Don’t blame people for drowning. Help them to shore.

CONTRARY TO what Califorinia guv’s Gavin Newsom seems to think, the unhoused are not invaders. They are victims.

Here is Newsom’s latest on homelessness: “No more excuses. It is time to take back the streets. It’s time to take back the sidewalks. It’s time to take these encampments and provide alternatives.”

To be fair, Newsom announced over $3 billion in grants to treat homeless people who “struggle with mental health and substance use disorders.” Committing funds, along with “providing alternatives,” is laudable. But characterizing unhoused persons as products of “mental health and substance use disorders” only feeds the heinous narrative that would dismiss them as victims of their own doing.

The mischaracterization is as intellectually lazy as it is cruel and monumentally inaccurate. Homelessness is largely an economic outcome. Addressing it requires identifying and addressing myriad underlying economic — and social — causal factors.

Blaming the unhoused for being unhoused only serves those righteous souls who are looking for an excuse, any excuse, not to show a little compassion.