I guess rampant homelessness is a bad look for a politician with bigger political aspirations than being the Governor of California. On July 25th Gavin Newsom decided to test the power of his pen. He issued an executive order, directing state agencies to clean up the homeless encampments which are ruining the scenic views in some of the country’s must beautiful cities. Will he pull this off and demonstrate his managerial bona fides? I have my doubts.
California’s homeless problem is a symptom of a much larger system failure. Industry, government, academia, and the public are not working together for the health and prosperity of the state. The state leadership (public and private) have lost control of the system, and are trying to alleviate the symptoms without curing the root ailment.
In a previous life I worked for a defense contractor which had received multiple awards from the government for the quality of its products. But then the 1990s arrived with a fresh cadre of management consultants preaching speed and efficiency. My company brought in a new leadership team with a mission (but not the wisdom) to streamline operations. They proceeded to break the system. For example: one of their initiatives was to slash our inspection workforce – the people who check the work of everyone else. Leadership’s argument was that machinists and assemblers could check their own work – and of course they could. But they were incentivized to manufacture products, not defect-free products. Corners were cut to achieve throughput, quality suffered, and products began failing in the field. Soldiers and sailors were not happy.
By the time our leadership realized that the system was out of control, poor quality had infected the entire system. Machine tools had worn out and were incapable of achieving specifications. Procurement bought substandard raw materials to minimize purchase price rather than overall production costs. Manufacturing processes had been changed to maximize throughput rather than accuracy. Employees had become lackadaisical. If management didn’t care, why should they? The system was broken and needed to be fixed.
Management took aggressive action. They put up posters declaring that “Quality is Job One,” and fortified the inspection force which they had previously gutted. But none of that fixed the problem. It just revealed a mountain of “red tagged” parts. But just like homelessness, the defective parts were just symptoms of much bigger problems. Finding the defective parts was not preventing the production of more defective parts. The pile of “red tags” continued to grow. Getting the system back under control required years of re-planning, retooling, retraining, and supplier development. We discovered that once control is lost, it is very difficult – and time consuming – to get back. That’s a lesson which I suspect Gavin Newsom is about to learn – the hard way.
When Newsom’s agents arrive at a tent city and tell everyone to pack up and get out, where will they go? Will they go to homeless shelters that don’t exist? Will they go to drug rehab facilities that are already full? Does Newsom have a plan to cull out, arrest and incarcerate the criminals among…in jails that are already overflowing? Maybe the homeless will suddenly develop a work ethic and get a job so they can rent an unaffordable apartment – with the pay from a business which has shuttered its operations. Or will everyone load up their shopping carts, move a few blocks down the street and pitch their tents again – because they have no other option? Newsom is about to learn that he can’t close the homeless encampments when the people living in cardboard boxes or under tarps are still economically dependent, mentally ill, substance addicted, or all of the above.
California’s tent people aren’t going to miraculously become productive members of society until the root causes of the system failure that created them are corrected.
Is Governor Newsom proposing that drug use be re-criminalized to discourage teenage experimentation from turning our youths into 40-something fentanyl addicted zombies?
Is Newsom proposing that California rethink its legislative and tax burden to expand access to well-paying jobs? Does he care about the exodus of businesses from California (i.e., SpaceX)? Does he have a plan to attract rather than repel businesses?
Does Newsom have a plan to make housing in California more affordable? That can only happen if it’s also more plentiful. Does the Governor have a plan to streamline the state’s multi-year permitting process? Does he have a plan to ensure new homes have access to adequate water and electricity?
Does the Governor have a plan to prepare young people to be contributing members of society? Is he planning to shift academic emphasis away from pronouns, victim studies, and climate hysteria – and towards reading, math, and science?
Is the Governor planning to reverse the state’s sanctuary status, so that its resources can be used to fix its existing problems? If not, the state is just bailing water while the boat is still riddled with holes.
Until Governor Newsom and his allies in the state legislature address the root causes of their current predicament, they aren’t fixing anything. They’re just masking the symptoms. They can sweep the human detritus under a rug for a time. It will be slightly less visible, but the illness that created the symptom will continue to fester, until the symptom explodes into public view again.
With his executive order, Newsom hasn’t proposed anything relative to
- The business climate,
- The regulatory climate,
- The criminal justice system, or
- The state’s learning institutions.
Either he doesn’t understand the scope of the problem California faces, or he’s just posing for the cameras. Sadly, we’re about to watch California’s homeless encampments become nomadic homeless encampments.
Author Bio: John Green is a retired engineer and political refugee from Minnesota, now residing in Idaho. He spent his career designing complex defense systems, developing high performance organizations, and doing corporate strategic planning. He can be reached at greenjeg@gmail.com.
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