How much would it cost to end homelessness in California? Try more than $100 billion

By Dan Walters

Multiple state agencies spent nearly $24 billion on housing and homeless programs in the first five years of Gavin Newsom’s governorship, but the number of people without homes continued to grow, rising by 20% to more than 180,000 in the most recent federal count in 2023.

State Auditor Grant Parks cited that stunning level of spending this year in a sharply worded report concluding that the California Interagency Council on Homelessness, Newsom’s umbrella agency that’s supposed to coordinate and track state programs, has utterly failed to do so.

Parks said the agency “has not aligned its action plan for addressing homelessness with its statutory goals, nor has it ensured that it collects accurate, complete, and comparable financial and outcome information from homelessness programs. Until Cal ICH takes these critical steps, the state will lack up‑to‑date information that it can use to make data‑driven policy decisions on how to effectively reduce homelessness.”

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