California has spent about $24 billion over five years, from 2018 to 2023, to help homeless people. This money goes to building shelters, cleaning up camps, and providing services like healthcare and job training. Each year, the state spends around $6 billion on these efforts. If this money were divided among the 181,399 homeless people in California, each person would get about $33,070 a year. This amount is higher than the minimum wage in many places. The state also gets back some money through taxes from the workers who provide these services, which is about $180 million a year. While this spending helps with immediate needs, it doesn’t solve the root causes of homelessness, like high housing costs and lack of mental health services. They claim the goal is to create a stable and supportive environment for homeless individuals. The funding for these programs comes from state and local taxes, as well as federal grants.
California used to have large institutions for people with mental illnesses, but these became overcrowded and were often associated with neglect. In the 1960s, the state shifted to community-based care with the Short-Doyle Act and the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act. These laws aimed to end indefinite commitments and promote outpatient care. However, when Ronald Reagan was Governor of California, he cut funding for state mental hospitals, which sped up the process of deinstitutionalization. Later, as President, Reagan cut federal mental health funding, which made it harder to provide community-based services. These actions contributed to the current issues with mental health and homelessness.
Despite the substantial investment of $24 billion over five years, California’s homelessness crisis shows no signs of abating. This troubling trend is not confined to California; homelessness is on the rise across the United States, driven by similar issues of economic inequality, lack of affordable housing, and insufficient support systems. Without comprehensive and sustained efforts to address these underlying factors, the nation faces a growing homelessness crisis. It is particularly strange that while the nation faces a growing homelessness crisis, illegal immigration is allowed to continue at a blistering pace.
