A weekend topic starting with the Washington Post. "The first share of $80 million that D.C. officials expect to reap from multistate opioid settlements has landed in District coffers, critical support for stemming an epidemic that claims more lives annually here than gun violence. Only West Virginia has a higher rate of fatal opioid overdoses than D.C. The Bowser administration’s strategy is rooted in a plan called Live.Long.DC. that launched in late 2018 with a goal to reduce opioid use and overdoses by 50 percent by 2020. Numbers have risen dramatically since then, prompting members of the D.C. Council and advocates to clamor for more action, even as they have applauded the administration’s embrace of harm reduction with the widespread distribution of the overdose antidote naloxone and fentanyl test strips, including in free vending machines."

The Boston Globe. "Millions of dollars from settlements with the opioid industry are flowing to cities and towns throughout Massachusetts, leaving municipalities with a welcome challenge: how to spend it. Local officials are holding public meetings to solicit ideas and considering new investments in such solutions as mobile crisis response teams, transitional housing, and improved access to medications that treat addiction. The windfall offers hope that Massachusetts may finally be able to ease the toll of the overdose crisis, which last year killed more people in the state than ever before. Mayor Nicole LaChapelle of Easthampton called the planning process 'luxurious' because the money will keep flowing for 17 years. 'When in municipal government do you actually get to plan for something that isn’t a basic government service so many years out?' she said."

"In the wake of Boston Mayor Michelle Wu sounding the alarm about deteriorating safety in the area of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard, various officials are calling for a change in strategy. Tania Del Rio, director of the team appointed by Wu to coordinate the city’s response to the various issues plaguing Mass. and Cass, said 'More weapons have been found there in recent weeks by police and cleaning crews.' Del Rio told the Globe that many of the people engaging in criminal activity at Mass. and Cass have housing, but travel to the area during the day. Along the same lines, Wu said that most of the people who gather there during the day have housing, whether temporary or permanent, but come to the area to engage in its open-air drug market."

WPIX New York City. "In response to the growing migrant crisis, the City of New York is officially commandeering popular park recreation centers. At least two have been partially taken over both at Sunset Park and McCarran Park in Williamsburg. Officials are warning these may be the first not the last. 'Everything is on the table right now,' said Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom. 'Since we’ve been looking at sites, I think we’ve looked at 3,000 sites, some are appropriate, some are not appropriate. Never in our wildest dreams did we think we’d be here a year later with 100,000 people and no end in sight.'"

CBS Colorado. "A homeless encampment in downtown Denver is now cleared up amid health concerns raised under Mayor Mike Johnston's administration. Earlier this week, CBS News Colorado visited 22nd and Stout Streets where dead and living rats, trash and empty Narcan were piling up against the rocks there. 'That was really bad. I used to spray every day, like bleach and stuff,' said James Lee Lewis II."

The Kitsap Sun in Washington. "Some of my neighbors live in tents. That doesn't make them any less my neighbors. My husband and I live on Warren Avenue in Bremerton, and run a small business on Pacific Avenue. Between them, just a few blocks' walk from either one, lies the tent village on MLK Way. Observing the encampment at close hand on a daily basis. We see human beings like ourselves, neighbors sitting together on scavenged armchairs enjoying the sun, or huddling together around a propane fire in winter. We donate products from our store to Food Not Bombs, one of the groups that provides supper twice a week to the village."

"At the August 2 Bremerton city council meeting, one woman commented that camping in the city is 'completely dystopian' and should be banned. I don't think she understands the meaning of 'dystopian.' If you look it up, you know the word refers to 'a very bad or unfair society in which there is a lot of suffering, especially an imaginary society in the future, after something terrible has happened.' In this dystopian present, something terrible has indeed happened: virtually every city in this country, perhaps in the world, has a large population of people who cannot afford housing."

The Spokesman Review in Washington. "'Burn Spokane Down' graffiti showed up downtown prior to five human-caused fires, including four that were 'purposefully set,' igniting Thursday on the west side of the city, fire officials said at a news conference Friday. One message read, 'Burn Spokane Down 8/3/23 — $900 million, We Not Housed, Burn Spokane.'"

The Los Angeles Times. "It was a ballot initiative born out of a lack of hope from advocates that Sacramento would ever fund the public mental health system. Proposition 63, passed by voters in 2004, created California's 'millionaires' tax,' a 1% income tax on the state's wealthiest, sent directly into the county coffers to spend on their mental health systems. In almost 20 years, the tax has brought in an estimated $26 billion, more than double of what lawmakers ever thought possible. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who advocates agree has focused more on mental health than prior governors, says it’s time to 'modernize' how that money is spent — namely taking 30% of it, or about $1 billion a year, to spend only on housing for those with serious mental illnesses, substance use disorders or both."

Newsweek on California. "Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was booed during a meeting on Thursday about housing the homeless in the city. Locals appeared furious following the announcement by Councilwoman Katy Yaroslavsky, who represents LA City Council District 5, of her new plan for an interim housing project on LA's Westside. The number of homeless people in LA has more than doubled in the past decade. The proposal was met with anger from some locals after an existing facility that houses the homeless in North Hollywood had been criticized by residents. One told Fox11 News that 'there's always someone fighting, screaming, and yelling' around the facility and that people were even stabbed and shot."

KBSW in California. "A new homeless survey is shining a light on some positives and negatives regarding the homeless population in Santa Cruz County. Shannon Waldman is among the homeless, living in a tiny home on Coral Street at the Housing Matters facility. 'People did it during COVID so how come it can't be done now,' Waldman said. 'With all the money that's been sent from the federal government I simply do not understand why we're not all housed everybody who wants to be housed should be by now.' One explanation is the COVID-19 money dried up so the focus turns back to building more permanent homeless housing."

