Homelessness is such a disaster in California and the California government is such an abject failure that you will not believe what LA county is spending on homelessness in 2023 and you won't believe how many homeless there are receiving that number. Now it is absolutely ridiculous before. I tell you how ridiculous that number is I want you to consider for a moment my insane as I was called I was called insane and I was called you know, like a militia man. I was called crazy things about locking people up or whatever which is just insane by the way.

But I was called crazy things when I ran for Governor in 2020 because I had what I thought was an incredible plan for solving homelessness. Imagine my plan quickly for a moment. Okay, first of all, how about this emergency and immediate support for Mental health? How about starting there? How about actually making it so that a homeless person who wants to talk to a doctor doesn't have to go in a six-month queue? And how are they going to get through the general care process and then get to a mental health professional in Los Angeles They don't? It's impossible because a you're not even capable of getting yourself there because you don't have any money and B even if you did, you have to wait six months and by then who knows how many drugs you've taken. It's absolutely disgusting.

Living on the streets in California is extremely dangerous. You are substantially more likely to die living on the street than if you're not living in the street. That should be obvious. But let me put it this way: you've probably got a murder or death rate amongst the homeless population around 15 to 20 percent.

When you walk through your daily life, you don't walk around thinking I've got a 15 or 20 chance of dying today. Okay, that's what the homeless population has to deal with Now don't get me wrong, there are a lot of issues that lead to homelessness that need to be solved. We need more housing and California we need eviction support services that are much more robust and capable rather than villainizing landlords. We have to recognize that a lot of the population in California thanks to the terrible California school systems which rank 40th out of 50.

That's bottom 20, by the way, in the United States Uh, maybe people are just undereducated and just don't have the opportunity to actually get out of a state of economic despair. So so when you start putting the pieces of the puzzle together, you realize when I ran for governor in California I ran under the premise that you know we need to solve the causes of homelessness, right? We've got to solve the education disparity. We've got to solve the economic. Gap We've got to solve the lack of housing.

These are all things that can be solved. We can build more homes very quickly. We just need a Governor that will actually lead the charge. Not the kind of Governor that we have now.

Who says things like hey, we want people to be able to build more accessory dwelling units and we're going to mandate that cities approve permits within 60 days so that homeowners can turn their garages into accessory dwelling units. Governor Says that. Guess what actually happens at the city level City says yeah. Oh, we'll review your paperwork for two years and we might deny you because you might be in a fire zone.

Oh wait, all of California is in a fire zone. Guess we ain't doing adus whoops. And what does the governor do? Nothing because he got to go to the Google campus and talk about how great it was that they were passing Sb7 and all these bills that suggest all housing is going to be so much easier in California And what practically happens? God-awful Nothing. because the government of California is an abject failure and it ha.

It's not because the people. It's not because of the bureaucrats. It's because of the leaders. The leaders don't have any balls because the people who try to run for governor in California The exception of me because I wasn't born in America and I can't do it.

Usually they try to end up setting themselves up to run for president. so they set themselves up to run for president by basically coasting through the governorship in California not rocking the boat like Mr gavinosum so they could end up running for president and then guess what happens in the meantime all the judges want to be your buddy in California because if you do end up becoming president, those California judges want Federal appointments. or maybe maybe they could even get to the Supreme Court So the system is highly, highly broken and look I'm not Mr tinfoil had I Think many of you know that I'm so aggressively in the middle and you know I consider myself a JFK style Democrat Although even saying that these days pisses people off I like to say I'm 51.49 Okay, that's what I like to say republican Democrat Democrat Republic whatever in the middle Now what is really incredible about that is listen to sort of my idea here or on homelessness and then listen to what's actually happening. Okay, so in addition to solving for housing, mental health, and obviously Support Services like being able to provide medical care for people and also fixing our school system by actually teaching people trades or white collar professions so they can graduate high school, being capable of functioning in our economy rather than floundering debating Do I want tens of thousands, all tens of thousands of dollars of student debt Or do I actually want to start working at 18, right? That should not be a question.

You should have the skills you need at 18 to get a job that you could live off of. You should be able to build a career at 18. that's what we were going to build. But anyway I Didn't become governor.

Got almost a million votes though and came second place for the recall candidates. But anyway, my plan for homelessness was very, very simple. In the areas that we have homelessness which what's crazy about this is some people are like wait, you can't do that in our areas and I'm like dude, you have all the homelessness already But anyway, in the areas where the homelessness problems exist, we create emergency facilities that provide everything you need. A bad food uh Medical Care like triage style Medical Care Obviously I mean if we could have onside mental health grade as well Uh, provide all the services that you need if you fall into the level of Despair that you have to sleep on the floor.

But guess what? There's only one. There are two two big rules. Rule number one is you can leave anytime you want. These are not like handcuffed facilities.

