Is Gavin Newsom Really Turning The Corner On Homelessness?

Gavin Newsom can now tout something he’s never been able to say before as governor: The number of people sleeping on the streets in California is declining.

Newsom announced a 9 percent drop in unsheltered homelessness during his State of the State address last week, pushing back on conservatives’ portrayals of the state as a dystopia overridden by encampments and visible poverty.

But if the decrease gives Newsom a new talking point about progress during his tenure, it has also invited a closer look at his overall record on homelessness as he enters his final year as governor — and turns his eye toward a likely White House bid in 2028.

Is a 9 percent drop in street homelessness all that impressive? Can those numbers be trusted? Has Newsom reframed the narrative around an issue that could otherwise be a serious liability in a presidential run?

To make sense of it all, we assembled a POLITICO roundtable of reporters who have followed Newsom’s career and the issues of housing and homelessness for years.

Melanie Mason, a senior political reporter in California, moderated the discussion with Liam Dillon, our Los Angeles-based housing reporter; Dustin Gardiner, co-author of the California Playbook; and Jeremy B. White, senior reporter for politics and policy.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Newsom and his team have been very eager to tout that the number of homeless people living on the streets dropped by 9.1 percent last year. Help me put that number in context. Do you all see this as the impressive achievement he’s making it out to be?

White: It's certainly important for Newsom to be able to point to progress after he's put so much political capital into showing improvement on this issue. That includes allocating money and pushing local governments to do more. But let's not lose sight of the fact that the decrease comes after those numbers rose every year of Newsom's tenure: There were about 50,000 more people sleeping on the street in 2024 as compared to 2019. So it's an improvement that comes after a lot of worsening.

Gardiner: Republicans are already questioning the validity of the data. But keep in mind that the same regional entities that report their unsheltered homelessness data to HUD at the federal level are sharing their numbers with the state. So, it’s hard to see this as anything but a major win for the governor, perhaps the first tangible fruition of tens of billions of dollars the state has spent to build emergency interim housing and expand its addiction-treatment system. That said, homelessness has still increased overall during Newsom’s seven-plus years in office.

Dillon: I think it's an impressive achievement in the sense that it's the first true reversal of a trend that has only been going in the wrong direction. But it's important to contextualize that a lot of the decrease is centered in Los Angeles, where Mayor Karen Bass has put a tremendous amount of political capital and local resources into decreasing unsheltered homelessness as well.

Liam, you’ve been diligent in stressing that this is a decline in unsheltered homelessness, even when his office doesn’t necessarily make that distinction. What do we know about the overall homelessness rate? And why does that distinction matter, both policy-wise and politically?

Dillon: Let's start with some definitions. Unsheltered homelessness equals street homelessness, or people that are outside in encampments, etc. Overall homelessness equals the street homeless population plus those in shelters. The former is the visible signs of homelessness while the latter is considered the true homeless population. The national numbers that come out around this time are based on a volunteer-led count of both populations that takes place the prior January across the country. So in this instance, whenever the Trump administration releases the data it will reflect numbers from January 2025 — before Trump took office.

Unfortunately, we don't know what the overall homelessness figures are in the state because again the Trump administration/HUD haven't released nationwide data yet. Presumably, the governor's office could share its estimate of changes to the overall homelessness rate, but it hasn't. I would guess based on trends and other data that's out there that the overall homelessness rate will have declined but not as much as the unsheltered number.

You can just go back to what the governor has said for years about why the distinction matters. I cannot tell you how many press conferences and other events I’ve been in where he's said, "Shelter solves sleep; housing solves homelessness." So while yes, the unsheltered population going down is great, people who are in shelters are still considered homeless.

Gardiner: I'll chime in here to add that we saw a 5 percent increase in the number of sheltered homeless people statewide last year (at least for the 30/44 regional jurisdictions that were required to report their full data for 2025). Yes, unsheltered street homelessness is down, but more homeless people are living in shelters or temporary housing. That's arguably a healthy progression: As the state moves more people indoors, the sheltered count will logically go up.

