San Diego, CA
San Diego isn't properly reporting or evaluating hundreds of millions in homelessness spending, audit says
San Diego city officials spent hundreds of millions of dollars over three years to fight a growing homelessness problem but failed to fully report its revenue and spending or evaluate the effectiveness of many programs, according to a state audit released April 9.
During the three fiscal years between July 2020 and June 2023, San Diego spent more than $218 million from federal, state and local sources on myriad programs.
But San Diego officials did not clearly define performance measures related to much of that spending or make sure that service providers properly monitored outcomes for the work they were paid to perform, according to a report by the California State Auditor.
“For example, in a $1.6 million agreement for interim housing and supportive services, the Housing Commission did not specify how many people the provider should serve or set a target for occupancy,” the report stated.
“Housing Commission staff explained that attaching goals to certain metrics can create unintended adverse behaviors from service providers to meet those goals,” the report added.
The auditor’s report examined homelessness spending in San Diego and San Jose and said it found similar deficiencies in spending and reporting practices in San Jose, which spent more than $300 million over the same three-year period.
“Both cities use interim housing as a way to provide shelter for people experiencing homelessness, but they both need to develop additional permanent housing,” state auditor Grant Parks wrote. “Data consistently show that placements into permanent housing results in significantly better outcomes than placements into interim housing.”
The audit says neither city “has a clear long-term plan for meeting its need for permanent supportive housing.”
Auditors also wrote that “to inform decision-makers and provide transparency, the cities should track and report in a single location all funding they receive and use to reduce homelessness.”
The report gives credit to both cities for adopting specific plans to address the rising homelessness in their jurisdictions. But it says each city could improve how it reports its objectives and outcomes.
“Neither San Jose nor San Diego has measured the effectiveness of all of its programs to address the risks of unsheltered homelessness,” according to the report.
In response, San Diego officials said they generally agree with the report’s recommendations and indicated they would take steps to implement them where feasible, though Chief Operating Officer Eric Dargan said the city already complies with much of what the audit recommends.
“The city already has existing spending plans in place, but will publicly report them in a single location,” Dargan said. “The city already requires performance measures, and an overall review and assessment of the effectiveness of service providers is in progress.”
Dargan recently told The San Diego Union-Tribune that he aims to eliminate the city’s homeless services department and rely more heavily on private philanthropy to address homelessness.
The San Diego Housing Commission, a separate agency that operates under the city housing authority made up of the nine City Council members, issued a response that was more critical of the audit’s conclusions.
Commission President Lisa Jones said the agency already has launched a series of programs with high impact and regularly exercises and upgrades its various monitoring tools.
“It is unfortunate that the audit report’s discussion of SDHC and its efforts was too narrowly focused, did not reflect understanding of the breadth of SDHC’s extensive efforts and lacked the context necessary for a comprehensive assessment of the homeless shelters and services system,” Jones said.
The auditor’s response said the office stands by the report.
The audit examining San Diego and San Jose was released in conjunction with another report evaluating efforts to fight homelessness across the state.
That report says more than 180,000 people in California experienced homelessness in 2023 — up 53 percent from a decade earlier. Nine state agencies invested billions of dollars over the past five years without consistently tracking or evaluating the spending, the report says.
The number of unhoused people has climbed in San Diego in recent years, auditors said, but not as steeply as statewide.
Between 2015 and 2023, the audit says, the number of people experiencing homelessness in San Diego rose from 5,538 to 6,500, based on the city’s Point in Time counts — an increase of about 17 percent. Over the same period, the number of unhoused people in San Jose jumped by 56 percent.
The findings may be especially significant because both San Diego and San Jose have huge chunks of homelessness funding they have yet to spend.
According to the state review, San Diego was sitting on more than $52 million in unspent state and federal funds. Most of that came from $21 million in state Homeless Housing Assistance and Prevention grants and $22 million earmarked under a permanent housing program.
San Jose was holding more than $86 million in unallocated money designated for homelessness programs, the audit states.
Specifically, auditors reviewed 14 separate programs run by each of the two cities.
San Jose failed to set clearly defined goals in any of the 14, auditors said. San Diego enacted specific performance measures in eight of the 14 projects reviewed, but the others had undefined goals or no goals at all, according to the report.
“Although both cities asserted that they monitored or reviewed the performance of their service providers, their staff did not always document overall conclusions about the effectiveness of the service providers’ efforts,” auditors wrote. “One reason for this gap is that the cities’ procedures do not require staff to formally document such assessments.”
The audit was released five days after San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria introduced a new shelter plan for the Middletown neighborhood just north of Little Italy. That plan, which lacks details and has yet to be approved by the City Council, would add 1,000 or more shelter beds. ◆
County leaders are keeping their options open for a future county-backed tax hike as a citizens coalition pushes a November sales tax measure.
Officials in late April quietly extended a contract with consultants tasked with researching and poll-testing potential county revenue options for a Board of Supervisors subcommittee led by Chair Terra Lawson-Remer and Vice Chair Monica Montgomery Steppe. The extension is for up to two years and the price tag remains up to $320,000.
Other county supervisors’ offices told Voice of San Diego they weren’t notified of the change – and one is now working on a policy proposal to force public updates on subcommittee-directed contracts.
County spokesperson Tammy Glenn said staff directed the contract extension “in consultation with the subcommittee” and based on prior board approval last September to create the Sustainable Fiscal Planning Subcommittee. The item allowed the subcommittee to hire and pay consultants up to $500,000 to explore multiple options to increase county revenues and taxes.
An initial January 2026 contract called for Chula Vista-based Ironwood Public Affairs and four subcontractors including a prominent local Democratic campaign consultant to survey county residents, prepare revenue estimates for potential tax hike options, conduct focus groups and outreach and submit a report by May 1.
