Gillen Tener Martin is a journalist and the Features Editor at the Washington Monthly, which recently published her article entitled "Gavin Newsom’s Tragic Mistake on Homelessness" We speak with Gillen via Zoom for the first half of the show.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. I'd like to
welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where our
mission is to foster allyship empathy and understanding. Big shout
out to my co host q Ward. I am your
host Rams's Jah And today we have a couple of
guests that we're going to be checking in with just
to bring some stories to life that we've been covering.
(00:21):
First up, we're going to be speaking via zoom to
Gillan Tenner Martin about Gavin Newsom's approaches plural to dealing
with homelessness in California. That's something that he has been
having to deal with on the national stage because obviously
(00:44):
homelessness is a tremendous problem in southern California and his
attacks from the right somewhat are justified. And Gillan is
going to talk to us more about that problem, scale
of the problem, and what he has been doing and
continues to do to remedy that. Russell later on the
show going to be talking to Bobby Nichols, one of
(01:04):
the Bernie Sanders endorsed Democratic socialist who actually won a
recent campaign in a city called Timpe, Arizona, and he's
going to talk to us about what that means for
the country and the shifting desires of the electorate and
all that and so much more.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
So.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Right now, let's get into our conversation with Gillan Journalist.
Gillan Tennor Martin is the features editor at The Washington Monthly,
which recently published her article entitled Gavin Newsom's Tragic Mistake
on Homelessness, and she is our guest today. All right, Gil,
welcome to the show. How you doing today?
Speaker 2 (01:40):
I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me.
This is a really important top me and in my life,
so I'm grateful to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Sure. Sure, And of course a lot of folks have
been very critical of Gavin Newsom because of this very topic,
and so I before we get to all the good stuff,
talk to me a little bit about what sort of
inspired you to like delve into this topic.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yeah, that's actually an interesting story. So I'm from a
very rural part of California. I'm from about six hours
north of the Bay Area, up in humbold County.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
I'm here right now.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
It's sort of a part of California that we don't
think of a lot when we think of homelessness, think
about San Francisco's tenderloin or skid row in Los Angeles,
but really every part of our state, including our rural
and suburban areas. And last summer, I was monitoring a
story on coming out of my local city council where
(02:38):
protesters were just shutting down every council meeting over the
clearance of a homeless encampment. It was an encampment on
private property and the city was being asked to assist
with it and have a local news story. And I
found it really interesting because it's a really hard issue,
and what the city kept bringing up was that, you know,
the governor of California is potentially making fun to contingent
(03:00):
on our doing this. We might not be accessing state
grants if we don't participate in this homeless in case.
You know, the community has a really different opinion than
the governor, at least some parts of the community do.
So that's what really got me interested in it. I've
worked in housing programs in the city that I was
following the story in in the past, so I just
(03:21):
thought that I was coming at it from a good
place to really do a deep dive.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Sure, sure, okay, so Gavin Newsom has obviously been in
the crosshairs over this issue. So I guess let's start
a little bit before the problem that we're faced with today.
How has Gavin Newsom approached this homeless problem in California
(03:48):
over the course of his career. I'd imagine, you know,
it hasn't always been the same approach.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yeah, yeah, I think he's taken a lot of different
approach is throughout his career. I note that as governor,
he's had nine state agencies have had a hand in
housing and creation and homelessness programs, and they've operated thirty programs.
So clearly he's taken a lot of throughout his whole career.
(04:16):
There's sort of two strands that I pull out from
his time as San Francisco City Supervisor in San Francisco
mayor up through his eight years as governor. And the first,
knowing that housing is the solution to homelessness, that California
still has a housing shortage in the high hundreds of
thousands to multiply millions, depending on the estimate, he's tried
to create housing, and he's tried to do that by
(04:38):
streamlining permitting processes. Rolling back to the California Environmental Quality
Act or advocating for his state lawmakers to do so,
I'm really trying to create a kinder regulatory environment to
bring new housing online and especial especially affordable housing. And
then the other bucket is sort of what some people
call addressing quality of life law violation.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Clearances.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Or as San Francisco mayor, he advocated for a kind
of controversial ballot initiative that was a sit Lie law
that would have prohibited sleeping on streets or sitting on
streets during daytime hours. It was opposed by many homeless
advocates and ultimately passed by the voters of San Francisco. So,
I do primary buckets build as much housing as possible,
(05:25):
knowing that's the real long term solution, but then also
sort of mitigate these more visible aspects of homelessness on
the broader community of California housed and unhoused constituents.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Now, you mentioned hundreds of thousands to maybe even millions
of people. How big of an issue has homelessness been
in California. I would imagine it is ramped up in
the past couple decades. But how big of an issue?
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Really?
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (05:55):
So the housing shortage is in the high hundreds of
thousands to the multimillions right now in California. As of
the last really clean point in time count we had
about one hundred and eighty seven thousand people I believe
it was that was in twenty twenty four homeless it
is a big issue. It's huge, there's no other way
to say it. As I said, you know, a rural community,
(06:15):
we see it here, we see it in our and
I think for those of us who grew up in
California or who've lived here for decades, it can feel
like it's just consistently been growing and consistently been getting worse,
But you know it's not. Actually in twenty seven and
twenty fourteen, homelessness was actually on the decline in California,
(06:38):
and I think, you know, there's there's a lot of
different reasons thrown out for that. A lot of it
was this huge effort at the national the federal level
to combat veterans homelessness and a lot of federal dollars
put toward that. But since since twenty fifteen in California,
we've really seen homelessness only go up and up, and
that you know, rises alongside housing costs which we've only
(06:59):
seen go living more generally, and of course the fact
that we haven't kept pace with a growing community. In California,
we've been experiencing probably the country's largest boom of any
industry in tech in California, and in those cities that
are that are most experiencing this, we we haven't allowed
the housing creation that would make it so that we
(07:20):
can have a roof over every single person who lives
in that community's head. We just have very exclusive zoning
laws and the really unkind regulatory environment which NEWSOM has
been trying to change.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Now, in your article, you say that NEWSOM is prioritized
affordable housing and something called permanent supportive housing, which combines
affordable housing with available but not necessarily mandatory social services
I think mental health care, addiction treatment, case management. Have
(07:53):
there been any results from this policy or this approach.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Absolutely, Support of housing is kind of clunky policy term,
but a lot of people know this as housing first.
