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Open-air heroin use. Sidewalks smeared in human feces. Blocklong homeless camps and people with severe mental illnesses wading through traffic in socks and hospital clothes. You would be forgiven if you thought that those descriptions of California’s urban ills came from the mouth of the state’s biggest detractor, President Trump. After all, as the president jetted off to the Bay Area on Tuesday for a fund-raiser, he took a moment with reporters on Air Force One to fulminate against “people living in our best highways, our best streets, our best entrances to buildings.” (Dougherty, 9/17)

President Trump maligned the problem of homelessness in California as he arrived in the nation’s most populous state Tuesday, arguing that people living on the streets here have ruined the “prestige” of two of the state’s most populous cities and suggesting the possibility of federal action. “We can’t let Los Angeles, San Francisco and numerous other cities destroy themselves by allowing what’s happening,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Silicon Valley, where he hosted a campaign fundraiser to kick off a two-day visit to California. (Rucker and Stein, 9/17)

While aboard Air Force One on Tuesday en route in San Francisco, he said he is considering the creation of an “individual task force” as a possible solution to homelessness, without providing more details. “We can’t let Los Angeles, San Francisco and numerous other cities destroy themselves by allowing what’s happening,” he said, adding that the homelessness crisis is prompting residents of those cities to leave the country. “They can’t believe what’s happening.” (Oreskes, Rust, Shalby and Cosgrove, 9/17)

In the report, "The State of Homelessness in America," even shelters get some of the blame for increasing the number of people who are homeless. The argument: Some people would be able to find their own housing if they were turned away from shelters. "While shelters play an extremely important role in bringing some people off the streets, it also brings in people who would otherwise be housed, thus increasing total homelessness," the report states. (Woodyard, 9/17)

A week after hearing about federal officials swinging through a vacant office building close to Los Angeles International Airport, Hawthorne City Manager Arnold Shadbehr is still confused. Shadbehr hasn’t heard from the federal government or anyone else — other than reporters — about the visit to study homelessness in California. The Washington Post last week reported that officials with the administration of President Trump had “secretly” toured the one-time Federal Aviation Administration facility in Hawthorne as part of discussions about turning it into a government-run homeless shelter. (Smith, 9/17)

California’s homeless crisis came under a federal magnifying glass Tuesday, with President Donald Trump bemoaning conditions in San Francisco and Los Angeles as HUD Secretary Ben Carson downplayed fears of a law enforcement crackdown. As the numbers of people sleeping on California streets have soared — helping to push issues of housing and affordability to the top of the state’s political agenda — Trump has pointed to the growing crisis as evidence of failed leadership in a state that prides itself as a liberal counterweight to the president’s agenda. (White, 9/17)