☆ Former Councilmembers in support of Doan/Batra call for audit of SJ City homelessness spend
Image by Wikimedia Commons
Concerns about unaccountable spending by the SJ Housing Dept. go back years--even decades. Johnny Khamis and Pierluigi Oliverio, the two SJ CM's who sounded the klaxon most urgently about ineffective and misguided homelessness programs back in the day--give thumbs up to the Doan/Batra audit proposal. An Opp Now exclusive.
Johnny Khamis:
I applaud councilmembers Batra and Doan for working to improve accountability and transparency. I often wonder why we do not have better results from the vast amounts of money our government spends on the homelessness crisis. In my time, when Jacky Morales-Ferrand ran the Housing Dept., I saw the department spend a lot of money on non-profit vendors, countless studies, and a very large staff. The more we spend on duplicate services, fruitless studies, and bloated staffing--the less money we have to spend on helping house those with the most needs.
One example of duplicative services took place during a research visit to a homeless encampment at Guadalupe Park that several councilmembers took to evaluate the needs of our less fortunate. While I was talking to 3 of the unhoused individuals, 3 separate non-profits stopped in to survey the population of that particular encampment. After I told the head of the housing department of my experience, I asked for procedural changes to better account for who was being surveyed and by what non-profit vendor, but sadly my concerns fell on deaf ears.
--Johnny Khamis
Pierluigi Oliverio:
It is a good practice for elected officials at all levels of government to request department audits which may include department analysis and subsequent projections. CM’s have a responsibility as directly elected board members to observe and oversee city operations prior to making policy decisions or changing policy. Audits should bring transparency to how department analysis is conducted and how that builds into department assumptions. This week the state legislature recently approved an audit of HCD since it was previously found HCD staff had a lack of documentation, errors in their models and in some cases did not have any analysis to back their assumptions.
--Pierluigi Oliverio
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