Final week Gov. Gavin Newsom donned blue denims and a t-shirt to take part in a well-choreographed cleanup of a squalid encampment in Los Angeles, declaring that homelessness is the “biggest scar on the reputation of California.”
That it’s, and it’s a picture that former President Donald Trump is weaponizing in his presidential duel with a CalifornianVice President Kamala Harris.
Nonetheless, California’s seemingly intractable homelessness disaster can be the largest scar on Newsom’s governorship, one he needs to erase by blaming metropolis and county officers for a lack of evident progress.
Thursday’s media occasion, chronicled by Newsom’s $200,000-a-year private photographerwas clearly aimed toward portraying him as diligently working to unravel the issue, whereas locals drag their toes.
“I’m here on behalf of 40 million Californians who are fed up,” Newsom stated, including, “I’m one in every of them. I wish to see outcomes.
“We have cleared every hurdle,” he stated, referring to a latest Supreme Courtroom determination making it simpler for native officers to clear encampments. “We’re done with excuses.”
For the umpteenth time, Newsom threatened to “redirect” cash the state has been sending to native governments for homelessness applications if he doesn’t see progress.
Nonetheless native officers have stated these threats are the largest obstacle to creating everlasting amenities and companies to maneuver California’s homeless residents — approaching 200,000, by far probably the most of any state — off the streets.
Many of the state cash has been within the type of one-year grants and with out ensures of long-term funding; the mayors and different officers say they can not preserve ongoing applications.
“Now is not the time to play politics when people’s lives are at stake,” Carolyn Coleman, CEO of the League of California Cities, replied in 2022 to one in every of Newsom’s periodic threats. “Failing to release state funding will not put roofs over the heads of Californians or deliver desperately needed supportive services.”
Furthermore, whereas Newsom has talked an excellent recreation about lowering homelessness, his personal administration has been lower than environment friendly.
Earlier this yr, state Auditor Grant Parks sharply criticized Newsom’s Interagency Council on Homelessness, saying that within the three years since a earlier audit discovered the state was not successfully coordinating homelessness efforts, the company nonetheless “has not continued to track and report on this information since that time.”
Clearing encampments, as Newsom and state staff did final week at a state-owned website, is the best side of the disaster. However what occurs to residents when their camps are cleared?
“We gotta be somewhere,” Tré Watson, who lives in a tent in Santa Cruz, instructed CalMatters. Watson stated he and others are working out of choices. “We can’t hover. We come here, they run us away. We go to any park and they run us away. We go to the Pogonip (nature preserve), and they bring bulldozers.”
A state of affairs in Sacramentoonly a few minutes from the Capitol, illustrates that issue.
For the previous two years, about 50 individuals have lived in city-issued trailers parked in a vacant lot dubbed Camp Decision. Nonetheless the lease on the property expired this month and town needs to shut the camp, labeling it “a failed experiment” with unsanitary situations.
Attorneys representing the residents are attempting to dam closure, however a choose refused to intervene. Metropolis officers say camp residents have rebuffed efforts to be moved to different websites or into housing.
It’s just about sure that encampments of some type will nonetheless be very seen when Newsom’s governorship ends 29 months therefore. Will they proceed to be a part of his legacy, or by then will he have shifted the onus onto others?
