Just this week our prime minister announced that the government is giving police officers new powers to move on rough sleepers or people displaying disorderly behaviour in town and city centres. Breaching an order risks a fine of up to NZ$2,000 or three-month jail term. Instead of investing in infrastructure to support the most vulnerable members of our community, authorities want to sweep the problem under the rug and punish them for it.
But after six years at City Hall, Raman is no longer an outsider. She has her own record, which is in many ways intertwined with the mayor's, particularly on homelessness, an issue the onetime allies have worked closely together to remedy. As a City Council member, Raman, whose previous campaigns were backed by Democratic Socialists of America Los Angeles, has sometimes walked a political tightrope, exasperating her progressive base on issues like policing.
The Cicero Institute, created by tech investor Joe Lonsdale, has spent the past few years promoting aggressive policies targeting encampments for the unhoused and pushing cities to move away from Housing First, the U.S.'s primary model for responding to chronic homelessness. Over the summer, HUD quietly adopted several of Cicero's key recommendations. And the result was widespread panic among the local agencies responsible for keeping people housed.
GOOD MORNING, SUNDAY! It's the perfect time to catch up on some of the great reporting and stories the Mercury churned out this week! (PRO TIP: If you despise being "the last to know," then be one of the first to know by signing up for Mercury newsletters! All the latest stories shipped directly to your email's in-box... and then... YOUR HEAD.)
The city of Los Angeles violated the state's open meeting law when council members took up a plan to clear 9,800 homeless encampments behind closed doors, a judge ruled this week. In a 10-page decision, L.A. County Superior Court Judge Curtis Kin said the City Council ran afoul of the Ralph M. Brown Act by approving the encampment strategy during a Jan. 31, 2024, closed session.
The Attorney General, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and the Secretary of Transportation shall take immediate steps to assess their discretionary grant programs and determine whether priority for those grants may be given to grantees in States and municipalities that actively meet the below criteria, to the maximum extent permitted by law:
Newsom said Assembly Bill 255, which would have allowed cities to use up to 10% of their state funds to pay for "recovery housing," was unnecessary. That's because using state funds for sober housing is already allowed, the governor said. He said "recent guidance" makes that clear. That was a big surprise to Assemblymember Matt Haney, who had spent the past two years working on the bill Newsom was now saying had been moot all along.
The former Union Iron Works shipyard, now a historic district occasionally used for workforce training, is a swath of largely unoccupied land dotted with a few remaining abandoned industrial buildings. A large-scale redevelopment project encompassing Pier 68 and Pier 70 has been in progress for years, adding retail, restaurant, and office space to the waterfront. But in the meantime, the pier may be used to store RVs towed by the city.
