LOS ANGELES (CNS) - Gov. Gavin Newsom is scheduled to visit staff and residents at a board and care home in the Harvard Heights section of Los Angeles today on the second day of his weeklong homelessness tour.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas is set to join Newsom on the visit. Ridley-Thomas is a co-chair of Newsom's Council of Regional Homeless Advisors, whose work Newsom credits for inspiring many of his new proposals to address the homelessness crisis.
Newsom is scheduled to visit an emergency shelter and Access Center in Riverside earlier Tuesday.
Newsom's tour began Monday when he visited two homeless service providers and shelters in Grass Valley, about 60 miles north of Sacramento.
Newsom signed an executive order Wednesday as part of a comprehensive state response to homelessness.
The order includes creation of the California Access to Housing and Services Fund, expediting the availability of state land assets to temporarily house the homeless and directing the Department of General Services to supply 100 camp trailers from the state fleet and the Emergency Medical Services Authority to deploy modular tent structures to provide temporary housing and delivery of health and social services across the state.
In his state budget proposal released Friday, Newsom formally announced more than $1 billion in homeless response funding, including $750 million for the Access to Housing and Services Fund, and making changes to the Medi-Cal system to better serve individuals experiencing mental illness and homelessness.
``The state of California is treating homelessness as a real emergency because it is one,'' Newsom said Wednesday in connection with signing the executive order. ``Californians are demanding that all levels of government -- federal, state and local -- do more to get people off the streets and into services, whether that's housing, mental health services, substance abuse treatment or all of the above.
``That's why we're using every tool in the toolbox -- from proposing a massive new infusion of state dollars in the budget that goes directly to homeless individuals, emergency housing and treatment programs to building short-term emergency housing on vacant state-owned land.''