Newsom Dumps Another $145 Million in Homelessness Funding as Fraud, Waste, and Empty Shelters Plague His Record

Governor Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday that his administration is handing local governments an additional $145.4 million in taxpayer dollars to “drive forward our progress reducing homelessness,” touting “real results in real time” and wildly claiming the state has already transitioned more than 100,000 Californians out of homelessness. 

My administration is providing an additional $145.4 million to local governments across the state to drive forward our progress reducing homelessness.

We're seeing real results in real time — and we're not taking our foot off the gas.

— Governor Gavin Newsom (@CAgovernor) April 8, 2026

The latest slush fund targets counties including Lake, Orange, Riverside, Sacramento, Santa Clara, Solano, Yolo, and Yuba under the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention (HHAP) grants. 

Despite Newsom’s rosy spin and unfounded claims of modest declines in unsheltered homelessness, the brutal reality remains: California still suffers approximately 180,000–187,000 homeless individuals — accounting for roughly one-quarter to nearly one-third of the entire nation’s homeless population, even though the state represents only about 12 percent of U.S. residents. 

In Los Angeles County alone, the 2025 count revealed 72,308 people experiencing homelessness (including 43,699 in the city of Los Angeles), while San Francisco’s 2024 Point-in-Time Count documented 8,323 people experiencing homelessness, with over 4,300 unsheltered. Visible despair, encampments, and human suffering continue to dominate streets from San Francisco to Los Angeles. 

Even in the very counties now receiving this fresh $145.4 million handout, the crisis rages on. Recent Point-in-Time counts show a combined total well over 28,000–30,000 people still experiencing homelessness across Lake, Orange, Riverside, Sacramento, Santa Clara, Solano, Yolo, and Yuba counties.

Dividing this latest $145.4 million by roughly 30,000 homeless individuals in those counties equals a staggering $4,847 per person — nearly $4,850 in new taxpayer dollars dumped on each individual in this single announcement alone.

Adding this latest $145.4 million to the estimated $37 billion already flushed into the Homelessness Industrial Complex since 2019 brings the grand total to over $37.145 billion. Even spreading that obscene sum across California’s roughly 180,000–187,000 homeless individuals works out to a staggering $198,636 to $206,361 per person — nearly $200,000 to $206,000 in taxpayer money spent per homeless individual, with shockingly little to show for it except waste, fraud, empty shelters, and ever-growing street encampments.

Yet even as Newsom celebrates incremental progress and promises stronger accountability, California Globe reporting has repeatedly exposed how billions in prior homelessness spending under his watch have been marred by waste, fraud, abuse, and outright failure to deliver results for the state’s most vulnerable. 

As the Globe previously reported, CalDOGE recently uncovered that Newsom’s flagship Project Homekey program poured $745 million into homeless housing projects in Los Angeles—only for many of the facilities to sit empty while the crisis persists on the streets. 

That audit comes on the heels of the governor’s own 2026 budget proposal, which the Globe detailed as creating yet more new homelessness agencies and ramping up spending even further—despite the state squandering an estimated $25–$37 billion since 2019 with little measurable success and a documented rise in the unhoused population. 

Apparently $37 billion wasn’t enough to hide the utter failure of his policies.

State Auditor reports have flagged multiple Newsom administration agencies as “high-risk” for waste, fraud, and abuse in homelessness and related housing programs, a designation reserved for the most egregious cases of mismanagement. 

Federal prosecutors have also stepped in, filing charges in multiple alleged misuse-of-funds schemes tied directly to Newsom-era homelessness dollars. 

Nonprofits contracted to house and feed the unhoused have been caught diverting funds for lavish lifestyles, luxury purchases, and personal gain — exposing just how wide open the floodgates of abuse have been left under this governor’s negligent oversight. 

Gavin Newsom’s approach isn’t just failing — it is actively enabling a parasitic industry that enriches consultants, politically-connected nonprofits, and fraudsters while California’s most vulnerable are left to rot on the streets and law-abiding citizens endure the daily chaos of unchecked encampments, crime, health hazards, and filth in cities from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

With California still home to roughly one-third of the nation’s unhoused population—and encampments remaining a fixture in cities from San Francisco to Los Angeles—taxpayers are left wondering how many more hundreds of millions must be poured into programs before real, verifiable outcomes replace the endless cycle of announcements, spending, and excuses.

The California Globe will continue tracking these funds and holding Sacramento accountable.