Two prominent advocacy groups focused on homelessness has blasted California Gov. Gavin Newsom for blaming city and county governments for exacerbating the state’s elevated homeless population.
Yesterday, Newsom issued a model ordinance for cities and counties to address unhealthy and dangerous encampments.
“There’s nothing compassionate about letting people die on the streets,” said Newsom in a statement. “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.”
However, the AIDS Housing Foundation’s Housing Is A Human Right division and the National Coalition for the Homeless issued a statement that observed how Newsom “has little to nothing to show that he has meaningfully addressed homelessness in California” despite allocating $24 billion in state funding to address the issue. The groups also noted that “state officials under his watch cannot even account for how the $24 billion may have been spent.”
“Governor Newsom signed housing legislation with no mandate for low-income affordable housing, opposed rent control and cozied up to market-rate developers, all of which increased homelessness, and now he wants to lay all the blame on local government,” said Susie Shannon, policy director for Housing is a Human Right. “It is unconscionable to take away the right of people to sit, lay or sleep on public property in California when there are approximately 187,000 people homeless and nowhere for them to live. How many housing bills will Newsom sign this year alone that provide no relief for high rents for working families, children and seniors and no housing for those experiencing homelessness?”
“The solution requires addressing the structural issues. Without having housing in place along with supportive services, this is going in the wrong direction,” added Donald Whitehead, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless. “It only exacerbates homelessness and while we are not promoting encampments, we understand that this is a symptom of California not addressing the structural cause of homelessness, which is a lack of housing for people who are marginalized.”
Photo: Gage Skidmore / Flickr Creative Commons
Anyone that would believe anything he says would be crazy.