Gavin Newsom Tells Sean Hannity That California Has ‘Not Made Progress’ on Homeless Crisis

Homeless Health Care Los Angeles workers distribute items in the Skid Row neighborhood of Los Angeles on May 16, 2023. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

California Gov. Gavin Newsom admitted that his efforts to curb the state’s homeless crisis have not progressed during an exclusive interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, which aired the evening of June 12.

Hannity pressed Newsom on his efforts to combat the immense amount of homelessness, among many other issues spreading throughout the state.

“This state has not made progress in the last two decades as it relates to homelessness because housing costs are too high, our regulatory thickets are too problematic, localism has been too impactful—meaning people locally are pushing back against new housing starts and construction,” Newsom said.

“I’ve been here four years. I can’t make up for the fact that in 2005 we had a historic number of homeless under a Republican administration,” he added.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom announces the May budget revision in Sacramento on May 12, 2023. Hector Amezcua/The Sacramento Bee via AP

Hannity compared California’s current homeless reports of over 170,000 homeless individuals across the state to Florida, which has a homeless population of roughly 26,000, and asked Newsom why the numbers are so different given the states’ similar climates.

“The dynamics are very different,” Newsom replied. “That said, we own this, Sean. I’m not here defending this.”

According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, California comprises 50 percent of the nation’s unsheltered homeless population. This amounts to 171,521 homeless residents, or one-third of the entire homeless population across the country.

Los Angeles is the country’s largest homeless population, and Mayor Karen Bass signed a $13 billion city budget with 10 percent dedicated to addressing the problem in May.

“Los Angeles is really the epicenter,” Bass said in a June 6 interview with PBS. “We have over 40,000 people sleeping in tents around the city, and so getting them off the streets immediately, putting them in interim housing, which right now is motels and hotels, addressing why they were unhoused, to begin with, and then moving them on to permanent supportive housing. And we are having challenges doing that.”

“We actually have vacancies in some of our permanent supportive housing. But we’re dealing with bureaucratic barriers and trying to address those. And those barriers are on a federal level, county and a city level,” Bass added.

Mayors Seek Help From Governor

On May 17, members of the California Big City Mayors coalition met with legislators and Newsom at the state Capitol in Sacramento to request more permanent funding to address the state’s homelessness and mental health crises, NBC Bay Area reported.

They called on the governor to allocate $2 billion annually to the state’s Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention Program, or HHAP.

The coalition of mayors represents California’s 13 most populated cities: Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco, Fresno, Sacramento, Long Beach, Oakland, Bakersfield, Anaheim, Stockton, Riverside, and Irvine.

The group’s chair, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, said the mayors needed continued partnership with state lawmakers to address the problem.

“We acknowledge that it’s hard for many Californians to see these results and that’s because we’re simply not keeping pace with the number of people who are becoming newly homeless,” Gloria said.

Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao said the issue was both a national one and a personal one.

“I want to first speak from the perspective of someone who was forced to live in my car,” Thao said. “The access to safe, permanent, and dignified housing should not be seen as the American dream. It should be seen as a human right. It should be seen as dignified housing. It should be seen as [a] basic necessity. And this is why of course, we are here today.”