5d ago

California Governor Gavin Newsom demands cities force homeless people to move every 72 hours

www.wsws.org

On May 12, California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, demanded that cities throughout the state adopt anti-camping ordinances that would effectively ban public homelessness by requiring unhoused individuals to relocate every 72 hours.

While presented as a humanitarian effort to reduce homelessness, the new policy victimizes California’s growing unhoused population—approximately 187,000 people—by tying funding in Proposition 1 to local laws banning sleeping or camping on public land.

In his announcement, Newsom pushed local governments to adopt the draconian ordinances “without delay.”

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technocrit @lemmy.dbzer0.com

5d ago

California Governor Gavin Newsom demands cities force homeless people to move every 72 hours

www.wsws.org /en/articles/2025/05/19/dqpi-m19.html

United States | News & Politics @lemmy.ml

technocrit @lemmy.dbzer0.com

5d ago

California Governor Gavin Newsom demands cities force homeless people to move every 72 hours

www.wsws.org /en/articles/2025/05/19/dqpi-m19.html

United States | News & Politics @midwest.social

cm0002 @lemmy.world

5d ago

California Governor Gavin Newsom demands cities force homeless people to move every 72 hours

www.wsws.org /en/articles/2025/05/19/dqpi-m19.html

76 comments

WTF happened to this guy? Did he have a Fetterman stroke?
- Nope, he's just a neoliberal chasing after the center.
  
  The center between Hitler and Mussolini
- He's gearing up for a presidential run, and I'm mostly sure that the DNC wants him for 2028; he's running hard to the right (not that he was ever really far left to start with, FOX made him sound way cooler than he ever was) so that they can try the "run a moderate Republican and see if we can win by peeling off a whole 6 republicans nationally and then shaming the tuned out base when we lose" strategy against Trump for a third time. There for a bit, I would have been pretty okay with voting for Gavin, but it's clear enough to me now as a CA resident that he's the clown prince of shitlibs and he's just desperately scrambling to try and pick up support from DOZENS of moderate republicans all over the country.
  About the only thing he's done lately that I agree with is dedicating $1B/yr of California's carbon cap and trade program to CAHSR for the next fifty (I think it was fifty) years, which solves a HUGE problem that's been a big source of delays for CAHSR, which is the lack of predictable funding.
  
  Dude is a terrible governor. He’s as reactionary and as stubborn as W.
- IMHO, there is a fair amount of misinformation floating around this issue.
  Newsom hasn’t been pushing to blindly kick people off the street with no where to go. The draft ordinance is about filling unfilled shelter beds.
  So if you had 200 beds and 1000 unhoused people, Newsom wants to be able to clear enough encampments to get 200 people into shelters. Cities wouldn’t clear all the encampments, only enough to get close to filling the available beds.
  And that said, that policy doesn’t really account for the fact that shelters can be pretty dangerous and worse than the streets. So although this policy sounds compassionate, it’s actually quite flawed.
  
  He's using the same approach he used as mayor of SF. In that case, the promised funding for alternative housing never materialized (at least never near the scale needed), but the cruelty and abuse still happened.
  
  shelters can be pretty dangerous and worse than the streets
  That's troubling. What's the solution here?
  
  So although this policy sounds compassionate, it’s actually quite flawed
  That's an understatement the size of "Trump's tariffs might not make eggs cheaper"..
- He’s trying to become POTUS and it is unlikely the DNC will select someone looking to make things better
- He is now, and always was, a neoliberal. He just aligned himself to blue politics for a while.

Spending millions a day to shuffle around people instead of actually saving money by putting them in unoccupied homes.
Can't wait until the DNC picks him for me tells me this was actually a good thing, like platforming Charlie Kirk and Steve Banon, and saying trans people are actually disgusting with them.
- "The politics of failure have failed."

Sounding a bit more like Trump bit by bit. Wtf.
- bit by bit
  That sounds like "a little" and "slowly"...
  Pretty sure Newsom's swing to the right is pretty fair complete by now. He's basically full MAGAt, just managing to keep it somewhat low-key so far.
  🤡 🖕
  I'm still fuzzy on his reason though... Could be looking for a Presidential run in the near future...??? 🤔
  
  Of course he is. He hasn't been trying to hide it
- It’s not surprising, but it is disappointing. He’s showing his true allegiance, and it’s not to a political party. It’s to a socioeconomic class, and that socioeconomic class is “rich people”.
- Newsom is just another rich worm who got into politics. Frankly speaking if our recalls weren't fucking braindead he'd probably have been kicked to the curb by now.

