California spends billions on homelessness, but does not track the impact
Today, California is home to nearly half of the nation’s unsheltered homeless population. Since 2018, our state has spent nearly $24 billion taxpayer dollars to solve its homelessness crisis, only to see our unhoused population increase — rising by 32%. Locally, Sacramento County’s homeless population has grown by 67% since 2019 — recently passing San Francisco’s own homeless population.
In 2023, as a newly elected member of the California Assembly, I wasa member of a bipartisan effort to request an audit of our state’s homelessness spending. The premise was simple enough: If the billions of dollars our state is spending to address this crisis aren’t achieving the desired results, what are we doing wrong? And how can our investments be put to better use?
The results, however, were more troubling than I expected.
Not only could the dollars be put to better use, but, in most cases, we don’t even have the information necessary to properly assess program effectiveness.
The state auditor’s two-part report, which focused on five state level programs and two local governments (San Jose and San Diego), highlighted a number of eye-opening findings. First, despite billions of dollars in spending, the homeless population in California has increased by 53% in the last decade. Our state has failed to systemically track homelessness spending and is not adequately positioned to collect data and assess outcomes.
Only two of the five state programs audited could provide enough information to assess their cost effectiveness. Neither San Jose nor San Diego centrally tracks and reports its spending or outcomes, and neither city has properly evaluated the effectiveness of its homelessness programs. Both cities, meanwhile, have sent millions in funding to outside service providers, but have not assessed whether these service providers are actually getting results
One solution proposed by the California State Auditor in their recently released report is for the Legislature to mandate new reporting requirements telling state agencies to measure the costs and outcomes of statefunded homelessness programs. That seems like something that should have been happening all along to make sure policymakers have the ability to regularly assess program efficacy.
The bottom line is California is failing to solve our homelessness crisis. More importantly, however, is that we don’t even know where our dollars are going. This should be cause for concern for taxpayers and homeless advocates alike. The inability to measure outcomes and performance will inevitably lead to wasted resources and broken promises.
The results of this audit are a critical first step toward improving our investments, protecting taxpayers, restoring public spaces and getting unhoused Californians the help they need. Now, the Legislature must make bold, necessary changes to improve transparency and accountability.