Clear the homeless camps, otherwise

LOS ANGELES – Governor Gavin Newsom on Thursday stepped up his campaign to pressure local governments to address homeless encampments, making his most direct threat yet that he will withhold funding from counties he says are slow to get people out of homelessness.

While his targets have been large counties, Newsome’s ire was not-so-subtly directed at one in particular: Los Angeles, the epicenter of the state’s homeless crisis, where the Board of Supervisors gave a cold shoulder to his recent executive order on encampments.

“If we don’t see visible results, I’m going to start redirecting money,” Newsom told reporters gathered at the site of a recently cleared encampment on state-owned land in the San Fernando Valley, adding: “I’ll be honest with you. This is an indictment of the counties in general. … The counties need to do more.”

He continued: “We are here with our hands out. Open hands, not clenched fists. That said, if we don’t see results, we will change our approach.”

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

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

Newsome’s executive order, which directed state agencies to step up their own efforts to clear encampments, does not address enforcement. But the question is whether the Supreme Court Grants Pass The court’s decision will trigger a new wave of repressive measures that have swept cities and counties in recent weeks.

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

However, Los Angeles authorities have made it clear that Grants Pass does not significantly change their approach to dealing with homelessness, and they themselves have been outspoken opponents of policies that would “criminalize” people living on the streets.

“We don’t want encampments on our sidewalks, but we cannot, nor do we have the legal permission to, make prisons our de facto home and shelter,” Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Lindsey P. Horvath said at a meeting last week, where county officials were united in their apparent skepticism of the governor’s order.

The board later approved a motion explicitly stating that county jails would not be used to hold people arrested solely for violations of ordinances prohibiting camping.

Newsom did not specify whether he would like cities and counties to step up enforcement of criminal or civil laws.

“Nobody wants to see criminalization,” he said. “It’s a lazy, lazy framework. And that’s what binary people who don’t want to do the work are going to try to frame, and I reject that.”

He listed a litany of actions the state has taken to help counties combat homelessness, including millions of dollars to address encampments, billions of dollars to treat mental health and addiction problems, zoning reform, efforts to improve probation and reimbursement for mobile health services under Medi-Cal.

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

The increased friction with Los Angeles County comes as state and county officials will have to work even more closely together to clean up the encampments. Counties are often the providers that offer shelter or other interventions to people living in the encampments. At the site Newsom visited Thursday, where he said 11 people were living, workers had been out the previous day to let people know about the upcoming cleanup.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said at a supervisors meeting last week that while Newsome’s executive order “will not change the way our department approaches or addresses the issue of homelessness,” it will increase communication with the California Highway Patrol, which will oversee the cleanup effort.

Newsom stressed that his criticism did not apply to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who is currently in Paris for the closing ceremony of the Summer Olympics.

“I want to commend Mayor Bass,” Newsom said. “She saw a 10.4 percent reduction in unsheltered homelessness last year, one of the largest reductions in the state of California. She was a great partner.”

Still, Newsome’s harsh rhetoric toward county officials puts Bass at the center of a growing feud between two key players she has partnered with to solve her city’s most pressing problem.

She was also a fierce critic Grants Pass decision, arguing that it would result in neighboring cities and counties simply throwing their homeless populations outside their borders without solving the underlying problem.

In fact, Bass told a recent immigration conference before Newsome issued his executive order that the city needs to prepare to “resist a potential wave of oppression” in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling.

“Now we’re going to have to worry about other cities, locally, sending homeless people to Los Angeles and creating chaos,” she said. “That’s not the way to solve the problem. We all know that.”