California lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are calling for more oversight of the billions of state dollars being spent on homelessness.
After a recent audit revealed a plethora of unanswered questions, the State Assembly called in one of the governor’s top housing officials to speak on how homelessness funds are being used, and how effective the programs are.
She had no data to share.
“You’re coming to a budget committee and there’s no numbers. There’s no how many people have we helped, how many people off the street, how many people permanently housed,” Assemblyman Phil Ting said. “We spent billions of dollars and you can’t tell us at all how many people we've helped?”
“Apologies, I don’t have the information in front of me to share,” replied Meghan Marshall, executive officer of the Interagency Council on Homelessness.
Ting said he "doesn't get how a system that started in 2021 has no data."
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California has spent $20 billion over the past five years to address the state's homelessness crisis. In that time, the unhoused population has risen from 151,000 to more than 181,000.
Lawmakers were told there should be new data on how homelessness funding has been spent sometime in July.
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