The cliche is that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. By that standard, California Governor Gavin Newsom is stark raving mad. Last week he announced “a new statewide task force that will prioritize clearing homeless encampments and expanding services in California’s 10 largest cities, including Los Angeles.”
Well, that ought to do the trick.
Newsom’s career has been characterized by grandiose announcements and initiatives that ultimately, and often quickly, come to naught, largely because they tend to be all about him. He was elected Mayor of San Francisco by a slim margin largely on a homelessness initiative he called “Care Not Cash.” Back then he at least had half a toe in reality. He lamented that out-of-staters come to California for generous cash handouts, which they used to buy drugs and alcohol. As Mayor he paid for a commercial in which a procession of men said, “I take your cash, and I buy drugs. Crack, heroin, alcohol.” The commercial ended with the men declaring “I need care, not cash.” This was before it became politically inconvenient to acknowledge the fact that a substantial proportion of hardcore homeless people have substance abuse problems.
Despite its dalliances with the real, Care Not Cash failed to stem the homelessness crisis in San Francisco. It also begat what has become known as the Homeless Industrial Complex. It promised every homeless person in the city permanent shelter and services. Sound familiar?
At this point it’s safe to ask if anyone believes any of these initiatives will ever have any impact, including the Governor himself. Last week’s press release called California’s homelessness crisis “decades in the making.” Specifically, “Between 2014 and 2019 — before Governor Newsom took office — unsheltered homelessness in California rose by approximately 37,000 people.”
Really, it says that. Out of one side of his mouth Newsom demands accountability, then out of the other side he dodges it himself. He was, of course, Lieutenant Governor from 2011 to 2019. As Governor Jerry Brown’s errand boy he had as much of a hand in creating the current crisis as anyone, replicating his failure on the issue as Mayor.
Then again, Newsom is as adept at dodging accountability as he is at demanding it of others.
At this point the euphemisms barely make sense. Newsom is calling the new task force the State Action for Facilitation on Encampments, or SAFE (not to be confused with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’s existing “Inside Safe” encampment clearing initiative). SAFE comes on top of myriad previous state and local task forces, action plans, blue ribbon commissions, executive committees, and emergency initiatives. Four years ago, as the state emerged from the COVID pandemic, Newsom announced a $12 billion homelessness “comeback plan” called “California Roars Back.” He promised the plan would end family homelessness within five years.
With apologies to T.S. Elliot, the Roar proved to be barely a whimper. The press release announcing the plan declared “Newsom is not settling for the old way of addressing homelessness — he is demanding greater accountability and more urgency to get people off the streets.” Two years after the whimpering Roar, his homelessness czar (of course we have one of those) testified under oath before a state Senate committee that the Governor’s office literally had no idea how some $20 billion in homelessness funding had been spent.
So much for accountability. It’s reached a point at which Newsom and other politicians brag about an allegedly slowing rate of increase in the state’s homeless population — a decrease that’s believable only if you discount the many unresolved and fundamental flaws with the annual homeless count.
Perversely, in the face of all of these highly visible, multi-billlion dollar failures, Newsom stubbornly claims success. In particular, last week’s press release cites Project Roomkey and Project Homekey as “revolutionary programs” that “did more to address the homelessness and affordable housing crisis [in a year] than anything that’s been done in decades, and has since become a national model.” Anything, presumably, including Care Not Cash and all his other initiatives.
In a word, Newsom is lying.
Project Homekey has been an abysmal failure. As I documented in detail along with Westside Current Publisher and Editor in Chief Jamie Page, some 60% of Homekey housing units remained vacant years after the state funneled $2 billion to the program. More than a thousand units are unoccupied to this day. According to whistleblowers, Homekey properties that are occupied are plagued by violence, crime, and rampant substance abuse. Residents in a Homekey apartment building in Sunland-Tujunga report water intrusion, black mold, fungus, and even mushrooms growing on the walls. In a former Homekey property in Venice, at least two residents died.
This is Newsom’s version of “revolutionary success.” It’s chilling to ponder what he’d consider a failure.
Nevertheless, last week’s press release also boasted that “California’s comprehensive and strategic approach to reversing this national crisis and getting people out of encampments is working.” See what he does? It’s a “national crisis” that’s “decades in the making.” Newsom is a victim! This is the Alfred E. Neuman approach to politics.
Thanks to — oh, let’s call them “leaders” — like Gavin Newsom, California has failed to solve the homelessness crisis for a quarter of a century. That’s quite the track record. Tens, maybe hundreds of billions, collectively wasted. Tens, maybe more than a hundred thousand deaths (multiply the average number of homeless deaths per year times 25 gets us damn close to that number). California’s political class is in a very real way engaged in human sacrifice, on the alter of their ideology. Newsom’s new “task force” is more of the same. More people will die, more money will be wasted. It’s a sickness.
When will we, as voters, learn?
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