Hotel California

... El Cajon... is a medium-sized city in the metro San Diego area...

Then came September 2022. We noticed a new and sudden influx of homeless people to our city—not just on the streets but taking over El Cajon hotels. I asked our police department to make some friendly inquiries with these folks, to find out where they’d come from. As it turned out, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, without consulting us, had launched a hotel voucher program that quickly overwhelmed our two-star travel-lodge-type properties, turning every one of them into a homeless encampment....

Decades ago, California was the destination of dreams. When my father and countless others stopped here for a brief stay in San Diego on their way to fight in the South Pacific, Korea, or Vietnam, they found warm weather, beautiful new cities and suburbs, and a natural paradise that led down through the unspoiled pine forests of the High Sierra to the glistening Pacific.

Today, though, the state is overpriced, overtaxed, and in many places riddled with crime and filth. Many large and medium-sized cities have become nearly uninhabitable—overrun by unchecked encampments of makeshift tents and ramshackle lean-tos. Drug zombies, criminals, and untreated psychotics roam the ruins and rule the places that were once the domain of the rich and powerful. The latter haven’t abandoned their castles of commerce, but they now quickly run from car to guarded lobby, deftly dodging feces, vomit, and vermin...

Assembly Bill 109 and, in 2016, Proposition 57 sought to ease prison overcrowding in California by simply deciding that many crimes were no longer punishable by incarceration. More than 70 crimes were redefined as “less serious” or “non-violent.” This includes the rape of an intoxicated or unconscious person, sex trafficking, lewd acts with a minor of 15 years old and above, hostage-taking, assault with a deadly weapon, domestic violence resulting in injury, and many others.

Then, prisons began closing—two in the past two years. After that, El Cajon saw a 35 percent spike in homelessness....

... when a state collapses into a one-party system, laws become malleable ... fungible ... open to interpretation by those in power.

Let this be a cautionary tale for other states that say, “It can’t happen here.” It most assuredly can.

Woke religion and the ruination of San Fransicko, by Fred Elbel, 9 December 2021.