Properly Subversive/Sherman R. Frederick
Gov. Gavin Newsom doesn’t like the progress local governments have made on homelessness, so he announced this month that he’s withholding $1 billion in state homelessness funding until local governments come up with more effective plans to reduce the number of people living on the streets.
He’s right about one thing: California’s homeless numbers aren’t good. He needs them to look better if he’s to run for president in 2024.
During the pandemic, the homeless population in California grew by 22,500. Yet, the plans now on the books from cities and counties would reduce street homelessness by just 2% statewide by 2024.
Newsom told the Los Angeles Times that local governments must “deliver damn results.”
That was a not-so-subtle shot across the bow of big cities like L.A., San Francisco and San Jose.
“It’s a crisis. Act like it. Everybody step up. I’m not the mayor. You want me to come in? I’ll do the job. I’ll do it. Happily. I’ve been going into cities cleaning up encampments. Has anyone gotten the hint? If someone did that to me when I was mayor, I’d be like, ‘OK, I got it.’”
CalMatters talked to a few mayors about the Newsom warning. They were not impressed.
The governor is “creating more hoops for local governments to jump through without any clear explanation of what’s required,” said San Francisco Mayor London Breed.
San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo put a sharper edge to the governor’s move: “We need to put down the megaphones and pick up the shovels.”
The truth is that the fight to fix – or modestly alleviate – homelessness in California is going badly. Some thinkers in the state say that to get a handle on it, hundreds of billions of dollars in steady, reliable cash has to be created by the state. A measly billion here and there isn’t going to make a dent in the problem.
Some had hoped that Proposition 27 – the ballot measure that legalized online sports betting with much of the proceeds going to homelessness and mental health services – would do the trick. But voters resoundly rejected that idea. (Gov. Newsom opposed Prop 27, too.)
Marin is by no means ground zero for homelessness. We’re nothing like L.A. or San Francisco. But anyone who is paying attention knows we’ve not hit upon any real solutions either. Marin has encampments tucked away under freeways and alongside roadways. We also seem paralyzed to consistently do good when “little” problems present themselves.
All you have to do is read Marinscope’s police reports.
For example, there’s a guy who lives in the bushes near a local post office. He pops out like a troll to scare the bejeebers out of patrons. Police tell him to stop it. He doesn’t.
Another poor fellow does the same thing at a popular bank when people arrive to use the ATM.
One fine gentleman of the streets wanders around a seaside tourist area showing people a big knife in his belt. He hasn’t stabbed anyone, so police say they are limited in what they can do. Knife Man says he doesn’t need help, but obviously he does.
And, a woman weekly terrorizes one of our quaint Marin downtowns, pushing over trash cans, yelling racist remarks at the top of lungs and threatening to “kill everyone.” Her bizarre behavior is reported to police, but goes on unabated..
All I’m sayin’ is these people are known to us and they need help. Police can’t be the answer. While the governor and mayors talk about spending billions and billions, is it too much to ask that we actually do something real for these folks?
LOUSY TEST SCORES
The word alarming doesn’t begin to describe the performance of some Marin school districts in math proficiency. Scores were bad everywhere. Here are two of the worst.
In the San Rafael Elementary District, 32% of testers were math proficient. Thirty-two percent? In the Marin City School District only 27% of the kids taking the test showed proficiency in math. We must do better.
ONE MORE THING
– I don’t need to spell because I have autocorrect. For that I am eternally grapefruit.
– Why did the dad joke cross the road? To get father away.
– I once dated a girl with a twin. It was easy to tell them apart because Sue painted her nails red and Bob had a beard.
And, that’ll do for this week. Thanks for reading and until next week avoid soreheads, laugh a little and always question authority.
(“Properly Subversive” is commentary written by Sherman R. Frederick for Marinscope Community Newspapers, the “mother ship” of the Novato Advance, San Rafael News-Pointer, Mill Valley Herald, Ross Valley Reporter, Twin City Times and the Sausalito Marin Scope. Mr. Frederick is an award-winning journalist and co-founder of Battle Born Media, a news organization dedicated to the preservation of community newspapers. You can reach him by email at shermfrederick@gmail.com.)
Tom Shane says
With teachers caught regularly changing test scores for whatever reason it’s impossible for me to believe results are as high as 30% – face it every generation since we won the last World War has become a little less ambitious – sports and music prevails and if I don’t have a place to live so be it.
A.d. Hopkins says
What something do you propose for homeless situation?