This was a strategy that was really first adopted nationally
and had a lot of bipartisan support up until recently.
It was first pushed under George W. Bush's administration, and
it's cut veterans homelessness in half. Since twenty ten, veterans
(08:21):
homelessness nationwide is done fifty percent. So the idea here
is that you know, if someone is struggling with mental
health issues or substance abuse issues, which we know oftentimes
lead people to homelessness, it's hard to keep yourself housed
if you're dealing with these things. Other people, it is
more likely that they will start experiencing mental health or
substance abuse issues living on the streets. For both those reasons,
(08:44):
our homeless population as struggles with mental health and addiction
at higher rates than other people. So the idea is
that before you can tackle either of those issues, you
got to get a roof over someone's head. You know,
you can't expect someone to be showing up for for
substance abuse is meetings or mental health appointments if they're
(09:04):
living on the streets. And what we see from this
approach when it's put in practice is that people really
exit homelessness more permanently at higher rates. They have lower
rates of return to the streets than say, staying in
a temporary shelter or you know, other sorts of housing interventions.
What we don't see with this approach, and this is
why it's come under fire to some extent recently. Is
(09:28):
putting a roof over someone's head alone oftentimes doesn't solve
someone's perhaps schizophrenia or sure opioid addiction, you know. So
it does prevent people from returning to the streets, but
some people won't engage with the social services that are offered,
and they may just then be living in a unit
and dealing with the same issues that they either developed
while homeless or perhaps led to homelessness or both.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Okay, well, you know there's something funny about this because
the things that I've learned, and I'm obviously not as
learned as you are when it comes to this particular issue,
but I do recognize that systemic issues tend to have
(10:15):
an effect on society overall, and so I've made it
a point to study systems and one of the things
that I've learned is that homelessness, well let's call it houselessness,
as you mentioned, tends to have a ripple effect not
(10:38):
only on the individual, not only on the community, but
on the society at large. To be fair, you mentioned
it was in the one hundred thousand below two hundred
thousand range of actual homeless people in California, and that
relative to a population of somewhere in the neighborhood of
forty million. So everyone is not homeless, it's just there's
(11:01):
a lot of homeless people and they're very visible because
they're outdoors pretty much all the time. And there's a
significant amount. Obviously the population is significant, but statistically compared
to the population, it's a significant amount as well. One
of the things that I learned though, and this was
(11:22):
dealing with I have a cousin who has a severe
form of autism, and there was a place for him
to go and kind of learn how to function as
an adult. And I ended up speaking with the director.
The director actually has been on the show before, discussing
(11:42):
the intersection of mental health issues and homelessness and the
carceral system, and a scenario that was suggested to me
that she suggested was quite common. I don't have the
data on this, but she suggested that there are people
(12:02):
who have issues and they might have a primary caretaker
or they might have this that are the some support services,
and for one reason or another, their support services they
lose them. You know, a parent could die, they could
age out, of a program, whatever the case is, and
they are not prepared to engage with society as an adult,
(12:22):
and society is optimized for people who are in a
position to do that. And what happens is these people
who cannot find their way because of some issue, whatever
that issue might be, end up on the street. You know,
if their caretaker is no longer paying the rent. One day,
the landlord comes and evicts them because the caretakers passed
(12:44):
away and they can't pay the rent themselves. Whatever the cases,
they end up on the street. And when they're on
the street, they're doing what people on the street do
to survive with no money, and that often sees them
running a foul of law enforcement and then they end
up in the prison industrial complex dealing with that. And
so I would imagine that a place like California has
(13:06):
had to reckon with all of these these elements intersecting
at different points. Now, you mentioned that Gavin Newsom's you
called it, I called it, I think permanent supportive housing.
You called it something different that you know that has
had some moderate success. Are there any other approaches to
(13:28):
this issue or these issue that you're aware of that
have been effective as well?
