August 10, 2024 - 5:03pm
On Thursday, California Governor Gavin Newsom, accompanied by television cameras and wearing plastic gloves, personally assisted state workers in cleaning up a homeless encampment beneath a busy freeway in the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles. This visit follows Newsom’s recent executive order, issued just two weeks prior, which directs state agencies to clear homeless encampments on state-owned property and encourages local governments to adopt similar measures.
Newsom expressed frustration over California’s $24 billion in homelessness spending and its failure to achieve significant results. However, his executive order does not allocate new funding, rendering it essentially voluntary for local governments.
The Governor’s actions are influenced by a recent US Supreme Court ruling that grants cities increased authority to arrest, cite, and fine individuals sleeping in public spaces. This ruling effectively overturns six years of legal protections for the homeless in California and other western states. In the 6-3 decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson, the Court upheld an Oregon city’s ordinance banning camping on public property, contrary to a previous Ninth Circuit ruling. This decision allows cities to impose penalties on unhoused individuals in the absence of alternative housing, significantly impacting homelessness management in California. Newsom, who had supported the ruling through an amicus brief, praised it for clarifying legal ambiguities that had constrained local officials.
As a potential future presidential candidate, Newsom faces substantial criticism over California’s severe homelessness crisis. The state, while home to only 12% of the US population, accounts for more than 180,000 homeless individuals — nearly 30% of the national homeless population. This is largely attributed to its temperate year-round climate, which makes it easy to sleep outdoors, and Proposition 47, a statewide initiative which decriminalised personal drug use of methamphetamine and heroin. Newsom’s recent push to take a tougher stance on homeless encampments, following five years of perceived inaction, has made many in California furious.
His executive order has been met with mixed reactions. San Francisco Mayor London Breed, who is facing a tough re-election in November, has been quick to act. Citing an exhausted shelter system, Breed issued an executive order directing city workers to offer homeless people bus tickets out of town before providing housing or shelter services. Homeless advocates have criticised her actions, stating that it will just spread the problem to other cities. They may be right, but the problem hasn’t left the Golden State: Los Angeles, Sacramento and Humboldt were the top three destinations for homeless people travelling within California.
In Los Angeles, Newsom’s order has met resistance. Supervisor Lindsay Horvath, who has condemned the Supreme Court ruling as “unconscionable”, asserted that Los Angeles County is already fully engaged in its homelessness response. Mayor Karen Bass criticised the order, arguing that removing makeshift shelters would criminalise the homeless without effectively addressing the crisis. Los Angeles is home to the highest number of unhoused individuals, with 75,312 in the County, including 45,252 in the City. None of the five County Supervisors, nor the Mayor of Los Angeles will face a re-election this November, which may be the reason they are unwilling to act.
Overall, in a state where billions have been poured into “solving homelessness”, all eyes will be on whether Newsom will finally address the problem. California residents, especially those in Los Angeles, should not hold their breath.
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SubscribeFirst, he ruined San Francisco. Then it was the state of California. Naturally, he wants to do likewise for the country. Delusions of mediocrity dance in Gavin’s pointed little head. His policies have done more to increase homelessness than reduce it, as if that was the goal. In whose pockets did all that money go?
24b in state employees that vote progressive. I’m not sure where the crisis is.
Ship of Fools
Why do crappy politicians have to pretend they’re doing actual work by putting on work gloves and picking up a piece of paper?
It’s the bizarre idea of performance they have all over the world. No one believes them but they keep doing it: cuddling up to kids in school, manly handshakes at the factory, digging a hole for new development. And this is something their advisors said was a good idea.
From the picture, doesn’t look like he’s wearing gloves so, could it be a first and thant actually good ol Gav did get his hands dirty? May be he saved the gloves to count the 24Bn…
24 Billion would have built mega affordable housing developments. Wonder where the money went.
You can’t “solve” homelessness. Homelessness would solve itself, for free, if homes would be affordable. Homes would become affordable if building them were affordable. Building them would become affordable if A: zoning laws were significantly loosened and B: construction regulations were significantly eased. Zoning laws will be defended by those who live in already zoned neighborhoods and regulations will be defended by those whose livelihood is regulating things. Homelessness will continue, with the regulators and the people who keep voting them into office wasting more billions on “solving” it.
Every dollar put into homeless results in more homeless. They are drug-addicted bums. What is needed, badly, is consequences. It’s easy and fun to be homeless. We need to make it hard, dangerous, and unpleasant. No free food. No free needles. Beat the crap out of the homeless.
Good grief! What kind of a person are you?
Perhaps he’s someone with compassion for the little kids whose parks and streets have been taken over by drug addicts & criminals; mums and dads whose toddlers have to navigate used needles & human faeces; hard-working immigrants and the poorest of the poor who, despite being law-abiding and trying their best to better themselves, have to share their space with people who are high and possibly dangerous all day and night.
Compassion doesn’t have to flow in the most obvious direction only to make one a ‘good person’.
You can bus people out of an area without beating the crap of them 😉
I’m with you. I just get tired of the pearl-clutching, ‘virtue’-signalling morality police… Especially since so many of them are absolutely fine with Jewish women being sexually tortured to death. I find myself asking what kind of people are _they_?
Not sure why you are being downvoted by this. There have been some really interesting reads on the homeless situation lately, and the bottom line is, when the average house costs 800k in an area, and about 20 years ago it was 200k, it really throws a wrench in the spokes.
Some people are willfully homeless. They either have severe mental health issues and nobody to care for them, or they just don’t want to work a square job and join the rat race or whatever. Can’t force people to work in this country. But what you can do, is offer affordable places for people to live.
There are tons of drug addicts and losers all over the country. But in rural Ohio, for example, you can rent a shack with a couple buddies for like 400/mo. The problem does, at least to the extent that it can, solve itself.
In Southern California, people are living out of cars and RV’s and working regular jobs. Showering at gyms, washing clothes at laundromats, etc. Some might prefer this, but I bet if they could rent a studio for less than 2000/mo, you might see less of those on the streets.
What happened with the up and down votes? They seem to slowly dwindle to 1s and 0s here as the days go on.