Yes, that time I have been warning of since 1985 has arrived: prison camps for the homeless. Nearly four decades of demonizing the homeless as sub human drug addicted mentally ill “useless eaters” has provided the justification needed to intern those who cannot afford housing.
Thankfully many Americans have compassion for their homeless neighbors. Many of us have family on the streets or are struggling to keep housed and appreciate the difficulties tens of thousands of us are experiencing.
My wife and I owned a graphic design company in Kenmore Square. We designed ads and publications for companies in our neighborhood including the Boston Red Sox and local retail shops who were members of the local business association. The vice president of the Kenmore Association invited me to his stuffy second floor office to ask me to design another publication.
“Keith, the Association wants you to take a photo of that black guy that stands outside Captain Nemo’s Pizza and make a poster with a red circle with a line through it over his face like a no parking sign. The poster should say “Wanted out of Kenmore Square.”
I refused to make the poster, volunteered to share food behind Fenway Park before each game and suggested it would not be possible to drive the homeless from Kenmore Square since the crowds of Red Sox fans and college students made it the perfect place to panhandle. I also explained that “that black guy” was loved and had a name.
A few weeks later my wife Andrea called me over to her desk at our graphic design business to show me the Kenmore Association newsletter.
“Keith look at this.” pointing to page 2 of the October issue of the Kenmore News. The typewritten newsletter of the association mostly reported on the news of the Security and Maintenance Committee.
“The Security and Maintenance Committee encourages all KA Members to assume an active role in cleaning up Kenmore Square. In order to prevent the attraction of street people (especially the “rough element”, new to Kenmore Square), the following guidelines were suggested at the breakfast meeting…
Please don’t give free food to these street people.
Please lock all dumpsters. Unlocked dumpsters will be cited by the City inspectors and all infractions will be subject to fines. Open dumpsters attract street people looking for collectibles and food.
Please refrain from throwing returnable cans and bottles in public trash receptacles. The street people find Kenmore Square a profitable location for collecting on these cans and bottles.
Start calling the police if certain annoyances persist and keep a record of your calls (ie. date, time of day and response time).
We stopped what we had been doing and typed out a response to the business association:
“As members of the Kenmore Association we object to the dehumanizing statements against those living on our streets made by the Security & Maintenance Committee in the October newsletter.”
“These people are our neighbors, friends and family and deserve our compassion and support.”
“Dehumanizing people in this manor smacks of Hitler’s Germany. The association is showing a total disregard for people being people. We urge the Association to support efforts to help our neighbors instead of adopting policing to drive them out of the community.”
“There is no evidence that their presence is having any impact on business. We should celebrate the unique qualities of Kenmore Square that make it attractive instead of seeking to become a second Newbury Street.”
Sincerely,
Andrea and Keith McHenry
24 hour residents of Kenmore Square
We shared our life with our homeless friends. The most visible and lovable of our street friends was “that black guy” Mr Butch who could be found outside Captain Nimo’s Pizza with a blue electric guitar slung across his chest welcoming the streams of Boston Red Sox fans chugging through Kenmore Square. Harold Madison Jr could have been Jimi Hendrix’s double.
The war against America’s homeless had begun.
As the number of Americans who were not able to afford housing increased business districts and municipal governments started to enact laws deigned to remove the homeless from sight.
After eight years of Reagan’s trickle down economics the number of homeless Americans had grown to more than 750,000 people. Cities started to pass and enforce what they called “quality of life” laws designed to make it a crime to be unhoused citing the pseudo science of the Broken Windows Theory to justify their dehumanizing campaigns.
Demonizing the homeless took another ugly step after I had relocated to San Francisco. Mayor Dianne Feinstein held a press event in my Richmond District neighborhood praising the city’s homeless-proof Muni bus stops. Her replacement, former social worker Art Agnos continued her anti-homeless programs including arresting Food Not Bombs for sharing meals at the entrance to Golden Gate Park at the end of Haight Street.
But that was nothing when compared to Mayor Frank Jordan’s “Quality of Life Enforcement Matrix Program”. In the first months Jordan order the police to confiscate the shoes off of people living outside. Jordan would brag that Rudy Giuliani had adopted his program to clear Manhattan of their homeless.
The next mayor of San Francisco continues the repression. Mayor Brown asks to borrow the Oakland Police Department night vision-equipped helicopter to locate homeless people illegally sleeping in Golden Gate, but Oakland refuses to help. Sweeps of the parks continues anyway and the quality of life enforcement continues with 23,871 tickets issued to people living on the streets in 1999. Brown orders the police to charge people with shopping carts with a felony.
When Gavin Newson was on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors he initiated the ballot measure Care Not Cash which would change San Francisco’s General Assistance from $395 per month to just $59 per month but came with a guarantee of housing and food for the homeless. The promise of housing and food failed to materialize but the cuts in assistance was implemented.
When Gavin Newsom took the mayor’s office in 2004 he launched “Operation Outreach,” a special police unit that responds to 911 calls to rid the streets of the homeless, claiming he would be placing people in rehab or mental facilities, but with the lack of services people were just arrested or ticketed. Newsom claimed his program would eliminate the chronically homeless from San Francisco by 2014.
