Gavin Newsom decides to tackle California homeless crisis… now it’s an election year

Watch out California: Gavin Newsom is wearing a T-shirt. You know what that means: the Golden State governor means business!

Every few years the well-coifed pol dons his everyman garb (jeans, trucker hat, aviators, et cetera) and puts on an impassioned performance for the press. His latest PR stunt has to do with his state’s worsening homeless crisis.

Two weeks ago Newsom issued an executive order directing state agencies to clear the tent cities and encampments that bestrew the state. To drive the point home, Newsom even put his gloves on and picked up garbage from underneath an overpass in Mission Hills before heading back to the place he
feels most comfortable— in front of the cameras. “We need local government to step up. This is a crisis,” he huffed to the press gaggle.

But that wasn’t all. He also issued a warning to counties that if they don’t follow his order, there will be consequences. “The state’s unprecedented billions of dollars of support? I’m not interested in providing that support and not seeing the results,” he opined. “I’m a taxpayer, not just the governor. It’s not complicated. We’ll send that money to counties that are producing results.”

He even took to social media to reiterate his no-nonsense message to California counties. “No more excuses. We’ve provided the time. We’ve provided the funds. Now it’s time for locals to do their job,” he wrote.

The taxpayers in California have certainly provided plenty of time and a preposterous amount of money to combat this issue. In the last five years of Newtopia, the state has spent $24 billion trying to curb homelessness with little to show for it. According to the Hoover Institution, despite the massive spending in this five-year period, “homelessness increased by about 30,000, to more than 181,000.” How can that much money and that much time result in such little progress? According to the state’s audit results from April, that answer remains a mystery: thanks to the failings of the California Interagency Council on Homelessness, the state hasn’t analyzed any spending data after 2021.

Listening to Newsom grandstand about how the homeless epidemic has created a dangerous environment in which moms can’t take their kids to the park and people can’t open up businesses, you would have no idea that he has been in charge for the last five years. In fact, if T-shirt and Jeans Newsom were running against French Laundry Newsom in 2026, the former would win in a landslide.

So why now? Why is the Patrick Bateman of politics suddenly noticing what is going on in his progressive wasteland? It should be noted that Newsom’s executive order followed a decision by the Supreme Court in which the justices ruled that an ordinance in Oregon that made it illegal for homeless people to camp on public property was not unconstitutional. So perhaps Governor Newsom held off on taking any real action over the last five years because he was waiting on more clarity from the Supreme Court. But waiting for the green light of constitutionality from the highest court in the land is not typically
Newsom’s style.

What is far more likely is that Newsom is readying himself for the national stage in some capacity and he knows that this issue is going to stick to him like a cheap hair gel. So like his fellow Californian Kamala Harris, Newsom is trying to distance himself from his own track record as much as possible by feigning outrage over his own failings.

Wait until Taxpayer Gavin Newsom finds out that Governor Gavin Newsom’s office is paying a fabulous photographer $200,000 per year to take fancy pictures of T-Shirt Gavin Newsom clearing out trash from the underpasses. I’m sure he’ll be outraged.