Shocking figures reveal how much California spends on each homeless person in the state

California spent $7.2 billion dollars on its homeless population in 2021 and 2022 -equivalent to $41,000 per vagrant. 

The taxpayer cash was splurged on housing and rental assistance, health outreach, case management and temporary housing for 172,000 rough sleepers. 

In total, the Democratic state has invested an eye-watering $24 billion in the last five years in the hope of cracking down on homelessness there. 

Despite this, the number of homeless people in the state in 2023 was 181,000, according to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. 

A homeless woman shoots up on a San Francisco street in 2022. It has now emerged that California spent $41,000 per vagrant that year  

A grim scene on Los Angeles infamous Skid Row in February 2023. California has thrown money at the homelessness crisis, but the cash does not appear to be yielding tangible results 

Last year auditors slammed the states homelessness tsars for throwing the funds at 30 programs from 2018 to 2023. 

The damning audit said they failed to track if the money was actually helping the states growing number of unhoused people. 

Auditors probed five schemes that received a combined $13.7 billion in funding.

Only two of them were likely cost-effective, including one that converts hotel and motel rooms into housing and another that helps to prevent families from becoming homeless, they found.

Three other programs, which have received a total of $9.4 billion since 2020, couldnt be evaluated due to a lack of data.

The auditors office said: The California Interagency Council on Homelessness (Cal HIC) has done a poor job accounting for homeless spending and tracking results.

Cal ICH has also not aligned its action plan to end homelessness with its statutory goals to collect financial information and ensure accountability and results.

We believe that the State’s policymakers and the public need up‑to‑date information to evaluate the efficacy and effectiveness of billions of dollars in state spending. 

At the time, Thomas Wolf, a San Francisco-based consultant and former homeless drug addict, called the findings a scandal.

Governor Gavin Newsom had previously threatened to withhold $1 billion in funds from cities and counties after he criticized homelessness plans for being weak

Last year auditors slammed the states homelessness tsars for throwing the funds at 30 programs from 2018 to 2023. Skid Row in LA is pictured 

Governor Gavin Newsom had previously threatened to withhold $1 billion in funds from cities and counties after he criticized homelessness plans for being weak. 

Speaking in 2022, he said: I want to see results. I don’t want to read about them. I don’t want to see the data. I want to see it.

LA Mayor Karen Bass had declared a state of emergency in December of 2022 after being in office for less than 24 hours. 

Her Inside Safe program used $250 million to direct money towards helping homeless people transition into temporary housing. 

A city website that tracks the results of that initiative says over 21,000 people have been helped back into accommodation, with 5,000 with finding permanent housing. 

Homeless tents are seen near the City Hall of San Francisco in California

A homeless man injects fentanyl into his friends armpit, due to a lack of usable veins, as people walk by near City Hall in San Francisco in September 2022 

In San Francisco, which has also been plagued by the open use of hard drugs, Mayor London Breed started cracking down on street sleepers earlier this year. 

She promised a very aggressive operation after the Supreme Court ruled removing sleeping equipment from a public space was not unconstitutional. 

A task force took to the streets of the beleaguered city and dismantled tents and temporary shelters that had been tolerated for years. 

Mayor Breed claimed the Supreme Court had finally given her the power to do something about it.

The problem is not going to be solved by building more housing, she declared. Thank goodness for the Supreme Court decision.