California Governor Gavin Newson blames President Trump for California’s failure to control the growing homelessness in cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles. While Newsom was speaking in Sacramento, California last week, the governor claimed President Trump is purposely withholding key data his state needs in order to address the epidemic of homelessness.

Newsom claimed his administration would start taking applications for the almost $500 million in state funds set aside from local programs to conquer homelessness, even though the federal government has not released the homeless counts which are normally used to establish how the funds should be distributed.

Newsom’s office stated that “politicized roadblocks” were put up by the Trump administration by declining to release the data, even though counts were conducted by cities and counties and the results were forwarded for approval by the federal government months ago.

“California is making historic investments now to help our communities fight homelessness. But we have work to do and we need the federal government to do its part,” said Newsom in a statement.

After Democratic presidential debates on Thursday in Los Angeles, a reporter asked Newsom why he thinks it is President Trump’s responsibility to fix the housing crisis that California created itself.

“Well, he’s president of the United States, and I imagine he cares about people of the United States, and he cares about the largest state in the United States of America,” replied Newsom. “And I imagine if you’re president of the United States, any leader, like myself, feels a deep sense of responsibility to address some of the most vexing issues in the country. In that respect, you would imagine some accountability and some responsibility to be supportive and to reach out.” 

The reporter mentioned the housing and affordability to Newsom and added,”It sounds like you’re deflecting towards him.”

Newsom answered, “I would encourage you to take a look at what we’ve been doing which you may not be familiar with and I imagine if you did take a look at what we just did in the last year you would see a very different picture would be painted in your mind and that question would be sort of incongruent with the reality.” 

The reporter told Newsom she knew about his efforts to address homelessness, which have not done much to remedy the issue.

“Good. So you get a sense then of the billion dollars we invested. The fact that we put a plan together, have an interagency council to address the issue for the first time in our state’s history,”replied Newsom. “That we’ve strategized the plan at a regional basis, that we were in Kern County today laying out our hundred day strategies. Mayors, city administrators all across the state. And that we’ve asked the Trump administration for the one thing that he can do specifically and that’s address the fair-market rent issue and help us support with vouchers additional resources so we can get people housing. It’s not about abdicating responsibility. It’s not about pointing fingers. It’s saying to the president of the United States, ‘if you want to help, you can help.’”

The reporter questioned Newsom about plans to help the homeless people with drug abuse and mental health problems.

“People with behavioral health problems, that’s an interesting issue because the Republican Party for decades has been cutting behavioral health funding, cutting brain health funding, consistently not supporting the efforts of the local, national, and state levels to do justice on that issue, so you’re absolutely right the president can do a hell of a lot more,” replied Newsom.

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