As President Donald Trump tries to radically reduce the presence of homeless people on the streets of the District of Columbia, Democrats are grappling with how to respond given their party’s rightward shift on the issue.
One of the highest-profile Democrats who has pushed his party in this direction is Gov. Gavin Newsom, who earlier this year issued a model ordinance that municipalities in California can adopt to ban homeless encampments on public property. Newsom’s agenda has drawn some comparison from housing advocates to Trump’s promise to remove homeless encampments and displace people living on the District’s streets.
“In essence, the core of these efforts are exactly the same,” Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, told NOTUS.