In abstract
Consultants predict funding cuts and coverage modifications. However Trump and Newsom seem to agree on encampment sweeps.
When President-elect Donald Trump strikes into the White Home in January, he’ll turn out to be a key determine in California’s homelessness disaster, holding the federal purse strings and setting coverage on the nationwide stage..
So what’s going to this modification of energy imply for the state because it tries to maneuver its almost 186,000 homeless residents — essentially the most within the nation — indoors?
Housing and homeless companies consultants in California fear the Trump administration will reduce federal funding in these areas, whereas additionally putting off insurance policies deemed too “progressive.”
However surprisingly, based mostly on what he’s stated up to now about one of many key points relating to homelessness, Trump’s agenda isn’t a lot completely different from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s. Trump pledged to deal with the encampments which have made cities “unlivable” by working with states to ban city tenting and arrest those that don’t comply — one thing many cities in California began doing earlier than Election Day, as Newsom inspired them to clear camps.
“The homeless have no right to turn every park and sidewalk into a place for them to squat and do drugs,” Trump stated in a marketing campaign video posted on-line in April, 2023. The video seems to be the final time he revealed particular homelessness coverage intentions.
“There is nothing compassionate about letting these individuals live in filth and squalor rather than getting them the help that they need,” Trump stated.
Newsom, who in most different arenas is certainly one of Trump’s largest foes, has stated almost the very same factor.
“There is no compassion in allowing people to suffer the indignity of living in a camp for years and years,” Newsom stated in September earlier than signing a package deal of housing payments. In July, Newsom ordered state companies to ramp up encampment sweeps, and he threatened to withhold state funding from cities that fail to do the identical.
Greater than two-dozen California cities and counties have already got launched or handed new ordinances cracking down on camps (or up to date current ones to make them extra punitive), after the Supreme Court docket gave them the inexperienced mild to take action in June.
Trump additionally stated he would transfer unhoused individuals to tent cities staffed with docs and social staff.
That plan alarmed Alex Visotzky, senior California coverage fellow for the Nationwide Alliance to Finish Homelessness.
“We need to remember that involuntary carceral approaches don’t work and just delay our efforts to end homelessness,” he stated.
If Trump pushes these insurance policies on the nationwide stage, particularly if he gives federal funding for sweeps and tent cities, it might spur California cities to additional crack down, Visotzky stated.
“The homeless have no right to turn every park and sidewalk into a place for them to squat and do drugs.”
president elect donald trump in a marketing campaign video, 2023
Because the Trump administration will get to work changing the heads of federal companies such because the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, there’s likelihood insurance policies California has come to depend on will get tossed out alongside the best way, stated Sharon Rapport, director of California state coverage for the Company for Supportive Housing. The brand new guard probably will scrap a minimum of some insurance policies seen because the gold customary in California, resembling “housing first,” which says unhoused individuals, even these battling an dependancy or their psychological well being, ought to be provided housing with no strings hooked up, after which companies to assist them recuperate.
It’s additionally guess California would see massive cuts to funding for federal housing and homelessness applications — together with the voucher program that subsidizes rents for tons of of 1000’s of Californians, Rapport stated.
That’s worrying for organizations resembling Abode, which supplies housing and different companies for homeless Californians in seven counties.
“Federal funding is the brunt of what we receive either directly or through other entities, so it could be really impactful if there’s a huge reduction,” stated CEO Vivian Wan. “It’s just going to hurt all of our communities.”