Speaker 3 (13:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
First, just to respond to what you said, I think
that that's what makes analyzing approaches to homelessness really difficult
is that the homeless population is not one monolithic entity.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
It is incredibly diverse.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
You know. I had a law enforcement officer tell me
that some of the folks he's dealing with in his community,
a bus ticket back to home, back to family would
probably solve a whole lot of their issues. Other people
have been dealing with an untreated and probably at times
severe form of mental illness for decades and experiencing the
daily trauma of trying to survive and keep clean and
(14:09):
keep social and you know, engaged in the world while
living on the streets. So you know, some people are
we have a July people who are homeless. A huge
percentage of California's homeless population are our senior citizens. So
it's an incredibly diverse group that has been and there's
no one size fits all approach. You have to be
doing a whole lot of things at once, and you
(14:30):
have to be doing them well. You know, a permanent
supportive housing project that apartment unit managed well might see
great outcomes. If it's managed poorly, it might not. I
think Another complicated thing about this is that when we
look to other cities that have you know, been lauded
nationally for how they're doing on homelessness, Temple, they're doing
(14:51):
a lot of the things that Newsom has done. They're
really prioritizing this This housing first is what I called
it permanent supportive housing strategy, and it's just easier to
build the I think another approach is building out more
robust shelter systems. That's sort of what I talk about
in this piece. You see places like New York and
(15:12):
really high rates of homelessness. They consistently rank amongst the
cities with the highest highest homelessness per capita. And as
you said, you know, California has under two hundred thousand
homeless people. It's got the most homeless people of any
state in the country, but not per Capitafornia does not
help the highest per capita homeless population. But what these
places do in terms of sheltering is, you know, they
actually have enough shelter beds for the entire homeless population,
(15:36):
so that when a permanent supportive housing slot becomes available,
perhaps that case manager knows where to find them, rather
than you know, if you're living in encampments or outside,
and you're continually moved along by law enforcement, you might
lose touch with that case manager that can let you
know when your name is finally up on the list
and you're voucher you know, or you're getting a rental
(15:57):
assistance program spot. So you kind of need these interventions,
and I think rental assistance is a big one that
we don't talk about very much to help people not
become homeless in the first place. If they are struggling
to pay their rent, if they're paying say more than
fifty percent of their income to their rents, those people
are at high risk of becoming homelessness homeless in the
(16:17):
first place, and once someone's homeless, it's difficult to get
them to exit that rather than preventing it in the
first place. This is the program that I was running
with federal dollars up here in Humboldt County was a
rental assistance program that helped seniors pay each month. And
so you've got these all of these different interventions that
(16:38):
should ideally be happening in concert, all of them expensive,
and all of them requiring really trained staff who have
the ability to end the capacity to do this well,
because I think if you're putting dollars into a project
that's poorly managed, then that's not helping anyone. But there's
a whole lot of different approaches, and ideally you're doing
(16:59):
quite a few of them.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Sure, sure, I I know that, you know, for myself
and for Q my co host, we had a program
that we ran for a long time, about ten years
where we took our radio audience and invited them to
come down and you know, make lunch bags and hygiene
(17:20):
kits for the homeless population in our city. And it
was a successful event for a very long time until COVID,
of course, and then we had to stop. But one
of the things I learned interacting with those populations, you know,
to your earlier point, is that, yeah, a bus ticket
would solve a lot, or a translator or you know whatever.
(17:43):
And there's so many cracks in society that many of
us will never even think of. But not everybody is
just on drugs passed out on the side the world.
There are a significant amount of those folks and they
do require obviously some services, but a lot of people
that are adding to that population or folks that are
just you know, caught up in a system that is
(18:05):
not that has not considered their specific circumstances. Now, one
of the things that we were accused of when we
were doing this is that we were doing this as
a performative exercise, and that always kind of boggled my mind.
But you know, we were accused of it because we
promoted the event on social media and you know, it
(18:30):
seemed to folks, some very small minority people, but vocal minority,
that we were simply doing it for clout And I
know that Gavin Newsom himself is a person that has
been associated with the presidency potentially you know, running for president,
and he's very vulnerable to criticism just as a as
(18:56):
a result of being the governor of California certainly stepping
into that role. People are already mounting their arguments. Uh,
do you think that this homeless issue is something that
is is is it an actual concern of Gavin Newsom's
or do you think that it's more of an optics
thing where he's like, I gotta deal with this because
(19:17):
I won't be able to make it to the presidency.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Hm. First off, I just want to respond to the
slipping through the cracks part.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Okay, please, I.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Sorry, did you get that little slack notification that jumped up? Okay,
I'll give it ten seconds. Yeah, I just want to
respond to the slipping through the cracks. I think, you know,
as as someone who's currently housing employed, to think about
the ways in which just over the course decades, we've
(19:50):
created so many more like cracks for people to slip into,
whether that's in the healthcare system or in your now
I need two step verification for there are just so
many different ways in modern society that people can really
you know, not have the supports they need or the
there's just a whole lot more cracks these days. I
feel like than perhaps there were twenty to thirty on
(20:16):
how important homelessness is to Gavin Newsom. I think it's
incredibly important. I think any politician that I think he's,
you know, a good politician. I think that any politician
worth their salt is going to care about the issue
that is clearly important to their voters. And I do
think that he did not need to stake his reputation
(20:37):
on homelessness in such a big way. You know, he's
putting nearly thirty billion dollars bard homelessness. He didn't have
to do that. That was a really politically risky thing
to do. Before him, you know, governors barely mentioned the
word homelessness. They saw it as a local issue, an
issue for cities and counties to build enough housing for
their community and to provide the homelessness services necessary for
(20:59):
those folks that are unhoused in communities. Right now, Gavin
Newsom really changed that. He said, you know, it's time
to solve it. In campaigning, you know that this is
the crisis of our time, and that's a politically risky
thing to do. The reason why governors weren't prior weren't
mentioning homelessness is because it's a really difficult issue and
it's a really long, practable one. I think he took
(21:22):
it on in a brave way, clearly given the peace
I wrote. I think he made some mistakes, but I
do think that it is a very personal issue for
him because he knows it's personal to California. He grew
up here too. No one likes seeing people suffering around you,
and I think that Californians especially have a really big
heart when it comes to homelessness. I think that more
than other states, Californians believe that it is part of
(21:43):
our government's responsibility to help people be sustainably housed. You know,
when it comes to do they want to see a
four story building in their single family neighborhood.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
That's a different story in a lot of communities.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
But I do think that more than other states, we
see it as government role to help the people in
our community that need help. And I think that got
the news and aspires to that, and I do think
that he took a risky gamble.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
I think he was politically brave.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Sure, there's there's something that I think is sort of
interesting when I rarely consume, you know, right wing media,
Fox News in particular, is that they kind of lump
the entire West Coast together when they have this conversation
about homelessness. And I'm aware of, you know what you
(22:34):
mentioned that a lot of folks want the homeless problem
to be solved, but they don't want homeless people in
their community. They wanted to be solved far away from
where they live. And that's that's a challenge. And I
can imagine why, because you know that we have, you know,
(22:57):
a diverse population, but everybody's lumped under them. Ella of homelessness,
and so you have you know, sex offenders and you know,
all that sort of stuff, and then you have people,
as you mentioned, with like medical debt that couldn't afford
rent and they're just on the street and they're trying
to get back. And again, while we're here, I think
your point is well made about a person who finds
(23:18):
themselves in that predicament realizing how challenging it is to
go from being homeless with no address to being employed
and having addressed. That is a bridge, especially if you
have children, especially if you have responsibilities, people with pets,
that sort of thing. But in terms of the three
(23:40):
states being lumped together, I do recognize that, you know,
the right tends to associate you know, drug use, criminality,
and homelessness with these liberal states, and you know, just
like you know, liberals have a tendency to lump poor
(24:00):
education and sick sick populations and whatnot with red states.
