SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom defended his administration’s work on housing and homelessness during an interview with The Chronicle’s editorial board Thursday, promising to crack down on local opposition to housing projects.
“Taxpayers deserve more in terms of results, not just inputs,” Newsom said. “They want to see results.”
In the last few years, Newsom has been responsible for putting more state funding into housing and homelessness programs than any other recent governor. His previous budgets have poured billions in funding to increase housing production and help get homeless people off the streets, but Californians aren’t yet seeing results they want, as they continue to rank housing and homelessness as top concerns.
Three years into Newsom’s tenure, housing production remains sluggish. Although preliminary numbers show the homeless population has shrunk in San Francisco, it’s grown in almost every other Bay Area county that reported data last week.
Where’s the holdup? At the local level, Newsom argues, where “not in my backyard” politics prevent homeless shelters from being constructed and housing projects from being approved.
“NIMBYism is destroying the state,” he told the editorial board in an interview seeking the paper’s endorsement in his upcoming re-election bid. “We’re gonna demand more from our cities and counties.”
Tensions over state intervention in local housing policy have escalated in California in recent years as the housing crisis has raged and lawmakers have passed dozens of new laws pressuring local governments to build more homes. A proposed ballot measure that would override recent state housing laws and give local jurisdictions far more power over housing decisions did not qualify for the November ballot, but organizers have said they’ll try to make the 2024 ballot.
Newsom’s promise to hold cities and counties accountable isn’t new. One of his first actions as governor was to sue the city of Huntington Beach for not planning to build enough affordable housing, something local governments must do under state law. He said his new Housing Accountability Unit within the Housing and Community Development Department is poring over the minutes of local planning committees to determine whether local governments are complying with state housing laws that require them to plan for affordable housing and, in some cases, approve it.
“It’s critical to hold cities and counties accountable,” he said. “There’s a crisis. Why the hell are you stopping projects? I mean, we’ve seen it over and over.”
That was illustrated last year, when Newsom’s Housing and Community Development Department began investigating whether San Francisco supervisors violated state law in rejecting a 495-unit apartment complex near Sixth and Market streets. That could potentially lead to the Newsom administration suing San Francisco, just as it sued Huntington Beach.
Newsom pointed to that lawsuit and suggested that was just a preview of the work his office will do to hold cities accountable on housing and homelessness.
In his revised state budget, which he unveiled earlier this month, Newsom identified homelessness as the state’s top issue and proposed $700 million in new homeless aid and $500 million to convert malls and office buildings into housing. Those proposals would build on billions in housing and homelessness funding that Newsom approved in last year’s budget.
Cities, meanwhile, are saying they need even more funding to meet the demand for housing. In a statement, League of California Cities CEO Carolyn Coleman applauded Newsom’s proposal to provide funds to convert commercial space into housing, but said cities need another $500 million to “help finance housing production, incentivize development, and achieve real progress toward housing production goals.”
Newsom’s proposal would need approval from the Legislature to become law. The state Constitution requires the governor and lawmakers to enact a budget before July 1, when California’s next fiscal year begins.
“I’m so excited about the next few years,” Newsom said. “We’re just winding up, and we mean business… what we put together in the last few years is starting to pay dividends.”
Sophia Bollag is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sophia.bollag@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SophiaBollag
