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.
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.
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