Auditors SLAM California's $24 BILLION spend on shelters and rent subsidies, ... trends now
California spent $24 billion tackling homelessness over five years but didn't track if the money was helping the state's growing number of unhoused people, a damning report says.
The audit slams the state's homelessness tsars for spending billions across 30 programs from 2018-2023, but gathering no data on why the cash wasn't tackling the crisis.
It confirms what's clear to many residents — the homelessness crisis is out of control, and that tent encampments and troublesome vagrancy across major cities is bad and getting worse.
Homelessness jumped 6 percent to more than 180,000 people in California last year, federal data show. Since 2013, the numbers have exploded by 53 percent.
Volunteers help to clean up belongings at an encampment of homeless people near the Nimitz Freeway in Oakland after the city ordered a clean up
Gov Gavin Newsom has made tackling homelessness a priority, but the results have been poor
California is home to nearly a third of America's entire homeless population.
State Auditor Grant Parks wrote in a letter to Gov Gavin Newsom and lawmakers that the 'state must do more to assess the cost-effectiveness of its homelessness programs.'
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Auditors probed five schemes that received a combined $13.7 billion in funding.
Only two of them were 'likely cost-effective,' including one that converts hotel and motel rooms into housing and another that helps to prevent families from becoming homeless, they found.
The remaining three programs, which have received a total of $9.4 billion since 2020, couldn't be evaluated due to a lack of data.
Thomas Wolf, a San Francisco-based consultant and former homeless drug addict, called the findings a 'scandal.'
'The state has spent billions on homelessness, and it's worse,' Wolf posted on X/Twitter.
'Outcomes literally mean everything when it comes to homeless services, and unsurprisingly, they have no data.'
Homeless people wait in line for dinner outside the Midnight Mission in the Skid Row area of Los Angeles
For some, the audit confirms fears of a 'homeless industrial complex' – a gravy train of funders, officials, shelter owners and charities more keen on swallowing public funds than solving the problem.
Entrepreneur Adam Rossi posted that the 'purpose of the homeless industrial complex in California is to perpetuate homelessness while extracting funds from the state.'
California State Auditor Grant Parks
'This is what the system does,' he added.
Democratic state Sen. Dave Cortese, who requested the audit last year after touring a large homeless encampment in San Jose, complained of a 'data desert' and lack of transparency.
Republican state Sen. Roger Niello called the lack of accountability troubling.
'Despite an exorbitant amount of dollars spent, the state's homeless population is not slowing down,'
