Take a stroll through the downtown of almost any California city and you will quickly run into evidence of the state’s large and growing homeless population. Large swathes of sidewalk, parks, and other public spaces have become virtual tent cities. Issues of public hygiene, crime, and general quality of life are becoming impossible to ignore.
Alongside a decade of unbroken liberal control of its politics, liberals framed California as a “state of resistance” to Trump, and a proving ground for the big progressive ideas they claimed could bring equity nationwide. But ironically, it is often those liberals fondest of denigrating conservatives …
This article appears as “Homeless in the Golden State” in the April 19, 2021, print edition of National Review.
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