In terms of, you know, what other states have been
doing or what other states could be doing, do you
feel like Gavin Newsom is kind of leading the charge
or do you feel like Gavin Newsom is learning from
other states? Like what because somewhere in here there's a
(24:23):
solution that at least moves this this problem more toward
being solved than you know, what we're seeing I guess
as of late.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Yeah, so I think I think he is trying to
get California into a place where housing can be built
cheaper and faster. You know, when we talk about I
don't know the exact stats for Houston, but in California,
it takes five years to an affordable housing project. The
average price per unit in that affordable house is around
six hundred thousand dollars per apartment. So he's trying to
(25:01):
It's expensive, you know, and it's earthquake engineering, energy efficiency requirements,
higher land and labor costs, longer permitting timelines. There's many
things that make it more expensive in California than Texas,
and he's trying to change that. So I think that
we will see improvement, but once again, five years start
to finish. Newsom's only been governored for coming up on
(25:22):
eight you know, so his regulatory rollbacks I think will
pay off more in time. In the meantime, and this
is sort of what my article focused on. In the meantime,
there are other states that have had you know, success
building out robust sheltering systems, and this thinking. Massachusetts is
(25:42):
the only state that has a right to shelter law.
This was passed by Governor Ducaucus in the eighties, and
this law guarantees homeless families, pregnant women, those with children
access to temporary shelter and services. New York City has
a similar mandate that arises from a court case, and
(26:03):
that one's actually broader because it requires the city to
provide enough shelter, enough beds overnight.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
In New York City.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
These are the only two places that have a lot
like that on the books. It would be very expensive
California's shelter bed shortage, and it would have taken a
lot of money away from the permanent solution, which is
housing creation. You know, I think Newsome lets sheltering fall
by the wayside a little bit because he wants to
focus on the long term solution, which is permanent supportive housing,
(26:33):
affordable housing, more middle income housing, more housing in general.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Sure, yeah, that seems yeah, it makes sense.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
But then what you see in the interim in some
places a shelter bed shortage of around one thousand. You know,
I was speaking with a county administrator in Fresno County,
another rural community in the Central Valley that is following
Newsom's encampment clearance guidance and moving people along as often
as they can. When encampments are reported shelter bedshorts of
(27:04):
around a thousand beds, so they're literally just asking people
to move their texts and you know, it's if moving
people with nowhere to offer them. Fresno is offering a
motel vulture for two weeks that you know, people sometimes
can't bring their pets to a motel. Maybe that community
is in a community a few not calling homes so
(27:25):
they're uncomfortable moving. I think it's just it's difficult to
focus so much on this permanent part that is the solution,
but that is years down the road of us actually
having enough housing and then in the meantime just asking
people to move every three days.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Yeah, of course, Well before we let you go, I
wanted to make sure that folks know how to keep
up with you. Obviously, there are people like me who
they have a heart. They want to be a supportive
as they can be when it comes to you know,
homeless folks, and this article I think gives them some insight.
(28:05):
But I know you've written a number of articles that
are fantastic. I obviously wrote an article last year about
the nation's largest nutrition education program being eliminated by the
US Congress. I wish I had time to get to
those questions. But again, before we go, make sure that
our listeners have a way to like lock in with
you just kind of follow your journalism and stay informed.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
Yeah. Absolutely so.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
You can read everything I've written and my wonderful colleagues
have written on www dot Washington Monthly dot com. We
also do email newsletters a few times a week, and
you on the home page of our website. And I
will say that this summer, we, as with decades, the
Washington Monthly, will be putting out our annual College Guide,
(28:52):
which ranks schools not based on you know, selectivity or prestige.
You're not seeing in schools topping the ranks as the
US and World Report rankings. These are the schools that
educate broad swaths of lower income and working class Americans,
educate them affordably, allow them high alumni earnings after graduation,
and really are just driving social mobility in.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
Our country.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
You know, cal State Fresno was really near the top
of our list, and you don't usually see these amazing
regional colleges that do educate the majority of Americans in
other college rankings very often. I'm going to check that
out near the end of the summer when it comes out.
