CA political candidate’s morning jog highlights homelessness crisis in viral video

A candidate for California’s State Assembly is taking an unconventional approach to highlighting the homelessness crisis plaguing the coastal region by giving an unfiltered point of view during his morning jogs. 

“People wanna see you directly pointing out government dysfunction, directly showing people on the ground what is happening and then publishing it directly on social media,” said Dick Lucas, who is running in California’s 51st district as an Independent. 

Lucas posted a since-viral video to social media over the weekend, showing him count the number of people he saw who are homeless during his short 25-minute run from Santa Monica to Venice. 

“I just thought it would make for a good video and be very visceral,” Lucas told The Post, adding that it was “probably actually a lot higher” than the 83 people he counted because he “lost track at one point.”

California has the largest homeless population in the country, with nearly 190,000 people living on the streets, according to federal data. For every 10,000 people in California, 48 experience homelessness. 

“There’s AB2903 and AB2570, this is on my full plan on my website, but basically [Governor] Newsom vetoed two bills that would bring transparency to how we’re spending money on homelessness, which is crazy,” Lucas sid. “The super majority of the Democrats sent him a bill, usually he’ll veto stuff that’s too far like to the left, this is something the Democrats even said, let’s bring more transparency and he vetoed them.” 

Governor Gavin Newsom said he vetoed AB2903 because similar measures are already in place to increase accountability and the effectiveness of California’s state homelessness programs. 

Lucas said he wants to see a “CEO of homelessness at the state and city level” who would become the face of the crisis and bring transparency to the issue. 

“Right now, what we have is a patchwork of thousands of organizations across you know, tens of thousands of people, and we don’t even know who to yell at,” he added. 

He also said cities need to enforce anti-camping laws that are already on the books, and build cost-effective facilities that prove treatment for substance abuse and mental health. 

“I think people are tired of politicians in California putting homelessness on their website and not actually addressing it—going into the streets, looking at the problem, admitting that the problem exists and stop pretending like just because we improved a few percent since last year that we’re actually addressing this,” Lucas said.