We have reached a point in society where, instead of confronting reality, we rename it. “Homeless” has become “unhoused,” as if changing the word somehow changes the situation. It does not. A person living on the street, in a tent, under an overpass, or in their car is homeless. That is not harsh. That is honest. And honesty is exactly what has been missing from this conversation.
If the use of clear, longstanding words is enough to offend someone into emotional distress, then this article is probably not for you. I am not going to soften language to make a difficult reality easier to hear. I am going to call it what it is, and more importantly, I am going to ask why, after tens of billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent, the problem is not only unsolved, but growing.
According to the California Legislative Analyst’s Office, the state has spent approximately $37 billion on homelessness since 2019. Even using the more conservative figure of roughly $24 billion identified in a state audit, the scale of that spending is staggering. However one chooses to measure it, the conclusion remains the same: an enormous amount of taxpayer money has been directed toward solving this crisis, and yet the crisis itself persists.
When you begin to break that spending down, the scale becomes even more difficult to ignore. Depending on how the totals are calculated, estimates range from approximately $24 billion in audited state spending to figures exceeding $37 billion when broader funding sources are included. When those numbers are compared against California’s homeless population, even using conservative estimates, the spending reaches well into six figures per individual. In some calculations, it exceeds $200,000 per homeless person over just a few years.
Let that sink in.
Even if we give the system every benefit of the doubt, even if we assume that every dollar was spent with the best of intentions, the outcome remains the same. Hundreds of thousands of dollars per person have been spent, and yet the number of people living on the streets has increased, not decreased. More troubling still, the visible conditions in many areas have deteriorated, with sprawling encampments becoming a common sight across cities that were once known for their quality of life.
To fully understand the scale of the issue, it is also important to acknowledge a factor that is often overlooked in these discussions. California’s climate plays a significant role in its homeless population. Much like the state attracts individuals seeking opportunity and lifestyle advantages, its relatively mild and consistent weather makes it one of the more survivable places in the country for those forced to live outdoors. Unlike regions that experience extreme cold or heat, California allows for year-round outdoor living, which can unintentionally contribute to the concentration of homelessness within the state, but does nothing to explain why, after tens of billions of dollars have been spent, it continues to grow.
In fact, by the state’s own data, the number of homeless individuals has increased over that same period. Compounding the issue further, both the Legislative Analyst’s Office and independent research organizations have pointed out that the commonly used “point-in-time” counts likely underreport the true number of people experiencing homelessness. In other words, despite massive financial investment, not only has the problem not been solved, it may actually be worse than reported.
At some point, we have to stop pretending this is simply a funding issue. It is not. This is not a lack-of-compassion problem. It is a lack-of-accountability problem, and the state itself has effectively acknowledged that reality. In reviewing one of Governor Gavin Newsom’s key homelessness initiatives, the Encampment Resolution Funding program, lawmakers have stated they are not yet able to determine whether the funds are achieving their intended goals. Without consistent data on outcomes, they cannot even assess cost-effectiveness. That means billions of dollars are being spent without a clear understanding of what those dollars are actually accomplishing.
If you spend $37 billion on a problem and cannot demonstrate whether your solution works, you do not have a solution. What you have is a system.
When you begin to examine how that system operates, a pattern emerges that should concern anyone paying attention. Taxpayer money flows in at the top and is distributed through layers of government agencies, programs, and nonprofit organizations. Each of those layers has operational costs, staffing requirements, and leadership structures that must be funded. Each layer consumes a portion of the total before the money ever reaches the individuals it was intended to help.
This is not a vague or theoretical concern. It is measurable and visible in the financial disclosures of the organizations involved. At one major Los Angeles nonprofit, PATH (People Assisting the Homeless), executive compensation alone exceeds $1.4 million in a single year. The CEO’s compensation approaches $400,000 annually, while the COO earns well over $200,000. At the same time, the organization reports tens of millions of dollars in total payroll expenses.
That money does not go directly to someone sleeping on the street. It supports a system that uses the homeless as the foundation that their organizations are built on, not for.
And PATH is not an isolated case. Across many large homelessness-focused organizations, executive salaries routinely reach into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, while administrative and payroll costs consume a substantial portion of total funding. This is not necessarily illegal, but it does reveal how much of the financial structure is dedicated to sustaining the system itself rather than directly resolving the crisis it was created to address.
Because if this system were truly designed to solve the problem, the results would reflect that. Instead, the opposite is happening. The more money that is spent, the larger the system becomes, and the more the problem grows.
And nowhere is that failure more difficult to justify than when you look at who is being left behind.
Among those living on the streets are men and women who once wore the uniform of this country. These are individuals who made the conscious decision to serve, knowing full well that doing so could cost them their lives. They did not “risk everything” in some abstract sense. They signed up knowing they could be shot, blown up, or killed in service to people they would never meet.
Many return carrying burdens that are not always visible. Post-traumatic stress, physical injuries, psychological trauma, and the kind of internal battles that do not simply disappear when the uniform comes off. For some, those struggles lead to substance dependency. For others, they lead to instability, isolation, and eventually homelessness.
And yet, in a system where tens of billions of taxpayer dollars are being spent, we still have veterans sleeping on sidewalks.
That should never happen. Not in a country with this level of resources, and not within a system that claims to be designed to help the most vulnerable.
If a person served their country and was honorably discharged, there should be a simple, non-negotiable baseline: they will never have to sleep on the street. Not because it is politically convenient, not because it sounds good in a speech, but because it is the bare minimum of what a functioning society owes to those who were willing to be killed in its defense.
This is not a complicated policy discussion. It is a matter of priorities. If we can spend over $200,000 per person and still fail to solve the problem, then the issue is not resources. It is how those resources are being used, and who they are truly serving.
Adding another layer of complexity, a 2023 report from the University of California, San Francisco found that approximately 34% of California’s homeless population is not originally from the state. This raises legitimate questions about how taxpayer dollars are being allocated and whether the current system is unintentionally incentivizing homeless migration into an already overwhelmed infrastructure.
At the same time, the system continues to expand, even as questions about its effectiveness remain unanswered. In some cases, funds that have already been allocated remain unspent while lawmakers wait for reports that may or may not demonstrate measurable success. This creates a situation in which money is both being spent at extraordinary levels and, paradoxically, not being used efficiently within the programs it was intended to support.
Compounding the issue further is the increasing reliance on what are known as “harm reduction” strategies. Public funds are being used to distribute items such as clean needles and overdose-reversal drugs, with the stated goal of reducing immediate risk. While these efforts may prevent death in the short term, they also raise an important and difficult question: are we helping individuals break free from addiction, or are we maintaining a system that allows the cycle to continue indefinitely?
Because the reality is that homelessness is not simply a housing issue. It is a complex intersection of mental health challenges, substance dependency, economic instability, and personal crisis. Addressing it requires more than temporary shelter or surface-level services. It requires structured intervention, access to treatment, accountability, and a pathway toward independence and stability.
What we appear to have built instead is a system that perpetuates the problem rather than solves it.
And until that changes, the outcome will not.