Fascist.
I live in downtown Oakland. It’s grim. The city has been fencing off areas where people previously had tents. It’s very sad.

"Running to the right will work for me because I'm a white dude!"

Does anyone have a source for the 72 hour thing?
I don’t see it in the draft ordinance. https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Encampment-Ordinance-formatted.pdf
The draft ordinance basically says that, if there are available beds, a city can clear a campsite if they give people 48 hours notice and direct people to the available shelter beds.
Although, this ordinance does not address the fact that many shelters cause more harm than good. People are on the street because it’s safer for their wellbeing and belongings. No one seems to be talking about this.
- Enabling shitty behavior from both Democrats and Republicans is what got the United States in this mess to begin with

There is a book advocating for UBI, which detailed studies showing it is actually easier and cost effective to just give homeless people unconditional cash grants. Contrary to expectations, 9/10 homeless folks cleaned themselves and looked for accommodation.

Every time I hear about this fuck I get more and more tempted to drive the 10 minutes from my parents house over to the governor's mansion and show him what happens when you ignore the will of your people (violent murder, if I wasn't fucking clear)

Yeah. I'm torn.
On one hand, I've seen what happens when homeless people, especially the worst of them, take over a public space without supervision. It is not hyperbole to say they destroy the area. The massive homeless camps in downtown Denver featured needles, excrement, unwashed clothing, and, in two instances I personally witnessed, a fire that tore through the area, destroying the homeless camp and risking damage to everything around. I get that we need to do better on housing all around and support the various proposals (such as homeless communities, repurposing abandoned buildings, etc), but there has to be an element of enforcement, including disallowing camping in areas not specifically purposed for camping, ensuring that people move on, and forced relocations, if for no other purpose than to address buildups of trash and vermin (to be clear: rats, not the people, I'm not calling homeless vermin 🙄 ). And IMO, a key component of this is funding a public healthcare program that addresses mental illness, such as Proposition 1 in California. This is good because addressing mental illness can lead to reduced drug abuse, which is a major cause of homelessness.
But on the other, what Newsom is doing is using tricks right out of the Trump playbook by demanding that cities and counties adopt policies they do not wish to implement to share in the funding that would make homelessness go down. I also notice that there are no requirements for carrots, only sticks. I.E. no demand that supervised camping sites be set up, or empty buildings bought up and repurposed as housing. Just the requirement that you're unwelcome in public places if you're unhoused, and that the law will be brought against you if you dare persist in the same place for 4 days in a row, no matter how much you take care of that space. Seems like he's working to appeal to the Right? "See, I can be as heartless and cruel as any Republican!" Makes me less inclined to vote for him.
- Homeless people are human beings. If we housed them, and had a proper social safety net, we wouldn't even be talking about it's. Homeless or not, they need a place to live.
  
  I agree with you. That's why I pointed out that the only mandate was enforcement, aka, the stick, and no incentives, aka carrots, were required. If Newsom was serious about tackling this, the enforcement would be paired with incentives, and the cities would be getting help to set up alternatives to camping in public places, such as the supervised camping we use here in my neck of the woods.
  But let's be clear. You still need the stick. It's perfectly OK to say "We'll do everything we can to get you off the streets, but you need to put in the effort yourself, and no, trashing public spaces is not an option."
  
  Housing is usually not the issue itself. If I’m not mistaken California actually has enough shelter available to not have homeless people at all. The employed, high functioning, productive yet homeless member of society is a rarity and often remain homeless very temporarily. Most homeless people have mental and/or drug abuse issues, which leads them to decide to be homeless because they don’t like the rules, can’t stick to a schedule, have antisocial tendencies etc etc etc.
  
