Following Gov. Gavin Newsom’s announcement Nov. 3 that the state would be pausing the third round of homeless grants to local jurisdictions, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti called the move “perplexing.”
The Homelessness Housing, Assistance, and Prevention grants, which amounted to $1 billion, would help address the lack of homeless housing across the state, according to Newsom.
“Californians demand accountability and results, not settling for the status quo,” he said. “As a state, we are failing to meet the urgency of this moment.”
Garcetti disagreed with Newsom since the city “worked directly with and received positive feedback from state agencies and county partners to develop our plan.” He said the state hasn’t provided enough resources to local communities.
“Having already waited 16 months for this funding, it cannot help people suffering to have the agreed funding timeline changed at the last minute,” Garcetti said. “Californians deserve a government that works in unison to bring urgency to this crisis. Lives are on the line and we can’t afford for this work to get mired in more politics and bureaucracy.”
Garcetti added that Los Angeles has made more than 84,000 permanent housing placements in the last five years, and that the city spends five times what the state spends on homelessness.
According to the 2022 Los Angeles County Homeless Count, there are more than 69,000 homeless people in the county. This is a 4.1 percent increase from when the count was last conducted in 2020.
“Despite some good steps forward from the governor and legislature in recent years, this fight is still disproportionately shouldered by local communities with far fewer resources than the state,” Garcetti said.
A spokesperson from Newsom’s office told The Epoch Times the governor plans to meet local leaders in mid-November to push for “more aggressive action from local communities,” and “the details about the gathering in mid-November are being ironed out.”
According to his earlier statement, the meeting will review the state’s “collective” approach to homelessness and identify new strategies. Each jurisdiction must submit a plan to reduce homelessness and increase permanent housing to the state for approval in order to receive the grants.
At California’s current pace, Newsom said, it would “take decades to significantly curb homelessness in California.”
“[T]his approach is simply unacceptable,” Newsom said. “Everyone has to do better—cities, counties, and the state included. We are all in this together.”
Through the Homeless Emergency Aid Program and the first two rounds of the state homeless funding, the state has allocated $1.5 billion in emergency aid to address homelessness, according to the governor’s office.
California has the largest unsheltered homeless population—70 percent of the estimated 173,800 homeless statewide the previous winter, as reported by CalMatters—in the nation.
Senate Republican Leader Scott Wilk (R-Santa Clarita) said in a statement Nov. 3 that Newsom’s “policies have been a total flop.”
“Republicans call for accountability and results-based legislation, which have fallen on deaf ears for the last two years,” Wilk said.
The state adopted a “Housing First” model in 2016 and enacted related laws to address the homeless crisis by requiring counties to provide low-barrier shelters and housing to homeless people, without imposing specific requirements—such as sobriety or participation in mental health treatment—to be admitted.
In the same year, Los Angeles voters passed Proposition HHH, a $1.2 billion bond designed to provide 10,000 housing units for the homeless in 10 years. Six years later, major issues, including exorbitant building costs, surfaced, and only 1,142 units have been completed as of February 2022. In one instance, over $800,000 was spent on a single unit.
Other efforts to address the crisis—which is the top concern for Los Angeles voters according to early polls—have appeared on the Nov. 8 ballot too, including Initiative Ordinance ULA, which would place a 4 percent tax on real estate sales over $5 million to generate funds for affordable housing. For properties of more than $10 million, the tax increases to 5.5 percent.
