California Doesn't Know If $24 Billion It Spent Did Any Good

 

The results of a recently released audit clearly illustrate that, while California spent a staggering $24 billion to address the homeless crisis over the past five years, it failed to properly or consistently track the huge outlay of public money-- or whether it did anything at all to actually improve the problem.

In fact, the state auditor’s report found that despite the massive outlay, the problem didn’t improve in many cities.

According to Fox News, “the report found that the California Interagency Council on Homelessness (Cal ICH), which is responsible for coordinating agencies and allocating resources for the homelessness programs, stopped tracking whether the programs were working in 2021.” (Yet the Cal ICH is placing the blame squarely on local governments.)

Newsome’s government stopped tracking whether the programs were working several years ago? Way to be cautious and prudent with those taxpayer dollars! The sad truth is that Cal ICH likely stopped keeping track of whether the program was a success or not precisely because they knew it wasn’t!

As the late, great “investigative humorist” P.J. O’Rourke once noted, “Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”