A smiling San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria joins Gavin Newsom outside the newly re-opened Boulevard Sanitarium for the Care and Treatment of the Mentally Unwell in San Diego’s back country. “Speaking as someone who has lost a lot of sleep over the people sleeping on his city’s sidewalks,” said Gloria, “I can’t wait to get these poor folks ‘off the streets and into the suites’ here at Boulevard!”

On September 14, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment (CARE) act into law. The law will allow courts to order treatment plans for mentally ill homeless individuals for up to two years, plans that can include medication, housing, and therapy. Critics have accused Newsom of returning to the days when people were “warehoused in institutions,” but he said he found their arguments “exhausting,” and that “their point of view is expressed by what you see on the streets and sidewalks all across the state. I’m trying to win an election, position myself for a presidential run in 2024, and convince people to move to California from places like Florida and Texas because here, ‘we still believe in freedom.’ But no one’s gonna believe me if they’re not free to walk down the street without being accosted by a homeless schizophrenic shouting about masks and aliens. If we have to curtail the freedom of a few unlikely voters to make good things happen, that’s okay, because as the bill’s name makes it clear, California CAREs.”