And yeah, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Absolutely I appreciate it's been a pleasure. Please come back
and share with us again. This has been quite insightful
and I can't thank you enough. Once again. Today's guest
has been journalist Gillan Tenner Martin, who is the features
editor at The Washington Monthly and don't forget about her
recently published article entitled Gavin Newsom's tragic mistake on homelessness
(29:56):
Stick around. We're coming back with Bobby Nichols right after
this
Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. I'd like to
welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where our
mission is to foster allyship empathy and understanding. Big shout
out to my co host q Ward. I am your
host Rams's Jah And today we have a couple of
guests that we're going to be checking in with just
to bring some stories to life that we've been covering.
(00:21):
First up, we're going to be speaking via zoom to
Gillan Tenner Martin about Gavin Newsom's approaches plural to dealing
with homelessness in California. That's something that he has been
having to deal with on the national stage because obviously
(00:44):
homelessness is a tremendous problem in southern California and his
attacks from the right somewhat are justified. And Gillan is
going to talk to us more about that problem, scale
of the problem, and what he has been doing and
continues to do to remedy that. Russell later on the
show going to be talking to Bobby Nichols, one of
(01:04):
the Bernie Sanders endorsed Democratic socialist who actually won a
recent campaign in a city called Timpe, Arizona, and he's
going to talk to us about what that means for
the country and the shifting desires of the electorate and
all that and so much more.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
So.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Right now, let's get into our conversation with Gillan Journalist.
Gillan Tennor Martin is the features editor at The Washington Monthly,
which recently published her article entitled Gavin Newsom's Tragic Mistake
on Homelessness, and she is our guest today. All right, Gil,
welcome to the show. How you doing today?
Speaker 2 (01:40):
I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me.
This is a really important top me and in my life,
so I'm grateful to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Sure. Sure, And of course a lot of folks have
been very critical of Gavin Newsom because of this very topic,
and so I before we get to all the good stuff,
talk to me a little bit about what sort of
inspired you to like delve into this topic.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yeah, that's actually an interesting story. So I'm from a
very rural part of California. I'm from about six hours
north of the Bay Area, up in humbold County.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
I'm here right now.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
It's sort of a part of California that we don't
think of a lot when we think of homelessness, think
about San Francisco's tenderloin or skid row in Los Angeles,
but really every part of our state, including our rural
and suburban areas. And last summer, I was monitoring a
story on coming out of my local city council where
(02:38):
protesters were just shutting down every council meeting over the
clearance of a homeless encampment. It was an encampment on
private property and the city was being asked to assist
with it and have a local news story. And I
found it really interesting because it's a really hard issue,
and what the city kept bringing up was that, you know,
the governor of California is potentially making fun to contingent
(03:00):
on our doing this. We might not be accessing state
grants if we don't participate in this homeless in case.
You know, the community has a really different opinion than
the governor, at least some parts of the community do.
So that's what really got me interested in it. I've
worked in housing programs in the city that I was
following the story in in the past, so I just
(03:21):
thought that I was coming at it from a good
place to really do a deep dive.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Sure, sure, okay, so Gavin Newsom has obviously been in
the crosshairs over this issue. So I guess let's start
a little bit before the problem that we're faced with today.
How has Gavin Newsom approached this homeless problem in California
(03:48):
over the course of his career. I'd imagine, you know,
it hasn't always been the same approach.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yeah, yeah, I think he's taken a lot of different
approach is throughout his career. I note that as governor,
he's had nine state agencies have had a hand in
housing and creation and homelessness programs, and they've operated thirty programs.
So clearly he's taken a lot of throughout his whole career.
(04:16):
There's sort of two strands that I pull out from
his time as San Francisco City Supervisor in San Francisco
mayor up through his eight years as governor. And the first,
knowing that housing is the solution to homelessness, that California
still has a housing shortage in the high hundreds of
thousands to multiply millions, depending on the estimate, he's tried
to create housing, and he's tried to do that by
(04:38):
streamlining permitting processes. Rolling back to the California Environmental Quality
Act or advocating for his state lawmakers to do so,
I'm really trying to create a kinder regulatory environment to
bring new housing online and especial especially affordable housing. And
then the other bucket is sort of what some people
call addressing quality of life law violation.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Clearances.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Or as San Francisco mayor, he advocated for a kind
of controversial ballot initiative that was a sit Lie law
that would have prohibited sleeping on streets or sitting on
streets during daytime hours. It was opposed by many homeless
advocates and ultimately passed by the voters of San Francisco. So,
I do primary buckets build as much housing as possible,
(05:25):
knowing that's the real long term solution, but then also
sort of mitigate these more visible aspects of homelessness on
the broader community of California housed and unhoused constituents.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Now, you mentioned hundreds of thousands to maybe even millions
of people. How big of an issue has homelessness been
in California. I would imagine it is ramped up in
the past couple decades. But how big of an issue?
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Really?
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (05:55):
So the housing shortage is in the high hundreds of
thousands to the multimillions right now in California. As of
the last really clean point in time count we had
about one hundred and eighty seven thousand people I believe
it was that was in twenty twenty four homeless it
is a big issue. It's huge, there's no other way
to say it. As I said, you know, a rural community,
(06:15):
we see it here, we see it in our and
I think for those of us who grew up in
California or who've lived here for decades, it can feel
like it's just consistently been growing and consistently been getting worse,
But you know it's not. Actually in twenty seven and
twenty fourteen, homelessness was actually on the decline in California,
(06:38):
and I think, you know, there's there's a lot of
different reasons thrown out for that. A lot of it
was this huge effort at the national the federal level
to combat veterans homelessness and a lot of federal dollars
put toward that. But since since twenty fifteen in California,
we've really seen homelessness only go up and up, and
that you know, rises alongside housing costs which we've only
(06:59):
seen go living more generally, and of course the fact
that we haven't kept pace with a growing community. In California,
we've been experiencing probably the country's largest boom of any
industry in tech in California, and in those cities that
are that are most experiencing this, we we haven't allowed
the housing creation that would make it so that we
(07:20):
can have a roof over every single person who lives
in that community's head. We just have very exclusive zoning
laws and the really unkind regulatory environment which NEWSOM has
been trying to change.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Now, in your article, you say that NEWSOM is prioritized
affordable housing and something called permanent supportive housing, which combines
affordable housing with available but not necessarily mandatory social services
I think mental health care, addiction treatment, case management. Have
(07:53):
there been any results from this policy or this approach.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Absolutely, Support of housing is kind of clunky policy term,
but a lot of people know this as housing first.
