Once upon a time, American cities had something called order. Not perfection, not paradise, but order. Public drunkenness, vagrancy, and loitering were not lifestyle choices. They were violations. And they were enforced. Then came the judicial cleanup crew. In Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville , 405 U.S. 156 (1972), the United States Supreme Court gutted traditional vagrancy laws, calling them unconstitutionally vague. Translation. Police discretion was now suspect. Street-level enforcement was crippled. The predictable result followed. Streets that once moved people now store them. Fast forward. We now have entire neighborhoods functioning as open-air shelters, with sidewalks treated like private property by people who don’t own them. Then came the “solutions.” Politicians, armed with compassion and someone else’s money, decided to warehouse the problem. Luxury hotels. Massive budgets. Layers of bureaucracy. And just to make sure nobody misses the irony, they impose what amount ...