Governor Gavin Newsom Wants You to Think Homelessness in California Is Improving. Do Not Be Fooled.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) released its Annual Homelessness Assessment Report for 2024. The report showed that California homelessness grew by only 3 percent between 2023 and 2024, while total US homelessness increased by a shocking 18 percent. California Governor Gavin Newsom was quick to pat himself on the back for California’s success, while simultaneously scapegoating local governments for the state’s failures.

“Forty states saw larger increases than California,” the Democratic governor said at a press conference in Oakland. “We’re making progress, but we have to continue to do more. . . . [The state has] provided unprecedented support and flexibility. Local government has to deliver.”

Although homelessness is largely a local issue, homelessness programs have largely been regulated by the state’s Housing First law since 2016, which withholds grant money from entities that do not conform to Housing First dictates. And despite Newsom’s self-congratulatory statements, his time in office has seen the largest growth in homelessness on record.

When looking at California’s historical growth rates for homelessness, little seems to have changed. Rather, what Newsom seems to be interpreting as his own personal success is really the more recent failures of the rest of the country. When excluding California, homelessness in the rest of the United States was actually trending downward until 2022, but it jumped by 24 percent over the past year. Nearly half of the national increase came from New York, whose homeless population was already the second largest in the country even before it gained nearly 55,000 new homeless persons last year, amounting to a staggering 53 percent increase.

Homelessness has grown in nearly every state, which is a new and troubling trend, but if we want to compare similar states, California still performs shamefully. California’s 3 percent increase in homelessness amounted to nearly 5,700 new homeless persons, while the second and third largest states, Texas and Florida, each gained only 600—roughly a 2 percent increase.

Add to this that with 66 percent of its homeless population living outdoors, California still has the highest proportion of unsheltered homelessness in the country. And all of these problems come after the state spent $24 billion to end homelessness over the past five years. Instead of bragging that homelessness in California is growing at a slightly slower rate, Newsom should be embarrassed that it is still going up at all.

Governor Newsom may be doing victory laps around California’s recent homelessness numbers, but the Golden State is really just following the same trajectory it has been on for nearly a decade. The Governor seems to equate other states’ decline with California’s improvement, and he would like to fool the rest of us into thinking the same way.

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Image credit: Gage Skidmore / Flickr