This was a strategy that was really first adopted nationally
and had a lot of bipartisan support up until recently.
It was first pushed under George W. Bush's administration, and
it's cut veterans homelessness in half. Since twenty ten, veterans
(08:21):
homelessness nationwide is done fifty percent. So the idea here
is that you know, if someone is struggling with mental
health issues or substance abuse issues, which we know oftentimes
lead people to homelessness, it's hard to keep yourself housed
if you're dealing with these things. Other people, it is
more likely that they will start experiencing mental health or
substance abuse issues living on the streets. For both those reasons,
(08:44):
our homeless population as struggles with mental health and addiction
at higher rates than other people. So the idea is
that before you can tackle either of those issues, you
got to get a roof over someone's head. You know,
you can't expect someone to be showing up for for
substance abuse is meetings or mental health appointments if they're
(09:04):
living on the streets. And what we see from this
approach when it's put in practice is that people really
exit homelessness more permanently at higher rates. They have lower
rates of return to the streets than say, staying in
a temporary shelter or you know, other sorts of housing interventions.
What we don't see with this approach, and this is
why it's come under fire to some extent recently. Is
(09:28):
putting a roof over someone's head alone oftentimes doesn't solve
someone's perhaps schizophrenia or sure opioid addiction, you know. So
it does prevent people from returning to the streets, but
some people won't engage with the social services that are offered,
and they may just then be living in a unit
and dealing with the same issues that they either developed
while homeless or perhaps led to homelessness or both.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Okay, well, you know there's something funny about this because
the things that I've learned, and I'm obviously not as
learned as you are when it comes to this particular issue,
but I do recognize that systemic issues tend to have
(10:15):
an effect on society overall, and so I've made it
a point to study systems and one of the things
that I've learned is that homelessness, well let's call it houselessness,
as you mentioned, tends to have a ripple effect not
(10:38):
only on the individual, not only on the community, but
on the society at large. To be fair, you mentioned
it was in the one hundred thousand below two hundred
thousand range of actual homeless people in California, and that
relative to a population of somewhere in the neighborhood of
forty million. So everyone is not homeless, it's just there's
(11:01):
a lot of homeless people and they're very visible because
they're outdoors pretty much all the time. And there's a
significant amount. Obviously the population is significant, but statistically compared
to the population, it's a significant amount as well. One
of the things that I learned though, and this was
(11:22):
dealing with I have a cousin who has a severe
form of autism, and there was a place for him
to go and kind of learn how to function as
an adult. And I ended up speaking with the director.
The director actually has been on the show before, discussing
(11:42):
the intersection of mental health issues and homelessness and the
carceral system, and a scenario that was suggested to me
that she suggested was quite common. I don't have the
data on this, but she suggested that there are people
(12:02):
who have issues and they might have a primary caretaker
or they might have this that are the some support services,
and for one reason or another, their support services they
lose them. You know, a parent could die, they could
age out, of a program, whatever the case is, and
they are not prepared to engage with society as an adult,
(12:22):
and society is optimized for people who are in a
position to do that. And what happens is these people
who cannot find their way because of some issue, whatever
that issue might be, end up on the street. You know,
if their caretaker is no longer paying the rent. One day,
the landlord comes and evicts them because the caretakers passed
(12:44):
away and they can't pay the rent themselves. Whatever the cases,
they end up on the street. And when they're on
the street, they're doing what people on the street do
to survive with no money, and that often sees them
running a foul of law enforcement and then they end
up in the prison industrial complex dealing with that. And
so I would imagine that a place like California has
(13:06):
had to reckon with all of these these elements intersecting
at different points. Now, you mentioned that Gavin Newsom's you
called it, I called it, I think permanent supportive housing.
You called it something different that you know that has
had some moderate success. Are there any other approaches to
(13:28):
this issue or these issue that you're aware of that
have been effective as well?
