California Gov. Newsom and Los Angeles battle over homelessness, as he threatens to cut funding

(The Center Square) - California Gov. Gavin Newsom put on some gloves and used his own two hands to clear out trash from a homeless encampment removed from state property in Los Angeles as he threatened cuts to state resources for localities that don’t embrace his urgency on homelessness.

Los Angeles County and the City of Los Angeles, which have the largest homeless population in the nation, publicly rebuked Newsom’s executive order to clear out homeless encampments from state property and strong suggestion that localities do the same. Los Angeles County's Board of Supervisors specifically took issue with what they called Newsom's criminalization of homelessness.

Yesterday, cameras captured Newsom moving trash into piles and hopping over a creek at the site of a former encampment on California Department of Transportation land after his executive order last month banned homeless encampments from state property.

Newsom’s order said that “Local governments are encouraged to adopt policies consistent with this Order and to use all available resources and infrastructure … to take action with the urgency this crisis demands to humanely remove encampments from public spaces,” but his comments yesterday at a press gaggle following his cleanup indicate that encouragement now comes with a threat.

“$144 million has been provided through the Encampment Resolution Grants in LA County Broadly … this in addition to $3.1 billion in other resources … in just the last few years coming from the State of California [in Los Angeles],” said Newsom. “I’m here on behalf of 40 million Californians that are fed up. I’m here because I’m one of them. I want to see results.”

“We have cleaned up every hurdle for addressing this issue,” Newsom continued. “Do your job. There’s no more excuses. You got the money … you got the support from the state … If we don’t see demonstrable results I’ll start to redirect money … that will start in January. [If a] local government embraces those efforts, focuses with a sense of urgency, we’re going to double down. If local government’s not interested, fine, we’re going to redirect the money to parts of the state, cities, and counties that are.”

Newsom also said this is “not an indictment of LA City,” applauding City of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass for a 10.4% reduction in unsheltered homelessness last year, but said, this is an “indictment of counties.”

“They said they wanted reforms on conservatorships, they have it, but they’re not implementing conservatorship programs in LA County — they can’t even set it up for one person. They say we don’t have the money, the resources — how is that possible when we provided $990 million … in the last couple of years. They say well we don’t have money for short-term housing for people with mental health [problems], how can that be when we provided almost $400 million specifically for that,” said Newsom with regards to Los Angeles County.

Newsom continued by saying, “I’m a taxpayer, not just the governor. It’s not complicated. We’ll send that money to counties that are producing results.”

Newsom also shared he had taken away San Diego’s funding for “tiny homes,” and sent it to San Jose as an example of his willingness to take away idling or misused funding.

“If you want accountability, ask the folks in San Diego County. I just took all their tiny home money. I sent it to San Jose. They were sitting on it for a year.”

A federal audit released at the start of August found California “was not adequately prepared to prevent, detect, and respond to fraud due to the lack of focus it placed on fraud risks and establishing a robust fraud risk management framework,” regarding $320 million in COVID-era homelessness funds. A state audit from April also found the state has largely not been tracking the approximately $24 billion it spent on homelessness from 2018 through the 2022-2023 fiscal year.

Newsom, who has been governor since 2018, and before that was lieutenant governor starting in 2011, last month vetoed a bill passed with zero opposition that would have required the state to evaluate its homelessness spending.