On Thursday’s broadcast of Newsmax TV’s “The Record,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said that California has the amount of homelessness it does “because of our own policies and neglect” and the issue boils down to not building enough housing “for decades and decades and decades” and that homelessness is becoming a bigger issue across the country, including in red states.
Newsom said that affordability and housing are the biggest issues in the state, and housing has a “byproduct, which is the ultimate manifestation of our failure, and that’s the issue of homelessness.”
Host Greta Van Susteren then asked, “How did you get to that point, though? It’s a problem that’s plagued every state in the nation. But, certainly, California, because it is such a large state, we know — we see the enormous impact on it. But how did California get so much homelessness?”
Newsom responded, “Because of our own policies and neglect. We put up our feet and we rested on our laurels. We allowed NIMBYism to dominate in our state. We’re not building — it’s Econ. 101, supply and demand. We simply have not been building enough housing for decades and decades and decades. So, the cost of living, affordability has been the dominant challenge in our state. That said, I will say, having traveled across the United States, the issue of housing and homelessness is becoming more and more dominant. Red states, not just blue states. We were down — you saw the new numbers last year in places like Florida that had a huge spike in homelessness. The housing costs, insurance costs across the board in states like Florida are increasingly challenging. So, it’s not surprising to me that, in the economic plan that Kamala Harris put out, she talked about affordability and housing, not just from the prism of being a former Californian, as it relates to her time served in the state, but as vice president, understanding the United States and its challenges.”
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