Actor and former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Feb. 14 thanked President Donald Trump for his efforts to combat the homelessness crisis in the state.
The former Republican governor has previously criticized the president on a number of issues, but on Friday thanked him for sending Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson to California to take part in a homelessness summit.
As per the statement, the money will go towards helping “public housing families increase their earned income and become self-sufficient.”
In December, Trump said that California Governor Gavin Newsom was doing a “really bad job” on the issue of homelessness.
“California is doing more than ever before to tackle the homelessness crisis but every level of government, including the federal government, must step up and put real skin in the game,” Newsom said in the announcement.
“California is making historic investments now to help our communities fight homelessness. But we have work to do and we need the federal government to do its part.”
Newsom blamed “politicized roadblocks put up by the Trump administration,” for previous delays in the release of the funding, adding that state law requires the final funding allocations be based off federally-approved 2019 Point in Time Count (PIT) homelessness data, which he said had “historically been quickly reviewed, approved, and distributed by the federal government to every state in the nation.”
The Governor said that while local governments had submitted this data to the Trump administration “months ago,” the federal government had refused to release it, leaving cities and counties waiting for the money to be approved.
However, instead of waiting, Newsom said his administration had created an “interim solution” by collecting preliminary homeless data from California communities, and that based on those numbers, the state would be able to start applying and spending funding while the rest of it would be distributed once the Trump administration released its finalized PIT count data.