For years, California cities have been struggling with a homelessness crisis, pouring billions of dollars into addressing the escalating tragedy and providing aid to those urgently in need of housing.
However, there is one city that has managed to defy the odds and has reported the lowest number of homeless individuals in the state.
In an interview with “Fox & Friends First,” Coronado Mayor Richard Bailey (R) stated that his city has zero homeless individuals, attributing it to the strict no-encampment policy he has implemented while also maintaining the enforcement of laws.
“The policies that are in place at the regional and statewide level that are tolerating this type of behavior that is personally destructive and also destructive to the surrounding communities are really enabling this situation to increase throughout our entire state, and throughout our entire region,” Bailey said to Ashley Strohmier.
“Changing these policies will actually have a major impact,” he continued.
Coronado provides “reasonable” services to aid those in need in getting back on track, but the city’s no-tolerance policy for breaching municipal codes is also enforced, as per Bailey.
“We also make it very clear that we don’t tolerate encampments along our sidewalks, and we don’t tolerate other code violations such as being drunk in public or urinating in public or defecating in public,” Bailey said. “We just simply don’t tolerate these basic code violations. What ends up happening is an individual either chooses to get help or they end up leaving.”
Based on information from the San Diego Regional Task Force on Homelessness, Coronado had previously recorded just one homeless individual. Nonetheless, Bailey confirmed that the person was able to obtain the necessary assistance and is currently no longer living on the streets.
“The fact of the matter is there, although there are a myriad of reasons that people end up homeless, they eventually only fall into two camps — those that want help and those that do not want help,” Bailey explained. “And if those that are refusing to get help… shouldn’t be granted additional the ability to break laws such as tent encampments on the sidewalk or urinating or defecating in public.”
“We need to be enforcing these policies to ultimately kind of help them get into that other camp that eventually get help,” he continued.
Between 2018 and 2022, California was allotted $10 billion to tackle its homelessness crisis. Nevertheless, despite this significant government expenditure, the state still accounts for 30% of the nation’s total homeless population.
