Some California Democrats are turning on their Golden State leader after Gov. Gavin Newsom’s homelessness council failed to track whether billions of dollars spent on curbing the homelessness crisis were successful in the last five years.
“You come to a budget committee, and there’s no numbers,” Democratic Assemblymember Phil Ting said to Newsom’s housing and homelessness officials during Monday’s budget committee hearing. “How many people have we helped? How many people are off the street?”
“Because that’s what people want to know,” he added.
A California Interagency Council on Homelessness (CICH) executive responded that they’re dealing with “data quality issues,” so metrics are not yet available for how more than $20 billion was spent since the council’s inception.
“We’re working expeditiously,” executive officer Meghan Marshall said.
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom faces backlash for untracked $20 billion worth of state homeless resources and programs. (MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images | Contributor/Mario Tama/Staff)
“What does that mean though? We spent billions of dollars, and you can’t tell us at all how many people we’ve helped,” Tang said.
Megan Kirkeby, deputy director for the California Department of Housing and Community Development, told lawmakers in the committee that the state didn’t previously require them to track its progress on spending or the viability of its programs, adding it’s not “something to be proud of.”
CICH, the blue state’s hub for coordinating the state’s homeless programs, shifted blame to local cities last month in an emailed response to Fox News Digital’s inquiry about the failure to track the money. A senior spokesperson said municipalities “are primarily responsible for implementing these programs and collecting data on outcomes that the state can use to evaluate program effectiveness.”
As the state faces a significant budget deficit that must be worked out by a July deadline, both Republicans and Democrats in the legislature fear the audit’s findings could interfere with multiple city requests for more funding to address the homeless crisis. California is ground zero for the most homeless people in the nation, with more than 181,000 people living on the streets.
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A homeless man in a clear plastic poncho stands next to a shopping cart on the sidewalk on Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California, on Thursday. (Toby Canham for Fox News Digital)
In a bombshell report last month, the state auditor found that nine state agencies have collectively spent $24 billion in state funding over the past five years in administering at least 30programs dedicated to tackling the homelessness crisis, and the auditor said Newsom’s homelessness council “is responsible for coordinating, developing, and evaluating the efforts of these nine agencies.”
The state’s independent audit noted CICH is required by law to report its finances related to all state‑funded homelessness programs but that it stopped doing so in 2021.
A homeless encampment is seen on the sidewalk on Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California, on Thursday. (Toby Canham for Fox News Digital)
Over the past five years, CICH didn’t consistently track whether the money actually improved the situation, the audit concluded. It also failed to collect and evaluate outcome data for these programs due to the lack of a consistent method.
In a letter to the governor, the state auditor wrote that “the state must do more to assess the cost-effectiveness of its homelessness programs.”
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Proposition 1 adds $6 billion to California funding for homelessness. (Fox News)
Despite billions spent on homelessness and housing programs during the 2018-2023 fiscal years, the problem didn’t improve in many cities, according to the state auditor’s report. Since 2013, homelessness has jumped more than 53%.
A homeless man sleeps on the sidewalk on Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California, on Thursday. (Toby Canham for Fox News Digital)
Newsom consequently called for cities to take more rigorous steps to enforce the state’s progressive housing laws, saying he is “not interested in failure any longer.” In a press conference, Newsom announced the state would expand a Department of Housing and Community Development agency to enforce compliance with laws that require cities to meet a threshold of new homes, leading to legal action against rebellious cities like Huntington Beach that have refused to increase building.
“This will allow us to center accountability in both housing and homelessness programs going forward. And we are continuing to work with local jurisdictions to improve the type and quality of the state coming into our statewide Homeless Data Integration System,” a CICH spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
Jamie Joseph is a writer who covers politics. She leads Fox News Digital coverage of the Senate.
