San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system this week announced positive results from enhanced efforts to combat fare evasion. A BART spokesperson told reporters that new fare gates have not only increased revenue but reduced disorderly behavior, saying: “The people that were doing this type of damage to our stations have either just stopped doing that type of damage or they’re not coming into our stations at all.”

Late last month, the New York Times reported that homelessness appears to be declining, even in Los Angeles and other notorious hotspots. The decline coincides with anti-street homelessness efforts cities have taken in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision Grants Pass v. Johnson, which greenlit enforcement.

The Great American Vibe Shift has therefore not been reversed, at least when it comes to norms around disorder. Of course, Republican midterm prospects don’t look great. In multiple recent elections, from the 2025 Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial contests to one earlier this month over a Texas state Senate seat, the GOP has been racking up losses. Meanwhile, the Trump administration this week announced the end of its high-profile ICE surge in Minnesota.

Still, it would be unwise to expect a revival of the “Great Awokening” era. During the 2010s, homelessness spread far and wide because of lax enforcement. Some encampments swelled to hundreds of inhabitants. The street chaos climaxed during Covid, when dubious public health guidance directed local officials to avoid addressing encampments.

Many Democrats have since decided that they’d prefer not to live amid squalor and crime. In November 2024, Californians voted loyally for Kamala Harris but also authorized Proposition 47 by an almost 40-point margin. That ballot initiative, the “Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act”, strengthened criminal penalties for low-level offenses.

In New York City, where homelessness is more closely associated with mental illness than drug addiction, Gov. Kathy Hochul has been replenishing the state’s stock of psychiatric hospital beds. Last spring, Hochul and New York’s Democrat-controlled state legislature loosened restrictions on involuntary hospitalization, a policy change some polling indicated New York City residents supported by a 90 to 10 margin.

The anti-ICE movement provides an interesting contrast here. In America, immigration and homelessness are popularly seen as problems stemming from government incompetence. Fixing either will require some measure of popular support for enforcement. That support has weakened recently in the case of immigration. But while far-Left homeless advocates have for years protested against encampment sweeps (“House Keys Not Handcuffs!”), they have not sold their case to the broader public as successfully as anti-ICE campaigners have done.

Believing that police are unnecessary to address homelessness requires heroic faith in the effectiveness of housing programs. But ordinary Americans are aware that billions have been devoted towards housing for homelessness, with disappointing results. And — as anyone who has recently shared a New York subway car with someone with visibly untreated psychosis, or witnessed public drug use on West Coast streets, will know — homelessness is caused by many factors other than just the rent.

Conservative Democrats are generally understood to be a dying breed. But any responsible blue-city leader understands the need to prioritize. So far, most seem to be assuming that they need to tilt Rightward on enforcement if they want to avoid jeopardizing their more cherished Left-wing aims.