There is a $1.2 billion budget for a three year effort to clean up California. The first hundred million or so was spent and 8700 people employed to clean up San Francisco in advance of the APEC summit/
California has had several budget surpluses in recent years:
2021–2022: $47 billion in budget surplus
2022–2023: $55 billion in budget surplus
2023–2024: Projected deficit of approximately $32.5 billion
The state’s state debt stood at about $143.73 billion in the fiscal year of 2021. By the fiscal year of 2027, this is expected to increase to about $188.54 billion.
The money and means to clean up San Francisco and Los Angeles was always available. This cost about 0.2% of the state budget.
The enacted California budget assumes General Fund revenues, including transfers, of $208.7 billion for 2023-24, in line with the governor’s May Revision estimates. Revenues for the 2022-23 fiscal year were also revised down significantly from the 2022 budget estimates.
San Francisco had an estimated 7,754 people experiencing homelessness in 2022, a 3.5% decrease from the 2019 point-in-time count. More than 4,000 of those counted were unsheltered, meaning they didn’t have access to any temporary shelter.
Governor Gavin Newsom joins San Francisco Mayor London Breed and other state and local officials for the opening of a recently completed Clean California beautification project.
Newsom says they cleaned up for the APEC conference.
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Why should people in Redding pay one dime to clean up SF’s crap?
I live in San Francisco. The city began getting better about a year ago and really got cleaned up starting about 2 months ago when a federal judge lifted a ban on clearing encampments.
The reason the city got so bad during COVID was because the snowflake police force/union refused to arrest anyone for any reason after the election of a district attorney no one really liked but was elected because of the choice rank voting system. The cops decided screw the vote, the hell with democracy and like a bunch of thugs, stopped working. Instead of taking their licks and trying harder in the next election a couple of years later, the cops just started ghosting their jobs,collecting their paychecks and refused to help or arrest anyone. The police deliberately let the city collapse in order to force a recall election of the D.A.
They succeeded in forcing the recall election and got a better D.A. The problem is that they let the city devolve into lawless without realizing everyone was going to film the blight, put it on YouTube and destroy our tourism business and reputation. The cops went back to work a year ago and things have been improving every day.
The YouTubers keep going to the same 4 block areas by the Civic center, another in the Tenderloin and a third one by the overpass again and again trying to convince the gullible that those (3) four blocks areas represent the entire city. My neighborhood, Lower Pac Heights and about 97% of San Francisco neighborhoods are clean, beautiful and homeless free, with the exception of the occasional wandering heroin zombies that are quickly tended to by city services within a hour of you calling 911. They send out a wellness team and try to get the junkie into a shelter or clinic immediately. Too many people who don’t live here want to blame liberal policies for every problem in the city.
Here is a list of cities run by conservatives with a ton of homelessness problems.
Phoenix, Arizona: Phoenix has the third-largest homeless population in the United States, and the situation has been getting worse in recent years. The city’s Republican mayor, Kate Gallego, has acknowledged the problem and has taken some steps to address it, but more needs to be done.
San Diego, California: San Diego has the sixth-largest homeless population in the United States, and the city’s Republican mayor, Todd Gloria, has been criticized for his handling of the issue. Gloria has proposed a number of initiatives to address homelessness,
Fort Worth, Texas: Fort Worth has the seventh-largest homeless population in the United States, and the city’s Republican mayor, Betsy Price, has also been criticized for her handling of the issue. Price has said that homelessness is a complex problem with no easy solutions, but some critics say that she is not doing enough to help the homeless.
Jacksonville, Florida: Jacksonville has the tenth-largest homeless population in the United States, and the city’s Republican mayor, Lenny Curry, has also been criticized for his handling of the issue. Curry has proposed a number of initiatives to address homelessness
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Oklahoma City has the eleventh-largest homeless population in the United States, and the city’s Republican mayor, David Holt, has also been criticized for his handling of the issue. Holt has said that homelessness is a priority for his administration, but some critics say that he is not doing enough to help the homeless.
I’m the first to admit that a city this wealthy should be doing this better but I think that is about to change soon. The city recently passed a long overdue thorough auditing system for charities getting city money to help the homeless, based on measurable results. I think that will help a lot. They did take down a lot of orange construction tape and barriers and paint over a lot of graffiti for Xi’s visit, but the city has been getting nicer for the past year. The APEC conference just pleasantly accelerated things.
That’s a really interesting take. I get what you mean about the same few city blocks featured in the media to condemn the entire city. I was in Bangkok in 2010 when the coup and protests happened. I remember “BANGKOK ON FIRE” type of headlines, but it was just the same few crossroads and businesses that were temporarily ablaze or burned down. BLM “protests” were way more destructive and widespread but were played down a lot by the same lame media.
Thanks for the insider info. Informative.
Kate Gallego, mayor of Phoenix, is a Democrat. Thelda Williams (R) was mayor for 2 months after the previous Democrat mayor Stanton stepped down to run for congress. Phil
Gordon was mayor before that. Phoenix has had 19 years of Democrat mayors other than Thelda stepping in as interim until the next election. Skip Rimza was a republican 1994-2004 mayor of Phoenix.
Todd Gloria is a democrat, mayor of San Diego.
City name Homeless population 2022
Los Angeles City & County 65,111 (democrat mayor)
New York City 61,840 (democrat mayor)
Seattle/King County 13,368 (democrat mayor)
San Jose/Santa Clara City & County 10,028 (democrat mayors)
Oakland, Berkeley/Alameda County 9,747 (democrat mayors)
Sacramento City & County 9,278 (democrat mayor)
Phoenix, Mesa/Maricopa County 9,026 (democrat mayor)
San Diego City and County 8,427 (democrat mayor)
San Francisco 7,754 (democrat mayor)
Metropolitan Denver 6,884 (democrat mayor)
…
Fort worth has about 3000 homeless.
Texas’ homeless population shrunk by nearly a third over the past decade, while California’s grew by 43%, according to the federally mandated point-in-time count. And in the Golden State, 439 people are homeless for every 100,000 residents – compared to 81 in the Lone Star State.
Gavin Newsom was talking about the San Francisco homelessness problem in 2008 and how he would fix it in 10 years.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/LWrkDIrZiiE
I see a pattern.
ahahahahahahaha
Your right about the city, last month your vehicle got broken into 3 minutes after you left it alone, now it’s 4. Massive progress.
What does “clean up” mean? It’s not just the trash & poop, but all the people.
Where did they go, did they get bused to other cities?
What a joke, SF is a garbage. They need to lower taxes to keep people from leaving, then hire more police to enforce the laws already on the books, and also fire everyone currently in their local government, they did nothing to fix the mess, only made it worse, while lining their pockets.
But no, they will keep handing out free needles, while letting thieves loot all their remaining stores, so I say again, what a joke.
Oh so we could always clean things up but we decided to do nothing while SF descended in to the depths of the 3rd world. Thank goodness Xi visited so that we would tidy things up but it is sad to know that our leaders care more about what Xi thinks than what their own citizens want.
In related news a homeless encampment in LA located under a major arterial highway caught fire and the freeway has been closed “indefinitely”. It was probably a bad idea to let people accumulate propane tanks and surround them with rubbish.