New website tracks how California cities are (and aren’t) tackling homelessness, Newsom says
Good morning and welcome to the A.M. Alert!
I am The Bee’s new(ish) governor reporter, Lia Russell. I grew up in San Francisco and returned to California in November after a decade on the East Coast, where I most recently worked at The Baltimore Sun in Maryland. You can reach me via email at LRussell@sacbee.com or on X and Bluesky @liaoffleash.
NEWSOM ANNOUNCES ‘ACCOUNTABILITY’ FOR HOMELESSNESS FUNDS
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Monday the creation of a new state website tracking what county and city governments are doing —or not doing — to tackle homelessness in their jurisdictions.
The website shows how many housing units each county has built between 2019 and 2023, how their homelessness populations have fluctuated, and how they are meeting people’s behavioral health needs.
It also shows whether each county is complying with state-mandate housing goals, which Newsom has pushed since an audit last year said the state was not adequately tracking the efficacy of programs meant to help the unhoused. The CaliforniaDepartment of Justice recently sued the city of Norwalk in November for banning homeless shelters within city limits.
Newsom told reporters he would use the website, which pulls its data from the California Department of Housing and Community Development and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, to claw back funds from counties that are not building enough housing or adequately reducing homelessness.
“We have been too permissive as it relates to encampments. We need them cleaned up,” the governor said. “We’re providing unprecedented support now. We need to see unprecedented results. If we don’t, we’re not going to continue to fund excuses, not going to continue to fund failure.”
Graham Knaus, chief executive of the California State Association of Counties, dismissed the tracker as “spin without substance,” and blamed counties’ failure to tackle housing and homelessness on the state.
“Counties aren’t the bottleneck to addressing housing and homelessness,” Knaus said in a statement. “The real barriers to progress are the state-mandated bureaucratic hurdles that slow local governments down, forcing them to navigate a maze to get resources on the ground.”
REPUBLICANS TAKE AIM AT AIR POLLUTION RULES
Via Stephen Hobbs ...
Assembly Republicans on Monday unsuccessfully tried to quickly force a vote on a bill that would void controversial changes to state air pollution rules that GOP lawmakers say could increase gasoline prices.
The California Air Resources Board in November amended the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, which requires that gasoline used in the state emit reduced levels of greenhouse emissions over time. That approval occurred despite criticism that the changes would lead to higher gasoline prices and that the program was not as environmentally beneficial as it could be.
Last week, the amendments were placed on hold by the Office of Administrative Law, which reviews regulations to make sure they are legally valid and clear.
The measure that Republicans wanted to bring forward, Assembly Bill 12, was referred to the Assembly’s Natural Resources Committee, where it could receive a hearing. Republicans wanted to bypass that and bring it to the Assembly floor for a vote.
STATE LAUNCHES DIGITAL DEMOCRACY TOOL
The state Government Operations Agency has rolled out a digital platform, Engaged California, to collect feedback from residents and crowd-source potential policy solutions.
Newsom touted the tool as the first of its kind in the U.S. The initiative is modeled after a similar “direct democracy” tool in Taiwan, which lawmakers used to communicate with residents during the pandemic and combat misinformation. It will initially focus on the recovery effort for the recent Los Angeles wildfires, believed to be the costliest natural disaster in state history. Newsom asked Congress for $40 billion in disaster aid on Friday.
The state will run the initiative in partnership with Stanford University’s Deliberative Democracy Lab, the Carnegie Endowment, UC Berkeley, and others. Newsom likened the platform to a “town hall” for the digital era by building consensus via online avenues instead of traditional methods like attending in-person meetings and contacting individual state and local officials.
“Government works better when we build it together — and this means making it easier for everyone to be involved,” he said.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“We’re not going to continue to fund failure.”
—Gov. Gavin Newsom via X. The governor announced a new website tracking how counties spend homelessness funds.
Best of The Bee:
California Republican David Valadao wants to stop big Medicaid cuts. Can he succeed? via David Lightman
El Dorado County Democrats crowd Rep. Tom McClintock’s office to protest Trump and Musk, via Jenavieve Hatch
Jury selection starts in second death penalty trial for admitted Sacramento cop killer, via Sharon Bernstein
This story was originally published February 25, 2025 at 4:55 AM.
