By Jamie Joseph
SACRAMENTO—A group of Republican lawmakers introduced more than a dozen bills to combat California’s worsening homeless crisis March 16, a problem they say the state’s Democrats have inadequately addressed as billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent and the homeless population continues to grow.
Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher (R-Yuba City), Assemblywoman Suzette Martinez Valladares (R-Santa Clarita), and Sens. Patricia Bates (R-Laguna Niguel), Brian Jones (R-Santee), Senate Republican Leader Scott Wilk (R-Santa Clarita), and other members in the legislature told reporters outside of the Capitol that their legislative package aims to tackle the root of homelessness with a strategy emphasizing accountability, mental health, and substance abuse.
“We must combine compassion with accountability,” Gallagher said. “No more pricey programs that don’t get results.”
Over the last three years, California has spent $13 billion on homelessness, according to a February 2021 state audit report.
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced in January that $12 billion in the state’s proposed 2022-2023 budget will go toward permanent supportive housing and mental health services for the state’s estimated 160,000 homeless.
Assemblywoman Laurie Davies (R-Laguna Niguel) told The Epoch Times “some of the [bills] will move forward, and probably sadly, some of them won’t” amid a deeply Democratic legislature.
“It’s been very clear that what they’ve been doing hasn’t been working,” Davies said. “All of the money that we’re spending and not seeing any results, and not only not seeing results, we’re seeing the increase in homelessness.”
The state adopted in 2016 a “Housing First” philosophy that prioritizes placing homeless individuals into permanent and temporary housing.
But critics point to the shortfalls of Los Angeles’ Proposition HHH—a $1.2 billion bond measure also passed in 2016 to create 10,000 housing units. Only 1,142 have been created, according to a recent report by the city’s controller, and those that have crossed the finish line have an average cost of over $530,000 each.
One project in development, according to the report, had a price tag of $837,000 per unit.
“That’s not an effective use of our tax dollar,” Gallagher said. “We can do so much better, but we need transparency, and we need audits to show how this money is being spent.”
At least one of the Republican’s proposals will require the governor to provide such an annual report on state and local governments’ homelessness efforts.
Another bill in the package seeks to provide addiction services for the homeless using opioid settlement funds to provide treatment for those having mental health issues.
Bates, one of the Republican senators, said the legislative package will focus on “growing a skilled workforce, increasing facility capacity, enforcing our laws rather than tolerating open drug use, and expanding [the] federal and state Housing First law so that [homeless] services can be required and not nearly offered.”
Earlier this month, Newsom proposed forcing mentally ill and drug-addicted homeless individuals into treatment through a court order. If an individual declines treatment before a judge, they could be placed into conservatorship.
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“The homeless folks that are trapped living on the street and their families don’t care if solutions come from Democrats or Republicans,” Jones, one of the Republican senators, said. “They just want to get their families healthy. Unfortunately, for too long … the governor and our Democratic colleagues have made this a partisan issue.”