The city’s negligence on public encampments has yielded tragic results. Almost 800 homeless people died in Phoenix’s Maricopa County last year, more than 40 percent more than in 2021. A recent New York Times story described how a local sandwich shop had to deal with outdoor defecation, public masturbation and sex, fires that incinerated trees, and methamphetamine use around the establishment.

Local residents and businesses had brought a case against Phoenix, claiming that the Zone was a “public nuisance” that the city must clean up. Given the piles of trash, needles, tents, human waste, bodies, and the city’s habit of turning a blind eye to them, Arizona State Judge Scott Blaney found it easy to declare that officials had tolerated a situation that, in the words of state public-nuisance law, “interferes with the comfortable enjoyment of life or property by an entire community or neighborhood.” If the Zone didn’t qualify as a nuisance under these terms, it’s hard to know what would.