No amount of deterrent is going to remove the motivation of petty thieves. Give them better means to live a dignified existence without resorting to crime and the problem disappears. Such solutions implicitly demand rethinking housing policy, social welfare and jobs programs. A couple other equally effective, on paper, solutions would be imprisonment and slavery of petty thieves, or murdering them (capital punishment, near genocide, crime against humanity). It's important to consider the privilege, assets, and what people stand to gain or lose when considering solutions. I've got no dog in the fight over problems in California. What's clear is that these problems are systemic and demand a federal solution. The people responsible to enact a federal solution are beholden to the people who stand to lose the most if these systemic issues of housing, healthcare, income, and the like are solved. Tech workers have more in common with the homeless people they step over to get to work than the f500 CEOs telling paying Congress to stall and distract. Bridging this class divide and building solidarity with people we've been taught to think ourselves better than is a foundational step in building the grassroots needed to force change.