The state allocated $24 billion for homelessness and housing in the last five fiscal years, and Newsom has implemented several new programs aimed at getting and keeping people off the streets.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Project Roomkey allowed cities and counties to use FEMA funds to shelter homeless residents in hotel rooms. Homekey, a program launched in 2020, lets cities and counties use state funds to buy hotels and other buildings and turn them into homeless housing. So far, that program has funded 15,319 homes in 250 projects. Funding for that program was tripled in 2021, jumping from $846 million to $2.75 billion.

The latest budget also pours $250 million into Newsom’s Encampment Resolution Funding Program, which helps cities and counties clear specific homeless encampments and provide housing or shelter for the camps’ residents. And Newsom threw his weight behind Proposition 1, a recently passed $6.4 billion bond that promises to fund 6,800 beds in facilities treating mental illness and addiction, plus 4,350 new homes for people who need mental health and addiction services. 

For the past several years, cities and counties also have received $1 billion per year to fight homelessness through the state’s Homeless Housing Assistance and Prevention Program. Newsom threatened to cut that funding this year, in an effort to plug major holes in the state’s budget. But cities, counties, nonprofits and the legislature pushed back, and the funds were reinstated. 

But the problem is continuing to get worse, despite increased state spending. That’s led some in the Legislature to ask: Where is all that money going?

A recent audit found the state is failing both to track its homelessness spending and to analyze the results of the programs that are supposed to be pulling Californians off the street. Three of the five state programs the auditor reviewed – including California’s main homelessness funding source – didn’t produce enough data to determine whether they are succeeding or not. 

Even before that scathing audit came out, “accountability” had become a buzzword in conversations about homelessness. Newsom keeps mentioning it as he demands cities make better use of the homelessness funds he gives them – in 2022 he even briefly withheld $1 billion because he said cities’ plans to spend that money weren’t ambitious enough.