Florida's Homeless Encampments Go Viral After DeSantis Attacks Newsom

Photos of homeless encampments in Florida have gone viral on Twitter after Governor Ron DeSantis criticized California Governor Gavin Newsom and "leftist policies" for the homeless situation in San Francisco.

On Thursday, Wayne DuPree, a conservative media personality and supporter of former President Donald Trump, shared several photos of homeless encampments in Florida and tweeted, "Hey Jesse @JesseBWatters! You said there were no pictures of homeless people in Florida like in California. I guess you were protecting the Governor. Either way you asked for pics."

According to his tweet, which has been viewed over 194,000 times as of early Friday afternoon, the photos show different homeless encampments in Gainesville, Jacksonville, Pensacola and Orlando. Local media reports in Florida show that many of the homeless encampments shown in DuPree's tweet have been removed by officials. In 2022, WALA-TV reported that Pensacola removed at least 100 homeless people from encampments located under Interstate-110. Similarly in March 2021, WJAX-TV reported that officials in Jacksonville also removed dozens of homeless people from their encampments.

The tweet by DuPree came shortly after DeSantis, who recently announced his bid for presidency in 2024, shared a video of himself in San Francisco where he spoke about the city's homeless population.

"The city is not vibrant anymore. It's really collapsed, because of leftist policies and these policies have caused people to flee this area," the Florida governor said in a video. "They don't prosecute criminals...and the wreckage has really, really been sad to see. It just shows you these policies matter, leadership matters. They are doing it wrong here."

Shortly after the remarks by DeSantis, Fox News host Jesse Watters spoke about the homeless situation in San Francisco, calling it a "political gift" for all Republicans.

Watters added that he has not seen homeless encampments like the ones in San Francisco in Republican-led states like Florida, which prompted DuPree to post the photos.

"I have not seen, on our air ever, a homeless encampment where everyone is crazy on drugs, in the state of Florida," Watters said on Fox News' The Five.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed also responded to DeSantis's criticism and said, "Unfortunately, in politics the old playbook of focusing on the negative and targeting places like San Francisco have been unfortunately the norm, so we need to turn that around."

Over the past several weeks, DeSantis has continued to criticize Newsom and allegedly sent flights of migrants to California recently. Newsom responded by calling the Florida governor a "small, pathetic man" and said that he was looking into criminal charges for the migrant flights.

DeSantis's Never Back Down PAC told Newsweek in a statement on Friday that "Governor DeSantis has taken aggressive action to reduce homelessness and ensure safe, clean streets in Florida—that's one reason why so many Californians have moved to the Sunshine State."

According to 2022 data from EndHomelessness.org, California ranked as the state with the highest total number of homeless people with 171,521. However, Florida ranked third for total homeless population with 25,959. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau in 2022 shows that California has a much higher total population when compared to Florida, (39,029,342 to 22,244,823, respectively).

The data from EndHomelessness.org also shows that in 2022, California had a rate of 44 homeless people per 10,000 residents. Comparatively, Florida had a rate of 12 homeless people per 10,000 residents, according to the data.

Update 6/23/23, 3:36 p.m. ET: This article has been updated to include a statement from DeSantis's PAC as well as additional information on the photos of the homeless encampments.