‘The Time for Inaction Is Over’: Newsom Makes Major Shift on Homelessness, Demanding Immediate Encampment Removals

On par with his recent political shift to the center, Governor Newsom is taking a full-throated approach to the Golden State’s homelessness crisis by calling on hundreds of cities and counties to immediately crack down on encampments on public grounds.On Monday, Mr. Newsom, whose administration has spent $27 billion to provide treatment and housing for the largest homeless population in the nation, called on local officials to implement formal guidelines for clearing encampments.“There’s nothing compassionate about letting people die on the streets,” Mr. Newsom said in a statement announcing the new order. “Local leaders asked for resources — we delivered the largest state investment in history. They asked for legal clarity — the courts delivered. Now, we’re giving them a model they can put to work immediately, with urgency and with humanity, to resolve encampments and connect people to shelter, housing, and care.“The time for inaction is over. There are no more excuses,” he added. Mr. Newsom’s model ordinance, an expansion of his 2024 executive order for clearing encampments, offers localities a how-to guide for prohibiting “persistent camping in one location” and encampments that block free passage on sidewalks, and requires local officials to “provide notice and make every reasonable effort” to find alternative shelter before clearing an encampment.While his administration cannot force municipalities to pass his model ordinance, the announcement formalizes the use of $3.3 billion in state-controlled housing funds to put his plan into place.The governor’s model does not specify consequences facing homeless people for failing to clear out, but it does make it a crime to construct homeless encampments on public property like roadways, parks, and public plazas. It would be up to the municipalities to decide penalties, including arrests and citations for those who violate the ban.The new order echoes increasing frustration with the persistence of homeless encampments across California that proliferated during the Covid pandemic and remain a problem for communities in Southern California, the San Francisco Bay area, and the Central Valley. While Mr. Newsom notes that homelessness has increased 3 percent in the state in 2024, a lower rate than 40 other states, the most populous state in the nation outpaces every state by far with 27.9 percent of the nation’s total homeless population, according to the World Population Review. The failure to find housing for individuals suffering behavioral health issues or unable to find affordable housing has caused a growing disconnect between voters and the state’s elected officials.Nearly 40 percent of Democratic voters in the state recently said that the encampments have become such an issue that they would be in favor of arresting homeless campers if they refused shelter, according to a poll from Politico and the University of California, Berkley, which also showed that policy leaders in the state are weary of addressing the issue of encampments with law-enforcement agencies.“Californians are right to be frustrated,” a veteran Democratic consultant and Mr. Newsom’s former deputy chief of staff, Jason Elliott, told Politico. “If I were a policymaker, I would read this as people expressing frustration that homelessness hasn’t decreased in absolute terms.” Mr. Newsom, who was once a champion of liberal policies, has increasingly tested the Democratic Party’s positions in recent months.In March, he made a sharp break from his party on the issue of transgender people participating in girls’ and women’s sports, saying during an interview with the Turning Point USA founder, Charlie Kirk, that it was fundamentally “unfair.”“It’s deeply unfair. … I totally agree with you,” Mr. Newsom said to Mr. Kirk.

‘The Time for Inaction Is Over’: Newsom Makes Major Shift on Homelessness, Demanding Immediate Encampment Removals

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