The Independent View: Who’s guarding the purse
SACRAMENTO:
California spent $24 billion to tackle homelessness over the past five years but didn’t consistently track whether the huge outlay of public money actually improved the situation, according to state audit released Tuesday. With makeshift tents lining the streets and disrupting businesses in cities and towns throughout California, homelessness has become one of the most frustrating and seemingly intractable issues in the country’s most populous state. An estimated 171,000 people are homeless in California, which amounts to roughly 30 percent of all of the homeless people in the U.S. Despite the roughly $24 billion spent on homeless and housing programs during the 2018-2023 fiscal years, the problem didn’t improve in many cities, according to state auditor’s report.
Among other things, the report found the California Interagency Council on Homelessness, which is responsible for coordinating agencies and allocating resources for homelessness programs, stopped tracking spending on programs and whether programs were working in 2021. It also failed to collect and evaluate outcome data for these programs due to the lack of a consistent method, the audit found.
Some data regarding the number of program participants and bed inventory in the state system might not be accurate or reliable, the audit found.
The council, which lawmakers created in 2017 to help deal with the state’s homelessness problem, has only reported on homelessness spending once, according to the audit. Without reliable and recent data on its spending, “the state will continue to lack complete and timely information about the ongoing costs and associated outcomes of its homelessness programs,” the report says.
Democratic state Sen. Dave Cortese, who requested the audit last year after touring a large homeless encampment in San Jose, said the audit depicts “a data desert” when it comes to homelessness. The biggest issue is the lack of transparency at every level, he said.
“Despite (the auditor office’s) professionalism and best efforts, they are at this time unable to ... draw conclusions about things like whether or not overhead is appropriate or too high,” Cortese said, though he stopped short of calling for a halt to future spending on the homelessness issue.
Republican state Sen. Roger Niello said the lack of accountability is troubling.
“California is facing a concerning paradox: despite an exorbitant amount of dollars spent, the state’s homeless population is not slowing down,” Niello said in a statement. “These audit results are a wake-up call for a shift toward solutions that prioritize self-sufficiency and cost effectiveness.”
California funds more than 30 programs to tackle homelessness. The audit assessed five initiatives and found only two of them — one that converts hotel and motel rooms into housing and one that provides housing-related support — are “likely cost-effective.”
The state auditor also reviewed homelessness spending in two major cities, San Jose and San Diego, and found both failed to effectively track revenue and spending. I don’t find this unusual because most government employees and our elected officials like to refer to government funding when its actually our funding. We have no say in how much we have to give and where it’s spent. While serving in the military and working as a civilian on a Marine base, at the end of every fiscal year they fly like crazy to use up any surplus fuel so next year’s allotment won’t be reduced. BORDER WALL INJURIES Border Walls Injuries. Emerging public health data affirm what border county hospital trauma surgeons have been suspecting since the U.S. government began raising the height of the Southwest border wall to slow migration: the 30-foot fence causes more injuries and is far deadlier, than any barrier before it.
County hospitals in El Paso and San Diego are receiving patients with border wall fall-related trauma at a rate of one per day in 2023, according to their chief trauma surgeons. The injuries range from complex lower extremity breaks including shattered ankles, foot and leg bones to life-altering spinal and cranial injuries.
Border wall falls carry “a mortality rate that is higher than COVID in the general population,” said Dr. Susan Mclean, surgical ICU medical director at University Medical Center in El Paso. “And it is something that is happening all up and down the border.”
Physicians say the falls and fatalities are a public health crisis for border communities at a time when the Biden administration, and the state of Texas, are investing in new border fencing amid record apprehensions of migrants.
But the Department of Homeland Security is already replacing an 18-foot fence with the 30-foot version near San Diego. DHS didn’t immediately respond to USA TODAY’S requests for comment regarding whether the agency takes into account public health outcomes when designing the style or height of border barriers.
In a statement earlier this year on the increase in migrant deaths at the border. Customs and Border Protection said: “Crossing the border illegally is inherently dangerous. CBP urges migrants to seek lawful pathways into the United States and not to place their lives in the hands of human smugglers, whose priority is profit.”
Texas also is poised to expand its border security measures. In addition to the concertina wire and buoy
barriers in the Rio Grande built under Gov. Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star, the Texas House last week approved a $1.54 billion Senate proposal to fund the construction of 50 additional miles of border fencing.
When DHS began construction on a 30-foot fence in southern California in 2019, then -President Trump described the barrier as impassable. “This wall can’t be climbed,” he said during a tour at Otay Mesa. From 2000 through 2019 – when construction began on the 30-foot fence in California – El Paso’s University Medical Center recorded a single death from a border wall fall, Mclean said.
Last year alone at UMC, nine patients died after a border wall fall. Another 326 people were treated for injuries for a mortality rate of 2.8 percent, she said.
Trauma surgeons – especially at university-run hospitals in counties along the U.s.-mexico border – have been collecting data independently to better understand a public health problem they say trumps politics.
The increase in border wall fall-related trauma rose in San Diego and El Paso after 2020, coinciding with the expansion of the higher 30-foot fence and a surge in migration. Border Patrol migrant encounters rocketed from 400,000 in fiscal 2020 during the pandemic to more than 2.4 million in fiscal 2023.
“We noticed starting right around 2020 that the numbers had gone up,” Mclean said. “It qualifies as a public health problem,” she said. “It’s a large population, and it’s a preventable problem with serious consequences.”
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I read a letter to the editor this week from a reader who corrected my stating Biden created National Transgender Day on Easter when the NTD was created a few years back and Easter happened to fall on the same day this year. I’m grateful people read my column. I also appreciate it when they find a mistake and publish it. The letter to the editor was correct, but I’m still disgusted the Biden Administration announced a Proclamation on Easter Sunday to reaffirm the administration’s position on it.