California’s $24 Billion Effort to Combat Homelessness is a Complete Failure
LOL: Hollywood Homelessness Director Flees High-Cost State After Evicted from Home…Second Time
Back when California Governor Gavin Newsom was mayor of San Francisco in 2003, he offered a 10-year plan to end the crisis.
As Newsom took over following the 2003 San Francisco mayoral election, the then-mayor-elect said that December he intended to “aggressively” make ending homelessness in his city his administration’s top priority.
The plan involved a 10-year strategy to end chronic homelessness with “tens of millions” of federal dollars in funding to create 550 “supportive housing” units for the troubled homeless, SFGate reported at the time.
Here’s a video of Gavin Newsom from 2008 promising to end San Francisco’s homeless crisis in 10 YEARS…
Today there are more than 170,000 homeless people in Gruesome Newsom’s commiefornia.
— 🇺🇸 Pismo 🇺🇸 (@Pismo_B) November 4, 2023
Twenty years later, the state’s homelessness problem is worse than ever. Iconic sites for tourism have turned into dangerous homeless camps. Infectious disease outbreaks are occurring in camp locations, due to the the garbage and waste.
Now a new state audit has conducted on the effectiveness of the $24 billion effort to curb the problem.
I am sure Legal Insurrection readers will not be surprised to learn that the programs have been a complete failure.
The report comes as homelessness in the state reached new heights. California now accounts for a third of the country’s unhoused population and half of its unsheltered homeless citizens. Over 181,000 Californians were unhoused in 2023, a nearly 20% uptick since 2019.
That’s despite an unprecedented nearly $24 billion in state spending on homelessness over the same period, in addition to local and federal investments, according to the audit.
“California is facing a concerning paradox: despite an exorbitant amount of dollars spent, the state’s homeless population is not slowing down,” Sen. Roger Niello (R-Fair Oaks), vice chair of the Senate Budget Committee, said in a statement.
Legal Insurrection readers will also not be shocked to learn California failed to track the effectiveness of this billion-dollar spending on homelessness programs.
[T]he effectiveness of these programs is unclear; the state audit found that some agencies lack data on the costs and outcomes of its homelessness programs in recent years “despite the significant amount of additional funding the State awarded to these efforts in the past two years.” In the report, the auditor argues that the council has not “aligned its action plan” to ensure accountability and results.
Having up-to-date information, the auditor states, allows the state agencies to “make data‑driven policy decisions on how to effectively reduce homelessness.”
…Auditors were unable to assess the cost-effectiveness of several other programs because of the lack of data on the program outcomes. The report suggests that the legislature mandate data collection and public reporting of the costs and outcomes of their homelessness programs.
Democratic State Sen. Dave Cortese and Republican Sen. Josh Hoover, two of the lawmakers behind the request for the audit, say the audit was a “critical first step” in the state’s overall challenges with homelessness.
If you don’t collect data, you can’t measure success or failure. This approach seems to be a guiding principal for blue state policy implementation.
One last note: The director of homelessness services in the Los Angeles area is leaving the state…due to the high cost of living in California.
Nathan Sheets, director of the homelessness services organization The Center in Hollywood, has been served his second eviction notice in three years.
Citing an affordability crisis and lack of housing security, Sheets is giving up California for good, taking his family back to lower-cost Indiana and leaving his job helping the homeless in California.
Until vagrancy laws are reestablished (or enforced), effective guidelines for dealing with the mentally ill are created, the border crisis is resolved, and Bidenomics is replaced polices that protect small business and the free market, California will continue to throw good money after bad.
Unfortunately, that money includes many of my tax dollars.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
The waste is a feature not a result. The money was directed to favored local programs with no oversight. My guess it went to office space, salaries and benefits. FJB
Homelessness was the pretext of the program, not the intent.
A fundamental law of economics: subsidize something and you’ll get more of it.
I prefer “feature, not a bug”. Comes from my CS background.
Much Dem (and maybe to a lesser degree Republican) government spending is for the purpose of graft. It isn’t just homelessness, of course, but racial, DEI, environmental, etc, efforts all fall into this – ways to siphon money from the government till to favored constituencies. The problem for CA Dems, maybe more than for anyone else in the country, is that the money has run out. They are a Sanctuary State with someone of the most generous benefits in the country for illegals, while spending billions for native homeless. Blacks are demanding Reparations, and no one is really telling them that there is no money for them (despite being obviously violative of Equal Protection). The Bullet Train To Nowhere is still getting funded. Etc. Meanwhile the tax base is declining fairly quickly as businesses and high income individuals are fleeing the state. The portions of the traditional middle class, who can leave, are.
One problem esp with homeless and illegals is that both populations are being bribed and facilitated to come and stay. In our rural county in NW MT, there is a 2 day limit for camping in town. On the 3rd night, they are arrested. If they insist on being homeless, they can stay in the jail, and earn their keep on work details. They can stay at USFS campgrounds 5 or more miles from the nearest town for up to 2 weeks, but are then evicted. This plays out similarly throughout much of the rest of the country. So, many of them end up where they are bribed to go. And CA, with its often mild climate, and good rewards for being either homeless or illegal, gets much more of its share.
