The Trump administration is pushing back on California’s efforts to blame it for a historic homeless crisis, noting that the state is sitting on $450 million in federal aid and doing nothing to slash regulations that have driven up the price of a single low-income unit to $750,000.
The flashpoint came this week in a San Francisco Chronicle editorial that pushed California’s claim that the administration’s policies are to blame and that the president is fighting “against proven homeless policy in California.”
According to the editorial, “It’s Trump’s ongoing battle with the state about homelessness that has the greatest chance of creating immediate, negative effects for both California residents and the cities in which they live.”
Immediately, the Department of Housing and Urban Development pushed back, revealing that the state has $450 million in housing vouchers for the homeless that are unused and has made no move to cut regulations that can double the price of taxpayer-funded housing for the poor.
The department also described as unrealistic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s call for federal funding help to build enough units to house the state’s 60,000 homeless.
“The federal government is more than $21 trillion in debt, so expecting the federal government to build more than 60,000 permanent supportive housing units at $750,000 a unit is more than unreasonable. It is time for California to get its housing market in check and start taking actions to make life more affordable for all of its citizens,” said a senior HUD official.
The newspaper said in its editorial that the administration’s homeless plan has strained local communities, though HUD officials noted that the government has coughed up $2.3 billion to address the issue nationwide.
It also said that Washington has been holding up the release of homeless numbers used to calculate federal funding. HUD responded that it typically hasn’t released those numbers until this month and rejected a state claim that it can’t release some $650 million in aid until they come in.
“California’s homelessness issue is at a crisis level, and it is in part of its own making. The state needs to get at the root of the problem, and there are many, but it can start with addressing the exorbitant cost of housing and litany of regulations required before a single shovel can go into the ground,” the HUD official said.
