Tents lived in by homeless people in San Francisco | AP Photo/Jeff Chiu Newsom makes homelessness his first 2020 priority

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom is opening 2020 with a suite of homelessness actions that include a proposed $750 million to help homeless people into supportive housing, a push to house people in state-owned trailers and nearly $700 million to address the most dire health needs of those living on the street.

The broad range of proposals emerging today would help homeless people pay the rent, provide safe shelter as repeat emergency room visitors recuperate from illness or injury and ultimately establish more sites where homeless people can address underlying social and health problems.


Exorbitant housing costs and ever-growing numbers of homeless people on the streets of California cities were paramount issues during Newsom’s first year in office, attracting the regular ire of President Donald Trump, and 2020 promises to hold more of the same.

New federal numbers show that an increase in homeless Americans is largely concentrated in California. In recent polling, state residents for the first time cited homelessness as the overriding issue in their lives — highlighting the urgency of an issue that threatens to define Newsom’s governorship.

In a budget proposal due this week, Newsom will call for placing $750 million into a new state fund that can develop more housing for people living on the streets, fund existing facilities and provide temporary rental assistance for those facing homelessness, according to a memo provided to POLITICO. The governor will also sign an executive order calling on the state to identify surplus land and property — including land near highways and decommissioned hospitals — that can be used to house people. California will also deploy 100 trailers to cities and counties.

Newsom said in a statement that "homelessness is a national crisis" and "the state of California is treating it as a real emergency — because it is one."

"That’s why I am proposing a massive new infusion of state dollars in the budget that goes directly to getting homeless individuals emergency housing and treatment programs, with a particular emphasis on street homeless populations," Newsom said.

It’s the biggest signal yet that the new governor will pull from lessons he learned as mayor of San Francisco, where over his two-term tenure he failed to fulfill a key promise to end chronic homelessness. Tenets of his new push reflect what he did in the liberal city that Republicans love to hate. And it's the latest example of Newsom’s broader vision to implement a "housing first" approach in California which prioritizes housing for homeless people, then links them with behavioral health services and other assistance needed to get off the streets.

As mayor, Newsom directed city funds into a program transforming residency hotels into homeless housing, the centerpiece of an ambitious agenda that targeted chronically homeless people — many of whom suffered from disabling health and substance abuse disorders. Still, the flood of homeless people continued, and it continues today.

The $650 million budget proposal is the first major glimpse at Newsom’s broader transformation of the state’s low-income health program, which will be called “Medi-Cal Healthier CA for All,” according to Newsom’s office.

Newsom renamed it from “California Advancing and Innovating Medi-Cal,” or CalAIM for short. It includes major changes ahead for California’s fragmented behavioral health care system related to provider payments and integration of mental health and substance abuse services with the larger Medi-Cal program.

Newsom today also will create a behavioral health task force to consider changes to the state’s Mental Health Services Act and said he would work to ensure patients receive timely access to mental health treatment.

The homelessness crisis has fueled an ongoing feud with the federal government over homelessness. Trump has regularly lashed out at California leaders, including Newsom, for failing to contain a crisis that Trump and allies call an illustration of failed liberal leadership. U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, in releasing updated numbers, emphasized California’s outsize responsibility on Monday.

The Newsom-appointed co-chair of a state homelessness task force, Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, praised Newsom for starting to “outline a set of policies that will I believe make a huge difference," key to which is the concept that providing housing can no longer be a voluntary effort by government — but mandatory.

While the issue won’t be solved in a year, Steinberg said, the combination of that shift in public policy thinking combined with creative ideas like using vacant land will make “2020 a transformative year around homelessness.”