IN SUMMARY
Consultants predict funding cuts and coverage adjustments, however Trump and Newsom seem to agree on encampment raids.
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When President-elect Donald Trump strikes into the White Home in January, he’ll develop into a key determine in California’s homelessness disaster, controlling federal cash and setting nationwide coverage.
So what’s going to this shift in energy imply for the state because it makes an attempt to maneuver its virtually 186,000 homeless residents—the most important quantity within the nation—to closed homes?
Consultants on housing and homeless providers in California are involved that the Trump administration will reduce federal funding in these areas, whereas eliminating insurance policies thought-about too “progressive.”
However surprisingly, primarily based on what he has mentioned to date on one of many key points associated to homelessness, Trump’s agenda isn’t a lot totally different from that of Governor Gavin Newsom. Trump promised to deal with encampments which have made cities “unlivable” by working with states to ban city encampments and arrest those that do not comply, one thing many California cities started doing earlier than Election Day as Newsom inspired them to vacate the camps.
“Homeless people do not have the right to turn every park and sidewalk into a place to sit and do drugs,” Trump mentioned in a marketing campaign video posted on-line in April 2023. The video seems to be the final time he revealed particular coverage intentions for homeless folks.
“There is nothing compassionate about letting these people live in filth and squalor instead of giving them the help they need,” Trump mentioned.
Newsom, who by most accounts is certainly one of Trump’s greatest enemies, has mentioned virtually precisely the identical factor.
“There is no compassion in allowing people to suffer the indignity of living in a camp for years and years,” Newsom mentioned in September earlier than signal a bundle of housing payments. In July, Newsom ordered He known as on state businesses to step up raids on the encampments and threatened to withhold state funding from cities that didn’t do the identical.
Greater than two dozen California cities and counties have already launched or handed new ordinances to finish the camps (or have up to date current ones to make them extra punitive), after the Supreme Court docket of Justice gave them the inexperienced gentle to do it in June.
Trump additionally mentioned he would transfer homeless folks to tent cities with medical doctors and social staff.
That plan alarmed Alex Visotzky, senior California coverage researcher for the Nationwide Alliance to Finish Homelessness.
“We must remember that involuntary incarceration methods do not work and only delay our efforts to end homelessness,” he mentioned.
If Trump pushes these insurance policies nationally, particularly if he gives federal funding for raids and tent cities, it might immediate California cities to take more durable measures, Visotzky mentioned.
“Homeless people do not have the right to turn every park and sidewalk into a place to sit in the shade 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 businesses just like the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, there is a good probability that insurance policies California has come to depend on might be scrapped within the path, mentioned Sharon Rapport, California state coverage director for the Company for Supportive Housing. The brand new guard will probably get rid of a minimum of some insurance policies thought-about the gold customary in California, akin to “housing first,” which says homeless folks, even these fighting dependancy or psychological well being, are It should supply housing with out circumstances, after which providers to assist them get again on their toes.
It is also a very good guess that California would see large cuts in funding for federal housing and homeless packages, together with the voucher program that subsidizes the rents of tons of of hundreds of Californians, Rapport mentioned.
That is regarding for organizations like Abode, which gives housing and different providers to homeless Californians in seven counties.
“Federal funding makes up the majority of what we receive, either directly or through other entities, so it could have a big impact if there were a significant reduction,” mentioned CEO Vivian Wan. “It will just affect all of our communities.”
This text was initially revealed in English by CalMatters.
