The state of California and the city of San Jose have evicted the residents of a tent city. The results were predictable:

Residents of the neighborhood in Central San Jose that abutted the Jungle were glad to see the encampment go. But dismantling the Jungle is already creating new problems. Just days after the Jungle was torn apart, San Jose police and other city departments began fielding calls from people in different neighborhoods complaining of former Jungle residents setting up camps near them. Some ended up in a Walmart parking lot before being booted. Others were congregating near the airport, also under threat of eviction. At least one hospital reported an upsurge of emergency room visits from former residents of the Jungle, sick from weathering the elements, having misplaced medications in the eviction.

I don’t have an good solution to the problem of homelessness, but it seems obvious that evicting people will only destabilize their lives and move the problem to someone else’s neighborhood. It sounds a lot like externalization to me.

via ‘Some sort of hell’: How one of the wealthiest cities in America treats its homeless.