Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has criticized California’s homeless problem while introducing legislation that will limit where homeless people can get shelter in his own state.
Florida was one of four states that contributed to over half of all people experiencing homelessness in the United States in 2023, according to an annual report from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Florida reported 15,482 unsheltered people last year.
DeSantis on Wednesday held a press conference announcing that he signed Florida House Bill 1365, which bans people from sleeping on public property without a permit.
The bill does allow for local governments to designate properties for sleeping or camping, but the sites have to meet Florida Department of Children and Families standards and can only be used for one year.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
During the press conference, DeSantis took aim at California, which has the largest homeless population of any state.
He mentioned the homeless encampments on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, California, as a measure of how Florida’s homelessness problem has worsened.
“The number of families who would say that they had to leave some of these areas because you’d have drug use just rampant in public. You’d have homeless overwhelming just like on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles—just a massive encampment shows up,” he said. “That is not the way you can have strong communities. That is not the way you have good governance. That’s not healthy for society.”
DeSantis said that California’s response to its homelessness problem has “failed.”
“San Francisco is actually slightly smaller than the city of Jacksonville, [Florida,] yet San Francisco’s homelessness problem has cost their taxpayers $1.1 billion in 2022 alone. That’s almost 80 percent of Jacksonville’s entire city budget,” the governor said. “So, this is just something that is not sustainable and that model has absolutely failed.”
In October, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced that the state will give $179.7 million in grants to create an additional 710 homes in seven counties—Fresno, Los Angeles, Modesto, Sacramento, San Buenaventura, San Diego and Visalia to help curb the homelessness problem.
With these additional units, Homekey, the statewide effort to develop housing for the homeless population or people at risk of homelessness, will have created a total of 13,484 homes.
“The state’s homelessness crisis has been decades in the making. While there’s more work to be done, we are challenging the status quo with new, innovative solutions to get Californians off the streets and into housing,” Newsom said in a press release at the time.
Newsweek reached out to Newsom’s office via email on Wednesday for comment.
In an X post on Wednesday, DeSantis laid out other parts of HB 1365, including the creation of enforcement tools to ensure that local governments are complying with the new law and ensuring that homeless shelters provide drug abuse and mental health counseling alternatives when they reach maximum capacity.
“We are acting on homelessness to ensure Florida communities will not mimic the failed policies in other states that have allowed homeless encampments to overwhelm society,” he added in the post.
When asked by Newsweek if Florida has enough homeless shelters to accommodate the homeless population, DeSantis’ office said via email: “Homeless shelters are managed at the local and county level. I suggest reaching out to the relevant local government entities for more information.”
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
