You can’t sweep your way out of a housing crisis

Friends,

This week, Gavin Newsom—the so-called “progressive” governor of the state with the highest housing costs in America—announced a blueprint for cities to criminalize homelessness. 

To sweep the tents. Clear the sidewalks. Make the problem disappear.

Let’s get something straight.

You don’t get to bulldoze encampments when you helped bulldoze the economy.

We’ve worked with people doing unhoused advocacy work on the ground. And we know the truth: Sweeps don’t solve homelessness. 

They destroy the few things unhoused people have left—medical records, ID cards, social security paperwork. The very documents they need to get housing.

In California, cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco have spent decades chasing encampments from block to block, even busing unhoused people to other towns. 

A 2022 UCLA study found that 74% of people displaced by sweeps end up unsheltered again within weeks. All it does is make the crisis harder to track and even harder to solve.

Chip in now if you’re tired of watching billionaires buy power while the unhoused get bus tickets and trash bags. We’re building real solutions—not more cruelty disguised as policy.

For decades, California’s Democratic establishment handed our cities over to luxury developers, hedge funds, and landlords. 

They stripped away public housing, deregulated rental markets, and sold off neighborhoods block by block. 

And now that working people can’t afford to live in the state they built?

Their answer is to outlaw poverty. Again.

We know this isn’t new. Vagrancy laws. Reagan’s “urban blight.” Clinton’s “three strikes.” 

America has always tried to bury its social failures under criminal codes.

But let’s be clear: the people sleeping on our sidewalks are not the problem. 

The politicians who turned shelter into a commodity and addiction into a paycheck for private prisons—that’s the damn problem.

Look, we all know Newsom wants to run for president. 

And like every coward who’s climbed the Democratic ladder, he’s decided to punch down on the most vulnerable people in this state to look “tough” on a crisis his own donors created.

Let me tell you something. When Butch Ware is elected Governor, he won’t just condemn these sweeps—he’ll make them illegal. 

Because housing is a human right. And dignity is not conditional.

The answer isn’t sweeps—it’s permanent housing, mental health care, tenant protections, and investments led by the people directly affected.

This campaign isn’t just about a better policy. It’s about a better moral imagination.

If you believe in standing with the unhoused, not tossing them out of sight—chip in now. Let’s build a California that protects its people, not just its property lines.

In solidarity,

Jason Call
Campaign Manager
Butch Ware for Governor