Newsom cleans up homeless California encampments after he allocated billions of dollars while crisis grew

Blue state Gov. Gavin Newsom took to the streets of California to clean up trash left behind by homeless encampments Thursday, threatening municipalities that if they do not clean up encampments they'll lose state funding next year.

A frustrated Newsom was seen picking up trash from a cleared encampment in Los Angeles — one of the largest hubs in the state for homeless people living outdoors — alongside the California Department of Transportation. California's homelessness accounts for roughly one-third of the country's crisis. 

"I want to see results," Newsom told reporters Thursday. "I don’t want to read about them. I don’t want to see the data. I want to see it."

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Homelessness has skyrocketed in the Golden State under Newsom's leadership. According to the 2024 point-in-time count, which provides a snapshot of homelessness on a given night, the number of homeless individuals in California increased to approximately 172,000. This represented an increse from the estimated 131,000 homeless individuals counted in 2018, the year Newsom took office.

Thursday’s announcement was a continuation of Newsom’s increasing efforts to urge local governments to conduct more sweeps of homeless encampments after the Supreme Court ruled governments can force people out of encampments. Last month, Newsom directed state agencies to begin clearing encampments from state property and has been pushing local officials to follow suit.

"We're done with the excuses," Newsom told reporters. "The last big excuse was, 'Well, the courts are saying we can't do anything.' Well, that's no longer the case, so we had a simple executive order: Do your job. … You've got the money, you've got the flexibility, you've got the green light, you've got the support from the state and the public is demanding it of you."

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But some local leaders don't agree with Newsom's approach. In a statement to ABC7 News, LA County officials said in part, "New bed capacity needs to be built to accommodate a population of patients who will require locked facilities when held for treatment involuntarily.

"Without first taking those steps, the work of moving people off the streets for their own health and safety would fail," the statement continued. "This does not mean LA County is standing still. Our Pathway Home encampment resolution program already has moved hundreds of people inside as we have also extensively supported the City of LA's Inside Safe program that has sheltered thousands of others."

Kathryn Barger, an LA County supervisor, told the news outlet she "would love to explain to the governor what we are doing because we are." 

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"I'm not going to criticize the fact that he issued that order because, actually, I support what he wants to do. My goal is to have us all in the same direction. You can go in and clear the encampment, but if you don't coordinate with the different jurisdictions around you, you're simply moving that problem," she said. 

Earlier this year, Newsom's administration blamed counties and cities after a state audit report found his own homelessness task force failed to track how billions of dollars have been spent trying to tackle the crisis in the last five years. 

At the time, a senior spokesperson for the California Interagency Council on Homelessness (CICH), which coordinates homeless programs across the state, told Fox News Digital the audit's findings "highlight the significant progress made in recent years to address homelessness at the state level, including the completion of a statewide assessment of homelessness programs."

Over the past five years, the CICH didn’t consistently track whether the money actually improved the situation, the audit concluded.

The spokesperson added local governments "are primarily responsible for implementing these programs and collecting data on outcomes that the state can use to evaluate program effectiveness."

Since 2016, California has spent over $25 billion on homelessness. This includes state, local and federal funding allocated toward boosting the state's "Housing First" ideology through various programs, which prioritizes placing people in housing first before addressing mental illness or substance abuse problems. 

The Housing First model began in 2016 through SB 1380. Authored by Democratic state Sen. Ed Hernandez, the bill expanded state resources for permanent housing to homeless individuals without requirements like sobriety or employment. 

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In a response to Fox News Digital's request for comment, a spokesperson for Newsom referred to Thursday's news conference and provided a statement.

"The State of California’s doing more than ever. We'll continue to do more. But this will be my final words on this: If we don't see demonstrable results, I'll start to redirect money. I'm not interested in status quo any longer. And that will start in January with the January budget. We've been providing the support to local government that embraces those efforts and focuses on a sense of urgency — and we're going to double down. If local government is not interested, we'll redirect the money to parts of the state, cities and counties that are."