No One Knows if California’s Spending on Homelessness is Working
City Hall Digest is TogetherSF Action’s weekly dispatch from San Francisco’s City Hall, broken into bite-sized pieces—because understanding local government is your fundamental right and duty.
California Spends $24 Billion on Homelessness, Fails to Track Results
Last week, California’s state auditor released a much-anticipated report that investigated the state’s efforts to reduce homelessness between 2018 and 2023. The report found that while California spent a whopping $24 billion dollars on 30 programs through nine state agencies, the state had little to show for it—in fact, homelessness in California increased by almost 20 percent from 2019 to 2023. Worse still, the state failed to effectively track the data and money they spent on homelessness. So despite a rigorous audit, no one really knows if any of the programs California is funding are actually working.
Inexplicably, the California Interagency Council on Homelessness—the agency created in 2017 to oversee homelessness programs—stopped tracking spending from the programs it was meant to monitor in June 2021. The audit found that the agency has no consistent methods for collecting data on programs, nor does it verify the accuracy of data submitted by municipalities. Their database doesn’t provide up-to-date information, contains deleted records and test entries, and likely overstates the number of participants in programs meant to end homelessness.
In fact, the Council on Homelessness has only reported homelessness spending once in its entire time of existence. It is really not great when the agency that is specifically responsible for tracking, reporting, and overseeing spending on homelessness can only manage to produce one report in over seven years of existence.
So this audit had extremely limited data to work with, and most of it was bad. The report also called out the role California’s cities and counties have in tracking homelessness. Local governments are primarily responsible for implementing homelessness programs—unfortunately, too many municipalities don’t properly collect data to send back to the state. Locally, San Jose was specifically called out for failing to track revenue and spending on homelessness programs.
But there were some bright spots—the audit highlighted two cost-effective programs. Project Homekey converts hotels and motels into housing for the homeless, and is a key component of Governor Gavin Newsom’s strategy to combat homelessness. Converting a room into housing is at least 2.5 times cheaper than building new housing, making it a fiscally sound shelter strategy.
And California’s housing assistance program, meant to keep people from slipping into homelessness, received $760 million in state funding. Low-income families received between $12,000 and $22,000 to stay in their homes, which is much less than the roughly $50,000 California spends on an unhoused individual. Keeping someone housed is much more cost-effective than trying to get someone sheltered once they’re homeless.
Those costs matter because California has approximately 171,000 unhoused people living in the state right now. That’s 30 percent of all homeless people in the United States. Cost-effective solutions are the only way California can begin to solve this crisis.
That’s why audits like this one are so important, and why this report is so damning. Effective government programs can work to solve big problems—but we need good data and information to determine which programs are actually working. Local governments and state agencies need to do the bare minimum and actually track spending, so the state can actually optimize their programs. Just spraying a giant money hose with no safeguards or accountability isn’t going to solve anything.
Because the reality is that while California has a massive budget, money isn’t unlimited, and the state is facing budget cuts this year. At the local level, that means San Francisco officials must continue to ensure city money is being spent wisely on effective homeless programs. At the state level, that means the Council on Homelessness needs to get its act together, develop effective tracking mechanisms, start figuring out where tax dollars are going and whether or not that money is actually doing any good.
CHP Seizes Enough Fentanyl From the Tenderloin to Kill Almost 10 Million People
Governor Gavin Newsom’s press statement last week highlighted the kind of good news, bad news reality we currently live with in San Francisco. The good news? Since California’s Highway Patrol started drug enforcement operations in the Tenderloin last year, CHP has taken 42 pounds of fentanyl off the streets of the neighborhood. The bad news? There were 42 pounds of fentanyl on the streets of the Tenderloin, and that’s likely a drop in the bucket of what’s actually out there.
Conditions in the Tenderloin are still very bad. Dealers continue to openly operate drug markets, drug overdose deaths are still much higher in San Francisco than they are in the rest of the country, and the city still doesn’t have nearly enough treatment beds to meet demand.
But there has been improvement in the Tenderloin recently, and that deserves to be celebrated. Crime in San Francisco is down year over year. The afore-mentioned drug markets? They’re smaller than they were a year ago, and now mostly operate at night thanks to efforts from SFPD, CHD, and community groups like Urban Alchemy. And the 42 pounds of fentanyl confiscated by CHP is way more than police have pulled off the streets in recent years.
