Why California Governor Gavin Newsom Keeps Making Homelessness Worse
California saw its homeless population rise by 31 percent even as the number of homeless declined 18 percent in the rest of the United States between 2010 and 2020.
As a result, there are today 161,000 total homeless in California, with about 113,000 of them “unsheltered,” meaning they’re sleeping in tents on sidewalks, in parks, and alongside highways.
In response, California Governor Gavin Newsom proposed in a press conference today to spend another $12 billion on housing and services for homelessness.
While there are homeless people in other developed nations, there exists nothing like the open drug scenes and homeless encampments that have expanded across California in recent years.
Nor does there exist a drug overdose crisis approaching ours. In the early 2000s, around 17,000 people died from drug overdoses every year in the U.S.; by 2019, the rate of death had risen four-fold, to 70,000.
The way every other developed nation solves homelessness is through assertive case management, mandatory psychiatric care and drug treatment, and sufficient facilities of different kinds for different populations, from psychiatric hospitals to homeless shelters to permanent supportive housing.
