President Trump, growing increasingly frustrated over the ongoing homelessness crisis in California’s major cities, has threatened to leverage EPA violations against the state as incentive to solve the crisis, the Washington Post reports.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, President Trump described it as “a terrible situation that’s in Los Angeles and in San Francisco,” adding that “we’re going to be giving San Francisco, they’re in total violation, we’re going to be giving them a notice very soon.”
The president emphasized the abundance of used needles from drug addicts that litter the streets, which, alongside other waste, has been “entering the ocean through storm sewers.”
Tyler Gamble of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission responded by falsely claiming that the city “hasn’t had any (recent) problems with syringes.” State Senator Scott Wiener (D-Calif.) claimed, without evidence, that President Trump made “homelessness and addiction worse by cutting healthcare and affordable housing.”
San Francisco’s Mayor London Breed (D-Calif.) signaled a willingness to work with President Trump, saying that “if [he] wants to talk about homelessness, we are committed to working with our state and federal partners on actual solutions.”