We can’t let Gov. Gavin Newsom off the hook. He didn’t just inherit California’s homelessness crisis; he is its lead engineer, from San Francisco to Sacramento.
At his recent press conference, Newsom struck a familiar tone: urgency and blame.
“The time for inaction is over,” he declared, urging local governments to “take back” their streets.
He pointed to the state’s $27 billion investment as proof he’s done his part and shifted the burden to local leaders to produce results.
But that narrative omits a key fact: since 2016, California has required local governments to follow the Housing First approach.
This mandate prohibits conditions such as sobriety, treatment, or work, regardless of individual needs or readiness.
It forces local leaders to unearth landlords willing to rent to tenants who may be actively using drugs, have no obligation to seek treatment or employment, and often lack the life skills to maintain their housing.
Unsurprisingly, many landlords opt out.
Shelter funding is restricted to “low-barrier” models — facilities that cannot deny entry to individuals actively using drugs, prohibit screening, and have minimal behavioral expectations. The result is chaotic, often unsafe environments that drive away those seeking recovery and offer no real path out of homelessness.
California has institutionalized a system that enables addiction, fuels disorder, and traps 187,000 homeless Californians in suffering while tying the hands of local governments desperate for better solutions.
Meanwhile, transitional and faith-based programs that offer structure, accountability, and healing are disqualified from state funding precisely because they require sobriety or participation in treatment.
Assemblymember Matt Haney’s Assembly Bill 255 attempted to challenge this orthodoxy by proposing that up to 25% of state homelessness funds be allowed for recovery-oriented programs that emphasize sobriety. But the bill was significantly amended to appease Housing First hardliners.
The watered-down version now bans recovery-focused programs from evicting tenants who repeatedly relapse, forcing them to facilitate transitions to Housing First placements that can take years due to California’s housing shortage. In the interim, individuals seeking sobriety are likely to be housed alongside active users, jeopardizing their recovery.
With recovery housing virtually non-existent and the state producing only 40% of the housing needed each year, those cleared from encampments are funneled into dysfunctional shelters while waiting indefinitely for permanent units that offer no better path to recovery.
It’s a cruel bottleneck.
If Gov. Newsom is serious about “doing things differently,” as he claimed while promoting Prop 1 and again during his press conference remarks, he must begin by confronting the very policies that have trapped the homeless and their communities for nearly a decade.
That means restoring support for recovery-focused programs rooted in sobriety, treatment, and responsibility—pathways to help people reclaim their lives.
It also means funding a full spectrum of housing, not just individual units and low-barrier models that often enable dysfunction instead of change. For many, the first step toward stability isn’t a set of keys. It is structure, community, and the chance to heal.
And it requires confronting a hard truth: Housing First has failed to deliver on its promise. It vowed to end homelessness in ten years, but instead delivered a 40% surge. The governor must stop deflecting blame onto local leaders shackled by a broken, state-imposed system.
Above all, he and the Legislature must abandon the false choice between tent-lined streets and disorder-filled shelters. The ideology driving that choice traps people in addiction, isolation, and despair.
For California to begin to heal, it must abandon failed policies and embrace a Human First approach to homelessness—one that puts treatment, accountability, and the dignity of real recovery at the center of its response to homelessness.
Michele Steeb is the founder of Free Up Foundation and author of “Answers Behind the RED DOOR: Battling the Homeless Epidemic,” drawing on her 13 years as CEO of Northern California’s largest program for homeless women and children and eight years as a Governor Jerry Brown appointee to the California Prison Industry Authority Board where she helped shape rehabilitation initiatives. She also served as a vice president of the California Chamber of Commerce. Follow her on Twitter: @SteebMichele.
