(Daily Mail) California Governor Gavin Newsom was called out by a reporter after he continued to dodge questions about blowing the state’s $24 billion spending on the homeless.
The Golden State’s budget deficit is at least $45 billion, a shortfall so large it prompted Newsom to propose painful spending cuts impacting immigrants, kindergarteners and low-income parents seeking child care in a state often lauded for having the world’s fifth-largest economy.
California spent $24 billion tackling homelessness over five years but didn’t track if the money was helping the state’s growing number of unhoused people, a damning report says.
At a press conference announcing his plans, he was asked by Angela Hart of KFF Health News if he felt his administration did enough to ensure the money was well spent and if he was worried the appetite for spending was lessening based on the homelessness program.
The usually confident Democrat hemmed and hawed for two minutes, to which Hart responded: ‘I’m sorry governor, I didn’t hear responses to either of those questions.’
California Governor Gavin Newsom was called out by a reporter after he continued to dodge questions about blowing the state’s $24 billion spending on the homeless
The Golden State spent $24 billion tackling homelessness in cities like San Francisco over five years but didn’t track if the money was helping the state’s growing number of unhoused people, a damning report says
The governor said throughout his initial answer that the problem was dealing with local governments but Newsom was clearly chastened by Hart’s retort.
Newsom finally leveled, saying the audit ‘did not surprise me’ and he agreed with most of its findings and said that the state has made unprecedented investments and tried to increase accountability from local governments for that spending.
‘As it relates to the public mood… more is not always better, the public want to see results,’ he added.
Hart finally thanked him for his answer, calling it ‘thorough’ before asking Newsom about cuts to healthcare spending and climate change.
The audit slams the state’s homelessness tsars for spending billions across 30 programs from 2018-2023, but gathering no data on why the cash wasn’t tackling the crisis.
It confirms what’s clear to many residents — the homelessness crisis is out of control, and that tent encampments and troublesome vagrancy across major cities is bad and getting worse.
Homelessness jumped 6 percent to more than 180,000 people in California last year, federal data show. Since 2013, the numbers have exploded by 53 percent.
California is home to nearly a third of America’s entire homeless population.
Newsom finally leveled, saying the audit ‘did not surprise me’ and he agreed with most of its findings and said that the state has made unprecedented investments and tried to increase accountability from local governments for that spending
Homeless people wait in line for dinner outside the Midnight Mission in the Skid Row area of Los Angeles
State Auditor Grant Parks wrote in a letter to Gov Gavin Newsom and lawmakers that the ‘state must do more to assess the cost-effectiveness of its homelessness programs.’
Auditors probed five schemes that received a combined $13.7 billion in funding.
Only two of them were ‘likely cost-effective,’ including one that converts hotel and motel rooms into housing and another that helps to prevent families from becoming homeless, they found.
The remaining three programs, which have received a total of $9.4 billion since 2020, couldn’t be evaluated due to a lack of data.
Thomas Wolf, a San Francisco-based consultant and former homeless drug addict, called the findings a ‘scandal.’
‘The state has spent billions on homelessness, and it’s worse,’ Wolf posted on X/Twitter.
‘Outcomes literally mean everything when it comes to homeless services, and unsurprisingly, they have no data.’
For some, the audit confirms fears of a ‘homeless industrial complex’ – a gravy train of funders, officials, shelter owners and charities more keen on swallowing public funds than solving the problem.
Thanks to such spending programs, California’s budget deficit is at least $45 billion, a shortfall so large it prompted Newsom to propose painful spending cuts impacting immigrants, kindergarteners and low-income parents seeking child care in a state often lauded for having the world’s fifth-largest economy
