California Governor Gavin Newsom didn’t mince words with officials in Los Angeles County. He’s “done with the excuses.” It’s time for them to actually do their job. If they don’t get serious about cleaning the tent cities off the sidewalks, they’ll lose serious state money in the upcoming year.
LA County dragging feet
Local governments, especially Los Angeles County, are “moving too slow to clear homeless encampments.”
Governor Newsom is getting serious heat from the Kamala Harris campaign to clean the place up before the Democrat Convention in Chicago later this month. Newsom threatened to yank their funding if they don’t get with the program, fast.
The progressive governor used a cleared homeless encampment in L.A. as the backdrop for what looks like a campaign ad. He’s obviously planning on using clips later. It’s official business now so the state can legitimately pay the production costs.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has a message for local governments: clean up homeless encampments now or lose out on state funding next year. https://t.co/ZUPaXiMfCQ
— FOX 11 Los Angeles (@FOXLA) August 10, 2024
Newsom boldly threatened “to start taking state funding away” from any city or county that isn’t “doing enough to move people out of encampments and into shelters.”
The money dries up January 1, he points out. “We’re done with the excuses. The last big excuse was, ‘Well, the courts are saying we can’t do anything.‘ Well, that’s no longer the case.”
SCOTUS made a whole bunch of Democrats unhappy. He failed miserably at getting the job done for a decade. Now that it’s someone else’s problem, he’s throwing a fit over it. LA County is taking the heat because they’re whining about it.

Do your job
Newsom looked the cold glass eye straight in the lens and declared that he issued “a simple executive order.” LA County needs to get their act together.
“Do your job. There’s no more excuses. You’ve got the money, you’ve got the flexibility, you’ve got the green light, you’ve got the support from the state and the public is demanding it of you.” More importantly, Kamala Harris is demanding it of him. Rumors say Barack Obama gave him a jingle about it.
Thursday’s political theater “was part of Newsom’s escalating campaign to push local governments into doing more encampment sweeps.” LA County wants to opt out of that.
LA County officials respond to Reichfuhrer Newsom's warning about not clearing homeless encampments – ABC7 Los Angeles https://t.co/ZF9wAU8Dco
— 🏳️🌈 🇵🇸 Chuck Hamilton (he/him/his) 🏴☠️🍸 (@natty4bumpo) August 10, 2024
SCOTUS took all the power away from their best arguments, ruling that governments can force people to leave encampments, even if there weren’t any shelter beds available.
L.A. County continues to insist that “the executive order criminalizes homelessness.” That won’t hold water because the order “lays out a strategy for services and support.” It turns out that the decisions are being made by underlings right now because “most of the L.A. County supervisors are in Paris for the Olympics.” One of the few who didn’t run off to the games is Supervisor Kathryn Barger.
“I would love to explain to the governor what we are doing because we are. I’m not going to criticize the fact that he issued that order because actually, I support what he wants to do. My goal is to have us all in the same direction. You can go in and clear the encampment, but if you don’t coordinate with the different jurisdictions around you, you’re simply moving that problem.” They’ll get tired of moving sooner or later.