California Gov. Gavin Newsom threw his fellow Democrats under the bus for their “victim mindset” on homelessness and refused to accept blame for the problem he spent billions in taxpayer funds trying to solve.
Out-of-control homelessness is almost exclusively a problem in Democrat-run areas, critics have pointed out.
For two decades, Newsom failed to address the issue. Now the 2028 Democratic presidential frontrunner is pointing the finger at his fellow liberal lawmakers.
Newsom appeared on podcaster Scott Galloway’s “Prof G Pod” this week and blamed Democratic local leaders for the problem… a sad new low for the state’s leader.
“Unsheltered homelessness, encampments in particular, the permissiveness particularly that came at peak during and after COVID as it relates to tents out on the streets and sidewalks,” Newsom said. “This notion that we couldn’t do anything about it — this sort of victim mindset that, frankly, was almost universal with many of the leaders in local government.”
In a rare moment of clarity, Newsom said Democrats believe their inaction was a moral virtue.
“Somehow we were applying the standard that it was compassionate to step over people in the streets and the sidewalks in the name of their personal liberty,” Newsom said. “When in fact the degradation of the communities, the businesses that were impacted by that, the family structure — the mom that just wants to walk her kid down to the playground in the stroller — was outraged and furious and didn’t trust government.”
“The biggest problem with the Democratic Party is we’re perceived, rightfully, as too slow, weak, and ineffective,” he said. “We’ve got to be more aggressive, stronger, more assertive, more clear, more conviction.”
“We lost a lot of trust during COVID, and we haven’t gotten that back,” Newsom admitted. “I think I was a little slow at understanding how much had changed.”
Newsom has been promising taxpayers that he would fix homelessness since 2004, when he was first elected mayor of San Francisco after being backed by Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Jesse Jackson.
Two decades later, California is home to one-third of the nation’s entire homeless population, an estimated 187,000 people. Between 2010 and 2020, while the national homeless population declined 18%, California’s grew by 31%.
The money Newsom has thrown at the problem has been staggering.
A 2024 state audit found California burned through $24 billion on homelessness over five years with “not much to show for it.”
Newsom’s own program tells the same story. A damning CalMatters investigation published last month found that Homekey, launched in 2020, has blow through $3.8 billion and has roughly 3,000 promised homes unbuilt, one in five projects the program pledged to deliver. About 2,000 additional units still need converting to permanent housing. Grants for 500 units were canceled or never materialized.
Of 148 completed projects, only 60 finished on time. Forty-five are still incomplete.
All under Newsom’s leadership.