California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s failure to fix his state’s homelessness crisis is undeniable, although he made it one of his primary goals upon taking office.
Newsom stated in his January 2019 inaugural address, “We will launch a Marshall Plan for affordable housing and lift up the fight against homelessness from a local matter to a statewide mission.” How has that worked out? He’s spent anywhere from $24 billion to $37 billion on “solving homelessness” — that’s at least $170,000 per homeless person in California — and the state has gained 30,000 more homeless people, bringing the total to 187,000, a 24% increase since 2019. Lee Ohanian of the Hoover Institution notes that if you gave those 187,000 people their own city, it would be the 137th largest in the country, about the same size as Akron, Ohio.
Because 86% of Californians, according to recent polling, believe homelessness in the state is staying the same or getting worse, it has become one of the defining issues in the gubernatorial race to replace Newsom. The six top-polling candidates faced off in a debate in San Francisco on Wednesday night, and their answers on the homelessness crisis made clear that only the two GOP candidates, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and Donald Trump-endorsed Steve Hilton, are capable of solving the problem. The Democrats, meanwhile, in the first debate since former Rep. Eric Swalwell dropped out of the race, gave answers that ignored the massive fraud in the state’s homeless system and doubled down on Newsom's failing policies.
Related: The Fraud Newsom Doesn’t Want You to Know About
Former Rep. Katie Porter, who gives Newsom an A- for overall job performance, gave him a solid B on the issue of homelessness, even though she called herself a "notoriously tough grader." In what looked more like grade inflation at an over-priced Ivy League university, Porter credited the governor for effort, saying: "I don't think this has been an easy problem to solve, but I do give him a lot of credit for calling attention to the problem. When he campaigned eight years ago he was talking about housing when nobody else was."
Ohanian points out that this "Housing First" policy has been a huge failure:
Another problem is that the principles of harm reduction and Housing First underlie California’s homelessness policies. Harm reduction means that society should accept that some individuals will use drugs, respect people who use drugs, and support social interventions that will reduce the harm that may arise from drug use and its stigma. Housing First means that the first order of business in dealing with homelessness is providing permanent supportive housing.
These visions of dealing with homelessness mean that California doesn’t require those receiving housing to be sober, nor to receive any type of treatment for mental health or substance abuse issues. This approach implicitly incentivizes the continued use of drugs and alcohol and avoidance of mental health treatment. About 75% of chronically homeless individuals are dealing with substance abuse, severe mental illness, or both, which means that even if many of them are provided housing, they may remain unable to contribute to society.
Xavier Becerra, former California attorney general and former Health and Human Services secretary for the Biden administration, who has been rising in the polls, also said the focus needs to be on keeping people housed while, shockingly, praising Newsom for his photo-op strategy: "We've seen him come down to Los Angeles, actually go out and try to clean some of these streets." Becerra's grade to Newsom on homelessness: A for effort.
How about the billionaire Tom Steyer? He was the toughest grader of the Democrats — giving Newsom a B-. (The final Dem candidate, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, gave Newsom a B.) But he’s in favor of, you guessed it, "emergency interim housing. Getting people into one room with a key. Shared laundry and food. You don't have to be clean. And you can bring your animal."
Bianco and Hilton pulled no punches in their answers, forcefully saying that Democratic policies are the source of the crisis and that any of the four Democratic candidates on stage would just prolong it. Bianco said he doesn't even want to hear the word "homeless" anymore:
We are not dealing with homeless, so stop calling it homeless. It has nothing to do with homes. This is drug and alcohol-induced pyschosis, mental illness causing the other; it doesn’t matter. But these people are suffering from drug and alcohol abuse and mental illness. We would have fixed this problem probably already had the Democrats in California in state legislature and our governor funded Prop 36 to give us the treatment that we need. … This has nothing to do with a home.
Bianco also addressed fraud, saying that all the wasted money going to nonprofits and NGOs for the homeless will end the day he takes office.
Hilton, who is leading in the polls, gave Newsom a big fat F grade, saying he’d love to have been in Porter’s class considering her grading scale. He also laughed at Becerra, saying that Newsom’s several photo-ops changed nothing. He explained his three-point plan, which is grounded in common sense:
Number 1 – it is illegal to live and camp on the streets. We need to enforce the law. Number 2: We need to get people into the drug treatment that they need, and it cannot be a choice. Number 3: We need to get people the mental health care that they need instead of the barbaric situation we have right now in California as a result of these Democrat policies, where the main place where we’re treating people with mental health problems is jail.
The only question now is whether enough Californians have the common sense to see that the crisis they recognize as a problem is due to the one-party rule in their state.
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