With 187,000 residents homeless, California leads the nation—not in solutions, but in expensive failures. This year, major cities like Oakland saw a 9% increase in homelessness. If the state’s goal was to increase homelessness, its policies are a resounding success.
The state isn’t short on resources. California has some of the nation’s highest taxpayers and receives $322 billion in annual revenue. But it burned through $24 billion of that on homelessness over the past five years—and it’s still failed to halt the bleeding.
In large part, this failure is due to incompetence. The crisis keeps spiraling because no one has bothered to track where the money is going. A state audit confirmed that the government had no idea what it was doing.
Local governments aren’t any better. San Diego and San Jose funneled millions into homeless programs with little…
