Democrats divide on homelessness — public safety vs. radical folly

 Democratic pols are knocking heads over homelessness: One approach to the problem reflects reality, and the other is sheer lunacy.

On the lunatic side, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is vowing to let homeless encampments spill into every Gotham neighborhood.

And in Connecticut, Democratic state lawmakers are about to pass a law that will keep local officials from cracking down on living rough in parks or vehicles.

But Democrats with higher aspirations, like California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom and Boston’s Mayor Michelle Wu, are reading the political tea leaves — and distancing themselves as far as they can from such misplaced compassion.

After all, Americans favor clearing homeless encampments by nearly two to one, an August AP-NORC/Harris poll found.   

The general public has it right: Freezing to death, being murdered, or dying of an overdose on a urine-soaked mattress does not equal kindness.

And encampments pose an immediate risk to any person walking past one.

Nationwide, an alarming 13% of homeless people living on the streets are registered sex offenders — and in eight states more than half of them are.  

Nearly one-third of California’s homeless have done prison time for felonies.

“Hotbeds of crime,” is how Cicero Institute expert Devon Kurtz describes homeless encampments.

And for the occupants, they’re death camps.

Living unsheltered robs decades from an adult’s life: A 40-year-old living rough has the same life expectancy as the average housed 60-year-old, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.  

Most die of drug overdoses, with trauma — including homicide — as the second most common cause of death.

The violence in encampments is staggering, with 38% of the homeless victimized by crime, according to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Since June 2024, when the US Supreme Court upheld the right of Grants Pass, Ore., to ban homeless encampments from town property, hundreds of cities across the country have adopted or strengthened local ordinances similar to the Grants Pass ban.

But the National Coalition for the Homeless still argues that people should be free to sleep rough any place they choose, and that it “strips a person of their dignity” to force them into a shelter — or even to send them to a designated camping site. 

That belligerent view tramples the public’s right to live in an orderly, clean, safe town.

Following the Grants Pass ruling, Democrats in Virginia, Illinois, Maryland and Connecticut started pushing Coalition for the Homeless-proposed legislation that bars towns and cities from banning sleeping rough and camping on public property.

So far no state has passed it, but Connecticut is getting close, poised to vote on a similar measure this spring, state Rep. Tony Scott told me.   

With a Democratic supermajority in the legislature, it’s likely to pass.

It will be the most radical homeless law in the country.

Connecticut’s bill will literally tie the hands of local officials, forcing them to allow camping in public parks and sleeping rough in vehicles.  

The state has already passed a law, signed by Gov. Ned Lamont two weeks ago, that will truck mobile showers and laundry facilities to encampments.

Connecticut today has one of the lowest homeless rates in the nation — but put out the welcome mat, and more will come.

Newsom has learned that painful lesson first-hand.

Half the unsheltered homeless population in the entire United States lives in California.   

Sprawling tent cities blight every region, from Los Angeles to the San Francisco Bay area and beyond.

In May, in the midst of a very public attempt to moderate his image, Newsom called on all municipalities in the state to outlaw camping on public property.

The guidelines he proposed would make it illegal to “sit, sleep or lie or camp on any public street, road or bike path or sidewalk”  — the polar opposite of what Democrats in Connecticut are doing.

Boston’s Wu is another ambitious Democrat rejecting the far left’s indulgence toward sleeping rough.

When she took office in 2021, the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard (“Mass and Cass”) had become a spreading tent encampment and opiod overdose mecca.

By 2023, rising rates of stabbings, sex trafficking and assaults in the vicinity evoked an outcry, and forced her hand. 

She changed her policies, limiting the distribution of clean needles, clamping down on illegal drug use, and clearing tents.

That’s smart politics: 75% of Americans believe it’s more compassionate to require homeless individuals to move off the streets and into shelters, an October survey by the Cicero Institute found. 

Mamdani and the rest of the reality-deprived left plead for us to be “humane.” 

We all want that.

But there’s nothing humane about a hands-off policy that speeds mentally ill and drug-addicted people toward untimely deaths.  

Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York.

https://nypost.com/2025/12/12/opinion/democrats-divide-on-homelessness-public-safety-vs-radical-folly/