Newsom pledges 1,200 small homes for homeless
SACRAMENTO, CALIF.>> Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday that California will build 1,200 small homes across the state as part of an effort to help house the nation’s largest homeless population and to address an issue that persistently has plagued the state during his time in office.
Newsom announced the plans in Sacramento on the first stop of a planned four-city tour, during which major policy announcements are expected on housing, health care and public safety. The tour is replacing the governor’s traditional State of the State address.
With prototypes of the homes on display behind him during a speech at the state fairgrounds, Newsom said he hoped to have all of them constructed by the fall. They will be spread across four cities — Sacramento, San Jose, San Diego and Los Angeles — with local governments deciding exactly where to place them and being responsible for managing them.
The goal, he said, is to provide more options for homeless people who are “living out in the streets and sidewalks in these extraordinary and horrid conditions.”
There were more than 170,000 people on California’s streets in 2022, according to federal data. Newsom said the 1,200 new homes are just one part of wideranging state efforts to tackle the issue. He’s approved more than $22.3 billion in spending on new housing and homelessness since taking office, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
“I get it: You want to see progress, and you want to see it now,” Newsom said.
Republican state Senate Leader Brian Jones criticized the proposal, saying it’s another example of Newsom “throwing money” at the problem without solutions.
“”While I appreciate the governor’s creativity to construct 1,200 tiny homes, that is a drop in the bucket,” he said in a statement.
Newsom dedicated his 2020 State of the State speech to homelessness, calling it a “disgrace “ in a land of so much wealth. California, home to nearly 40 million people, has nearly one-third of the nation’s homeless population, and their numbers are growing much faster than in other states, according to an analysis of federal data by the Public Policy Institute of California.
His goal is to have the new homes placed on public land to house people living in encampments along roads and rivers. Sacramento will get 350 homes, Los Angeles will get 500, San Jose will get 200 and San Diego will get 150.
The homes will cost an estimated $30 million, Newsom spokesman Anthony York said.
Newsom also announced that he had released more money to local governments to tackle homelessness after their commitment to be more aggressive about reducing the number of people on the streets.
Last fall Newsom delayed $1 billion of funding for local government homelessness programs because he didn’t like how they planned to spend it. Cumulatively, the local governments’ plans aimed to reduce the homeless population by just 2%. Newsom later released the money after a meeting with local leaders.
On Thursday the governor said local leaders have revised their plans with a goal of a 15% reduction.
California’s homelessness problem is in part a byproduct of its shortage of affordable housing, an issue that advocates say impacts many more people than simply those living on the streets.
Leaders of the state’s biggest cities and counties want Sacramento to define more clearly their role in addressing homelessness and how the state will measure the success of local programs that receive state funding.
Currently state homelessness funding has “all sorts of rules that have to be put in and half a dozen different state departments involved in order to find one program,” said Graham Knauss, executive director of the California State Association of Counties. “That needs to change. That is not government at its best.”