t have enough shelter beds to accommodate everyone living on the streets. That decision reversed six years of legal roadblocks and gave local governments the green light they’ve been waiting for.
The ruling didn’t force cities to act. It just gave them permission. And the state should have taken that permission and run with it.
Instead, Newsom is still trying to thread a moral needle that no longer fits the facts. He wants credit for being tough, without taking the heat for being decisive. He’s trying to solve a public order crisis with the tone of a social worker.
But dignity isn’t the right to sprawl wherever you want. It’s the right to rejoin the rest of us — in responsibility, in community, in mutual obligation. And that means saying yes to care. To structure. To help that may come with terms.
We’ve tried it their way. For years. With pilot programs and outreach vans and housing-first slogans. And what we’ve gotten in return are sidewalks filled with fentanyl, encampments guarded like turf, and politicians who talk tough only when it’s politically safe.
The public sees it. That’s why even progressive cities are starting to pass tougher ordinances. Not because they’ve turned cold, but because they’re tired of pretending that chaos is compassion.
You can believe in housing and still say no to tents. You can support mental health care and still reject the normalization of outdoor psychosis. You can be humane without being a hostage.
Newsom says this ordinance is a model. But really, it’s a mirror. A reflection of a state that still can’t decide if it’s serious about solving homelessness or just managing it politely.
We don’t need more soft language. We need lines.
Because the sidewalk isn’t yours. It’s ours.
And it’s time we started acting like it.