Dustin, you had noted before that Republicans are skeptical about the numbers and how reliable they are. Do you think that skepticism is justified?

Gardiner: A HUD representative told me today that they're still working on compiling the 2025 national data and cannot give a timeframe for its release. When the data comes, I will be really curious to see if there's anything in HUD's report to justify Republican skepticism. So far, I haven't seen any evidence to back up this notion that Newsom cooked the data. And, as I noted earlier, regional entities are sharing their same point-in-time counts with federal and state officials.

Dillon: The way I like to think about it is the point-in-time count, which the governor's office is relying on, isn't a great data source, but it's the best data source we have. It's what all major experts and academics use at a high level, and there's evidence from independent researchers that the figures the governor is using here are correct.

Jeremy, you keep a close eye on public opinion in the state. Polling indicates that Californians are less intensely concerned about homelessness than they were several years ago. Is that another metric of progress of Newsom? Or just a sign that other concerns, like the economy, have become more acute?

White: Newsom had the unenviable distinction of being governor when homelessness became a top issue for voters for the first time since PPIC started asking the question. In the years since, it has pretty consistently been in the top three and, at times, was the number one problem California voters said they wanted their politicians to address.

To your question, those numbers have actually softened noticeably in the last year or so. Some of that is methodology — they started putting the fate of democracy as an option, for example — and some of it is concern about the economy predominating. But it could also be an indicator that voters are finally feeling better about this, or at least like they've seen movement.

Newsom’s State of the State last week included some not-so-veiled criticism of previous governors (ahem, Jerry Brown) when it comes to that issue. “When I began as governor, there was no homeless plan, no mental health and certainly no housing plan,” he said. “There was no accountability and little investment.” Was he really starting from nothing?

Dillon: Not quite. The state has required cities to plan for housing growth since the late 1960s, for instance. But it's absolutely true that the governor has done a lot more than his predecessors when it comes to promoting development, holding local governments accountable for denying development, funding affordable housing and the like. That said, the biggest demonstrable change has really been about the conversation in Sacramento and the state's role on housing being different and more robust than it was. You really haven't seen major movement on housing production, rent declines, increased affordability — all the things that normal people would see as affecting them and making it easier to live here. Now, while many of the reasons for this are out of his control — mortgage rates, material prices, etc. — a changed conversation hasn't translated much into results on the ground. And perhaps that's another reason why this decline in unsheltered homelessness is significant.

White: To Liam's point, there's pretty widespread consensus at this point that the homelessness crisis and the affordable housing crisis are two heads of the same hydra. You've heard Newsom articulate that over and over, as with his solving homelessness versus sleep comment.

So I think if you asked the Newsom administration: What have you done to fix homelessness? They'd certainly point to money for dismantling encampments, behavioral health reform, Project Roomkey and other programs explicitly focused on getting homeless people into shelter. But they'd also argue the broader moves to juice housing production will, over time, chip away at those root causes.

We’ve been drilling down on the California homelessness numbers and state spending, for obvious reasons. But we’re also watching everything Newsom does now through a national political lens, since he’s widely expected to launch a 2028 presidential bid. How do you think these new numbers — and the issue of homelessness more broadly — will affect his White House ambitions?

White: Hard to imagine a 9 percent drop in year eight of his tenure is going to be what brings voters on board with the Newsom candidacy. Certainly Newsom will tout that progress, but the images of urban squalor are just going to be more potent than a numerical shift in the right direction.

Dillon: Agree with Jeremy. More than just the images, the dramatic increase in homelessness during his time in office is real. Although, certainly it's better to be trending downward than upward.

Gardiner: There's also going to be a lot of cherry-picking numbers. We're already seeing that — Republicans claim the decrease is fake while Newsom's press team is taking a victory lap and glossing over the details. But, big picture, homelessness is still likely a vulnerability for Newsom as a national candidate. It's also true that a year-over-year decrease in street homelessness is a much stronger defense than he could have mustered on this issue two years ago.