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https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/13/audit-san-jose-failed-to-adequately-track-300-million-in-homelessness-spending/

Audit: San Jose failed to adequately track $300 million in homelessness
spending
City urged to work harder to assess cost, impact
RVs and cars are parked at the homeless encampment near Columbus Park in
San Jose, Calif., on Friday, April 12, 2024. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News
Group)

Ethan Varian, Bay Area News Group housing reporter
By ETHAN VARIAN | evarian@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group
PUBLISHED: April 13, 2024 at 6:10 a.m. | UPDATED: April 13, 2024 at 8:52
a.m.

Over the past three years, San Jose has failed to consistently track the
more than $300 million spent to fight homelessness and cannot adequately
ensure that the money is helping to alleviate the crisis, according to a
much-anticipated state audit.

The financial audit, released this week by the California State Auditor,
also found that San Jose lacks clear goals for its homelessness programs
and has no cohesive plan for building the affordable housing needed for
its estimated 6,340 homeless residents.

“The biggest conclusion that the auditors came back with is that there’s
just inadequate transparency, data and information available,” said
State Sen. Dave Cortese, a Democrat representing San Jose, who requested
the audit in 2022 after touring a large city encampment.

A pile of trash is seen at the homeless encampment near Columbus Park in
San Jose, Calif., on Friday, April 12, 2024. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News
Group)

The 115-page report, which comes as public frustration continues to
mount over city officials’ struggle to manage the crisis, also examined
San Diego’s homelessness efforts and highlighted similar findings. It
was accompanied by a broader statewide audit finding California’s lead
homelessness agency hasn’t tracked most of its $24 billion in spending
since 2018.

Auditors detailed a laundry list of recommendations for San Jose to
complete by September, including publicly reporting its homelessness
spending, drafting a homelessness response plan with specific goals,
including placement rates for moving people into permanent housing, and
monitoring the performance of its nonprofit service providers, which
receive millions in city funding. The recommendations aren’t technically
mandatory, but the auditors will issue regular reports on the city’s
progress.

The city disputed some of the findings and described “flaws” in the
audit, including an expectation that it should evaluate public health
outcomes at encampments, contending that’s the responsibility of Santa
Clara County.

Still, city officials said they’ve already begun working to satisfy many
of the audit’s recommendations.

“At a high level, this idea that we need to set goals, measure results
and be accountable for outcomes is absolutely right,” Mayor Matt Mahan said.

From July 2020 through June 2023, the audit found San Jose spent at
least $302 million in taxpayer dollars on a range of homelessness
programs, from building supportive housing and tiny home shelters to
street outreach programs and clearing encampments.

About $181 million of the total was local funds, while $89 million came
from the state, and the remaining $32 million from the federal government.

Auditors said they “worked extensively” with the city to identify those
expenditures, concluding that San Jose lacks “the information necessary
to easily assess the effectiveness” of its homelessness spending.

Adrian Covert, a homelessness policy expert with the Bay Area Council, a
pro-business group, said difficulty tracking the numerous sources of
homelessness expenditures across public agencies is hardly unique to San
Jose.

“Building a centralized data portal is a worthwhile endeavor and a
challenge facing every city in the United States,” said Covert, who’s
working with Mahan on a statewide homeless-shelter bill.

In fact, Covert said San Jose is actually ahead of the curve when it
comes to keeping similar data. That’s because the city works with the
county on regionwide homelessness planning, which includes reporting the
number of homeless people officials help into housing along with other
benchmarks.

“Homelessness is a community crisis, and it takes all of us working
together to end it,” said Ray Bramson, chief operating officer at
Destination: Home, a local nonprofit that helps with the plan.

In addition to developing city-specific goals, auditors have asked San
Jose to more closely scrutinize specific performance metrics for its
nonprofit providers, which operate homeless housing and shelters and do
most street outreach.

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As an example of the lack of oversight, auditors cited findings that
Destination: Home vastly overreported the number of households that
received financial assistance through an $8 million homelessness
prevention agreement. Auditors said San Jose officials blamed
Destination: Home for the error, but Bramson said the nonprofit reported
its numbers accurately to the city.
For Todd Langton, executive director of the volunteer-run homeless
advocacy group Agape Silicon Valley, the audit findings are evidence
that the city’s largest nonprofit services providers — including
HomeFirst, PATH, LifeMoves and Destination: Home — aren’t following
through on their commitments.

Homeless services non-profit HomeFirst's van is seen at the homeless
encampment near Columbus Park in San Jose, Calif., on Friday, April 12,
2024. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
Homeless services non-profit HomeFirst’s van is seen at the homeless
encampment near Columbus Park in San Jose, Calif., on Friday, April 12,
2024. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
“It just confirmed what a lot of us suspected and really knew, that they
continue to throw millions and millions of dollars at the problem
without any accountability and poor results,” Langton said.

The audit also took aim at one of Mahan’s top priorities: rapidly adding
new tiny homes and other shelters with private rooms to help the city’s
unsheltered residents.

While the report acknowledged more shelters are needed, it found most
homeless people who move through them don’t find permanent housing. It
faulted the city for lacking a plan to add the affordable housing
necessary to pull most people out of homelessness.

Mariena Acosta said she stayed at a tiny home shelter in East San Jose
before returning to a tent at Columbus Park near San Jose Mineta
International Airport. Acosta, 39, appreciated the reprieve from the
dangers of the street but said the shelter operator was ultimately
unable to help her find housing before her tiny home time ended.

Unhoused resident, Mariena Acosta, center, who lives in a tent at the
homeless encampment near Columbus Park in San Jose, talks during an
interview on Friday, April 12, 2024. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
Unhoused resident, Mariena Acosta, center, who lives in a tent at the
homeless encampment near Columbus Park in San Jose, talks during an
interview on Friday, April 12, 2024. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
“Some people could stay maybe like six months as the maximum, and other
people are still there,” she said. “I was there for six months and had
to leave.”

The audit found that for all shelter types in San Jose, including
county-operated group shelters, just 16% of the 8,041 people who left
the facilities between July 2019 and March 2023 moved to lasting homes.
It did note, however, that the city reported that half of the 984 people
who moved out of its private-room shelters found housing.

Mahan pushed back on the audit’s characterization of his shelter
strategy, contending the city needs faster and more inexpensive
solutions in addition to affordable housing, which takes years to build
and can cost nearly $1 million a unit. He said the effort to move people
into “safe and dignified” spaces is working, pointing to the 10% decline
in the city’s unsheltered population last year.

While state auditors might want the city to prioritize moving its
unhoused residents into lasting homes, Mahan said his constituents’ main
concern is helping people out of encampments and off the street. “The
community is who we’re accountable to,” he said.

RVs and cars are parked at the homeless encampment near Columbus Park in
San Jose, Calif., on Friday, April 12, 2024. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News
Group)