Arnold Schwarzenegger Thanks Donald Trump For Addressing California Homeless Epidemic
Donald Trump recently sent Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Ben Carson to a homelessness summit called Unhoused: Addressing Homelessness in California, which was also attended by former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Although the actor often has disagreements with Trump, he nevertheless took to Twitter to thank the real estate mogul for addressing the homeless epidemic, Breitbart reports.
“Everyone knows @realDonaldTrump & I have our disagreements,” Schwarzenegger tweeted. “But I want to thank you for sending @SecretaryCarson to our homelessness summit. We’ll only solve this if everyone works together. This issue is bigger than all of us. Now it’s time for action.”
According to the HUD website, Carson announced a $20M investment into nine public housing agencies. The money will allegedly go toward helping families reliant on public housing bolster their income to become self-sufficient eventually.
Per The Daily Trojan, Carson noted that both liberals and conservatives must work together to address the homeless crisis. According to student Katie Ross, who attended the event, the crowd indicated there was a bipartisan effort interested in tackling the problem.
“There were a lot of people from Democratic sides as well as Republican ideologies. I thought it was a really interesting way of bringing everyone together on social issues, especially homelessness that’s affecting a lot of California.”
Instead of using the EPA as a tool for political retaliation, Trump should talk to experts and come up with real solutions for California’s homelessness crisis.
I’ll save Trump some time. pic.twitter.com/xcJpQZk9hB
— Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) October 3, 2019
Former California Gov. Gray Davis also spoke at the event and expressed his belief that Los Angeles homelessness is a state of emergency. He pointed to the priority earned by the city’s sports stadiums and suggested that housing and treating the homeless should receive as much or more of a priority.
Schwarzenegger emphasized the beauty of California but noted the severity of its homelessness problem.
“There are over 150,000 people in our state that are considered homeless,” he said, adding that approximately 40 percent of residents fear that one of their family members will fall victim to homelessness.
“We can do better, and we must do better,” he said.
Schwarzenegger is also an advocate for addressing climate change and environmentalism. He is a part of the American climate coalition World War Zero and appeared on MSNBC’s Meet the Press last month to discuss his advocacy. When host Chuck Todd pressed him about whether he believes he can convince Trump to look at his policies, he suggested that the president was just one part of the complex issue.
Schwarzenegger noted that climate advocates should work on changing the language they use to discuss climate change and focus on pollution. According to Schwarzenegger, such a narrow focus has been successful in getting some conservatives on board to tackle climate change.