The cruel criminalization of the homeless got a new ally in 2016 when the billionaire co-founder of CIA In-Q-Tel funded Palantir, Joe Lonsdale, started the Cicero Institute. He provides model legislation to states banning “unauthorized street camping.” The Cicero Institute also provides model legislation on civil commitment of the homeless saying that “states should amend civil commitment laws to make it easier to help those who cannot help themselves”.
The Cicero Institute succeeded in getting states to pass their legislation. Their Safer Kentucky Act started to be enforced in July 2024. Anyone cited with the offense for the first time can be fined. Subsequent offenses are Kentucky Class B misdemeanors and can bring more fines or jail time. Under this law, if a property owner believes an unhoused trespasser is uncooperative they can shoot the homeless person under a stand-your-ground provision.
With Joe Lonsdale’s help Tennessee made it a felony to camp on most state-owned property. Having a felony conviction will make getting housing even more difficult.
In September 2022 Governor Gavin Newsom started the first of his Community Assistance, Recovery, and Empowerment (CARE) Courts, opening a way to force the state’s homeless into involuntary mental health treatment.
Governor Newsom’s Proposition 1 passed in 2024 providing funding for facilities for those forced into state conservancy.
Two close homeless friends of mine were forced into civil commitment in 2023. Both were happy and no danger to themselves or others. All they required was enough money to afford an apartment.
The County of Santa Cruz removed one friend from a COVID hotel a week before everyone else was evicted in the Benchlands homeless camp. He was held in a psychiatric unit for months. Both of his cars were junked and he lost 30 years of crystals and drums he had in storage because he was blocked from paying for his units or his website, losing his life’s work. His once magical life was crushed.
My “rainbow family” friend was captured and forced into the mental facility and made to take psych drugs against her will. She died a couple of weeks after being released when she stopped taking the SSRIs.
On July 25, 2024, Newson signed the Executive Order N-1-24 calling on all state agencies to clear encampments. “With the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Grants Pass v Johnson, local governments now have the tools and authority to address dangerous encampments and help provide those residing in encampments with the resources they need.” He also told counties and cities who failed to clear homeless camps that the state would cut their funding.
Two months before Newsom signed his executive order the State awarded the City of Santa Cruz a $4 million “Encampment Resolution Grant” that provides two years of funding to remove the homeless from the streets around the Housing Matters homeless shelter. There is a claim that the grant will provide 55 people with a place in a tiny house or apartment. We will see.
The weekly sweeps scatter people to the woods and doorways until the police force them back to the relative safety of the camp outside the shelter.
In June 2025 San Jose, California passed a law making it illegal not to go into a shelter. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan stated, “Homelessness can’t be a choice” when pushing for his Responsibility to Shelter Initiative. Those refusing shelter three times will be arrested for trespassing on public land. The San José Spotlight points out that the county only has one shelter bed for every three unhoused people.
Trump continues the drive to criminalize those who cannot afford housing with his “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets” executive order essentially plagiarizing Newsom’s 2024 anti-homeless executive order.
A month after signing his order he spotted several people living in pup tents as he traveled to play golf in Virginia, writing on Truth Social platform, “The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY. We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capitol” ordering the unhoused residents to leave the US capitol or face eviction and vowed to use officers to make arrests.
Trump also federalized the District of Columbia’s police ordering them to enforce the anti-homeless laws passed by the liberal Democrats.
On August 12th White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt took questions about President Trump’s takeover of the Washington, D.C. police force and the Trump administration’s plan to remove homeless encampments in the city, responding that, “The Police Department, with the support of the new Federal agencies who have been surging on the street of the District of Columbia, are going to enforce the laws that are already on the books here in Washington DC. For far too long, these laws have been completely ignored in the homelessness problem, has ravaged the city. So D.C. Code 1307 and D.C. Municipal Regulation 24-100 give the Metropolitan Police Department the authority to take action when it comes to homeless encampments so homeless individuals will be given the option to leave their encampment to be taken to a homeless shelter, to be offered addiction or mental health services and if they refuse they will be susceptible to fines or to jai time. Again these are preexisting laws that are already on the books.”
The New York Post reported that, “In the past five months, U.S. Park Police have removed 70 homeless encampments, giving the people living in them the same options, she said. As of Tuesday, Leavitt said only two homeless encampments remained in district parks maintained by the National Park Service and would be removed this week.”
Associated Press reporter Meg Kinnard notes that “Trump said this week that homeless people will be moved far from the city in his crackdown on crime. But details of the plan to do so are unclear”.
The number of Americans facing homelessness is increasing as rents and the cost of food continue to rise, families face cuts in SNAP food stamps and other social safety nets. With the potential of tens of thousands more people being forced onto the streets US officials may believe they need to be prepared to deploy the National Guard across the country.
When we speak of the homeless people of Santa Cruz “being moved far from the city” there may already be a plan. Former Mayor Donna Meyers and former County Supervisor Ryan Coonerty were quietly proposing during their 2 by 2 meetings that people could be sent to the Camp Roberts California National Guard Base outside the tiny village of San Miguel in San Luis Obispo county.
Is this what Trump means, that America’s rapidly growing homeless population will be moved far from the city ?
Keith McHenry is co-founder of Food Not Bombs.
