California’s Joint Legislative Audit Committee approved a bipartisan audit request made by several state lawmakers last month to examine the state’s homelessness funding for the City of San Jose, one other city of the auditor’s choosing, as well as the “state’s structure and efforts for funding and addressing homelessness.”
The audit will determine whether funds have been used effectively to address homelessness over the last three years.
The audit request, brought forth by Sen. Dave Cortese (D-San Jose) and co-authored by Senators Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh (R-Yucaipa) and Roger Niello (R-Fair Oaks), and Assemblymembers Evan Low (D-San Jose), and Josh Hoover (R-Folsom) was approved March 22.
It also requests an evaluation of the state’s methods for calculating the cost-effectiveness of its programs and to determine how many individuals received shelter and services annually between fiscal years 2020–21 and 2022–23, a spokesperson for Cortese told The Epoch Times.
In addition, the review will assess whether any existing state or federal laws or regulations hinder the state or local jurisdictions’ ability to accurately assess and track the homeless population.
“Adding transparency will help both local and state jurisdictions work together to figure out how to best spend state homelessness funding,” Cortese said in a statement the day the audit was approved. “This audit is not to single out any city—it is to single out the fact that human suffering on our streets has persisted far too long.”
Despite a $12 billion allocation over two years in the 2021–2022 state budget to tackle the issue, the homeless population in San Jose has continued to surge, lawmakers argued in a joint letter to the audit committee March 8.
According to the City of San Jose’s 2021–2022 budget, over $28 million was spent on its “Homeless Housing, Assistance, and Prevention Fund.” For the 2022–2023 budget, more than $35 million was allocated.
According to a March report by the United Way, San Jose has the highest number of unhoused youth in the country.
The number of homeless individuals in the city increased by 40 percent in 2019, rising from 4,350 to 6,097, and per the 2022 point-in-time count 6,650 individuals in San Jose were homeless.
Cortese initiated a request for an audit last year, after taking a tour of an encampment at San Jose’s Columbus Park, considered one of the largest in the Bay Area—with a height of 400 living there during the pandemic.
Lawmakers made several requests in the letter, such as the number of people the city has aided in transitioning from the streets to shelters and services, the efficacy of the state’s investment, and the measures taken by the city to evaluate its own performance.
The audit will also assess whether the city has formulated goals for eradicating homelessness and, if so, how it is making progress towards achieving them.
“There’s been about $20 billion spent on homelessness [statewide] in the last roughly five years,” Niello told The Epoch Times. “And during that time, the homeless count has increased, not decreased, and so there is a great concern about the effectiveness of the spending. If what we’re doing is not working then let’s not spend money on those things anymore.”
Other efforts to tackle homelessness are also underway by lawmakers in the state, like a bill authored by Sen. Brian Jones (R-San Diego) that would have mandated encampments be cleared in front of public areas like schools, parks, libraries, and daycare centers.
The bill was stalled in the Senate Public Safety Committee on March 28, but will be heard again later this month.
The audit is due back by September.
The City of San Jose did not respond to a request for comment by press deadline.
