President Donald Trump may be prepared to dip his toe into California’s raging homelessness crisis.
During a Monday night interview with FOX News’ Tucker Carlson, Trump said that the engulfing homelessness situation two of California’s major cities – San Francisco and Los Angeles – was “disgraceful.”
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said that, while he didn’t appreciate the comments, masked as “political cheap shots,” there was still an opening to do something.
“There’s no question that having a President of the United States back this, just as Ronald Reagan did with then-Senator [Ted] Kennedy and Tip O’Neill when he was Speaker in the eighties,” Garcetti said in an interview with KNX Radio in Los Angeles. “They realized this wasn’t a partisan issue.”
The City of Angels has been particularly hard-hit by an ever-growing homeless population. Recently, a Los Angeles police officer out of the city’s Central Division was diagnosed with typhoid fever after exposure to the population of the city’s Skid Row.
In his radio interview, Garcetti added that the blame game over homelessness can, and often has, been pointed across both sides of the aisle over time.
Garcetti added that he “greatly welcomed” Trump’s involvement to “help save lives.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom, however, returned fire against the Presidential pronouncement while touring an affordable housing development in Emeryville on Tuesday.
“If interceding means cutting budgets to support services to get people off the street, he’s been very successful in advancing those provisions in addition to the massive Social Security cuts and Medicare cuts — two things he promised he wouldn’t do,” Newsom said.
