James Morrow: Cruel ‘progressives’ in US cities send Sydney a dystopian warning

Scenes in LA and San Francisco paint a stark picture about what can happen when lawlessness, homelessness and addiction are allowed to take over a city, in a chilling warning for Sydney’s CBD, James Morrow writes.

If you want to see what happens when you lose control of your CBD, just visit San Francisco.

Once one of the most beautiful cities in the world, today the City by the Bay’s downtown is a dystopia.

Homeless people – a combination of mentally ill, drug addicted, and just plain down on their luck – have set up encampments everywhere, encouraged by seemingly compassionate yet ultimately cruel social policies.

A homeless man sleeps in front of a luxury auto dealership in San Francisco, California. Picture: Josh Edelson/AFP

As long-time resident Michael Shellenberger writes in his new book, San Fransicko, “Over the last fifty years, California progressives have shamed any amount of coercion to address addiction or treat mental illness, whether in the provision of housing or in the issuing of sentences for crimes committed. The results are visible on the street.”

Meanwhile left-wing governments have all but decriminalised crime.

Thanks to lenient laws, thieves can now brazenly walk out of pharmacies, grocery stores, and other shops with hundreds of dollars in merchandise and no fear of prosecution.

Travel south to Los Angeles, and it’s much the same story.

Downtown L.A. is today like something out of Blade Runner, with the few remaining shops employing private security against the lawlessness.

Storefronts on Melrose Avenue in LA were boarded up as looters took advantage of protests responding to the death of George Floyd. Picture: Frederic J. Brown/AFP

Hit the ritzy beachside suburb of Santa Monica, and it’s not much better.

Too many closed shops, too many people who need help having loud and violent street corner arguments with demons only they can see.

On a recent evening not far from Santa Monica Boulevard, the futuristic awfulness was captured by the sight of a well-armoured wheeled delivery robot carrying a takeaway dinner to someone better off down footpaths dotted with people sleeping with their only possessions.

These scenes in California predate the pandemic, but they are a stark warning for Sydney about what can happen when lawlessness, crime, homelessness, and addiction are allowed to take over a city.

A man wearing a mask cycles past tents housing the homeless lining a street in Los Angeles. Picture: Frederic J. Brown/AFP

Sydney right now is on the cusp of making a choice about which way it wants to go.

Too many people are not coming in to work, spooked by the pandemic and lulled into the false economy of working from home.

As a result not only are local businesses – the pubs and restaurants, coffee bars and dry cleaners – suffering, but so too is the city as a place where people come together.

Watching people who clearly need help be allowed to turn our footpaths into camp sites while menacing passers-by, the danger is all too clear.

If nothing is done, the “new normal” everyone has talked about for two years will look more like downtown LA, and not the thriving world city we aspire to be.

Governments at every level have a responsibility to stop this happening.

And everyone who can should get out of the home office and back into town.

Originally published as James Morrow: Cruel ‘progressives’ in US cities send Sydney a dystopian warning