Before becoming the governor of California, Gavin Newsom was the San Francisco mayor and he pledged to clean up that city when it came to the homeless problem. Newsom now clearly has his sights set on the White House at some point and will make all kinds of other promises, so it's worth looking back on his past initiatives to see how they worked out in the long run.
This is from a 2003 story about Newsom's plan at the start of his tenure as S.F. mayor:
San Francisco Mayor-elect Gavin Newsom intends to "aggressively" make homelessness his administration's No. 1 priority, and his first moves will include creating a 10-year plan for ending chronic homelessness and going after "tens of millions" of new dollars in federal funding.
In an interview with The Chronicle, Newsom said he also plans to create within six months about 550 units of new "supportive housing" for troubled homeless people and to make city agencies collect numbers on exactly how many homeless are getting which services, so he can better determine what the most pressing needs are.
"I recognize that I'm setting myself up. I'm not naïve to that," Newsom said in the Friday interview. "I don't want to over-promise, but I also don't want to under-deliver. I want to hit the ground running."
There's the "how it started" part, and now on to the "how it's going" update.
Republican Rep. Kevin Kiley from California summed up what's happened since Newsom's war on homelessness started 20 years ago:
It's been 20 years since Newsom rolled out his plan to end homelessness in San Francisco within a decade. As it happens, we marked this anniversary with HUD's annual homelessness report to Congress. Among the findings:
— Kevin Kiley (@KevinKileyCA) December 19, 2023
-California has the highest homelessness rate of any state.… pic.twitter.com/MYVtp5Gdav
Here's Rep. Kiley's full post:
It's been 20 years since Newsom rolled out his plan to end homelessness in San Francisco within a decade. As it happens, we marked this anniversary with HUD's annual homelessness report to Congress. Among the findings:
-California has the highest homelessness rate of any state.
-California had a 30.5 percent increase in homelessness from 2007 to 2023, the highest of any state.
-California accounts for 28 percent of America's homeless and 49 percent of unsheltered homeless.
-San Francisco, for its part, had the second highest percent of unsheltered homeless youth and unsheltered veterans of any city in the country.
To this day, Newsom continues to make excuses. Just this weekend, he went on TV and railed against counties, accusing them of making excuses and "scapegoating." Incredibly, he praised himself while telling the counties: "It's time to do your job."
The homelessness crisis in California is not just a failure of policy. It's a moral failing. Thousands of people are dying on our streets because our political leaders have handled this issue in the worst possible way. And the quality of life in many of our communities is falling apart as a result.
Wow, it's almost as if the problems Democrats say they're going to "fix" only end up getting worse!
But recently we did see the secret to making S.F. Democrats and Gov. Newsom take control of the homeless problem:
And Xi got it done in less than a day. Sad
— Andy Swan (@AndySwan) December 19, 2023
All it took to temporarily make the problem disappear was a visit from the leader of a communist country!