On April 30, county staff amended the contract with Ironwood to “deliver any requested ballot measure language, report, and presentations no later than June 30, 2028.”
Five days later, a coalition that includes labor groups and advocates submitted signatures to the county registrar’s office for a proposed countywide sales tax hike projected to raise $360 million annually to fund healthcare, child care, solutions to the Tijuana River sewage crisis and public safety. The registrar’s office has since confirmed the measure qualified for the November ballot.
Lawson-Remer has rallied behind the sales tax proposal and argued that a “local revenue measure” could shield the county from Trump administration-backed cuts. The county has projected that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act could cost the county $300 million annually.
In a statement, Lawson-Remer’s office noted that a board majority voted last September to create the subcommittee and hire a consultant.
“With the Trump Administration threatening healthcare, food assistance, behavioral health, and other core services — and federal decisions being announced, reversed, paused, challenged, and revived in real time — the county and Fiscal Subcommittee has a responsibility to plan for multiple scenarios, including federal cuts, state shortfalls, taxpayer savings, state advocacy, and whether any local funding option does or does not materialize,” Lawson-Remer’s office wrote.
In a separate statement, Montgomery Steppe also pointed to board approval of the subcommittee and its work “evaluating fiscal risks and options to help inform future Board decisions.”
A few months after the September vote to approve the subcommittee, the county hired Ironwood Public Affairs led by former county staffer Victor Aviña. Aviña’s company subcontracted with prominent Democratic campaign consultant Dan Rottenstreich’s company Amplify Campaigns, polling firm FM3 Research, Los Angeles revenue forecasting firm Economic & Planning Systems and Los Angeles-based law firm Kaufman Legal Group.
Glenn said the county has thus far paid Ironwood $96,000 for planning tasks that the initial contract said should be completed by early this year.
The county has yet to provide documents to Voice that the contractor submitted to the county about its work a month after a public-records request.
Spokespeople for the county’s three other elected supervisors said this week they weren’t notified about the changes to the contract.
Supervisors Joel Anderson and Jim Desmond, the two Republicans on the board, have criticized the lack of transparency surrounding the subcommittees and consultants at least two of them have hired.
At an April board meeting, Desmond argued that subcommittees shouldn’t be allowed to spend county money or secure contracts without a review by the full board.
And Anderson has pushed for reforms to increase transparency for subcommittees that have met behind closed doors. The board on Thursday unanimously approved changes to make more of those meetings more public.
Anderson’s office said he is now working on a board proposal that, among other changes, would also require updates to the full board on work that outside consultants are doing for subcommittees. He expects to bring the proposal to the board in August.
“There’s no possibility of secrecy when a vendor/contractor reports to the entire board,” Anderson wrote in a statement.
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San Diego, CA
Streetsblog San Diego Launches July 27 — Help Us Build the Future of Transportation Journalism – Streetsblog California
For years, Streetsblog readers in Southern California have asked us the same question: “When are you coming to San Diego?”
Friends…we’re excited to announce that we have an answer: Streetsblog San Diego will officially launch on July 27. Excited? Consider making a donation to help us lift off…
The new site will cover transportation, housing, climate, public space, safe streets, transit, and active transportation issues across San Diego County, and some of its neighbors. From bike lane projects and transit expansions to housing near transit and climate policy, Streetsblog San Diego will provide the kind of accountability journalism and solutions-focused reporting that has made Streetsblog a trusted voice across California.
What’s especially exciting about this launch is how it is coming together. You may have noticed over the last couple of months, increased local coverage in San Diego (collated here) as we’ve been getting ready for the launch.
We’ve been able to do that because Streetsblog San Diego is being built as a collaboration between leaders and volunteers from Streetsblog California, Bike SD, Ride SD, San Diego 350, and other community organizations and advocates who share a vision for safer, more sustainable transportation and land-use policies. At launch, much of our content will be produced by a growing team of volunteers and freelance contributors who care deeply about the future of San Diego’s streets, transit systems, and neighborhoods.
This community-powered model allows us to begin covering a region that desperately needs more transportation journalism while we work to build a sustainable long-term funding base.
But that’s where we need your help.
Launching a new newsroom takes resources. We launched a pre-fundraiser for “friends and family” of the core group that has been working on making Streetsblog SD a reality, and raised enough funding to cover the fees associated with the launch of the website, and put aside a couple hundred dollars towards our next goal: raising $18,000 for a freelance fund and short video fund that will ensure regular written and video coverage.
Even with volunteer writers and editors donating countless hours, there are still costs for freelance reporting, editing, website maintenance, photography, public records requests, event coverage, video production, and the many other expenses that go into producing quality journalism. There’s a lot of ways you can donate, if you’re interested in helping, you can get started here. If you’re one of those donors who gives through a DAF, the non profit that publishes Streetsblog is called the Southern California Streets Initiative and our EIN is 27-3421838. We are a federally recognized 501c(3) non-profit.
Your donation today will help us:
- Pay local freelance reporters, photographers, and videographers
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- Cover transit, housing, and climate issues that often go underreported
- Train and support volunteer contributors
- Build Streetsblog San Diego into a permanent part of the region’s media landscape
In the long run, we will be seeking funds for a part-time or full-time editor. Every donation, no matter how large or small, will help us attract major donors, foundations, and advertisers so Streetsblog SD will be staffed similarly to the ones in Los Angeles and the Bay Area.
The challenges facing San Diego are too important to ignore. The region is making critical decisions about transit investments, housing production, street safety, climate resilience, and public space. Residents deserve independent journalism that explains those decisions, holds decision-makers accountable, and highlights solutions that can improve people’s daily lives.
That’s what Streetsblog has done for two decades and what will do in San Diego
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