California spends billions to fight homelessness without data on its effectiveness

California has allocated more than $20 billion to alleviate the state’s homelessness crisis since Gavin Newsom became governor in 2019, but there is very little data on how the money has been spent and what effect it has had, other than the fact that the number of homeless people continues to rise.

Despite the lack of concrete information, Newsom has been highly critical of what he calls local government failures and has threatened to withhold funding from those seen as lagging behind. Local officials, meanwhile, say they can’t develop comprehensive, long-term strategies unless Newsom is prepared to make multi-year commitments of financial support.

Earlier this year, state Auditor Grant Parks released a harsh audit of the California Interagency Council on Homelessness, the Newsom administration’s tool for coordinating homelessness programs.

“The state lacks current information on the current costs and outcomes of its homelessness programs because (the council) has not systematically tracked and evaluated the state’s efforts to prevent and end homelessness,” Parks wrote, adding that its most recent data is three years old.

Additionally, Parks said, the council “has also failed to align its action plan to end homelessness with its statutory goals of collecting financial information and ensuring accountability and results. As such, it lacks assurance that the actions it is taking will actually achieve those goals.”

It is rather brazen of Newsom to blame local officials if his own agency has been so slow to gather information on how billions of dollars have been spent and whether that spending has been effective.

However, the slowness in data processing is not limited to the state.

Since 2020, David O. Carter, a federal judge in Los Angeles, has presided over a lawsuit brought by the LA Alliance for Human Rights, a coalition of people from businesses, neighborhoods and homeless groups demanding to know how Los Angeles County officials have spent homeless funds. He is angry at the lack of response from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

“If there’s no documentation of the work being done, it’s not being done. That’s our only conclusion,” Carter said at a recent hearing, telling agency officials: “You’re not working on your current schedule. You’re working on mine.”

Meanwhile, in Sacramento, the quest for concrete information about the homeless has taken a small step forward.

Before adjourning its 2024 session, the Legislature approved a bill that would require state agencies that administer homeless assistance programs to file annual reports on spending and results with Newsom’s interagency council, which would then be required to make the information available to the public.