This In Chambers Order recently issued by a federal district judge may just be the most unusual, flat-out wild judicial opinion we have ever read.
Citing the Gettysburg Address, Brown v. Board of Education, systemic racism (including eminent domain) systemic sexism, and a slew of newspaper articles, the Central District of California (without even holding a hearing), issued a preliminary injunction ordering Los Angeles to immediately address the homeless problem, including ordering that "$1 billion, as represented by Mayor Garcetti, will be placed in escrow forthwith, with funding streams accounted for and reported to the Court within 7 days." Order at 107.
The city is also ordered to halt any public land sales, figure out how to use said land for the homeless, and report to the court how to address "structural barriers (including but not limited to redlining, highway construction, eminent domain, and health exposure)[.]" Id. at 108. (For the court's examination of LA's history of using eminent domain to take property, see pages 19, et seq.)
Now we don't think there's any way that this order survives review if the city takes it higher (which we can't imagine it won't). Even in the Ninth Circuit, which has been fairly forward about cases involving homeless issues. But we suspect the district judge knows this and issued the PI and this extraordinary order as a way to draw focus (have I got your attention now?). Oh, there's been a lot of talk, boatloads of money thrown at it, and government officials and their hangers-on speechifying, but a walk through of any major American city (and a lot of smaller ones) shows that the problems the order describes are not limited to LA and skid row.
And for all its wildness, the order hints what to us seems one obvious approach: if shortages of housing where people can afford to live is the problem, isn't a solution to make it easier to build more housing, rather than extraordinarily difficult as California makes it?
In Chambers Order, LA Alliance for Human Rights v. City of Los Angeles, No. LA CV 20-02291-DOC-(KESx) (C.D....
