California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, commands a Golden State that has turned into a deep blue “Sapphire State.”
As Newsom took over following the 2003 San Francisco mayoral election, the then-mayor-elect said that December he intended to “aggressively” make ending homelessness in his city his administration’s top priority.
The plan involved a 10-year strategy to end chronic homelessness with “tens of millions” of federal dollars in funding to create 550 “supportive housing” units for the troubled homeless, SFGate reported at the time.
The nonpartisan think tank Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) found that, as of 2022, 30% of homeless Americans lived in the Golden State, “including half of all unsheltered people (115,491 in California; 233,832 in the US).”
“Since 2020, California’s overall homeless population has increased about 6%, compared to just 0.4% in the rest of the country,” PPIC wrote in February. “A 17% increase in the homeless but sheltered population accounts for almost all of California’s change, while the more visible unsheltered population increased 2%.”
“The rest of the country’s unsheltered population grew faster than California’s (4%), while its sheltered population actually shrank (-2%),” they added.
During Newsom’s successful 2017 run for governor, the California Democrat pledged that he would “lead the effort to develop the 3.5 million new housing units we need by 2025 because our solutions must be as bold as the problem is big.”
A 2022 Department of Housing and Urban Development report found that 67% of California’s homeless population is unsheltered. – Source
California spent $24 billion to tackle homelessness over the past five years but didn’t consistently track whether the huge outlay of public money actually improved the situation, according to state audit released Tuesday.
With makeshift tents lining the streets and disrupting businesses in cities and towns throughout California, homelessness has become one of the most frustrating and seemingly intractable issues in the country’s most populous state. An estimated 171,000 people are homeless in California, which amounts to roughly 30% of all of the homeless people in the U.S.
Despite the roughly billions of dollars spent on more than 30 homeless and housing programs during the 2018-2023 fiscal years, California doesn’t have reliable data needed to fully understand why the problem didn’t improve in many cities, according to state auditor’s report.
The audit analyzed five programs that received a combined $13.7 billion in funding. It determined that only two of them are “likely cost-effective,” including one that converts hotel and motel rooms into housing and another that provides housing assistance to prevent families from becoming homeless.
Between 2010 and 2020, the number of people experiencing homelessness in California increased by 31% – Source
California alone accounted for nearly 30% of all homelessness in America, based on 2023 estimates of the Annual Homelessness Assessment Report to Congress. The estimated number of people experiencing homelessness in America surged to about 653,000 in 2023, the highest level on record since reporting began in 2007. – Source
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