Free Republic

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday ordered cities across the Golden state to start cleaning up its homeless encampments, stating that the "time for inaction is over" and that the state has a lot of federal funding to help with the efforts. California has become known for having the highest homeless rate in the country with 187,000 homeless people as of 2024, who largely occupy cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco. Los Angeles has the second highest homeless population in the country, behind New York City. Newsom laid out a plan to eliminate the homeless population from his...

Between 2022 and 2024, the U.S. saw a record 43 percent rise in “sheltered homelessness”—staying in some sort of emergency shelter, as opposed to living on the street. That is shocking enough on its own, but according to a new study, a contemporaneous spike in asylum seekers accounted for a stunning 60% of that increase. “Asylum seekers”—as referenced in the study—are all recent immigrants seeking residence in the U.S., regardless of their legal status. Unsheltered homelessness has been on the rise since 2015, but sheltered homelessness had declined by 12% from 2007 to 2022 before its sudden 43% spike between...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday urged California cities to clear homeless encampments, escalating efforts anew to address the makeshift tents that line underpasses, parks and streets up and down the state. The Democratic governor unveiled a blueprint for a camping ban for cities and counties to follow in announcing more than $3 billion in grants for facilities to treat homeless people and others who struggle with mental health and substance use disorders. He used the occasion to exhort cities and counties once again to use the money and policy changes provided by the state to do...

President Donald Trump announced on Friday revealed plans on Friday to create the National Center for Warrior Independence at the West Los Angeles VA Campus. This new initiative is aimed at offering critical support and housing for homeless veterans. Trump also directed that money originally set aside for services and housing for illegal immigrants be reallocated to help America's veterans instead. The White House said its goal is to house up to 6,000 homeless veterans at the center by 2028.

An Episcopal congregation here, after facing months of backlash from some neighbors in response to its proposal for a 17-bed homeless shelter, now has been targeted by ersey]the town for possible public seizure of the 11-acre church property through eminent domain. The congregation, Christ Episcopal Church, says the property is not for sale, yet the elected town council on April 30, during a raucous and contentious meeting, agreed to begin the process of buying or seizing the church and five other properties to create two new town parks. The Rev. Lisa A. Hoffman, Christ Church’s rector, said that a Toms...

Homelessness keeps rising, homeless taxes keep rising and the money disappears. In Los Angeles County, spring is in the air and so are higher taxes. Beyond the usual punishing ritual of April 15, county residents also now face some of the highest sales taxes in the country. Sales taxes in the area have shot up from 9.75% to as high as 11.25% to fund still more services for the ‘homeless’. The permanent sales tax increase is supposed to raise $1 billion a year to replace the stolen billions spent by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. Families will pay even...

Two teenage girls from Germany were detained, arrested, and deported at an airport in Hawaii after immigration officials said it was suspicious they had not booked a hotel room. Backpackers Charlotte Pohl, 19, and Maria Lepere, 18, arrived in Honolulu from Auckland while undergoing a round-the-world trip. The duo planned to spend five weeks in Hawaii before moving onto California and Costa Rica for the next legs of their journey. But despite having ESTA travel authorization, immigration officials accused them of attempting to enter the U.S. to work illegally, and they were placed in handcuffs and taken to a nearby...

A Southern California mayor is under fire for wanting to eliminate his city’s homeless population by giving them “all the fentanyl they want” — a shocking remark he reinforced by calling for a federal “purge.” Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris shared his controversial views during a Feb. 25 city council meeting when a resident took issue with the city’s attempt to address the homeless crisis by “enclosing” the unhoused at an abandoned golf course near a residential neighborhood. “What I want to do is give them free fentanyl,” Parris said as he interrupted the woman’s comments, according to footage of...

Officials at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) are facing scrutiny for refusing to release public records related to allegations of significant wrongdoing that led to $800,000 in taxpayer-funded settlements. LAist, a local news outlet, has been denied access to documents detailing wrongful termination and whistleblower retaliation claims filed by two former executives who departed the agency in 2024. The two executives are Kristina Dixon, former chief financial and administration officer, and Emily Vaughn Henry, former data and IT director. Their terminations occurred during Va Lecia Adams Kellum’s first year as LAHSA’s chief executive. LAist initiated its request for...