Speaker 3 (13:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
First, just to respond to what you said, I think
that that's what makes analyzing approaches to homelessness really difficult
is that the homeless population is not one monolithic entity.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
It is incredibly diverse.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
You know. I had a law enforcement officer tell me
that some of the folks he's dealing with in his community,
a bus ticket back to home, back to family would
probably solve a whole lot of their issues. Other people
have been dealing with an untreated and probably at times
severe form of mental illness for decades and experiencing the
daily trauma of trying to survive and keep clean and
(14:09):
keep social and you know, engaged in the world while
living on the streets. So you know, some people are
we have a July people who are homeless. A huge
percentage of California's homeless population are our senior citizens. So
it's an incredibly diverse group that has been and there's
no one size fits all approach. You have to be
doing a whole lot of things at once, and you
(14:30):
have to be doing them well. You know, a permanent
supportive housing project that apartment unit managed well might see
great outcomes. If it's managed poorly, it might not. I
think Another complicated thing about this is that when we
look to other cities that have you know, been lauded
nationally for how they're doing on homelessness, Temple, they're doing
(14:51):
a lot of the things that Newsom has done. They're
really prioritizing this This housing first is what I called
it permanent supportive housing strategy, and it's just easier to
build the I think another approach is building out more
robust shelter systems. That's sort of what I talk about
in this piece. You see places like New York and
(15:12):
really high rates of homelessness. They consistently rank amongst the
cities with the highest highest homelessness per capita. And as
you said, you know, California has under two hundred thousand
homeless people. It's got the most homeless people of any
state in the country, but not per Capitafornia does not
help the highest per capita homeless population. But what these
places do in terms of sheltering is, you know, they
actually have enough shelter beds for the entire homeless population,
(15:36):
so that when a permanent supportive housing slot becomes available,
perhaps that case manager knows where to find them, rather
than you know, if you're living in encampments or outside,
and you're continually moved along by law enforcement, you might
lose touch with that case manager that can let you
know when your name is finally up on the list
and you're voucher you know, or you're getting a rental
(15:57):
assistance program spot. So you kind of need these interventions,
and I think rental assistance is a big one that
we don't talk about very much to help people not
become homeless in the first place. If they are struggling
to pay their rent, if they're paying say more than
fifty percent of their income to their rents, those people
are at high risk of becoming homelessness homeless in the
(16:17):
first place, and once someone's homeless, it's difficult to get
them to exit that rather than preventing it in the
first place. This is the program that I was running
with federal dollars up here in Humboldt County was a
rental assistance program that helped seniors pay each month. And
so you've got these all of these different interventions that
(16:38):
should ideally be happening in concert, all of them expensive,
and all of them requiring really trained staff who have
the ability to end the capacity to do this well,
because I think if you're putting dollars into a project
that's poorly managed, then that's not helping anyone. But there's
a whole lot of different approaches, and ideally you're doing
(16:59):
quite a few of them.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Sure, sure, I I know that, you know, for myself
and for Q my co host, we had a program
that we ran for a long time, about ten years
where we took our radio audience and invited them to
come down and you know, make lunch bags and hygiene
(17:20):
kits for the homeless population in our city. And it
was a successful event for a very long time until COVID,
of course, and then we had to stop. But one
of the things I learned interacting with those populations, you know,
to your earlier point, is that, yeah, a bus ticket
would solve a lot, or a translator or you know whatever.
(17:43):
And there's so many cracks in society that many of
us will never even think of. But not everybody is
just on drugs passed out on the side the world.
There are a significant amount of those folks and they
do require obviously some services, but a lot of people
that are adding to that population or folks that are
just you know, caught up in a system that is
(18:05):
not that has not considered their specific circumstances. Now, one
of the things that we were accused of when we
were doing this is that we were doing this as
a performative exercise, and that always kind of boggled my mind.
But you know, we were accused of it because we
promoted the event on social media and you know, it
(18:30):
seemed to folks, some very small minority people, but vocal minority,
that we were simply doing it for clout And I
know that Gavin Newsom himself is a person that has
been associated with the presidency potentially you know, running for president,
and he's very vulnerable to criticism just as a as
(18:56):
a result of being the governor of California certainly stepping
into that role. People are already mounting their arguments. Uh,
do you think that this homeless issue is something that
is is is it an actual concern of Gavin Newsom's
or do you think that it's more of an optics
thing where he's like, I gotta deal with this because
(19:17):
I won't be able to make it to the presidency.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Hm. First off, I just want to respond to the
slipping through the cracks part.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Okay, please, I.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Sorry, did you get that little slack notification that jumped up? Okay,
I'll give it ten seconds. Yeah, I just want to
respond to the slipping through the cracks. I think, you know,
as as someone who's currently housing employed, to think about
the ways in which just over the course decades, we've
(19:50):
created so many more like cracks for people to slip into,
whether that's in the healthcare system or in your now
I need two step verification for there are just so
many different ways in modern society that people can really
you know, not have the supports they need or the
there's just a whole lot more cracks these days. I
feel like than perhaps there were twenty to thirty on
(20:16):
how important homelessness is to Gavin Newsom. I think it's
incredibly important. I think any politician that I think he's,
you know, a good politician. I think that any politician
worth their salt is going to care about the issue
that is clearly important to their voters. And I do
think that he did not need to stake his reputation
(20:37):
on homelessness in such a big way. You know, he's
putting nearly thirty billion dollars bard homelessness. He didn't have
to do that. That was a really politically risky thing
to do. Before him, you know, governors barely mentioned the
word homelessness. They saw it as a local issue, an
issue for cities and counties to build enough housing for
their community and to provide the homelessness services necessary for
(20:59):
those folks that are unhoused in communities. Right now, Gavin
Newsom really changed that. He said, you know, it's time
to solve it. In campaigning, you know that this is
the crisis of our time, and that's a politically risky
thing to do. The reason why governors weren't prior weren't
mentioning homelessness is because it's a really difficult issue and
it's a really long, practable one. I think he took
(21:22):
it on in a brave way, clearly given the peace
I wrote. I think he made some mistakes, but I
do think that it is a very personal issue for
him because he knows it's personal to California. He grew
up here too. No one likes seeing people suffering around you,
and I think that Californians especially have a really big
heart when it comes to homelessness. I think that more
than other states, Californians believe that it is part of
(21:43):
our government's responsibility to help people be sustainably housed. You know,
when it comes to do they want to see a
four story building in their single family neighborhood.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
That's a different story in a lot of communities.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
But I do think that more than other states, we
see it as government role to help the people in
our community that need help. And I think that got
the news and aspires to that, and I do think
that he took a risky gamble.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
I think he was politically brave.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Sure, there's there's something that I think is sort of
interesting when I rarely consume, you know, right wing media,
Fox News in particular, is that they kind of lump
the entire West Coast together when they have this conversation
about homelessness. And I'm aware of, you know what you
(22:34):
mentioned that a lot of folks want the homeless problem
to be solved, but they don't want homeless people in
their community. They wanted to be solved far away from
where they live. And that's that's a challenge. And I
can imagine why, because you know that we have, you know,
(22:57):
a diverse population, but everybody's lumped under them. Ella of homelessness,
and so you have you know, sex offenders and you know,
all that sort of stuff, and then you have people,
as you mentioned, with like medical debt that couldn't afford
rent and they're just on the street and they're trying
to get back. And again, while we're here, I think
your point is well made about a person who finds
(23:18):
themselves in that predicament realizing how challenging it is to
go from being homeless with no address to being employed
and having addressed. That is a bridge, especially if you
have children, especially if you have responsibilities, people with pets,
that sort of thing. But in terms of the three
(23:40):
states being lumped together, I do recognize that, you know,
the right tends to associate you know, drug use, criminality,
and homelessness with these liberal states, and you know, just
like you know, liberals have a tendency to lump poor
(24:00):
education and sick sick populations and whatnot with red states.
