'Do better': Newsom pauses $1B in homelessness spending
SACRAMENTO -- Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday he will delay $1 billion in funding to local governments because he says they are not being aggressive enough to curb homelessness in their communities.
California's 58 counties, 13 largest cities and groups of public and private service providers were in line to get the money from the state if they submitted plans showing how they would reduce the homeless population in their community while increasing people in permanent housing.
Thursday, Newsom said the plans that have been submitted weren't good enough. Together, Newsom said the collective plans by local governments would reduce homelessness statewide by just 2% over the next four years. Some plans even showed double-digit increases in the homeless population over that same time period, Newsom said.
"At this pace, it would take decades to significantly curb homelessness in California — this approach is simply unacceptable," Newsom said in a news release. "Everyone has to do better — cities, counties, and the state included. We are all in this together."
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Newsom has threatened to withhold funding to localities over policies dealing with their unhoused population before.
Back in August, Newsom admonished Oakland officials in a letter, saying they could lose millions of dollars in state funding because the city was "seeking to shirk its responsibility" over housing unsheltered people on Caltrans property along Wood Street in city limits.
In a letter addressed to to City Attorney Barbara Parker, Newsom's office said Oakland was taking a "novel legal position" that it has no responsibility to house about 200 individuals, even though the city received $4.7 million for rehousing activities at Wood Street.
The city said in July that it doesn't have the capacity to shelter all of the people at the encampment.
The letter from Newsom's office said local governments generally have the responsibility for providing shelter and rehousing for people who are homeless, while Caltrans is a transportation agency. It has no authority to provide housing or shelter to the public, the letter said.
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State lawmakers committed to spending $15.3 billion over the next three years to combat homelessness, including the grant program Newsom is pausing.
Newsom said he would hold the money until after a meeting with local leaders later this month to "review the state's collective approach to homelessness and identify new strategies to better address the homelessness crisis."
The office of San Francisco Mayor London Breed released a statement in response to Newsom's announcement Thursday afternoon.
"Cities are doing the work to address homelessness day in and day out. Over the last two and a half years, San Francisco has housed nearly 4,200 people. We were one of the only counties in the state that saw a decrease in homelessness over the last three years, including a 15% decrease in unsheltered homelessness," the statement said. "That is progress, but we still have serious work to do. To effectively build on this success, we need collaboration and clarity from the state."
"Instead, the State has decided to abruptly withhold funds that we have been planning around and that will actually make a difference in our communities – all without any warning or conversations or opportunities to address their concerns," Breed continued. "While we welcome accountability, now is not the time to delay funds that will help get people off the street. Now is not that time to create more hoops for local governments to jump through without any clear explanation of what's required."
Outgoing San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo also issued a statement in response Thursday.
"If the Governor wants to be bold in solving this crisis, then here are four things we can do together to get our state's 160,000 unsheltered Californians off the street: require land from all local agencies–water districts, transit agencies, cities, counties, and state– to be used for prefabricated, quick-build housing; work with construction trades to ramp up prefab factories; dedicate 10% of the state's surpluses to build housing; and require unhoused residents to take the housing when it is offered, or to move off the street," the statement said.
"Leadership is required to make this happen, but mayors will happily take the lead," Liccardo added.
California, the most populous state with more than 39 million residents, also has the nation's largest unsheltered population with an estimated 173,346 people experiencing homelessness in 2021, according to the state's Homeless Data Integration System.
For decades, California has mostly considered homelessness to be a local issue, with the state government handing out billions of dollars in assistance each year to local communities.
But Newsom has been more aggressive in setting and enforcing a statewide homelessness policy. In 2019, the Newsom administration sued the Southern California city of Huntington Beach, accusing local officials of ignoring the state's affordable housing requirements.
Earlier this year, the Newsom administration launched a first-of-its-kind investigation of San Francisco's housing policies aimed at figuring out why it takes officials there so long to approve housing projects. And last month, the Newsom administration and the state attorney general joined a lawsuit against the city of Anaheim alleging officials there violated state housing laws.
