Steve Hilton Pledges to Clear Every California Homeless Encampment by the End of 2027
Republican candidate for California governor Steve Hilton says every homeless encampment in the state will be cleared by the end of 2027 if he is elected, unveiling a plan at a San Diego news conference Saturday.
“By the end of 2027, every encampment will be cleared, and Californians will have their sidewalks and parks back,” Hilton said, according to the New York Post’s California Post.
WHAT STEVE HILTON IS PROPOSING
The plan calls for a network of “Homeless Recovery Centers,” using the Sunbreak Ranch project in San Diego County as the prototype, according to the Hilton campaign. The centers would provide beds, meals, showers, medical care, drug treatment, psychiatric care and job training, and each person would have someone responsible for helping them get into stable housing, with continued care for those who need it, campaign officials said.
“No one is going to get their life back on track on the streets,” Hilton said. “We are going to get people off the streets and into place where they can actually get help.”
Hilton says he would meet with mayors and county leaders in his first month as governor to set public deadlines for clearing encampments: Labor Day 2027 for local leaders, and a final deadline of Dec. 31, 2027, for every encampment in the state.
He also plans to declare a homelessness emergency to waive permitting barriers, enforce public camping bans once suitable facilities are available, and audit homelessness spending through what he calls “Operation Zero Waste” to redirect money from failing programs. If local leaders do not act, he said, the state would step in.
“Leaving people to deteriorate in tents is a disgrace,” Hilton said.
THE NUMBERS HILTON CITED
Hilton cited the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s 2025 count, which he said found 181,934 homeless people in California, including 115,583 living without shelter. He said the state has allocated almost $24 billion to homelessness and housing in recent years, and that the state auditor found it failed to consistently track spending and results, the Post reported.
WHAT BECERRA HAS PROPOSED
The campaign of Hilton’s Democratic opponent, former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday, the Post reported.
On his campaign website, Becerra calls homelessness “a moral emergency and a policy failure decades in the making.” He says he would declare a housing emergency on his first day, “build thousands of treatment beds” under Proposition 1, expand shelter capacity “as a bridge, not an endpoint,” and pursue “Housing First” approaches paired with behavioral health and addiction treatment.
“We have spent billions, and the results are not good enough,” Becerra’s plan says. “Programs that fail will be defunded; programs that work will be scaled.”
Sources: New York Post / California Post (Oct. 17, 2026); Xavier Becerra for Governor campaign website.
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