country is watching’: California...

outside her cramped RV. Inside, Gonzalez took a quick hit of fentanyl, and turned to a mirror to apply a fresh face of makeup. As the opioid coursed through her body, her anxiety settled, her thoughts grew more collected. But she knows the addiction can’t end well and recounted a half-dozen failed attempts to get clean.

“I really need to get off this ‘fetty’ and stay clean, but it’s so hard out here,” said Gonzalez, 32, her eyes welling. She turned back to the mirror, finishing her eye makeup. “I want to get help and find a program, but there’s no treatment around here. It seems like nobody cares.”

Across California, homelessness is impossible to escape. Steep increases — Sacramento County saw a 67% rise in its homelessness count from 2019 to 2022 — have so far blunted unprecedented government efforts to fund housing and treatment for people living on the streets. And although some communities have made progress, statewide the gravity of the crisis has deepened.

Encampments have mutated into massive compounds proliferating with hard drugs and untreated mental illness. “Isn’t there supposed to be all this money and housing?” asked Gonzalez’s boyfriend, Joe Guzman, an ex-convict who enforces rules for their encampment. Guzman said he has experience in construction but can’t find a job because of a felony drug record.

“Everybody out here is using,” said Guzman, 38, checking their emergency stash of naloxone, an overdose reversal medication, on a brisk November morning. “What else are you going to do, especially when it’s this cold? You have to be numb.”

At its heart, California’s homeless emergency stems from a long-standing shortage of affordable housing. But it is also a public health crisis: The encampments are rife with mental health and addiction disorders. Rats and roaches are endemic, as are stagnant sewage and toxic camp smoke. Gov. Gavin Newsom brims with frustration — and purpose and new ideas — when confronted with what has become an ageold question for California leaders: Why, for all the money and good intentions poured into helping people out of homelessness, does it look worse today than ever? Experts on homelessness say California stands out as the state that has done the most in recent years to address the issue, yet communities are struggling to make headway.

“Some people are demoralized,” Newsom said last summer, unveiling a strategy to fund housing for homeless people with mental health and addiction disorders.

“Some people have, frankly, given up — given up on us, given up on the prospect that we can ever solve this issue. And I want folks to know that they shouldn’t give up.”

Newsom has muscled historic investments of public funds to combat the crisis, wresting a staggering $18.4 billion in taxpayer money in his first four years for initiatives directly targeting homelessness, a KHN analysis found. And more money is on the way: Spending is projected to grow to $20.5 billion this year. As he wades into his second term as governor, the stakes are higher. He has signaled his ambitions for national office and speculation abounds that he’s positioning himself for a presidential run. He has cast himself as a vanguard for liberal values, taking out ads to goad the Republican governors of Texas and Florida for their conservative politics and publicly chiding fellow Democrats for being too meek in their response to the nation’s culture wars, including a right-wing assault on abortion and classroom speech on issues of race and gender.

On this national stage, California’s squalid tent cities loom as a hulking political liability, ready-made visuals for opponents’ attack ads. Newsom’s legacy as governor and his path forward in the Democratic Party hinge on his making visible headway on homelessness, an issue that has stalked him since he was elected mayor of San Francisco two decades ago.

And Newsom is recalibrating, injecting a new sternness into his public statements on the topic, something akin to “tough love.”

He is enjoining local governments to clear out the unsanctioned encampments that homeless advocates have long defended as a merciful alternative in a state woefully short on housing options. And he is demanding that cities and counties submit aggressive plans outlining how they will reduce homelessness — and by how much — as a precondition for future rounds of funding.

“We have written checks, but we’ve never asked for anything in return,” Newsom told reporters in August. “That has radically changed. We mean business. It’s unacceptable what’s going on in this state.”

Newsom has set in motion a costly, multipronged battle plan, in many ways a grand experiment, attacking homelessness on multiple fronts. Through his brainchild “Project Homekey,” the state has plowed about $4 billion into converting dilapidated hotels and motels into permanent housing with social services. Billions more have been allocated to cities and counties to clear encampments and open additional shelters and supportive housing.

Separate from that, his controversial “CARE Court” plan seeks a novel approach to compelling people languishing on the streets with untreated psychotic disorders to get treatment and housing. It melds the “carrot” of a court-ordered treatment plan, to be provided by local governments, with the “stick” of the prospect of court-ordered conservatorship if people deemed a danger to themselves or others refuse to participate.

Newsom allocated $88 million to launch the initiative, and state funding is expected to grow to $215 million annually beginning in 2025.

That’s on top of his CalAIM initiative, which over five years will invest roughly $12 billion into a blitz of health care and social services with the goal of improving health in low-income communities and averting the financial crises that can land people on the streets. This includes direct interventions like emergency housing assistance, as well as unconventional support like help with groceries, money management, and home repairs.

Philip Mangano, a longtime friend of Newsom’s who served as national homelessness czar during the George W. Bush administration, credited Newsom for using his political might to take on a seemingly intractable issue like homelessness after so many administrations ignored it.

“Yes, we are spending a lot of money, and yet the problem is getting worse,” Mangano said. “But look, the largest investment ever made in the history of our country, on homelessness, came from Gavin Newsom. He sees himself as responsible for taking care of the poorest Californians, and homeless people. I’ve known him over 20 years, and there’s no question that’s where his heart is.”

Still, putting the issue front and center is a serious gamble for someone with Newsom’s ambitions.

“Doing nothing puts him in peril, but doing something — he runs the risk of failing,” said Darry Sragow, a Los Angelesbased political strategist. “People want strong, tough leadership and progress on this issue, but if Gavin Newsom is going to make headway in reducing homelessness, he’s going to have to have a pretty stiff spine.” ***

Daniel Goodman slept on sidewalks, in a tent, or on a jail bunk throughout much of his 20s and early 30s. Now 35, he only in recent years committed to a regimen of psychiatric medication and counseling for schizophrenia, a condition he was diagnosed with at 24.

“I didn’t want to take medication for a lot of years; I absolutely refused,” he said, eager to discuss a change of heart that has enabled him to reclaim a life with his mom in a comfortable neighborhood in the Gold Country city of Folsom.

Tall, with a bright smile and rock-’n’roll hair, Goodman said he was addicted to methamphetamines for a decade, selfmedicating to calm the voice in his head he calls “the witch.” He panhandled, pushed shopping carts, and bellowed his agony in public fits of rage. It was a hungry, ragged existence during which he cycled from the streets to jail on charges of drunk and disorderly and then back to the streets.

His mom, Susan Goodman, in her form of tough love, eventually closed her home to him after his untreated illness devolved into threatening behavior, including stealing from her and a violent bout of vandalism during which he shattered every window in her house.

“I lived from second to second, and I didn’t have anything to eat or blankets, so I’d think, ‘What can I steal?’” Daniel said. “I u PAGE 4