San Jose Spotlight in California. "When it comes to drug use and dealing, San Jose is no San Francisco—though some residents and leaders are projecting that it’s heading that way. Although there are some reported instances of public drug use, that is not nearly enough to inflate the problem to San Francisco levels, said Keith Humphreys, a psychiatry professor at Stanford University and former senior drug policy adviser for former President Barack Obama’s administration. 'If somebody is intoxicated on the street and they don’t have a residence, that doesn’t necessarily mean there’s any open air dealing. It could just be they don’t have anywhere else to go,' Humphreys told San José Spotlight."

"Lighthouse Ministries Pastor Ralph Olmos, who runs a food pantry for unhoused residents in San Jose, is a recovering methamphetamine addict who works closely with that population. He said using language like ‘open air drug markets’ and ‘increased enforcement’ is code for criminalizing more homeless residents who suffer from drug addiction. He said most people buy and sell drugs at encampments or from homes and that the process is very covert—always moving because encampments are often swept."

"'You could say it’s gotten worse because the cartels are a big part of what’s happening with the unhoused,' Olmos said. 'They’re taking advantage of that situation because they can move drugs easily through the creeks and encampments.'"

The Financial Post. "Canada’s new immigration minister said he is open to 'having a conversation' on concerns raised by some economists and groups on rising immigration targets amid a housing shortage, but said he still has no plans to lower them in the near future. Immigration Minister Marc Miller is expected to announce Canada’s annual immigration plan later this year, which provides details on the number and categories of newcomers the country will welcome in the next three years. As per the current plan, the country aims to invite 465,000 permanent residents in 2023, 485,000 in 2024 and 500,000 in 2025."

"'Honestly, looking at the numbers and knowing what I know and the needs that exist in Canada, I don’t see a world in which we decrease it currently,' Miller said. The minister said cutting down targets in any one category would mean making some 'really difficult' choices. 'Do you want to reduce the number of skilled workers? Do you want to (turn) your back on people that are fleeing war? No,' Miller said."

The Canadian Press. "The Ethiopian Association in the Greater Toronto Area was not set up to provide shelter support, but the head of the organization said that when dozens of asylum seekers began showing up at its door seeking help, it had to adjust. Meserat Demeke said that between late May and mid-June, at least 200 Ethiopian migrants approached the organization’s office in Toronto’s east end, saying they needed help accessing food and somewhere to sleep. 'I think we picked up about 40 people that day,' Demeke told The Canadian Press, recalling the day of May 25, when the association began assisting unhoused Ethiopian migrants in Toronto."

"The following day, as word spread that the association was helping refugee claimants find shelter, more people began turning up at its door. At the same press conference, Pastor Eddie Jjumba of Dominion Church International Toronto, said his congregation had sheltered as many as 250 people in a building across the street. 'But it’s not a solution,' Jjumba said. 'It’s a band aid.'"

From Foreign Affairs. "As 2022 came to an end, hopes were rising that China’s economy—and, consequently, the global economy—was poised for a surge. After three years of stringent restrictions on movement, mandatory mass testing, and interminable lockdowns, the Chinese government had suddenly decided to abandon its 'zero COVID' policy. But by the end of the second quarter, the latest GDP data told a very different story: overall growth was weak and seemingly set on a downward trend. Wary foreign investors and cash-strapped local governments in China chose not to pick up on the initial momentum."

"What has become clear is that the first quarter of 2020, which saw the onset of COVID, was a point of no return for Chinese economic behavior, which began shifting in 2015, when the state extended its control. Financial markets, and probably even the Chinese government itself, have overlooked the severity of these weaknesses, which will likely drag down growth for several years. The condition is systemic, and the only reliable cure—credibly assuring ordinary Chinese people and companies that there are limits on the government’s intrusion into economic life—cannot be delivered."

"China’s development of economic long COVID should be recognized for what it is: the result of President Xi Jinping’s extreme response to the pandemic, which has spurred a dynamic that beset other authoritarian countries but that China previously avoided in the post–Mao Zedong era. The government’s response to the pandemic was another matter entirely. It made visible and tangible the CCP’s arbitrary power over everyone’s commercial activities, including those of the smallest players. With a few hours’ warning, a neighborhood or entire city could be shut down indefinitely, retail businesses closed with no recourse, residents trapped in housing blocks, their lives and livelihoods put on hold."

"All major economies went through some version of a lockdown early in the pandemic, but none experienced anything nearly as abrupt, severe, and unrelenting as China’s anti-pandemic measures. Zero COVID was as unsparing as it was arbitrary in its local application, which appeared to follow only the whims of party officials."

"What remains today is widespread fear not seen since the days of Mao—fear of losing one’s property or livelihood, whether temporarily or forever, without warning and without appeal. This is the story told by some expatriates, and it is in keeping with the economic data. Zero COVID was a response to extraordinary circumstances, and many Chinese believe Xi’s assertion that it saved more lives than the West’s approach would have. Yet the memories of how relentlessly local officials implemented the strategy remain fresh and undiluted."

"Some say the CCP’s decision to abandon zero COVID in late 2022 following a wave of public protest indicated at least some basic, if belated, regard for popular opinion. Yet the same could not be said for ordinary Chinese people, at least in their economic lives. A month before the sudden end of zero COVID, senior party officials told the domestic public to expect a gradual rollback of pandemic restrictions; what followed a few weeks later was an abrupt and total reversal. The sudden U-turn only reinforced the sense among Chinese people that their jobs, businesses, and everyday routines remain at the mercy of the party and its whims."

"Of course, many other factors were at play in the immense, complex Chinese economy throughout this period. Business failures and delinquent loans resulted from a real estate bubble that burst in August 2021, and remain a persistent drag on growth and continue to limit local government funding."