Story by Keith Burbank –
Mayors from California’s 13 largest cities, including Oakland, San Jose and Stockton, made a plea to the governor and legislators in Sacramento on Monday morning to keep flexible funding flowing to cities to curb homelessness.
If the money stops flowing, the mayors said, cities will face “a fiscal cliff that would result in the closing of countless shelters and entry points to housing assistance.”
Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, chair of the coalition of mayor’s that made the plea, said the current funding from the state is used in her city to operate Homekey projects, which allow cities to quickly create properties as temporary and permanent homes for people who were homeless or at risk of becoming homeless.
The governor made money available to create Homekey properties and Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said her city needs that money to operate or provide services to the people housed there.
Oakland has used state money provided through a source called Homelessness Housing, Assistance and Prevention, but that source is scheduled to become obsolete next year. It became available in 2019.
The coalition of mayors touted the work they did with the HHAP money along with money available through the Homelessness Emergency Assistance Program, called HEAP, which was established in 2018.
The mayors said their cities served 25,000 people and added more than 9,000 beds to shelters with the money. Mayors said the funds allowed them to be creative with solutions to address homelessness.
In Oakland, the city stood up pallet shelters and cabin communities, which are quick ways to get people out of the rain and weather.
In San Jose, the city erected tiny homes.
“We can’t do this alone,” Stockton Mayor Kevin Lincoln said of addressing the homelessness crisis.
He added, “Now is not the time to lose the momentum.”
In Stockton, 80 percent of the population said the homelessness crisis is their No. 1 concern, Lincoln said.
According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s 2020 point-in-time count, 161,500 California residents were homeless just before the COVID-19 pandemic began.
Seventy percent of those residents were unsheltered. Twenty-eight percent of the homeless people in the U.S. live in California, according to a report by the California Legislative Analyst’s Office, the Legislature’s nonpartisan fiscal and policy advisor.
The pandemic has limited the collection of more recent data on the numbers of homeless people in California and other places.
The governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for a comment on the plea by the mayors. Newsom was once mayor of San Francisco.
Homelessness has become a business!
Isn’t it funny, how the more and more money we throw at it, the more and more homeless we get!
Maybe we need to try something else.
It angered me this past week when I tried to help a homeless man who approached me at a gas station by driving him to the Trinity center for shower clothes and food. He said he knew about that place but didn’t like it because they limit his showers to only 10 minutes! He likes half hour showers turns out.
Interesting because the rest of us are forced by water mandate to take 5 minute showers.
I think we’ve been too nice to the homeless now. Maybe they need to kick in the butt.
You: knowingly invites homeless man into his automobile.
Are you insane? Do you have a death wish?
Confusious say : he who knowingly invites homeless man into automobile, has nut holding steering wheel
How about a goody bag and one way bus ticket to Portland.
You might as well take the money out into a field and put it in a burn barrel and light it on fire. That’s how much good it would do in the hands of these mayors and their inept city governments.
This state needs a drastic change in crime, substance abuse and mental health policy and legislation.
There is not a “housing” crisis. We have a policy crisis. The reason is California has 28% of the nation’s homeless is because we are failing miserably and the “progressive” policies adopted in the past ten years created it. AB109 truly started this mess. Every policy decision afterwards only made it worse.
The policy changes that started in March 2020 with free money and hotel accommodations and no consequences to crime and bad behavior made the state even more attractive to those desiring a non-normative lifestyle. Concord’s homeless population pre-2020 was primarily local. Now it has homeless from all over the country.
The reason? Failed policy.
… +1 …well said… and failed leadersip
I agree, very well said.
I wish I owned stock in the homeless industry.
All they need is more money! Big surprise.
The homeless problem will never be solved until the addicts are put into detox centers and we rebuild mental health hospitals for the mentally ill. Those two things would probably solve 80% or more of the homeless problem. Of course, that will never happen.
But I thought we were supposed to spending our money on bombs for Ukraine?
Just throw more money at it, that should fix everything.
Michael Shellenberger for Governor
No amount of tax money is going to solve the homeless problem with the leaders we have running this state. They have no intention of solving anything. Democrats maintain the problems we face in this state. Bad schools, high crime, high cost of living, poverty you name it they maintain it. That is how they stay in power, with promises and B S. The real sad thing is how the voters in California keep falling for it and vote for the same politician over and over again.
Asking for “flexible” funding, to avoid a fiscal cliff…free flowing money (means it flows freely from the hands of the “benevolent” bureaucrat, having freely confiscated it from the involuntarily pocket-picked producers of society, the taxpayer) to feed fuel to the fire that is vagrancy, seemingly most times drug addled…so easy for them, because it is not their hard earned money, no skin off their backs (dollars from their wallet) all they have to do is write a regulation..
I think anyone can become homeless at any time. Think you’re flush and safe? But what if Uncle Schwab decides you have too much and should rent instead of own? Or a WWIII makes everyone homeless?
Yes, there are a certain percentage of the homeless that are drug users or have mental problems but not all of them. Sometimes it’s just “bad luck”. And if you think they can take just any old job that is available then you’ve probably never been a hiring manager. 😉
Homeless own the parks in Walnut Creek. Are the parks safe for residents when many homeless are drug addicts. alcoholics and aggressive?
The homeless woman who sits outside the Police Dept on Main St at night. and yells obsenities at people walking by is protected… but are we?
That “certain percentage” you mention is probably 99.99%.
I just call the “homeless” transient drug addicts at this point.
There is more homeless than ever. As for helping the homeless have the police confiscate their drugs. Go to their camps their tents etc. every couple of days. If they can’t do their drugs on the street they will find a home to live in. With all the garbage, feces and urine we are looking at a public health situation that is dangerous.
Forced labor would fix this problem quick. Get these good folks off the streets and relocated them to “work camps”. Fixing pot-holes in July would be a hell of a motivator not to be homeless.
Just make it illegal… oh wait.
If you look at a map and figure out you are going in exactly the wrong direction, do you increase your speed to make up for it, or change the direction you are going? Throwing more money at failed policies is like increasing your speed in the wrong direction.
Someone a lot brighter than me once said, “If you want to become wealthy, go into the poverty business.”
Great report by the SF Chronicle regarding the homeless debacle and the ultimate failure of the City’s program is starting with NewScum and continuing through Breed. You can’t solve a problem by relocating it indoors and moving the squalor inside. What an absolute waste of money!
Give a person a fish, you feed them for a day. Teach a person to fish, you’ll feed them for a lifetime.
Build it and they shall come….
and keep coming and coming and coming……………..
There are some legitimate homeless people who need help.
They should be helped to get back on their feet and be self-supportive.
For those who want to live a free and easy life, nothing is free.
Stop giving those people anything.
Government should never give people something for nothing in return.
The Mayors need to spend more of the remaining taxpayers money to increase their voting base. After all, they wants to maintain their poo on the streets record!l
How about the mayors of these cities use their own private properties to house the homeless since they care about them so much?
I’m positive that with the funds they misappropriated over the years they can end the homelessness crisis once and for all.
Oh that’s right, socialism doesn’t apply to the kleptocrats running it. It only applies to the people living under it.