A new county-approved audit seeks to expose how agencies spent years of homelessness dollars and whether any of it produced real results.
The San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted this week to launch a full Transparency and Accountability Audit of homelessness spending across the region, a move aimed at finally determining where billions of taxpayer dollars have gone as the crisis continues to escalate.
The measure was introduced by Supervisor Jim Desmond, running for Congress in California’s 49th district, who said residents have watched spending soar while tents spread across city blocks.
“People are suffering, tents are multiplying, and taxpayers are left wondering where their hard-earned money is going,” Desmond said in a media statement.
The audit will examine how much homelessness funding entered San Diego County, which agencies received it, and whether the money resulted in measurable outcomes. Desmond pointed to a statewide review earlier this year that found more than $24 billion in homelessness funding from 2018 to 2023 was not consistently tracked.
The county has already conducted internal tracking, which Desmond says contributed to an 11 percent reduction in homelessness in unincorporated areas. He also announced that a public-facing dashboard will go live early next year, allowing residents to follow spending in real time.
But Desmond emphasized that local progress cannot counterbalance the lack of accountability across multiple jurisdictions. “Homelessness doesn’t stop at city borders,” he said. “We need accountability from every city, every agency, and every organization receiving funds.”
