Ever wondered why California has become the homeless capital of the U.S.?

Sure, there are lots of technical explanations about housing availability and bureaucratic waste, but let's look to the fine-dining California governor, Gavin Newsom, who let out this whopper three years ago in a virtually uncovered news story.

According to YourCentralValley.com's Alexan Balekian:

Newsom: "Clean and sober is the biggest damn mistake this country ever made." Should clean and sober rules be thrown out for homeless?

Governor Gavin Newsom admits he likes to self-medicate with a glass of wine while watching the nightly news. He believes the homeless should not have to be subject to rules and regulations when going to shelters for a bed or a hot meal.

The "biggest damn mistake this country ever made"?

Bigger than slavery?  Bigger than Vietnam?  Bigger than the poverty-and-fatherlessness-propagation programs of the Great Society?

Well, you heard it first from Newsom, Democrat frontrunner for the president in the post-Biden era, whenever that may be.

It tells us a lot about why California now houses 30% of the nation's homeless and has now become the nation's "homeless capital."  The tent cities and bums living under highway overpasses, booze bottles in hand, grow bigger and bigger in the state every year, even as Newsom shells out at least $12 billion for "homeless programs," supposedly to "help" them. 

According to local 790KABC:

Newsom's policies are working! Latest Census Shows California Is America's Most Homeless State

(Sacramento, CA) — Between 2020 and 2022 California's homeless population expanded more than any other state. That's according to the latest census data, which shows that the homeless population in the state grew by nearly ten-thousand in that span, raising the total to over 170-thousand. At least 30-percent of the nation's homeless population is in California according to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. California also accounted for nearly the entire national increase between 2020 and 2022.

Needless to say, this is complete lunacy. The best thing a bum can ever hear is that someone cares enough about him to encourage him, or order him, to get clean and sober.  Does Newsom like to dine out at French Laundry with people who are not "clean and sober"?  Does he take his nightly wine in the company of booze-addled street bums?  Should public schools or homeless shelters themselves and police drunk tanks be run by untreated alcoholics?  Should highways be freely available for drunk drivers now?  The whole thing speaks to an amazing breakdown of standards, whether it's convicts in government jobs, a lowering of academic standards, the declaration that obese people are healthy, or the claim that men can be women.  It's all about the "inclusion" now, and in Newsom's mind, alcoholism is no longer a "disease," let alone a bad condition whose most humane solution is going clean and sober.

Newsom is all about undemonizing the rum, and the results speak for themselves.

According to a story that ran on NBC News last year:

LOS ANGELES — California pours billions of taxpayer dollars into fighting homelessness each year but has little to show for it, as experts warn thousands could die before enough housing is secured for them.

In San Francisco, hundreds of housing vacancies remain unfilled as the Covid-19 pandemic has slowed efforts to pair homeless residents with hotel rooms and other forms of temporary housing.

In Los Angeles, a $1.2 billion bond measure is falling short of its promise to create up to 10,000 housing units for homeless people over a decade as construction costs skyrocket and projects drag on, according to a city audit released Feb. 23.

"It's like the walking dead out here," said LaJuana Johnson, who lives in a tent on Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles. "They're just waiting for judgment."

If you build it, they will come.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.