Dems Wake Up on Homeless ‘Rights’

Democrats across the nation are waking up to the fact that doing right by the homeless doesn’t mean leaving them on the streets simply because they refuse the mental-health help they so desperately need.

Portland, Ore., Mayor Ted Wheeler is pushing his state’s legislature “to lower the state’s threshold for civil commitment, which is currently limited to people who are a danger to themselves or others or are unable to provide for their basic needs,” Politico reports.

New Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass ran for office (as the further-left candidate!) promising to follow the lead of London Breed, the San Francisco mayor, in forcing treatment.

And California Gov. Gavin Newsom (a top Dem presidential candidate if Joe Biden bows out) has already pushed through laws easing the civil-commitment rules.

That’s a lot of progressive electeds saying it’s inhumane (and unsafe for everyone) to let mentally ill on the streets go untreated.

Mayor Adams remains the leader, having begun to involuntarily hospitalize more homeless with chronic and untreated mental illness after a string of horrific subway attacks. The first month of his new policy saw at least 42 seriously mentally ill people involuntarily taken in for psychiatric evaluation.

Even our left-leaning City Council is embracing legislation making mental-health treatment more widely available to the chronically homeless in the city’s family shelter system after a Post exposé revealed inadequate access. Still up in the air: Will the state Legislature hear Gov. Hochul’s call to do more on this front?

Most New Yorkers will cheer movement in this direction, but it can take a long time for politicians to abandon a senseless ideology. With West Coast lefties getting on board, let’s hope New York progressives can bend.