Sacramento City Officials Blow Through $57 Million on Homeless in 2023

The City of Sacramento blew through $57 Million on homeless spending in 2023. But the city has even more homeless drug addicts living on city streets than just a few years ago.

“The significant growth of the Sacramento homeless population has devoured resources, strained relationships, provoked litigation, and thrust the City of Sacramento (City) into the national spotlight for facing one of the most challenging homeless crises in the country,” the Sacramento City Auditor said in a new report. “The City Council has deemed homelessness an existential threat to the individuals living without housing and to the public health and safety of Sacramento’s residents and businesses.”

If homelessness is such an “existential threat,” city officials aren’t very convincing, nor do they behave as if they really believe it.

Here is an example of their “Solution-Oriented Investments:

“To work towards ending homelessness, the City invests in longer-term solutions that are designed to support the functioning of the homeless response system, prevent individuals from becoming unhoused,
and improve the housing supply.”

and;

“City leaders have also been actively discussing how the City can become more involved in prevention programs, including committing more funding.”

Now there are some hard hitting solutions.

While they may be skilled at spreading millions and millions of dollars around in the name of homeless eradication, they have failed the homeless and Sacramento’s citizens.

It is also apparent that the city is fudging on it’s homeless count – they keep decreasing the number, yet it is evident to anyone paying attention, that there are more homeless living on Sacramento streets than ever. A few years ago, Sacramento Steps Forward counted more than 11,000 homeless on the streets. But that was a bad look…

The more money the city spends, the more the homeless multiply like rabbits.

According to CBS News, that $57 million could have provided 380 more Sacramento police officers, or 185 more fire inspectors.

The Globe’s criticism isn’t the only voice appalled at the city’s gross incompetence. Former Congressman and businessman Doug Ose told CBS that the effort to fix homelessness is failing. And he correctly noted that the city didn’t even analyze whether the spending has been effective or not.

And this is because the Mayor and City Council refuse to build tried-and-true programs in dealing with the homeless. Instead, out of incompetence, laziness or greed they pretend that “Housing First” is the solution.

As we have repeatedly reported, “Housing First” only benefits developers and contractors, as it does nothing to delve into the root causes of most homeless individuals – mental illness and drug addiction. Very few people are actually one paycheck away from being homeless. And for those who are, there are existing safety-net programs to keep them off the streets.

One year ago in March 2023, Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg announced the state will purchase and install 350 tiny homes in Sacramento “as part of a statewide push to assist California communities in addressing the crisis of unsheltered homelessness.”

This announcement came on the heels of Gov. Gavin Newsom declaring how “In California, we are using every tool in our toolbox – including the largest-ever deployment of small homes in the state – to move people out of encampments and into housing.” Gov. Newsom announced his administration would be supplying 1,200 tiny homes statewide, including 500 for Los Angeles, 200 for San Jose and 150 for San Diego County.

They most certainly are not “using every tool in our toolbox,” as long as they pretend that housing is the root of the homeless crisis. If housing was the problem, more families would be on the street instead of individual mentally ill, drug addicted, and criminal “homeless.”

Yet here we are, one year later, and apparently the 350 tiny homes haven’t even been opened to the homeless. Capitol Public Radio reported in November, “the state will determine when that project opens, noting the shed-sized homes are part of the 350 tiny homes Newsom promised the Sacramento region this spring.”

“The magnitude of the homelessness crisis in California requires a coordinated response by all levels of government, and I commend Governor Newsom’s ongoing commitment to partnering with cities and counties,” Mayor Steinberg said last March 2023 when Gov. Newsom announced that the State would be delivering 1,200 small homes to Los Angeles, San Diego County, San Jose and Sacramento. “The addition of these small homes will get us one step closer to having the supply of emergency housing actually required to humanely clean up our streets.”

Where are those 350 tiny shed “homes?”

How do elected officials merely talk about this for a year, when people are living on the streets in their own filth?

Mayor Steinberg and city officials handed over a public park on the Sacramento River, next to a boat ramp, to the homeless transients. The park was originally stocked with 60 tents, and then the tents were replaced with 17 trailers. However, the homeless have rendered the once lovely park unsafe, noxious, toxic and unusable for the city residents who pay taxes to sustain it.

So far, the Mayor has done nothing to make an appreciable difference in Sacramento’s homeless population, except to help grow it – again, because of the faux “housing first” focus. Handing over a renovated apartment or tiny shed to a mentally ill drug addict is never a good idea.

“California has spent more than $20 BILLION over the last five years on the homelessness only to see the homeless population in California explode to more than 172,000, as the Globe has reported for many years,” the Globe reported last year. What is that amount now?

And where is the report from the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, which was to conduct an audit on the $20+ billions of dollars the Newsom administration has spent on the homeless crisis?

Some state lawmakers are trying to get to the bottom of California’s homeless crisis.

Assemblymen Josh Hoover (R-Folsom) and Joe Patterson (R-Rocklin) just announced last week Assembly Bill 2417 “to expand and improve California’s response to our state’s homelessness crisis. This legislation increases funding flexibility for treatment and service oriented programs by repealing the state’s existing one-size-fits-all ‘Housing First’ approach to homelessness.”

This means that the failed “Housing First” policy this state has spent billions on is… well… a failure – except for the contractors refurbishing and building the “housing” for the homeless.