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> As California governor he is now rolling out that failed policy across the state No he's not. He's on the record as saying that the approach he applied in SF
by wahern 6y ago
> As California governor he is now rolling out that failed policy across the state
No he's not. He's on the record as saying that the approach he applied in SF failed. I'm fairly certain he's said it more straightforwardly, but from a quick Google search with a 2014 quote,
> "There’s a mythology that you can — quote unquote — end homelessness at any moment, but there are new people coming in, suffering through the cycles of their lives," he said. "It’s the manifestation of complete, abject failure as a society. We’ll never solve this at City Hall."
Source: https://www.sfchronicle.com/archive/item/A-decade-of-homelessness-Thousands-in-S-F-30431.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/archive/item/A-decade-of-homeles...
And here's what he said in a recent state of the state address:
> "Of course, the fundamental building block of California’s solution has to be more housing. A comprehensive response to our collective failure to build enough of it. When we don’t build housing for people at all income levels, we worsen the homeless crisis. It’s a vicious cycle and we own it. And the only sustainable way out of it is to massively increase housing production."
Source: https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article240435521.html https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-aler...
Also noteworthy in that speech is that he spends more time discussing health care and mental health issues than housing, per se.
Newsom's talking points on homelessness are often annoyingly vague (owing to his very ambitious career goals), but note what he doesn't say and what he doesn't support. Notably he doesn't support a legal right to housing, and is on the record saying so. His complete silence on Senator Wiener's bills was also deafening. Following his politics over the years it's fairly obvious he supports Weiner in principle but 1) knew it would never pass and 2) didn't want to burn his political capital on a loser. Also note the sums in his spending proposals for new, publicly subsidized construction; they're ridiculously paltry if the actual intent is to literally use public funds to build homes for all the homeless. Rather, it's obvious he's placating the far left without burning real cash--a strategy that many centrist SF politicians are actually quite adept at.
The sad fact is that plenty of California politicians know exactly what needs to be happen, including and especially Newsom. But California voters, both liberal and conservative, don't want to loosen housing regulations state-wide (including overriding local restrictions), and far too many on the left unthinkingly assume it's feasible to publicly fund or exact, dollar-for-dollar, enough construction to "fix" the homeless issue. Newsom definitely no longer believes, and he, like Brown and many others, are also perfectly aware how hopeless the situation is in terms of electoral support for meaningful reform and choose to stay clear of attacking the issue head-on.
Don't blame the politicians for failing to produce solutions according to the electorate's inconsistent and incoherent preferences. And especially don't blame a man who successfully[1] implemented a widely popular but destined to fail policy and then publicly went on the record as admitting to the fundamentally flawed premise. We need more politicians capable of doing that and fewer that simply point fingers.
[1] He promised to create beds for every homeless person at the time, and by the time the program wrapped up it succeeded in creating that number of beds. Of course, for every homeless person given a bed and taken off the street someone else replaced them on the street. And he admits it--lesson learned.
- olivermarks 6y agoNewsom first launched project roomkey, housing thousands of street people in rented hotel rooms earlier this year. He then announced project homekey, spending vast sums on buying hotels and motels to convert into 'housing' this summer. The astonishingly autocratic one party California government have been buying city center hotels with no discussion or oversight to convert into 'homeless''homes'. Newsom is doubling down on his failed policies and despite being family is now in danger of burning out his political capital.
- wahern 6y agoSF spent $1.5 billion building housing. Newsom's budget allocates $550 million over several years for the entire state to build new housing. (SF population is ~800k as compared to the state population of over 35 million.) The rest (~$750 million) is for general homeless services, including mental health care. Note that alot of the beds purchased with the funds have already gone to house people displaced by wildfires. As I said, it's clear from the sums and structure of the funding that Newsom isn't actually trying to replicate the SF program. But it's easy for conservative pundits to make hay out of things (especially when the announcements themselves are tailored to placate the left) rather than support actual reform efforts. As I said, the politics in California is fscked up. But using Newsom as a scapegoat merely evinces partisan blinders.
- olivermarks 6y agoI'm a registered Democrat and have massive issues with both lobbyist dominated parties FWIW. Politics in California is fscked up because there is no opposition and increasingly incompetent, autocratic rule. The homeless 'non profit' industry is huge and growing. https://hcd.ca.gov/grants-funding/active-funding/homekey.shtml https://hcd.ca.gov/grants-funding/active-funding/homekey.sht... Has details of the crazy Homekey spending on hotels. There is very little housing being built it is extremely expensive. https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/homeless/article245547415.html https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/homeless/article245547415....