Gov. Gavin Newsom urges California cities and counties to ban homeless encampments
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Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday urged California's local governments to clear homeless encampments, escalating the state's efforts to ban the growing number of makeshift camps on sidewalks and in parks that are the most visible signs of the crisis of people living on the streets.
The announcement of a new model ordinance for counties, cities and towns is coupled with the release of $3.3 billion in voter-approved funds the state will make available to communities to expand housing and treatment options for homeless residents, the governor's office said in a news release.
The goal is to help municipalities set 'rules around encampments and establish effective enforcement procedures' prioritizing shelter and services.
'Encampments pose a serious public safety risk, and expose the people in encampments to increased risk of sexual violence, criminal activity, property damage and break-ins, and unsanitary conditions,' the news release said.
In 2024, voters approved a measure imposing strict requirements on counties to spend on housing and drug treatment programs to tackle the homelessness crisis. It was a signature proposal for Newsom, who campaigned for the measure's passage.
Under the measure, counties are required to spend about two-thirds of the money from a voter-approved tax enacted in 2004 on millionaires for mental health services on housing and programs for homeless people with serious mental illnesses or substance abuse problems.
The key provisions of the model ordinance announced Monday include prohibitions on 'persistent camping' in one location, a ban on encampments blocking sidewalks and a requirement local officials provide notice and make every reasonable effort to identify and offer shelter prior to clearing an encampment.
The state accounts for nearly a third of the homeless population in the United States. More than 187,000 Californians are in need of housing.
With tents lining streets and disrupting businesses in cities and towns across the state, homelessness has become one of the most intractable issues in California and one sure to dog Newsom if he runs for national office.
The governor has also pushed for laws to make it easier to force people with behavioral health issues into treatment.
A state audit in 2024 found California spent $24 billion to tackle homelessness over the previous five years but did not consistently track whether the huge outlay of public money actually improved the situation.
Despite the roughly billions of dollars spent on more than 30 homeless and housing programs during the 2018-2023 fiscal years, California does not have reliable data needed to fully understand why the problem didn't improve in many cities, according to a state auditor's report.
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Washington Post
29 minutes ago
- Washington Post
Live updates: Nationwide protests planned ahead of Trump military parade for Army's birthday
Thousands of Americans are gathering Saturday in cities across the country for an organized day of protests — dubbed 'No Kings Nationwide Day of Defiance' — ahead of President Donald Trump's grand military parade in Washington. The parade celebrates the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army and falls on Trump's 79th birthday. It is scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. Eastern time after other festivities. Weather could be an issue both in Washington and at protests across the nation. Roads in Washington will be closed to vehicles roughly between Seventh Street NW and the Potomac and from E Street to Independence Avenue. That includes the entire area encompassing Lafayette Square, the White House, the Ellipse, the Washington Monument, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial and West Potomac Park. For more details on street, Metro and waterway closures, click here. Roads in Washington will be closed to vehicles roughly between Seventh Street NW and the Potomac and from E Street to Independence Avenue. That includes the entire area encompassing Lafayette Square, the White House, the Ellipse, the Washington Monument, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial and West Potomac Park. For more details on street, Metro and waterway closures, click here. Nearly two-thirds of American adults, 64 percent, oppose using government funds to throw a military parade to celebrate the Army's 250th anniversary on Saturday, according to a new poll from NBC News Decision Desk and SurveyMonkey. Opinions differed sharply between parties. Most Democrats and independents — 88 percent and 72 percent, respectively — said they opposed the use of government funds for the parade, while 65 percent of Republicans said they supported it. In the hours before tanks barrel down the streets of Washington for President Donald Trump's grand military parade Saturday, thousands of Americans will gather across the country in defiance of what they call his dangerous brand of authoritarianism. A little over a week ago, thousands of veterans from across the country poured onto the National Mall to rally against the Trump administration's slashing of staff throughout the government and handling of the Department of Veterans Affairs. Mentions of today's parade largely stirred frustration among the crowd. Among the event's speakers was Cecil Roberts, a sixth-generation coal miner and combat veteran of the Vietnam War.
CBS News
30 minutes ago
- CBS News
Trump's military parade today isn't the first in the U.S. — but they're rare. Here's a look back.
