San Francisco and Los Angeles have poured billions into homelessness programs that no one audits, no one terminates, and no one's job depends on — producing 26% of SF's overdose deaths inside city-funded housing, a 7.9% rise in LA's unsheltered population, and encampment fires tripling across the state. SF is now re-awarding every contract by 2029 with outcome-based pay, but the metrics and enforcement that would make it real don't exist yet.
Read Top Post →LA’s unsheltered population rose 7.9% after two years of Mayor Bass claiming progress. A federal audit found the city “doesn’t know how much it is paying, and for what.” Controller Kenneth Mejia’s audit found similar gaps. Prop HHH, Measure ULA, Inside Safe, LAHSA — billions spent across programs with nearly zero financial oversight. The same pattern as SF: money moves, no one checks results, and the numbers get worse.
Jul 30, 2026 · 11 min
LA firefighters now respond to 46 encampment fires a day, triple the 2019 rate. Oakland’s numbers tripled too. A 2018 federal ruling froze clearances for six years; the Supreme Court lifted it in 2024, but camps kept forming. Oakland mapped 95% of the city off-limits to encampments, concentrating what remained in the working-class, majority-Black and Hispanic Flats — the same neighborhoods already absorbing the worst of the crisis.
Jul 06, 2026 · 12 min
26% of San Francisco’s accidental overdose deaths in 2024 happened inside permanent supportive housing — buildings sheltering just 1.5% of the population. A Civil Grand Jury report found the oversight commission voters created in 2022 has never conducted a single performance audit. HomeRise, operator of the complex where Eric McCain’s body lay undiscovered for 12 days, had been on the city’s corrective action list four times since 2019. No nonprofit contract has ever been terminated for safety or performance failures.
Jul 02, 2026 · 8 min