Afederal judge excoriated officials who were unable to account for $2.4 billion in taxpayer funds meant to go toward solving homelessness in Los Angeles.U.S. District Court Judge David Carter threatened to appoint a court-ordered receiver if officials didn't improve their efforts to account for the money spent, according to an LAist report. (snip) The judge gave them until May to fulfill their responsibilities or have a receiver take over the spending. While he acknowledged that they had inherited a "mess" from former officials, Carter demanded that they take accountibility.“I am your worst nightmare,” Carter told them. “I can make your...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — President Trump is vowing a new approach to getting homeless people off the streets by forcibly moving those living outside into large camps while mandating mental health and addiction treatment — an aggressive departure from the nation's leading homelessness policy, which for decades has prioritized housing as the most effective way to combat the crisis. "Our once-great cities have become unlivable, unsanitary nightmares," Mr. Trump said in a presidential campaign video. "For those who are severely mentally ill and deeply disturbed, we will bring them to mental institutions, where they belong, with the goal of reintegrating them...

FUBAR inflation, catering to migrants, and high taxes are impoverishing New Yorkers. Details in this 16 minute videoditorial and the attached transcript.

Sassy, Tuffy, Wiggles — do you recognize the names? Murrieta police are asking for the public’s help in identifying the owner of a pet headstone found during the cleanup of a homeless encampment on Friday, March 7. Riverside County’s homeless outreach team, City Net, found the headstone at a homeless encampment in a creek bed near Cherry Street and Adams Avenue in Murrieta, police Lt. Miguel Garcia said. The individual who resided there is known to local outreach personnel to bring various items to the site. “We have no proof that the individual did it,” Garcia said. “The encampment isn’t...

Homeless programs funded by the city of Los Angeles are essentially a black hole when it comes to oversight and the tracking of outcomes, a court-ordered, independent audit has found. The report, released on Thursday, was conducted by Alvarez & Marsal, a global consulting firm. It looked at four years of homeless services managed by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) from June 1, 2020, through June 30, 2024. A&M said it was stymied by information gaps and incomplete data that hindered its ability to gauge the results of approximately $2.3 billion in homeless spending over that time period....

America’s major cities are crumbling under Democrat leadership. From San Francisco to Chicago, urban centers have become showcases of dysfunction rather than beacons of prosperity. The pattern repeats itself with disturbing predictability. Beautiful, historic downtowns transformed into tent cities. Public spaces commandeered by the homeless. Tourist areas that visitors increasingly avoid. All while Democrat mayors talk about “compassion” and “equity” instead of actually solving problems. -------------- “In a Truth Social post on Wednesday, the president specifically referenced areas near the State Department and the White House that are populated with homeless encampments that need to be removed, adding that the...

A Detroit mother of four children, two of whom died from possible exposure to the cold this month while the family was living in a van, has been given a new home days after her son and daughter were laid to rest. A video posted by the city of Detroit and Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries this week showed Tateona Williams receiving the keys to her home. "We had to fix it, prep it, furnish it and then give them a good start so they don’t have to go one day with no food or being outside anymore," the organization's CEO...

The Seattle homeless population is the tragic result of failed policies. But it’s not just a problem — it’s a manufactured disaster, enabled and exacerbated by left-wing policies that have done nothing but invite more homelessness while refusing to address its root causes. A new study from the Discovery Institute’s Fix Homelessness explains how dire the situation truly is in Seattle. The study lays out in devastating detail how Seattle’s approach has not only failed but made everything worse. The city’s leaders, obsessed with progressive ideology over practical solutions, have created a system that draws homeless individuals from outside the...

SNIPThe Westside Current reported:SNIPAnother question raised by this event is why LAHSA, with an annual budget of $857 million, needed FEMA’s assistance to offer services to 45 individuals. SNIPWhile FEMA aid has been going to LAHSA, victims of the fire who need FEMA aid are having trouble accessing it in many cases, thanks in part to rampant fraud.SNIPIn addition, as the Westside Current notes, homeless services are supposed to have hundreds of millions of their own dollars, thanks to the passage of Measure A last year, which raised sales taxes half a cent in L.A. County for homeless relief.

State conflict of interest laws ban public officials from any involvement in contracts in which they have a financial interest, including agreements that financially benefit their spouse or groups that pay their spouse. Los Angeles’ top homeless services executive told LAist in December that she stuck to those rules, saying she had been walled off and “completely recused” from business relating to her husband’s employer. Through a public records request, LAist later discovered records that contradict her assertion. The documents show that Va Lecia Adams Kellum, chief executive of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), signed a $2.1 million...

The mainstream media desperately wants the Los Angeles wildfire story to have a very specific villain: Climate Change.The theory they’re pushing goes like this: Climate Change is real — only a stupid “science denier” would argue otherwise. And because it’s real, weather patterns are far more extreme. From famines, fires, and droughts to hurricanes, snowstorms, and floodings, Climate Change is the answer to all your questions. So, YES, Climate Change is responsible for the L.A. wildfires!Hence, the deluge of climate-centric news stories:Time Magazine: L.A. Fires Show the Reality of Living in a World with 1.5˚C of WarmingNew York Times: ‘We’re...