(Bloomberg) -- California Governor Gavin Newsom is weighing a funding cut for cities and counties that fail to use up their existing dollars to clear homeless encampments, said a person familiar with his thinking.
The cuts would begin as soon as next year for local governments that have unspent homelessness funds, said the person, who asked not to be named because the deliberations are private. It wasn’t immediately clear how much state money would be at risk or which local governments would be under the most scrutiny.
The governor has been trying to prod local governments after some officials balked at his drive last month to crack down on encampments in a state with more than 180,000 homeless people, the most in the country. Los Angeles County has led the opposition, with the board of supervisors defying Newsom’s exhortation and vowing to stick with its “care first” approach.
County leaders have asked him to clarify his expectations for the directive while saying their own efforts to address homelessness are bearing fruit. The number of unsheltered people in the county has dropped about 5% this year, while the sheltered population has risen about 13%.
“When I first heard of his statements, I personally attempted to contact the governor, but he was unavailable at the time,” said Los Angeles Supervisor Kathryn Barger.
Newsom unveiled the crackdown weeks after a US Supreme Court ruling that gave public officials greater authority to enforce sleeping bans by citing and arresting people even when they have nowhere else to go.
Shortly after county leaders in Los Angeles said they wouldn’t penalize people simply for sleeping outdoors, a visibly frustrated governor rushed to the city for a splashy visit to clean up trash from a homeless encampment under a freeway overpass. He threatened to cut funding for cities and counties that don’t do enough to move people into shelters.
Newsom is under pressure to show results after the state has spent more than $27 billion on homelessness since he took office. According to a statewide audit earlier this year, California failed to track how that funding was spent and whether the slew of state-run homelessness programs have produced meaningful results.
In contrast to Los Angeles County, many other Democratic-led localities in California have largely welcomed Newsom’s crackdown amid mounting pressure from angry residents.
San Francisco is stepping up encampment removals across the city. Oakland police evicted dozens of homeless people last month in one of the first high-profile sweeps since the Supreme Court ruling. Fresno recently stiffened penalties for violating its anti-camping ban, with $500 fines or as much as six months in jail.
While Newsom has praised the efforts of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, he has slammed county officials for not doing enough about homelessness, which he has called “the biggest scar” on the state’s reputation. The Los Angeles area has about 75,000 unhoused people, or about 40% of the state total.
It’s not the first time Newsom has used funding threats against local governments. In July, he yanked back $10 million from San Diego to build 150 tiny homes because of the county’s inability to find a site, giving it to San Jose instead.
Los Angeles, the center of the nation’s second-largest metro area, has received significant funding. In the past three fiscal years, the state government has allocated a total of about $3 billion for homelessness and affordable housing programs in the city of Los Angeles and LA County, according to the California Department of Housing and Community Development.
Currently, officials are spending state dollars “as quickly and as responsibly as possible to meet the urgency of the crisis,” said Christina Villacorte, a spokesperson for LA County’s Homeless Initiative.
“Any loss of funding that has already been allotted for a variety of housing and homeless services would derail Los Angeles County’s emergency response to homelessness,” Villacorte said. That would “hurt the momentum that has taken new strategies, extensive recruiting, and exhaustive work to build.”
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