Thread by @ShellenbergerMD

- Calif. is home to 12% of American people & 50% of homeless;

- NYC shelters 95% of its homeless, Calif. just 25%;

- 1,000 homeless will die on the streets of LA & 300 will die in NYC which has 2x people.

- More homeless die of hypothermia in Los Angeles than in New York City

Newsom knows housing vouchers can’t create more houses or apartments

He knows landlords refuse to rent to tenants with vouchers:

-Just 1% of rental postings accept vouchers

- In LA county, up to 90% of people who receive vouchers fail to find housing within four months.

Newsom suggests crisis is poverty problem alone but people who work with homeless say 100% are abusing drugs — usually hard ones like meth and heroin — or mentally ill or both. Significant % are schizophrenic or severely bipolar. Many devastated by trauma including rape & assault

It’s hard to believe that Newsom is naive. After all, he has held office in California for most of his adult life.Newsom was on the SF Board of Supervisors from 1997 to 2003 and Mayor from 2004 to 2011. During his time as mayor, SF homeless population grew from 6,248 to 6,455.

Newsom told HBO that most of the homeless people on the street when he ended his tenure as mayor of SF weren’t from California.

“The vast majority (of San Francisco’s homeless people) also come in from — and we know this — from Texas. Just (an) interesting fact,” Newsom said.

Politifact called his claim “ridiculous,” noting that “Newsom’s statement is contradicted by SF’s own point in time homeless counts.”

“Data shows (Newsom’s statement) is totally incorrect,” said San Francisco’s Coalition of Homelessness. “Newsom knows better, by the way.”

And now, in its press release attempting to blame the Trump administration for the homelessness crisis, the governor’s office claims that the letter to Trump was signed by a “bipartisan coalition.”

In reality, just four people signed the letter, and all of them are Democrats.

“If we’re talking 3 years from now and there’s no change…”

Wait, what? Three years? Do the people of California really have to wait 3 years before they can see significant change? Was 22 years in power in SF and California really insufficient time for Newsom to do anything?

Since taking office, Newsom has tweeted 85 times about immigration, 77 times about gun control, and 35 times about climate change. By contrast, he has tweeted just 16 times about housing and just five times about homelessness.

Homelessness is the biggest humanitarian, public health, and environmental crisis in the state. It is resulting in three deaths per day in LA alone. And yet Newsom is tweeting seven times more frequently about climate change.

The homelessness crisis is more than a public health disaster. It is an affront to human dignity. All of us who live in Calif. should feel ashamed of our state’s failure to serve the most vulnerable among us: not just the extremely poor but also the mentally ill and drug-addicted

What’s needed more than anything is a governor with vision, courage, and a relentless focus on saving California in 2019, not being elected president in 2024.

Calif. Gov. @GavinNewsom

- blaming others for homelessness crisis he helped create

- proposes housing vouchers he knows won't work

- claimed Texas created SF homeless problem

- more focused on being elected president in 2024 than saving Calif. in 2019

environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2019/…