For an illustration of how hard it is to uproot insanity in our big blue cities, look no further than the homeless encampment in Minneapolis.

This time, the bad idea didn’t start with the government. On July 9, Hamoudi Sabri announced that a parking lot he owned would be opened to the homeless. Some 20 people moved in within days, and more than twice that many were congregating there by late August, including people loitering by day who were suspected of not being homeless (one reasonably infers that some of these were dealing drugs or otherwise engaged in antisocial or criminal activities). The city sent cleanup crews who were denied access in late August, and after a closely divided 6-4 vote in a closed-door session of the far-left city council, it filed suit, claiming that the lot was a public nuisance due to “drug paraphernalia, solid waste and debris, a lack of clean water or sanitation facilities, open fires, hazardous junk and debris, and unsafe structures at the encampment.”

The suit got entangled in the rancorous mayoral campaign between the city’s arch-liberal mayor, Jacob Frey, and far-left challenger Omar Fateh. Sabri took Fateh’s side: “This lawsuit is not about public health or safety — it is about Frey’s desperate attempt to stay in front of cameras in the midst of his failing Mayoral campaign, this guy stops at nothing in his pathetic, last grasps for power.”

Monday night, things took a darker turn when seven people were shot at the encampment, with two of them having died thus far. Frey finally stepped in after that and closed down the encampment, a step the U.S. Supreme Court had found constitutional under federal law in a June 2024 decision. Sabri remains defiant, vowing to reopen as soon as the police leave, and a judge is delaying decision on a temporary restraining order against Sabri so long as he doesn’t reopen the encampment until the judge can rule.