California spent $24 billion on the state’s homeless crisis over the past five years, but it did not consistently track whether the enormous amount of spending was making a dent in the problem, a state audit has found.
The audit released Tuesday found California “lacks current information on the ongoing costs and outcomes of its homelessness programs.”
The state agency responsible for the issue “has not consistently tracked and evaluated the State’s efforts to prevent and end homelessness,” the audit discovered.
California has about 30% of the country’s homeless people, and the number continues to rise.
A total of 181,399 people were homeless in California at some point in 2023, up from 151,278 people in 2019. Last year’s homeless population was a 53% jump from the 118,552 people who were homeless in 2013, according to the audit.
Billions of taxpayer dollars were spent on more than 30 homeless and housing programs between 2018 and 2023, yet California could not explain why homelessness did not improve in some cities. In some areas, homelessness has become visibly worse, notably in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Sacramento.