Washington — President Trump is hosting a parade celebrating the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army today, bringing tanks and soldiers to the streets of Washington, D.C., for the capital's first major military parade in more than three decades. The event — which is expected to cost between $25 million and $45 million — follows a years-long push by Mr. Trump to host a parade, dating back to his first term. The festivities coincide with Mr. Trump's 79th birthday, which the president says is unrelated. The U.S. has held military parades throughout history, but they're not especially common, and they're typically held to celebrate the victorious end of a war or the return of military personnel from fighting. "There are historical comparisons to be made, but size and scale is tremendously different," Arizona State University history professor Brooks Simpson told CBS News. Here's a look back at past military parades: When was the last U.S. military parade? The U.S. marked the end of the Gulf War with parades in New York City and Washington in the first major military display on the streets of D.C. since the early decades of the Cold War. The festivities in the capital featured around 8,000 military personnel, tanks, missile launchers, fireworks shows and an address by then-President George H.W. Bush. Some 800,000 people attended the event, which cost around $12 million, The Washington Post reported in 1991, or just under $29 million in today's dollars. Hunter Ledbetter, a Marine reservist who was deployed to Iraq during the war, told the Post at the time that it was "the most exciting moment of my life." The parade — which recognized the U.S.'s campaign to drive Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait — was largely uncontroversial, Simpson said: "No one objected to that parade." Troops march over the Memorial Bridge in Washington, D.C., as they head towards the Pentagon during the National Victory Day Parade on June 8, 1991. DOUG MILLS Still, the parades drew some pushback. Some critics questioned the D.C. Gulf War parade's price tag, and D.C. officials said the procession of heavy tanks had left tread marks on the city's streets. New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis criticized the New York parade since it followed an uprising by Iraq's Kurds that Hussein's regime brutally suppressed. "Honor is due the soldiers who were in the gulf," Lewis wrote at the time. "But for other reasons — reasons all too painfully evident — it is clear now that a celebratory parade would be inappropriate. Fireworks while Kurdish babies die?" Cold War inaugurations Presidential inaugural parades often include some military personnel, dating back to the first inauguration of President George Washington in 1789. In the early decades of the Cold War, the festivities also sometimes featured tanks and missiles on the streets of the capital. Some military equipment appears in photos from the 1949 parade after President Harry Truman's swearing-in, President Dwight Eisenhower's 1953 and 1957 inaugurations and President John F. Kennedy's 1961 festivities. Kennedy's inauguration featured a replica of the PT boat that the new president served on during World War II. The entire event cost around $1 million in 1961 dollars — or more than $10 million today — paid for by private donors, The New York Times wrote at the time. A Navy PT boat rides high above Pennsylvania Avenue on January 20, 1961 as the inaugural parade passes the presidential reviewing stand. President John Kennedy waves to sailors aboard. Anonymous / AP Army tanks move along Pennsylvania Avenue during the Inaugural Parade for President Dwight D. Eisenhower on Jan. 21, 1953. Anonymous / AP Simpson says inauguration parades sometimes included a few tanks as an exhibition, but they were typically "much more limited" than the parade planned for this weekend. "It wasn't like Pennsylvania Avenue was lined with tanks," he said. Parades with military equipment became less common after the 1960s. That could be due to the Vietnam War, which was deeply unpopular in its later years, and the eventual easing of Cold War tensions. "After Vietnam, parades get complicated because [parades are always] linked to the outcomes of the wars and the conduct of them," said Aaron O'Connell, a history professor at the University of Texas, Austin. "And that makes it more difficult to cheer and throw a ticker tape parade, when people are coming home in ones and twos, and they're not coming home in large units, and the war hasn't gone as well as we would've liked." World Wars I and II New York City marked victory in World War II with a massive military parade on Fifth Avenue in early 1946. The event included thousands of members of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division and dozens of tanks and howitzers, requiring planners to close off the Manhattan Bridge and carefully bring heavy equipment over the East River from Brooklyn. The New York Times reported millions of spectators attended the parade. In mid-1942, months after the U.S. formally entered World War II, the city hosted a morale-boosting "New York at War" parade that the Times said was meant to "give a realistic picture of what the American armed forces and their machines of destruction look like." Soldiers stand rigidly at attention in their vehicles which carry 8-inch Howitzers during the Victory Parade of the 82nd Airborne Division on Fith Avenue in New York on Jan. 12, 1946. HARRY HARRIS / AP Thousand of people line the streets to cheer on military units in New York on June 13, 1942. Anonymous / AP The end of World War I was also celebrated by victory parades in New York and D.C. in 1919. It could've gone smoother: Dozens of artillery tractors that participated in the New York parade took a wrong turn after the event and got lost in Brooklyn for hours, the Times wrote at the time. The 1st Division of the U. S. Army parades beneath an arch at 14th and Pensylvania Avenues in Washington D. C. on Sept. 17, 1919. Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images Civil War and 19th century celebrations Washington hosted a massive two-day parade in May 1865 to celebrate the Union's victory in the Civil War, featuring over 100,000 troops, according to the National Park Service. The event — called the Grand Review of the Armies — was made up of military volunteers who passed through the capital on their way home from the former Confederate states, Simpson says. The event featured Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and President Andrew Johnson, taking place months after President Abraham Lincoln's assassination. "The place was packed," said Simpson. People watch soldiers on horseback, followed by those on foot, parade down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington during the "Grand Review of the Armies" on May 23-24, 1865. Matthew Brady / AP Other countries Mr. Trump may have drawn inspiration for Saturday's parade from abroad. The president first hinted at hosting a military parade after attending France's annual Bastille Day parade in 2017. He called it "a tremendous thing," and added, "We're going to have to try and top it" on the Fourth of July. His administration began planning a Veterans' Day parade a year later, but it was called off, with Mr. Trump blaming city officials for driving up the cost. President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron attend the annual Bastille Day military parade on the Champs-Elysees avenue in Paris on July 14, 2017. AFP Contributor France has hosted its Bastille Day military parade every July for over a century, recognizing the anniversary of the start of the 1789 French Revolution. Several other countries host regular military parades, including India, Pakistan, Russia and North Korea. But similar events have been fairly rare in the United States. O'Connell says that's probably due to a "long, long strain in American culture, on both left and right, of being healthily suspicious of state power and of military power in particular." "It's certainly deep in the American military character to be nervous about a garrison state, a militarized society," O'Connell said. Mr. Trump's plans to host a military parade this weekend have drawn criticism, with some Democrats calling the idea wasteful and self-aggrandizing. But the White House has defended Saturday's event, calling it "a fitting tribute to the service, sacrifice, and selflessness of all who have worn the uniform."
CBS News
32 minutes ago
- CBS News
Protests expected across Western Pennsylvania and the country on Saturday as part of "No Kings"
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