I’ve written Gov. Newsom a note about the $50 million he just gave to Santa Clara County and San Jose, to be shared between them for so-called homelessness solutions.
County bureaucrats exulted, with its chief executive officer, James Williams, telling the Bay Area News Group that while he welcomes the additional funding, “more funding” is needed. That’s despite the $234 million California already has given Santa Clara’s and San Jose’s homelessness efforts. No one really knows the total amount that has been given to California cities and counties to fight homelessness, because there are so many sources of income to them, including taxes. But various reports state that Newsom “has doled out $5 billion” on homelessness programs since 2019.
That doesn’t even take into account the $24 billion in missing funds, given by the state to counties over the past 5 years—money it can’t thoroughly account for. When Newsom—of whom I’m a fan—was questioned on this, he replied on X, “ANYONE can see how counties are using their funds at http://Accountability.CA.Gov.” This official California website lists all 58 of the state’s counties, and includes the total number of housing units, developed with state money, in each, from 2019-2024. However, it does not appear to have been updated since, and the numbers—as with any statistics—can be hard to define or even to prove. Besides, the public doesn’t particularly believe numbers on a website that may be made up or exaggerated for P.R. purposes. What the public believes is what they see with their own eyes, and in Oakland’s case, what we see is rampant homelessness, filthy encampments, overturned garbage bins, and sketchy people wandering our streets. Same as it’s been for many years.
Republicans predictably are going to beat Newsom up mercilessly on this. He’s already on the defensive and is going to have to come up with a better answer than to refer to a two-year old website. Newsom has lately been trying to inoculate himself from these attacks by taking some sterner steps, both rhetorical and substantive, against homelessness. But it may be too little, too late, when it comes to his presidential ambitions.
Meanwhile, back in Oakland, I think the common perception is that the city seriously mishandles how it spends the money it gets from the state and the federal governments (not to mention from taxes). There’s zero accountability for where it goes, how it’s spent, or whether or not it does any good. And yet, like the Santa Clara County chief executive, Oakland continues to demand more and more money, from any and all sources, to throw at a problem they’ve been unwilling or unable to deal with for the better part of a decade. And the whiners and bleeding hearts among the progressive crowd echo this senseless call, like lemmings throwing themselves—and us—off a fiscal cliff. I therefore repeat my request to the Governor: no more money, not a penny, until the recipients of all this money, including Oakland, can provide detailed information on where it goes down to the last dime, and whether or not it has any impact, beyond paying the salaries and benefits of the increasing numbers of public employees hired to work for the Homelessness-Progressive Complex.
Steve Heimoff