Homelessness has continued to surge in California despite the state pouring billions into the crisis since 2019, with experts pointing to a lack of housing availability and the state’s relaxed views on crime as the reasons.
The crisis has worsened year after year, with homelessness most recently increasing 6.2% between 2021 and 2022 and 23.4% between 2007 and 2022, bringing the total number to over 170,000, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom has responded to the crisis by committing more than $30 billion to addressing housing and homelessness since taking office in 2019, even as the numbers continue to climb, according to a press release. (RELATED: Residents Of Liberal California Town Fume Over Proposed Homeless Housing)
“There are billions of dollars that are squandered,” Joel Griffith, a research fellow in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “I would say much of the money that supposedly was targeting those who are homeless has been misspent as well because they are not getting to the root of the problem, so the funds are there. It’s just a matter of using those resources.”
