Yesterday, Judge Carter ruled that Los Angeles must offer shelter to every unhoused person on Skid Row.

Since Carter named me and used my research in his decision, a thread on why we must oppose this bait & switch which will criminalize our neighbors.

The lawsuit that inspired Carter’s decision was brought by landlords, business owners, and developers hiding under the name “LA Human Rights Alliance,” a group supported by the LA Police Protective League, private security forces, & LA’s most conservative representatives.

The goal of their lawsuit was not to provide housing, but to use offers of shelter as a pretext for the clearing and criminalization of unhoused people for the sake of their property values and business revenues.

As @LACANetwork reminds us, shelter is not housing. Not only temporary, shelters come with infantilizing curfews, invasive surveillance, and restrictions on guests and belongings. Shelter isn’t housing, it’s soft incarceration for the crime of not being able to afford rent.

More, through LA’s “Special Enforcement Zones,” which legalize aggressive police sweeps, harassment, brutalization, and citations of encampments around shelter sites, Skid Row shelters will help to disappear, punish, and incarcerate rather than house the unhoused.

Judge Carter devotes three enthusiastic pages of his injunction to my reporting on the failures of so-called Affordable Housing. He seemed to agree that real estate interests hide behind the brand of affordability through a policy that ultimately imperils the poor.

I urge Judge Carter to see the same operation in the use of shelter: a temporary solution whose ultimate beneficiaries are property and businesses owners, not unhoused tenants in need. And I denounce his use of my research and labor.

Like the shelter system which it props up, Judge Carter’s injunction is perfect expression of the alliance between liberalism and the right wing, the Real Estate State and the Police State.

We need to defend the rights of our unhoused neighbors to refuse the terms of carceral tenancy & to use public space free from criminalization. Solidarity to all unhoused and housed tenants organizing for dignity and self-determination in a city bent on our banishment.