[POWER LENDING]
HE WAS/IS BIG ON HOUSING, HAD A BRILLIANT PLAN,
BUT IT FAILED!
WHAT DOES HE DO NOW?
O
ne of his many promises a few years ago was a bold action to confront the issue he called California’s greatest challenge: making housing affordable again, or at least, returning the golden state to a world where residents won’t have to pay $900 grand in housing. For an ordinary person, this guy seemed serious, and he looked like the savior California has been waiting for, for almost a decade. His predecessors cannot match this man, because he is ambitious, outspoken and always has an agenda and one year in office, his administration was marked by a sense of urgency, an insistence that the times demanded a leader who would multi-task in the way his predecessors could not.
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The rhetoric was lofty, a “marshall plan for affordable housing” he said, unprecedented state action on homelessness, and 3.5 million new housing units by 2025, by all means, Gov. Gavin Newsom indeed looked like the savior we’d hoped for. Has he delivered? “If we want a California for all, we have to build housing for all,” Newsom said during his first State of the State address, a reference to his campaign slogan. “People’s lives, freedom, security, the water we drink, the air we breathe — they all hang in the balance,” Newsom said in his inauguration speech last January. “The country is watching us. The world is waiting on us. The future depends on us. And we will seize this moment.” Its been already one year
since the Governor took to office. The 52-year old Democrat can surely point to a string of high-profile victories in service of his progressive agenda and fortifying California’s political independence and resistance to President Trump. Yes, the progress is promising, but what most people don’t know is that the governor has struggled with an undisciplined and impatient governing style, something that might disrupt his ability to fix the state’s most pressing issues; homelessness, access to affordable healthcare among others. Speaking of homelessness, the governor has had a
THE POWER IS NOW MAGAZINE | MARCH 2020
