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Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday asked President Trump to approve more housing vouchers, as the Trump administration weighs in on the state’s massive homelessness problem.
Members of the administration visited Los Angeles last week to view the city’s sprawling homeless encampments after Trump told his staff to develop policy options to address the national crisis of people living on the streets.
Trump is also planning to attend a fundraising event in the Bay Area on Tuesday, his first presidential visit to the area, in which he will reportedly discuss the issue of homelessness, joined by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson.
The Democratic governor and officials representing California cities and counties sent the Republican president a letter asserting that “shelter solves sleep, but only housing solves homelessness.”
Their letter asks Trump to provide 50,000 more housing vouchers through two existing programs and to increase the value of the vouchers to account for high rents. That would help “a significant proportion of our unsheltered population,” including thousands of military veterans, they wrote.
Newsom’s office could not immediately say how much more the voucher proposal would cost.