These are not places that you have to go to and then of course people respond and go well. why would you go there Then It's simple because their second big Rule and this is really what I call the number one big rule is nobody Sleeps on our streets in California because when people sleep on our streets, they dramatically increase the likelihood of dying. They make other Americans and Californians feel unsafe, They hurt tourism, they hurt our economy, and they hurt the mental health of the individuals who are sleeping on the street. And they increase the drug problem that we have on our streets.

And they increase the mental health problem. There is no good that comes out of sleeping on the streets in California So my plan says, look, you don't have to go check in, but every time you fall asleep on the street, you're going to just happen to respawn at one of our facilities. And that means either you come with us or you start walking on your way or we take you there. It's very simple and hey, we can take you there, have a bagel, brush your teeth, take a shower, pop on some you know, donated clothes or whatever, and if you want to go walk all night long.

Fine, but if you fall asleep, you could go right back and it would be challenging. Don't get me wrong, the first few months of this would be difficult and we would do it with the National Guard for the first few months. But guess what? I Promise you within six months there would not be a single person in California sleeping on the street or dying on the streets anymore due to homelessness because people will realize damn, if I could go here and have a bed and have food and a shower and clothes, why would I sleep on the floor, Especially if they're just gonna bother the crap out of me and pick me up and keep throwing me in here. And they can get up and leave all the time they want.

And the idea then is, what have you done? You've centralized the homelessness problem. Now you start solving why people are falling into homelessness. You solve mental health, You solve the housing, You solve the education. That's going to take a long time, but at least immediately now you've concentrated where everybody is and guess what? Oh hey, good to see you again.

Robert Hey, by the way, you know so and so is coming in today. They've got job opportunities paying 17 bucks an hour if you're interested. they'll be here at 10. And guess what? you actually can now centralize the support services to try to reintegrate people in the economy.

And don't get me wrong, not everybody's going to look at that and go. Yeah, Okay, I'll work. Yeah, and not everybody's going to want to do that. There are going to be some people that might never leave sort of the the Trap of homelessness, but listen instead to what California is doing.

As of September In 2022, the latest homelessness account for LA County is 69 144. California has accounted for 30 percent of the country's homeless population, despite making up less than 12 percent of the entire country's population. That is obviously in part because California has, well at least Southern California has some of the best weather in the world. The weather That this Southern California coastline has only exists in seven percent of the world's land.

That's it. Okay, and it is the only place in the United States that has the weather system that we do. which is the Mediterranean Chaparral climate. basically nearly I'd say 80 to 90 percent of the time you're looking at 72 degrees year-round No clouds.

It's insane. It's beautiful. But what is LA County doing? Oh, LA County has about 69 000 homeless folks and they're spending a record 609 million dollars on homelessness this year. That amounts to almost 10 000 being spent per homeless person.

And guess what when you drive around? La What do you have? Homeless on the streets, Homeless dying on the streets, Homeless intense at the side of Highways all over the place, people getting accosted, people dying, the drug problem getting worse, the mental health issue getting worse. Everything is a complete disaster and at the same time as homelessness is increasing in California like downtown. San Diego Just hit a record for six months in a row of more homelessness. What are other states doing? Oh wow.

States Like Florida are actually managing to decrease their homeless population because imagine this: they're actually funding Emergency Shelters Supportive Housing Job training and mental health treatment. Holy smokes, What? I Ran on two years ago. Actually, it's almost slightly more than two years ago now, which is crazy already to think about. But uh, more than two years ago.

That's what I ran on. That's insane. It's absolutely insane that California can't figure it out. Uh, the richest state by GDP in the country and can't figure it out.

Potentially the uh, let's see turkey and Germany just boosted up. So we're probably around the seventh largest economy in the world. sixth or seventh somewhere around there, depending on how you count India uh and Germany in there. But anyway.

sad, really sad. that's my take. Had to get it out of the way. I'm sorry.

You know some people like Kevin that that sounds too aggressive. You know what? what we're doing now is aggressively stupid. and I don't know if it's because you got a Democrat problem I I or it's because you've got a republican counter problem I Don't think that's the problem because let me make it very simple: California happens to be a super majority of Democrats Now I'm not trying to offend people who are Democrats I'm just saying California happens to have all the power literally in one party. this is a one-party State and and I'm not I'm not saying that California is like Joe Biden has the presidency and the house and the Senate.

It's a little different in our legislature so we have the governor who's a Democrat. We've got the assembly uh and uh. we've got the house in California And guess what, when you put it all or the Senate California when you put it it all to assembly. Sort of like the house version.

you've got the assembly, the Senate and the governorship. All of them. Democrats And guess what? They have not a 50 50 majority. They have a super majority in every chamber.

so Governor's obviously Democrat each. Congressional house. well, legislative house we call it here. Uh, super majority of Dems.

In other words, if uh, if there was any even potential of a republican governor coming in the legislature could just veto anything, the Republican Governor does anything because they have a super majority of control and some people like all. but Kevin You know back in the day, Arnold Schwarzenegger he was a republican. Yeah, they didn't have a super majority of Democrats in the legislature then. yeah, crazy crazy.

That's all. I Gotta say.