Gavin Newsom’s Homeless Dilemma is of His Own Doing

Governor Hair Gel is now taking a hard line on homeless encampments, shifting blame onto local officials and agencies for action he refused to take for years. Yes, he's running for president in 2028.

Nice photo op. Where were you over the last five years?

Gavin Newsom’s latest demand for action on the homeless crisis he exacerbated is nothing more than a stunt to shift blame for his incompetence onto local officials. He’s well into his second term as governor of California and has reigned over a shameful human disaster that has grown by nearly 40 percent during his five-plus years in office.

California is home to 49 percent of all unsheltered in the U.S., making the Golden State the national epicenter of the homeless crisis. In 2023, more than 300,000 people accessed homeless services through California state and local agencies.

California’s breathtakingly high cost of living and its high unemployment rate are a double shot to the gut, putting locals in a precarious financial position that sometimes leads to losing one’s home and, with nowhere to go, one can easily end up sleeping on a sidewalk. Mental health disorders and addiction play a part but are typically the result of homelessness and not always the outright cause.

A COVID-era statewide eviction moratorium, extended twice during 2021 and signed into law in 2023 by Newsom, has eliminated much of the incentive for developers to build affordable housing. It also has worked to encourage existing landlords to convert rental units to condominiums, forcing renters to seek housing elsewhere. Those who can afford higher rent will make the move; others who cannot afford it either move out of the state or wind up on the streets.

The Homeless-Industrial Complex

Newsom not only helped to create this crisis through irresponsible executive orders and bait-and-switch legislation, he has created a multi-billion-dollar slush fund that in reality does nothing but expand California’s administrative state. Newsom and California Democrats allocated $24 billion in the last five years of Newsom's term as Governor for homeless services and housing, and recently passed a $6.4 billion bond measure that is intended to fund 6,800 beds in mental health and addiction facilities plus 4,230 new homes for those on the street. With all of this massive spending one would assume that California would be showing positive progress over the plight of homelessness.

No, the problem is getting worse. California’s homeless population grows nearly ten percent per year no matter how much is spent. That’s because all of this spending is not intended to get people off the street, but to make them more comfortable and allow them to continue living in squalor in a haze of booze, drugs, and mental illness. So what exactly is being done and how is the money being spent?

A recent federal audit found California has failed to analyze the effectiveness of its dozens of homeless programs and is not keeping track of the huge spending of taxpayer dollars. In particular, California’s share of the federal Emergency Solutions Grant program in 2020 was $319.5 million, and nobody knows where the money went. A second, more comprehensive federal audit will be performed some time in 2025. Yes, it takes the federal government to step in and find out how California has made a hot mess of its homeless programs.

Under Gavin Newsom, California has consistently taken the stance that homelessness in the state is a condition to be managed, not solved. A permanent new bureaucracy has sprung up in California to provide “services and resources” to the homeless, and the bureaucracy is not going anywhere. Solving the homeless crisis isn’t the goal here. Supporting the thousands of bureaucrats and billions of dollars of annual spending is the goal.

Presidential Candidate Newsom

But the homeless crisis in California has created a public relations problem for Newsom. While supporting tent cities and rampant crime and drug use on the streets seems to play well in California big cities, it doesn’t in most other states. Running for president means Newsom must position himself closer to the political center to capture the votes of moderates. Enter Newsom 2.0, where his “tough on homelessness” stance is set to begin in earnest.

The timing of this move is completely intentional. We not only have a presidential election in 2028, we have the summer Olympic games in Los Angeles. A lot needs to happen to make the Olympics a success, from finishing the ambitious people mover from LAX, to readying new and existing venues for Olympic competition. And cleaning up the streets of homeless encampments is on the agenda as well.

As a guaranteed Democrat candidate for president in 2028, Newsom has to deal with his California record on homelessness along with a host of other economic and social issues. The homeless issue is probably the easiest one to tackle first – it merely requires Newsom to act tough with local agencies, threaten to cut funding, and demand action that he should have taken years ago.

Don’t Go Away Mad, Just Go Away

One might ask “Where are the homeless to go?” It is likely that Newsom will stuff the homeless in hotel rooms across Southern California, forcing them off of the streets and temporarily out of the sight of the world. Or perhaps he might take the example of Oakland, where a proposal was made in 2019 to put 1,000 homeless souls on a cruise ship in the city’s port. The Oakland idea when nowhere, however it proves the attitude of California leaders that the homeless are an issue to be managed and not solved.

Maybe the homeless are to be herded into “sanctioned encampments,” where people can sleep in tents on a fenced-in, vacant lot that is equipped with portable toilets, showers, and other amenities. This, of course, doesn’t solve anything except to push the homeless out of the sight of those who claim to “empathize” with their plight.

That includes Gavin Newsom, who has not taken any meaningful action to humanely deal with homelessness in California. He has made matters worse and it will be difficult to square this circle on the national stage as a presidential candidate.

But hey, if Democrats think they can run Joe Biden’s VP as a serious presidential candidate with her undistinguished record, they’ll have no problem supporting Newsom and his transparently political pivot on the homeless crisis he made worse under his management. If you’re a Democrat in California, you fail upwards.