National & statewide media, experts, rip San Jose's and state's ineffective, unaccountable homelessness programs
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While local media soft-pedaled the blockbuster State Auditor's report that found that SJ (and statewide) homelessness programs don't work, national housing experts and media were more brutally honest. Excerpts from Calmatters, L.A. Focus, L.A Times, and more, below
Washington Free Beacon: Lack of reliable data dooming homelessness programs
California is not tracking the billions in taxpayer dollars that have been poured into the homelessness crisis and the agency in charge has not established a process for keeping tabs on myriad programs and whether or not they work, the state’s auditor said Tuesday.
A separate audit that looked at how two major cities—San Jose and San Diego—managed their homelessness spending found a similar failure by local government officials to report on funding or check the effectiveness of the programs they bankroll.
The agency responsible for homelessness spending, the California Interagency Council on Homelessness, "has not established a consistent method for gathering information on homelessness programs’ costs and outcomes, leaving the state without information that would allow decision-makers to make data-driven decision," the auditor wrote.
"Currently, the Council has no plans to perform a similar assessment in the future," the report said. "In the absence of an up-to-date assessment, the state and its policymakers are likely to struggle to understand homelessness programs’ ongoing costs and achieved outcomes."
The agency has also failed to set a plan to meet legislative goals for its funding and to make sure the data it has collected on homelessness programs are accurate, the report said. Nor has it set a "consistent method" for tallying costs and measuring effectiveness of program efforts.
Calmatters: San Diego outperforms SJ in building transitional shelters for homeless
Cortese began pushing for the audit after visiting a massive homeless encampment on vacant land near San Jose’s airport, where hundreds of people lived among rodents, massive piles of trash and broken-down cars and RVs. When he started asking whether state funding was going to that encampment, he couldn’t get a clear answer.
And despite the Newsom administration pouring billions into the homelessness crisis and launching several new programs aimed at moving people indoors, encampments still are rampant up and down California. The perceived lack of progress led lawmakers to ask: Where is all that money going?
In San Jose, the city extended an $8 million homelessness prevention contract based on vastly inflated performance data, according to the audit.
San Jose and San Diego have similar estimated homeless populations — 6,340 and 6,500 respectively. But San Diego has 4,000 emergency shelter and temporary housing beds, while San Jose has just 2,500, according to the report.
California City News: No way to know where all the money went, nor if programs had any impact
Auditors concluded the following:
Cal ICH does not consistently track or evaluate efforts to end homelessness, making it impossible to measure their effectiveness.
While the Homekey and CalWORKs programs are likely cost-effective, there is not enough data to determine the cost-benefit ratio for three other state programs.
San José and San Diego have also failed to adequately track spending or gauge the outcomes of their homelessness programs.
Neither city could provide an accurate account of how much money it has spent on the crisis or how successful its efforts have been.
LA Focus: Audit is "a wake-up call for a shift toward solutions that prioritize self-sufficiency and cost-effectiveness.”
Democratic Senator Dave Cortese, who suggested an audit following his visit to a homeless encampment in San Jose last year, remarked that the report reveals a “data desert,” highlighting a profound transparency deficit across all levels.
“Despite (the auditor office) 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.
Republican Senator Roger Niello expressed concerns over an apparent absence of accountability, finding it problematic.
“California is facing a concerning paradox: despite an exorbitant amount of dollars spent, the state’s homeless population is not slowing down,” Niello said.“These audit results are a wake-up call for a shift toward solutions that prioritize self-sufficiency and cost effectiveness.”
LA Times: More investigation of homelessness misspending needed, likely
Assemblymember Gregg Hart (D-Santa Barbara), chair of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, said Tuesday he plans to conduct an oversight hearing to “further investigate” the audit results.
“San José and San Diego identified hundreds of millions of dollars in spending of federal, state, and local funding in recent years to respond to the homelessness crisis. However, neither city could definitively identify all its revenues and expenditures related to its homelessness efforts because neither has an established mechanism, such as a spending plan, to track and report its spending,” the audit states. “The absence of such a mechanism limits the transparency and accountability of the cities’ uses of funding to address homelessness.”
Cortese — whose Silicon Valley district has long been home to some of the nation’s largest homelessness encampments, a stark juxtaposition against the backdrop of stunning wealth — said the findings regarding the two major cities could be a harbinger for future data discoveries.
“If those two cities are experiencing issues or if there’s symptoms of challenges that we need to correct, that probably exists in many, many other cities in the state of California,” he said.
USA Today: "Housing First" programs lack evidence of efficacy, impact
The report cast some blame at the California Interagency Council on Homelessness, an 18-member council that oversees the state's "Housing First" model and regulations to "reduce the prevalence and duration of homelessness in California," according to its mission statement.
The audit found that the council has not tracked and evaluated state programs since June 2021. It also noted that currently there is no reliable system to gather information on the costs and results of the programs.
"In general, this report concludes that the State must do more to assess the cost-effectiveness of its homelessness programs," California State Auditor Grant Parks wrote in a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers.
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