President Donald Trump issued a warning to California and its Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, as the state grapples with its homelessness crisis.
Trump didn’t elaborate on how his administration would deal with the issue.
Photos of homeless people camping out in public parks and on the street in San Francisco and in Los Angeles have drawn widespread attention and criticism.
“Shelters solve sleep. Housing and supportive services solve homelessness. Housing first. You have a new director on the Interagency Council on Homelessness in the United States appointed by Donald Trump that says housing [comes] fourth,” Newsom said.
Accusing the White House of not being “serious about this issue,” Newsom also claimed Trump and other Republicans of “playing politics with it ... There’s been nothing but division coming and emanating from the folks at HUD and the Trump administration.”
However, it isn’t only Trump who has assailed the state’s handling of the problem. Some experts have said that California has poor oversight.
“This isn’t rocket science,” said John Snook, who runs the Treatment Advocacy Center, a group that advises states on mental health and homelessness around the country.
In September, Trump told reporters that he’s considering using a task force to deal with the crisis.
“We have people living in our ... best highways, our best streets, our best entrances to buildings ... where people in those buildings pay tremendous taxes, where they went to those locations because of the prestige,” he said. “In many cases, they came from other countries and they moved to Los Angeles or they moved to San Francisco because of the prestige of the city, and all of a sudden they have tents. Hundreds and hundreds of tents and people living at the entrance to their office building. And they want to leave. And the people of San Francisco are fed up, and the people of Los Angeles are fed up.”