Newsom to local officials: Clear homeless encampments or else

LOS ANGELES — Gov. Gavin Newsom hit the throttle on his pressure campaign for local governments to address homeless encampments on Thursday, issuing his most direct threat so far that he’ll cut off money to counties he believes are too sluggish in getting people off the street.

Though counties writ large were the target of his broadside, Newsom’s ire was not-so-subtly aimed at one in particular: Los Angeles, the epicenter of the state’s homelessness crisis and where the Board of Supervisors gave an ice-cold reception to his recent executive order on encampments.

“If we don’t see demonstrable results, I’ll start to redirect money,” Newsom told reporters assembled at the site of a recently cleared encampment on state-owned land in the San Fernando Valley, adding, “I’ll be candid with you. This is more broadly an indictment of counties. … Counties need to do more.”

He continued: “We’re here with our hands out. Open hands, not a closed fist. That said, if we don’t see results, we’re going to change our approach.”

His comments mark the latest escalation of his assertive tone on homeless encampments in California, prompted by the recent Supreme Court ruling that freed local governments to enforce anti-camping laws, including through fines, citations or jail time. The decision has increased the political pressure on all of the state’s officials, from Newsom on down, to address what he called “the biggest scar on the reputation of the state of California.”

“We’re done with excuses. And the last big excuse was ‘well, the courts are saying we can’t do it.’ Well, that’s no longer the case,” Newsom said. “So we had a simple executive order. Do your job. No more excuses.”

Newsom’s executive order, which directed state agencies to ramp up their own efforts to clear encampments, does not address enforcement measures. But the question of whether the Supreme Court’s Grants Pass court ruling will unleash a new wave of punitive measures has gripped cities and counties in recent weeks.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed has said she’s open to new penalties , including citations and possible jail time for those who refuse services. She also has directed staff to offer homeless people bus tickets out of the city before offering shelter. Newsom on Thursday noted he had started a similar program when he was mayor of the city 25 years ago to reconnect people with family. But, he said, “that’s not the first thing I would do.”

Los Angeles officials, however, made clear that Grants Pass does not significantly alter their approach to dealing with homelessness, and they’ve been vocal opponents to policies that would “criminalize” people living on the street.

“We don’t want encampments on our sidewalks, but we cannot, nor are we legally allowed to make jails our de facto housing and shelter,” said Board of Supervisors Chair Lindsey P. Horvath at a meeting last week, where county officials were united in their visible skepticism to the governor’s order.

The board later approved a motion making clear that county jails would not be used to hold people arrested solely for anti-camping ordinances.

Newsom did not specify whether he wanted to see cities or counties ramp up criminal or civil enforcement.

“No one wants to see criminalization,” he said. “That’s a lazy, lazy framework. And that’s the binary people that don’t want to do the job are going to try to frame, and I reject that.”

He rattled off a litany of efforts the state has done to help boost counties in work to address homelessness, including millions of dollars for encampment resolution, billions for mental health and substance abuse treatment, zoning reform, efforts to streamline conservatorships and Medi-Cal reimbursement for mobile medical services.

“All we’re asking for is a deeper sense of urgency,” Newsom said. “It is not an indictment. These supervisors are actual, real-life friends … but I want a sense of urgency.”

The increased friction with Los Angeles County comes as state and county governments will need to work even more closely together to clean up encampments. Counties are often the service providers that offer shelter or other interventions for people living in the encampments. At the site Newsom visited on Thursday, where he said 11 people had been living, workers did outreach the previous day, alerting people of the coming clean-up.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said at the supervisor’s meeting last week that while Newsom’s executive order “will not alter the way our department approaches or manages the unhoused population,” it will increase communication with the California Highway Patrol, which will be overseeing the cleanups.

Newsom took pains to specify his critiques were not aimed at Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who is currently in Paris for the close of the Summer Olympics.

“I want to applaud Mayor Bass,” Newsom said. “She saw a 10.4 percent reduction of unsheltered homelessness last year, which was one of the most significant declines in the state of California. She’s been a good partner.”

Still, Newsom’s fiery rhetoric toward the county puts Bass in the middle of a brewing dispute between two major players she’s locked arms with to tackle her city’s most pressing issue.

She has also been a fierce critic of the Grants Pass decision, arguing that it will lead to neighboring cities and counties simply pushing their homeless population outside their boundaries without solving the underlying problem.

In fact, Bass at a recent immigration conference prior to Newsom releasing his executive order, said the city needed to prepare to “resist the potential wave of oppression” in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling.

“We’re going to have to worry about other cities now, locally, sending unhoused people into LA and creating chaos,” she said. “That’s not the way to solve the problem. We all know that.”