California's cities have been overrun drug- and crime-infested homeless camps for more than a decade now.
But here we are, after 6 years in office, and Gavin Newsom has finally decided to do something about it.
So after years of ignoring and downplaying the California homeless crisis and being mayor of the worst offending city, San Francisco, now Newsom has decided to get tough on the issue??
Why now?
I mean, the World Cup and the Olympics are both coming to LA, so he definitely has international friends to impress, but is there more to it?
Here's the scoop:
Gov. Gavin Newsom plans to escalate California's push to eradicate homeless encampments on Monday, calling on hundreds of cities, towns and counties to effectively ban tent camps on sidewalks, bike paths, parklands and other types of public property ...
He cannot force cities to pass his model ban, but its issuance coincides with the release of more than $3 billion in state-controlled housing funds that local officials can use to put his template in place. And though it's not a mandate, the call to outlaw encampments statewide by one of the best-known Democrats in the country suggests a shift in the party's approach to homelessness.
Newsom began this crusade nearly a year ago, instructing municipalities on how to remove the encampments, but he's hit a roadblock with cities who won't cooperate.
So now he's providing incentives to get on board, and he's abandoned the failed "let's build more houses" pie-in-the-sky plan Democrats have been so fond of.
The new plan suggested by Newsom stops short of criminalizing homelessness, however it does recommend that homeless encampments be outlawed, meaning that homeless people would either move out or face jail time.
A little context here:
The state is home to about half of the nation's unsheltered homeless population, a visible byproduct of the temperate climate and California's brutal housing crisis.
Yeah ... "it's the weather" that draws HALF of America's homeless to California, not the fact that you get paid to be homeless and then make money by dealing drugs and, as a result, killing people.
The lefty utopianism is failing big time, so much so that Newsom realizes the only way to be politically viable in the future is to clean up the streets.
In the end, Newsom's demands will give more conservative Democrat-controlled cities the permission they need to clean up the streets and their parks. But will the more liberal cities follow through with this nudge and get the homeless encampments out? We just don't know, so time will tell.
But one thing we do know: Gavin Newsom is up to something, and I think it rhymes with "punning for resident."
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