San Francisco has used the Tenderloin as a kind of containment zone for decades—a lot of social problems like addiction, homelessness, and untreated mental illness have been concentrated in the neighborhood. That’s made it difficult to address residents' concerns about drug dealing and crime, because so many of these problems have become entrenched. There aren’t any quick fixes, and San Franciscans need to support long-term operations in the neighborhood.
San Francisco’s current efforts to address these problems need to be sustained if the city is ever going to revitalize the Tenderloin. As District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said, "I see the same challenges that everyone else sees, and so I do recognize that this is only a sign of encouragement, it is not a sign that we are done, we have a long way to go to make sure that we get the Tenderloin and the South of Market area to what it needs to be.”
This recent success is only made possible through the joint collaboration of state, local, and federal law enforcement to tackle the drug crisis. When law enforcement agencies and the city row in the same direction, San Francisco makes progress on our big problems. So it’s absolutely critical that this joint operation is sustained long term.
But enforcement is only one part of the solution. To truly end San Francisco’s drug crisis, we need to make sure that drug treatment services are readily available to anyone with substance use disorder. San Francisco is making progress in adding treatment beds, but like the 42 pounds of fentanyl taken off the street, the beds the city has added lately are just a drop in the bucket.
Public Library Workers Shouldn’t Need to Be First Responders
Last Tuesday, employees of San Francisco’s public libraries held a public protest in front of the main library branch, calling for more security at the city’s 27 library branches. Speakers at the protest said San Francisco’s library workers have been forced to de-escalate and deal with a number of dangerous situations each day as part of their jobs, and the current security situation at libraries isn’t sufficient to deal with day-to-day problems.
The date of Tuesday’s rally was strategic—last week was National Library Week, when extra attention is on libraries. Public sector unions are also about to begin budget negotiations with the city (San Francisco’s library workers are part of SEIU Local 1021).
But “we need more security guards at our public libraries” is not something that needs to be said in a functional city. Unfortunately, due to San Francisco’s failure to shelter unhoused people and treat people with mental illness or substance use disorders, library workers in San Francisco have become quasi-first responders. The library system recorded 114 security incidents in March, or an average of 3.6 incidents a day.
Public libraries are free spaces where anyone can come to read, relax, and learn—it’s one of the reasons they’re an incredible asset to any city. Librarians and library workers have a specific set of skills, and de-escalating a violent situation to protect library patrons should not be one of them.
San Francisco’s failure to protect library workers is a symptom of a larger problem. As San Francisco, California, and the nation have hollowed out our social safety net, public sector employees like public transportation workers, police officers, and library workers have been forced into these social worker roles that they aren’t equipped to perform. SFPD should be focused on solving and preventing crime—problems occur when they’re forced to handle someone with a mental health crisis. Similarly, most library workers likely entered their field expecting to catalog books and spark a love of reading, not reverse overdoses.
Public library workers (like every San Francisco public employee) deserve to be safe on the job, full stop. Library workers can’t be expected to do the work of the police, paramedics, social workers, or any other first responder role they’re not equipped to handle.
The best way for San Francisco to support public employees is to fully staff SFPD, while also investing in drug treatment and mental health treatment at the level we need. Security guards to protect library workers might be needed now, but they’re not a solution, they’re a band-aid. San Francisco needs to address the root causes that are creating security incidents in libraries, not just address the symptom with more security. Public libraries are too important—we can’t allow them to deteriorate into unwelcoming spaces.
Oakland Airport Wants Some of That San Francisco Name Magic
Does San Francisco’s airport have a copyright for San Francisco Bay? That’s the question courts might have to decide in the next few months, as the Port of Oakland voted last Thursday to change the name of Oakland’s airport to “San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport.”
Port officials say the name change is necessary because many travelers apparently don’t know geography and have no idea where Oakland is located, leading to less trips through Oakland’s airport and airlines cutting service. San Francisco officials are pushing back, calling the name change “deceitful, ”stating that it may lead to traveler confusion, and vowing to sue.
Of course, like Oakland’s airport, San Francisco’s airport is also not located in San Francisco. While the airport is operated by the city of San Francisco, it’s located about eight miles south of city limits in San Mateo county. So should San Francisco’s airport change its name to San Bruno International Airport? People are asking.