In terms of, you know, what other states have been
doing or what other states could be doing, do you
feel like Gavin Newsom is kind of leading the charge
or do you feel like Gavin Newsom is learning from
other states? Like what because somewhere in here there's a
(24:23):
solution that at least moves this this problem more toward
being solved than you know, what we're seeing I guess
as of late.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Yeah, so I think I think he is trying to
get California into a place where housing can be built
cheaper and faster. You know, when we talk about I
don't know the exact stats for Houston, but in California,
it takes five years to an affordable housing project. The
average price per unit in that affordable house is around
six hundred thousand dollars per apartment. So he's trying to
(25:01):
It's expensive, you know, and it's earthquake engineering, energy efficiency requirements,
higher land and labor costs, longer permitting timelines. There's many
things that make it more expensive in California than Texas,
and he's trying to change that. So I think that
we will see improvement, but once again, five years start
to finish. Newsom's only been governored for coming up on
(25:22):
eight you know, so his regulatory rollbacks I think will
pay off more in time. In the meantime, and this
is sort of what my article focused on. In the meantime,
there are other states that have had you know, success
building out robust sheltering systems, and this thinking. Massachusetts is
(25:42):
the only state that has a right to shelter law.
This was passed by Governor Ducaucus in the eighties, and
this law guarantees homeless families, pregnant women, those with children
access to temporary shelter and services. New York City has
a similar mandate that arises from a court case, and
(26:03):
that one's actually broader because it requires the city to
provide enough shelter, enough beds overnight.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
In New York City.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
These are the only two places that have a lot
like that on the books. It would be very expensive
California's shelter bed shortage, and it would have taken a
lot of money away from the permanent solution, which is
housing creation. You know, I think Newsome lets sheltering fall
by the wayside a little bit because he wants to
focus on the long term solution, which is permanent supportive housing,
(26:33):
affordable housing, more middle income housing, more housing in general.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Sure, yeah, that seems yeah, it makes sense.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
But then what you see in the interim in some
places a shelter bed shortage of around one thousand. You know,
I was speaking with a county administrator in Fresno County,
another rural community in the Central Valley that is following
Newsom's encampment clearance guidance and moving people along as often
as they can. When encampments are reported shelter bedshorts of
(27:04):
around a thousand beds, so they're literally just asking people
to move their texts and you know, it's if moving
people with nowhere to offer them. Fresno is offering a
motel vulture for two weeks that you know, people sometimes
can't bring their pets to a motel. Maybe that community
is in a community a few not calling homes so
(27:25):
they're uncomfortable moving. I think it's just it's difficult to
focus so much on this permanent part that is the solution,
but that is years down the road of us actually
having enough housing and then in the meantime just asking
people to move every three days.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Yeah, of course, Well before we let you go, I
wanted to make sure that folks know how to keep
up with you. Obviously, there are people like me who
they have a heart. They want to be a supportive
as they can be when it comes to you know,
homeless folks, and this article I think gives them some insight.
(28:05):
But I know you've written a number of articles that
are fantastic. I obviously wrote an article last year about
the nation's largest nutrition education program being eliminated by the
US Congress. I wish I had time to get to
those questions. But again, before we go, make sure that
our listeners have a way to like lock in with
you just kind of follow your journalism and stay informed.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
Yeah. Absolutely so.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
You can read everything I've written and my wonderful colleagues
have written on www dot Washington Monthly dot com. We
also do email newsletters a few times a week, and
you on the home page of our website. And I
will say that this summer, we, as with decades, the
Washington Monthly, will be putting out our annual College Guide,
(28:52):
which ranks schools not based on you know, selectivity or prestige.
You're not seeing in schools topping the ranks as the
US and World Report rankings. These are the schools that
educate broad swaths of lower income and working class Americans,
educate them affordably, allow them high alumni earnings after graduation,
and really are just driving social mobility in.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
Our country.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
You know, cal State Fresno was really near the top
of our list, and you don't usually see these amazing
regional colleges that do educate the majority of Americans in
other college rankings very often. I'm going to check that
out near the end of the summer when it comes out.
And yeah, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Absolutely I appreciate it's been a pleasure. Please come back
and share with us again. This has been quite insightful
and I can't thank you enough. Once again. Today's guest
has been journalist Gillan Tenner Martin, who is the features
editor at The Washington Monthly and don't forget about her
recently published article entitled Gavin Newsom's tragic mistake on homelessness
(29:56):
Stick around. We're coming back with Bobby Nichols right after
this
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