{"id":647,"date":"2026-06-29T13:09:20","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T13:09:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/propertytransitionmedia.com\/?p=647"},"modified":"2026-06-29T13:09:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T13:09:20","slug":"a-new-grand-jury-report-shows-how-the-california-model-is-failing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/propertytransitionmedia.com\/?p=647","title":{"rendered":"A New Grand Jury Report Shows How The California Model Is Failing"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Shocking no one, a grim new from San Francisco\u2019s civil grand jury concludes that insanely expensive local spending on homelessness is being wasted on failed programs and ineffective nonprofit groups.<\/p>\n

Read more Relay For America Unites Americans \u2018One Mile At A Time\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cSan Francisco spends roughly $700 million annually on homelessness, and its Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (\u2018HSH\u2019) administers nearly $500 million on nonprofit contracts to deliver services each year, yet this system has gaps that jeopardize safety, accountability, and results,\u201d the report says.<\/p>\n

The most recent count from the city puts San Francisco\u2019s homeless population in the neighborhood of 8,000 people on a typical night, though that number is much lower than the estimate of people who are homeless at some point during the year and eligible for city homeless services. A 2025 draws the distinction between numbers like this:<\/p>\n

You can do the math either way: $700 million to support about 8,000 people who are homeless on any given night, or $700 million to support a varying population that slips in and out of homelessness and adds up to about 27,000 people. It\u2019s a lot <\/em>of money either way, but it\u2019s a little over $87,000 per person if you take the point-in-time count of around 8,000. (Recent news reports on the city\u2019s claims that its homeless count just hit the lowest level in fifteen years are mostly a word game about \u201cunsheltered\u201d homelessness.)<\/p>\n

Taking the higher number, the grand jury finds the heart of the problem by identifying the service model: \u201cHSH was created in 2016 to bring unity and simplified accountability to the City\u2019s homelessness programs, and it now serves roughly 27,000 people per year with a nearly 100% outsourced model through a network of nonprofit service providers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The money is public, but the service providers are private non-profit corporations. A local government spends hundreds of millions of dollars on the homeless through a giant network of NGOs, and no one is really watching them. As the grand jury describes the city\u2019s homelessness agency, underselling the point, \u201cits functional oversight is weak.\u201d<\/p>\n

Government accountants do \u201cdesk audits,\u201d seeing if the numbers on reports add up, but far less attention falls on the things that happen on the streets and in the shelters. \u201cHistorically, the City\u2019s oversight mechanisms emphasized fiscal compliance and fell short on programmatic measures,\u201d the grand jury says.<\/p>\n

Programmatic measures:<\/em> How much of the stuff they\u2019re supposed to do that they actually do.<\/p>\n

To understand what that means in practice, consider the death of Eric McCain. An alcoholic with a history of homelessness, McCain was receiving shelter in a city-funded, nonprofit-operated supportive housing facility that required contractors to regularly check on vulnerable clients who were supposed to be transitioning out of homelessness and addiction. But when firefighters found McCain\u2019s body inside his apartment, it was already in a state of significant decomposition. Records showed that staff at the facility had last checked on him twelve days earlier.<\/p>\n

As a local news story would report, the operator of the supportive housing facility received a \u201ccorrective action letter\u201d from city officials over the death, warning the nonprofit to check on its clients.<\/p>\n

Read more RNC Sues Colorado\u2019s TDS-Afflicted Elections Chief For Violating State Constitution<\/a><\/p>\n

McCain\u2019s death was something close to the local normal. In fact, the grand jury charges, permanent supportive housing facilities are the place addicts go to die. \u201cRoughly 25% of drug overdose deaths in San Francisco occur in PSH sites \u2014 which house only 1.5% of the city\u2019s population.\u201d<\/p>\n

That high risk of death in supportive housing facilities is happening in the face of another problem with homelessness, a crisis inside a crisis: What the grand jury identifies as \u201cincreasing levels of acuity among the homelessness population.\u201d Prolonged homelessness is leading to higher rates of physical and mental illness, and to higher rates of addiction. The longer it goes on, the worse it gets.<\/p>\n

Finally, finding a structural trap, a section of the grand jury report appears under this heading: \u201cRise of Homeless Nonprofits: \u2018Too Big to Fail\u2019 Now?\u201d That section examines the growth of individual NGOs and their growing share of public funding. Here\u2019s the grand jury\u2019s observations about a single NGO, Urban Alchemy:<\/p>\n

A nonprofit that was founded in 2018 had no city revenue in 2019, then saw explosive revenue growth as the city pushed more and more responsibility to a new organization.<\/p>\n

Urban Alchemy tells the same story about itself: \u201cBeginning in San Francisco and Los Angeles providing street cleaning, public restroom monitoring and activating public spaces, today we have grown into a thriving social enterprise with over 1,300 Practitioners (staff) and operations in California, Oregon, Texas, and Alabama.\u201d They\u2019re a growth business, and they mean to be.<\/p>\n

What that rapid growth means, the grand jury warns, is that the city has become dependent on its increasingly important homeless service NGOs. To shut them down would be to suddenly have a giant dependent population but no one to deal with them. \u201cThe scale, scope, and operational footprint of these multifaceted nonprofits increasingly make them difficult to replace in the short term without significant disruption to services,\u201d the grand jury concludes.<\/p>\n

Homelessness grows, the homeless decline into increasing dysfunction, the NGO-focused system that keeps growing to address the crisis increasingly can\u2019t address it, but that system also can\u2019t be replaced.<\/p>\n

The population of San Francisco is a little over 800,000 people. With a consolidated city-county government, it spends $17 billion a year. Another consolidated city-county government, Indianapolis, has a slightly larger population, around 900,000 people. It spends $1.7 billion a year. Yes, there\u2019s a decimal point in the middle of that second number.<\/p>\n

The blue model is a bonfire: for lives, for value, for money. It doesn\u2019t work, but it spends a fortune to fail. And America can\u2019t allow itself to become California.<\/p>\n

Read more The Obama Presidential Center Is Decidedly Meh<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

San Francisco NGOs receive a fortune in public funding to serve the homeless, but they don’t accomplish much. No one is tracking the money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":646,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[520],"tags":[521,2294,2295,316,2296,1317,2297,2298,1853,2299],"class_list":["post-647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-californication","tag-california","tag-eric-mccain","tag-fatal-overdoses","tag-grand-jury","tag-homeless-industrial-complex","tag-homelessness","tag-ngos","tag-nonprofits","tag-san-francisco","tag-urban-alchemy"],"yoast_head":"\nA New Grand Jury Report Shows How The California Model Is Failing - Property Transition Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/propertytransitionmedia.com\/?p=647\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A New Grand Jury Report Shows How The California Model Is Failing - Property Transition Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"San Francisco NGOs receive a fortune in public funding to serve the homeless, but they don't accomplish much. 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