21
votes
California fails to track its homelessness spending or results, a new audit says
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- Authors
- Marisa KendallHomelessness Reporter
- Published
- Apr 9 2024
- Word count
- 1956 words
This is a sadly all too common situation, made more complex by the waterfall of money and return track of data. If money goes from the state to a city, and a city to a nonprofit and a nonprofit to the actual service providers (be it in-house staff or contractors, which would add another layer...) Each one of those layers adds likelihood that the data will be lost or mangled. Unless there are incredibly rigid reporting requirements (and the funding to pay for admin staff to fulfill those requirements at every level) you get exactly this situation. Every politician hates to allocate money to administration, but it's absolutely vital to have people not only to administer the funds but to track the outcome as well. Otherwise we're dropping a billion dollars into the local economy with no idea whether it's working. I appreciate the cash infusion, but I'd like to know that it's working.
It certainly doesn't feel like it's working.
You're right, it doesn't. But without the data there are so many different ways it could be not working. That's the real bummer.
Part of the problem is funding nonprofits instead of empowering governments by writing efficient regulations with clear policy goals and methods. Too many layers of regulations and redtape just waste time and resources.
Absolutely. But anytime people start to talk about the government just doing something directly, a certain amount of the population loses their minds. Even in California, the government is very lean. Everyone gets to campaign on low government spending, even when contracting everything out is not the efficient way.
I don't think this belongs in ~life. Usually US political analysis and reporting goes in ~misc.
I wasn’t sure the best place for it, but a search for homelessness brought up a lot of results in ~life about policy, court rulings, and govt actions.
Housing and homelessness topics can be found in ~life. You're good.