Homelessness in California: Billions Spent, Results Untracked
The Problem.
California directed roughly $37 billion toward housing and homelessness programs between 2019 and 2025, spread across nine state agencies and more than 30 programs. The state's independent auditor found that the council responsible for coordinating this work was not consistently tracking spending or evaluating whether the programs were working. Billions of dollars could not be evaluated for success because the outcome data simply did not exist. When the auditor reviewed a set of state-funded homelessness programs, it could not even determine whether most of them were cost-effective, because the state had never collected the data needed to tell. One program that promised 20,000 housing units for mentally ill unhoused residents delivered fewer than 1,800 in six years.
The Solution.
It took an independent audit to force the state to begin collecting basic data on whether its homelessness spending works. The Transparency Act builds that oversight in from the start. It requires audits that assess whether spending is achieving its intended outcome, and requires ongoing audits every four years so problems are caught and corrected instead of repeated. Taxpayer dollars are used as intended, when intended.