We have the same in Texas, Austin is full so they are coming north and have become a nuisance in my town.
They know the laws and it’s literally shit show and police are afraid to do much
Now the city wants to throw money at the “problem”
I’m sorry, if you are a menace to society, we tax payers are not obliged to keep you fed and alive at any cost
This crap has to stop. Enough!
We are being held hostage by mentally insane, drug addicted people.
I don’t feel bad saying enough is enough.
It would have been cheaper just to give the homeless cash than what California did, $24 billion and the homeless never saw any of it.
The program was a success. He got the money, and he and his cronies got lots of French Laundry dinners out of it. What happened or didn’t happen beyond that is irrelevant.
To the kind of Democrats who control Ca., this has been a success and the funds wound up where intended.
CA under dem super majority. What could go wrong there?
How about making California the designated homeless destination?
Dems run California, so what ya gonna do? I just hope Sheets doesn’t bring any of that corruption back to Indiana!
The homeless got nothing, it all went into government programs and favored NGO’s. Homelessness increased A LOT in California during that time and now has close to half the homeless in the country.
Let me guess they built close to zero housing units with that money.
California dreaming, or california dying?
Enjoy the decline.
Isn’t Gruesome Gavin next in line if Xiden falters?
We do not know who the Politburo will choose to rule us . . . until it is announced.
Subotai Bahadur
The Homeless-Industrial Complex is now another permanently vested interest feeding at the government trough of ever-increasing funding. Now we can be sure the “homeless” problem will never be solved. Too many Democrats working for government at all levels, NGOs and other stakeholders funding lobbyists to keep their spot at the trough.
Perfect example of create a “crisis”->propose a “solution’”->secure funding for the solution->hire a bunch of people with civil service job security->declare the problem not yet solved->propose more funding to really solve it this time->let all the stakeholders know funding is in jeopardy, send lobbyists and money to elected reps->feed the narrative to the MSM. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Homeless Industrial Complex (HIC) is self perpetuating by design in CA.
Well said.
solve the problem, lose your job. On another note I would love to see a team of investigative reporters embed themselves in many of these NGO’s and report on them. Between the NGO’s working with the homeless, the illegal migrants and working in many foreign countries, we see a few stories now and then exposing bad behavior but what goes on in many of these groups is clouded in secrecy, I’m sure the ones that are actually above board would not have issue with light being shined upon them.
Good idea, but are there any real investigative reporters left? Other than James O’Keefe? Precious few who would seek to challenge The Narrative™.
I have been heartened at how the “remaining” Project Veritas group has stopped whining and restarted doing its job again. Their current narrative is that they have successfully shitcanned all the troublemaking agitators who sacked O’Keefe, and now deserve our support again. In fact, their last press release came this –> <– close to actually apologizing to O'Keefe, lauding him by name for "a testament to the stories that we were willing to break, and the courage of our founder James O'Keefe to investigate controversial issues."
(When they finally get around to an actual apology, I'll consider donating again. That's my hard and fast rule for people who beg me for "forgive and forget" amnesties.)
We need to abolish government funding of NGO’s
Yeah, with government funding they are essentially GOs!
“…the state audit found that some agencies lack data on the costs and outcomes of its homelessness programs in recent years “despite the significant amount of additional funding the State awarded to these efforts in the past two years.”
As many astute commenters on this article have noted, “That’s a feature, not bug.” Like all leftist agenda items (green energy, etc), the goal is not to solve any problems. The goal is continued rape of tax payers’ wallets to re-distribute money to an underground army of loyal lefty henchmen masquerading as NGO advocacy store fronts.
This well-funded underground army of leftist henchmen will have all the resources they need to ‘unexpectedly’ attack normie America with burn, loot, murder riots across the nation if or when another Republican is elected potus.
Of course, none of them will be prosecuted…
It sounds to me like it was a resounding success from their part. They always want a helpless underclass that is completely dependent, That’s exactly what they have.
The hobo industry in calif. began with collusion between Gov. Brown and a federal judge. The judge declared state prisons to be illegally overpopulated and ordered them depopulated. That ruling was exactly what Brown wanted.
Brown decided to release “non-violent” petty criminals rather than expand or build new prisons. Prisoners were released and bused to points up and down the state.
The state adopted Angela Davis’ prison abolition scheme via slight of hand.
Then came the Soros DA scheme to abolish criminality.
At least it’s a complete failure. One doesn’t want to do these things only halfway.
But a failure that won’t go away
The Left — still batting 1.000.
CA is peeing money into the wind. That money could be better spent on WPA or CCC style programs where at the very least, the taxpayers would get some return on their money.
Not accepting membership in such a program would mark a person as not merely homeless, but an irresponsible bum by choice, Dealing with acknowledged bums would be a different kettle of fish than ‘victims’ of the economy.
