The New Favelas

A West Coast experiment with sanctioned homeless encampments has proved disastrous—and Covid-19 might make it even worse.

Progressives routinely denounce economic inequality, yet the nation’s most liberal cities offer the most dramatic illustrations of it, with tech-driven wealth at the top and addiction-driven homelessness at the bottom. In the past five years, some streets in Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco, and Seattle have started to resemble Latin American favelas, o…