California's homelessness crisis: The irony, the hypocrisy and Newsom's appalling lack of leadership
You can look no further than the mayhem on the streets of Santa Monica or Venice to know Gov. Newsom and California’s response to the homeless crisis has been a disaster.
San Francisco just concluded hosting the APEC conference where President Biden sat down with President Xi Jinping of China. Anticipating the tsunami of journalists and media from around the world to this important event, city government pulled out all the stops to clean the streets of its famous/infamous filth left by its staggering homeless population.
Even California’s famously liberal newspapers panned the hypocrisy of this cleanup, expressing the generalized opinion that our mismanaged cities can clean up the problem when the motivation is there to show the world, but they can barely lift a finger to do it for the beleaguered citizens who have to put up with it daily.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s response to the hypocrisy label? "It’s true."
This is on top of the news that the director of LA’s homeless service organization announced he had to leave California due to unaffordability – a situation Newsom makes worse every day.
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You can look no further than the mayhem on the streets of Santa Monica or Venice to know Newsom and the state’s response to the homeless crisis has been a disaster. The homeless are not the only victims of Sacramento’s failure. Residents and business owners have suffered, too.
In April 2020, Newsom announced a new initiative called Project Roomkey, which forced homeless individuals into 10,974 hotel and motel rooms and 1,133 trailers. Sacramento mandated these private businesses, most of them already under tremendous duress from the pandemic’s impact on travel and tourism, swap potential paying customers for people who exhibit high rates of drug use, mental health issues, and often have zero income.
Let’s examine how the plan panned out.
Predictably, it flopped. LA Magazine reported in September 2020 that L.A. had only reached one-quarter of its 15,000-room goal. There were widespread reports of theft, sexual violence and hotel employees at their wits’ end.
Things were even worse at the historic Capitol Park Hotel in downtown Sacramento. "The conditions in that hotel have been horrific. We’re talking one elevator. At times there’ve been two toilets for 118 people," Sacramento Homeless Union president Crystal Sanchez told Fox News in a September 2020 interview.
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"The cost of what they’re trying to charge is completely outrageous. It’s a shame how much money is going into the Capitol Park Hotel renovation project, more than $58 million, to only house 134 homeless people. We could do so much better with the amount of money that they’re facilitating for this to turn into housing. It’s going to cost a lot more to just renovate versus just starting over."
In response, Newsom doubled down. In September 2020, the governor announced another $62 million in grants for counties to help them transition more people into permanent housing, including $35 million to pay for rental subsidies. Once again, he shoveled taxpayer money into a doomed program.
Guess who benefited? No surprise: it was the cronies running the system.
In December 2020, The Real Deal, an L.A.-based real estate publication, broke the news that a hotel in Downtown L.A. was receiving Project Roomkey funding. The hotel’s owner, Shenzhen New World Group, was implicated in an elaborate pay-to-play scandal involving former L.A. City Councilmember Jose Huizar. Shenzhen New World and its chairman, Wei Huang, were indicted on Nov. 30 on racketeering charges.
Cronies are still benefiting. As recently as June 2023, cities are still using Project Roomkey funding to purchase motels at outrageous prices. The city of Chula Vista, near where I live, is doing that same thing as this is written. No funding for organizations that provide services, because they are mostly religion based, but plenty of money to buy motels at prices their owners love.
Here we see the same old story. Large government programs that sound good on paper offer little real-world viability. Our politicians prefer ideas generated within the swamp of Sacramento instead of forging practical solutions. I guarantee you that a team of builders, architects and developers would be a thousand times more adept at solving these issues than lobbyists in their $5,000 suits.
There are examples for California to emulate.
Florida has halved its total homeless population in the last decade. In just 10 years, the number of homeless families decreased from 6,333 to 1,687. Florida posted the second-largest one-year homelessness decline in 2020: 3%.
The Miami-Dade County metropolitan area now has a homeless population of less than 1,000. California reported the largest one-year gain of any state: 6.8%. Los Angeles County’s homeless count stands at 63,706.
Florida has used a tough-love approach. Urban centers like Miami are clearing out homeless encampments. At the same time, they are partnering with various community organizations to house those living on the streets.
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Take a drive through the streets of Miami today and you will not see a single homeless person. It’s a far cry from the multitude of tent cities we see daily in every California city.
Newsom should follow Florida’s lead and fix our homeless problem.
As I detail in my book, "The Newsom Nightmare," we can end homelessness. With ample public and private resources at our disposal, our citizens should not have to worry about having roofs over their heads.
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We must make housing more affordable and provide the necessary health care to those in need. The key is affordable housing, which is the product of lower building costs. We need faster approvals, fewer mandates, less litigation and lower impact fees.
Homelessness has always been a tough challenge. But smart thinking and common sense, and a no-nonsense attitude such as the one Florida took in cracking down on homelessness, light the way forward.