Services provided to members could include basic medical, mental health/drug abuse treatment, job training, decent food, housing, etc.. Meanwhile they could be employed removing the wildfire causing deadfall from state forests, cleaning up their former encampments, planting trees, doing counter-erosion projects, removing graffiti, picking up litter along the roads. Basic tasks that taxpayers would otherwise be paying for directly.
The left of course will scream bloody murder that forcing such labor on the homeless is “demeaning”, while continuing to pay state employees to do the same tasks and accepting the worst of the homeless impacts. They prefer the peeing taxpayer money into the wind option.
“”The left of course will scream bloody murder that forcing such labor on the homeless is “demeaning””
Just call them good union jobs, because if they are not unionized the unions won’t cooperate with them to get their fair share.
If the money had went to the county or city where they could pay the homeless to pick up trash, clean parks, sweep sidewalks and stuff as well as build Single-Occupancy Unit complexes it would have made a lot bigger impact on homelessness. Instead, the money went into bureaucracy and then to advocacy organizations that spent the money lobbying and politicking and probably donated a lot of it back to the politicians.
You’re literally describing the Good First Step (CCC, WPA) that FDR used to puncture the constitutional funding safeguards that would have prevented the situation we find ourselves in now.
It was just another clever Democrat use of their “slippery slope/salami slicing” playbook to get to what they really want — same as, “all we want is to get married,” “safe, legal, and rare,” “15 days to flatten the curve,” and (the one that just won’t seem to cooperate), “all we want to ban is weapons of war on our streets.”
Those from the northwest remember Stephan Sharkansky…
“The cost IS the benefit.”
This story reminds me of the lunacy of the Austin city council. A few years ago they crowed about their visits to California and Oregon… site seeing tours to ‘learn from the front lines’ of the ‘battle against homelessness.’ That’s right, the Austin City Council is so stupid that they went to the people who are fu*king up the worst on this issue to ‘learn’ from them. Don’t even get me going on the zoning issues or their botching of the police department.
Anyway, this is just a quick note to say… we finally closed on the sale of our Austin house this week. Woot! We should be signing the contract with our builder in the next few weeks, and by next summer we will be out of this communist sh*t hole… hello Hill Country! As the saying goes, we’re voting with our feet.
I live near the big Buccees, you know what town, let me tell you the council here approved 9,000 more homes. The roads are already congested and traffic is horrible. The water system is not going to be able to accommodate thousands of new homes. I think it might be time to find a place far away from the interstates, or maybe go to the Philippines. lol
Run as far as you like, you will never escape Buc-ees.
Saw a Buc-ees billboard just this Wednesday, northbound between Tucson and Phoenix(!), announcing simply, “951 miles.” DW did the math and the research, discovered they’d opened one in Colorado. Also, another was already under construction in Goodyear or Avondale, just west of Phoenix. Personally, I’m pumped.
“That’s right, the Austin City Council is so stupid that they went to the people who are fu*king up the worst on this issue to ‘learn’ from them.”
A couple decades ago, I personally saw an ad in a national magazine for a course on how not to be scammed. The “teacher” literally claimed in the ad that he had been personally scammed over 15 times and now wanted to teach you all their tricks. For the life of me, I could not imagine anyone stupid enough to pay this idiot for his “course,” rather than pay someone who could claim that he had never been scammed in his life.
Lol, maybe somebody who got scammed ONCE, but 15 times, no.
First, it has to be acknowledged that in any Leftist polity, it is by definition impossible for any Leftist program to fail no matter what the outcome.
Second, as long as funds are transferred from the Kulaks and peasants to the Nomenklatura all is well. There are no other objective standards.
Third, we are approaching the end stage of this fiasco, when things cannot be held together any more. Keep thine codpieces buttoned.
Subotai Bahadur
“Third, we are approaching the end stage of this fiasco, when things cannot be held together any more. Keep thine codpieces buttoned.”
yes, Glubb’s 250 is fast approaching………………………….
If you subsidize something, you get more of it.
These programs all enable the homeless lifestyle. None of them are designed towards getting a homelessness person meaningful employment that would enable to rejoin society as a productive citizen.
If you tax something, you get less of it. CA paid for these handouts by taxing businesses and workers. Many of whom fled the State, others lost their jobs and became homeless.
Absolute best thing you can do to end homelessness: Nothing. Stop giving them “free” stuff.
The money never reached the homeless as far as I can tell.
It was never meant to. It was never even promised to. Housing, services, even food perhaps, those were the (undelivered) promises. But money? Money would have given them agency, a choice of provider. Livestock don’t get choice, they eat what’s put in the trough in front of them.
The dominant political philosophy in CA equates anti-social behavior with victimhood. And so vagrancy is government-funded.
I haven’t even read the post yet, just reacting immediately to the headline:
Hands up anyone who was even mildly surprised!
I see a lot of hands up. Plus, they’re saying “don’t shoot!”