Editorial: End of Clean California means end to jobs for some formerly homeless and incarcerated people

In the three years since Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the Clean California initiative, massive amounts of litter and trash have been hauled away from state highways and the land around them by thousands of people who might not otherwise have found work.

The $1.2 billion effort substantially augments the California Department of Transportation’s usual litter removal and resulted in the collection of more than 2.3 million cubic yards of trash. Clean California also offered grants to tidy up streets, and Caltrans hosted “dump days” that brought in thousands of mattresses and tens of thousands of tires. Along the way, the cleanups turned vacant lots into spaces the public can use; in San Francisco, one site is now a tree nursery at the foot of the Bay Bridge.

Clean California has funded the employment of thousands of workers who have the most difficulty getting hired — mainly those who are or were homeless, or spent time in prison or jail.

But now the entire Clean California initiative is about to disappear. With it goes the $50 million annual budget that allowed the Back2Work transitional employment program to subcontract with nonprofit agencies to hire the work crews.

It was always set to sunset after three years, though it may have been renewed had the state not been facing a $45-billion budget deficit. With housing and welfare programs on the chopping block, Clean California didn’t make the Legislature’s priority list.

We know state leaders are struggling with tough choices, but it’s heartbreaking to see cuts in programs devoted to hiring the people for whom employment is desperately hard to get. Housing, of course, is what unhoused people need most of all. But homeless people also need — and want — jobs. People coming out of jail and prison need employment as well, but must fight the bias against hiring formerly incarcerated individuals and might lack the skills to get hired. In all of these cases, work is not just a source of income but a stabilizing force in people’s lives.

While there is still $25 million left in the Clean California budget for hiring these workers, it won’t go far. The 100 crews around the state that were working for Caltrans through the Clean California program will be cut back to 48 next month.

One of the agencies affected is Chrysalis, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that places hundreds of marginalized workers in various jobs and offers a job-readiness program. It hired 15 crews to do litter abatement for Caltrans, funded through Clean California. But with the funding set to end, four of those crews have already been shut down and Chrysalis expects to shut down three more at the end of this month.