  Needing housing is unfortunately only part of the problem. Whether it's part of the reason they became homeless, or damage incurred in the course of being homeless, mental illness and co-occuring substance abuse go hand in hand with homelessness. (Though that majority dynamic may change with the way things have been going, it's becoming easier to fall through the entire net or what's left of it). If those issues aren't addressed simultaneously, the person ends up right back where they were, or even worse off.
- I watched what I assume was a meth lab burn the underpass of a major bridge near my apartment in 2023. Then just a couple weeks ago, only a few days away from the two-year anniversary, it happened again.
  We need to support people. Otherwise, we will vilify them. The sad fact is, this is a result of decades of destruction, and there doesn’t seem to be any willpower to do the hard thing anymore.
  It’s enough to make you want to walk into the ocean.
- The other issue that you forgot to mention is a lot of red states take their homeless people and send them to California.
  I live in LA. I've been threatened by people who are homeless. Multiple times. Yes, these people deserve help. But there's a billion reasons why our current system isn't working and part of that is the state can't institutionalize these people to get them clean from drugs and to help start them on the pathway to being a productive citizen again.
  I live in the Miracle Mile area, and I do not give a shit about someones 'right' to camp on the sidewalk with a huge ass tent that smells of shit. Sorry, but that's a public health hazard.
  Do I want people to get help? Absolutely. Do I think that people who live in these areas also deserve to live in a safe and clean environment? Absolutely.
  Something has to be done, at least Gavin is trying things.
  
  Something has to be done, at least Gavin is trying things.
  This is fascist thinking - the cult of action for the sake of action. You can't identify any real solution to the problem, but by God, you want SOMETHING done. And that something, when undefined, inevitably just means, "send law enforcement to torture them until they kill themselves."
  
  Not the right things. It's like if Gavin went and confiscated everyone's dogs to sacrifice them to Zorak to fix the homelessness issue. It's not going to work, it's never going to work, and then when people complain, you say "well, at least he's trying something." The fact of the matter is that California has an extremely deep deficit of affordable housing. The cheapest rent in Merced should NOT be $800 for a room in a single family house, that's zonko bananas, but it is. We're never going to fix the homelessness crisis without addressing the affordability crisis, and the hell of it is that affordability is actually fairly easy and cheap to address from the government's side, we just don't because it hurts the NIMBY's feelings.

Freedom^TM

He's also giving more funding to services that help the homeless so they can get back on their feet and get a home, right?
... Right?

Boo!

Vile slug. They’re people. People. His constituents. A man who lives in a taxpayer-funded mansion should think with humility.

Who’s gonna time them?
- Ignorant morons.
  You know... cops.

these out of control homeless encampments are a major and visible talking point that Republicans used to define democratic leadership. The policy of trying to avoid confrontation and hope something happens has marked some of the best cities in the world as no-go zones that are portrayed as Progressive and liberal leadership failures.
I understand why he’s chosen to do something.
- We know how to fix homelessness. It's not bulldozers; you fucking house them. Newsome has made some good strides in terms of encouraging more housing in California, but we'd be much closer to actually addressing homelessness if:
  He hit the bullshit zoning laws that restrict housing in this state with as big of a hammer as he hits homeless people with, and
  We stopped trickling money to the homeless via an infinitely recursing filter of non-profits and either directly administered the aid via the state government or just gave them the fucking money / housing. In LA, there's something like 10,000 non-profits focused on homelessness that have to coordinate with each other. That's some looney toons level shit right there, and it should be obvious to anyone that that would never work.
  California's been trying to fix homelessness with cops and bulldozers for forty or fifty years, and especially the last twenty. How long do we have to keep "accidentally" killing people and setting taxpayer cash on fire before we acknowledge that it doesn't fucking work and never will? You cannot beat homeless people into being housed, though I can see why Gavin would think that this solution would appeal to potential Republican voters who will ultimately not vote for him anyway.
- I understand why he’s chosen to do something.
  You're falling for fascist propaganda. Notice, Newsom isn't actually doing anything to fix the problem. He's not providing these people housing at all. All he's doing is sending out law enforcement to endlessly harass the homeless. That's what his "doing something" actually is. He's sending the police to "deal with" the homeless.
  You recognize there's a problem. But you can't identify a solution. A fascist strongman comes along and promises to "do something," without any real plans or promises, just the vague cult of action for the sake of action. Newsom tortures some poor people, and you walk away feeling good, believing that at last someone is "doing something."
  This won't actually house anyone. People don't disappear simply because you kicked them out of their camping spot. All you really do every time you disburse the homeless is make it that much harder for them to escape homelessness at all. Every time a camp is torn down, people lose invaluable possessions, resources, and documents that are really their only hope of ever pulling themselves out of homelessness. Newsom's actions are only exacerbating the homelessness crisis.
  It's the poorest of the poor that will pay the price for Newsom's fascist propaganda campaign. But, at least you get to feel good knowing that he's "doing something." You must be a big fan of the TSA.
  
  this kind of talk, and focus on unachievable ideologically pure outcomes, is why the undeniably most-facist party is in total control right now, you dope.

76 comments