Will a fed-up Gavin Newsom and California Democrats cause more homelessness? | Opinion
The stage is set for a dramatic increase in homelessness throughout California during Gov. Gavin Newsom’s final months in office, unless saner heads in Sacramento prevail.
A state homeless assistance program that all major cities depend upon to run homeless shelters has zero funding in the budget recently approved by Democrats in the California Legislature. Cities like Sacramento plan to run its shelters for the coming fiscal year with money it received from last year’s state budget. But when that money runs out next year, don’t expect cities to find a billion dollars floating around in their budgets to keep thousands of unhoused residents off the streets.
Fed up with the failure by local governments to mitigate this complex societal problem with the funding from the state, the governor and top Sacramento Democrats have found themselves with other financial priorities in a difficult budget year. But the prospect of the homeless problem getting worse, not better, is bad politics and policy.
“The number one issue that voters talk about in all of our communities is addressing homelessness,” said Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarty. “Taking these monies away from cities would essentially make us shut down some of our programs. There’d be more homeless people on the streets.”
At issue is the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention (HHAP) program. HHAP provides funds to local governments “with flexible funding to prevent and end homelessness in their regions.”
The city pf Sacramento, for example, plans to spend more than $12 million in HHAP funding it has already received to help run more than 1,000 shelter beds and other homeless services. It represents the single largest outside funding source to address homelessness in the community.
When state funding to address homelessness exploded under Newsom, thanks in part to federal assistance during the COVID-19 crisis, local governments without question threw this money at the problem rather than spending as if it was their own money. A scathing state audit last year cast doubt on how $24 billion to address homelessness over a half-decade had been spent.
As the public has grown weary of the homelessness dilemma and demanded action, Newsom has gotten fed up as well. He has called on local governments to adopt anti-camping ordinances and acted as if the state has already given cities all the money they need to put this crisis in the rear view mirror. “I’m not interested anymore, period, full stop, in funding failure,” the governor said at a news conference last month.
The Democratic leadership in the legislature, scrambling to find money for their priorities such as health care for undocumented immigrants, was all too glad to go along with Newsom and cut the $1 billion in previous funding for the HHAP program. So for now, the state’s primary program to address homelessness is going away, while the problem most definitely is not.
“This is going to make it way worse,” McCarty said. “It funds plenty of existing programs. Shelter beds, tiny homes, hotel programs.”
Big city mayors and homeless advocates are not giving up, urging the Sacramento leadership to reinstate funding for HHAP. The Democrats did comply with the constitutional mandate to pass a budget in June, but with so much financial uncertainty here and in Washington, some adjustments to the budget feel like a near certainty.
Sadly, this dwindling of the financial spigot is coming just at a time when Sacramento is on the verge of getting a whole lot smarter with the HHAP funding. The city has renegotiated contracts with non-profit organizations providing some of the services, for example, while advancing the “tiny home” village concept to move the city’s elderly homeless population off the streets.
But cities like Sacramento can’t be expected to go it alone. Greater accountability by the state on how HHAP gets spent on the ground makes all the sense in the world. But killing the program?
It’s beyond ironic that just when President Trump is traumatizing big cities throughout California with his federal law enforcement squads sweeping up immigrants, the Democrats want to pull the rug out from under their response to homelessness. Cutting HHAP to nothing could be one of the biggest self-inflicted wounds that Sacramento lawmakers have come up with for a very long time.
This story was originally published June 24, 2025 at 5:00 AM.