California spends an astounding amount of money to combat homelessness. Presumably.
I know this is a crazy question to ask, but does all that spending actually do anything to reduce the amount of homelessness?
The answer from California’s state agencies tasked with running homelessness programs seems to be no more than a shrug. According to a recent audit, the state stopped tracking the effect of its homelessness programs five years and $24 billion ago.
“More than 180,000 Californians experienced homelessness in 2023—a 53% increase from 2013,” the audit report reads. “To address this ongoing crisis, nine state agencies have collectively spent billions of dollars in state funding over the past five years administering at least 30 programs dedicated to preventing and ending homelessness.”
Yet, the audit found that there was little way to assess the…
