“He looked out the window toward Madison Street, which had become the center of one of the largest homeless encampments in the country, with as many as 1,100 people sleeping outdoors. On this February morning, he could see a half-dozen men pressed around a roaring fire. A young woman was lying in the middle of the street, wrapped beneath a canvas advertising banner. A man was weaving down the sidewalk in the direction of Joe’s restaurant with a saw, muttering to himself and then stopping to urinate a dozen feet from Joe’s outdoor tables. ‘It’s the usual chaos and suffering,’ he told Debbie. ‘But the restaurant’s still standing.'” The seemingly intractable homelessness in some cities is not only a crisis for those without homes, it’s also a crisis for small business owners. The excellent Eli Saslow with his first piece for the NYT (Gift Article): A Sandwich Shop, a Tent City and an American Crisis.

+ “Newsom announced Sunday that he will ask allies in the Democratic-controlled Legislature for a measure on the 2024 ballot to authorize funding to build residential facilities where up to 12,000 people a year could live and be treated.” California to seek beds for mental health, drug treatment. Getting care for 12,000 homeless people in California would be a start, but as of last year, the state had 171,000 homeless.