The number of homeless people in California grew about 50% between 2014 and 2022. The state, which accounts for 12% of the U.S. population, has about half of the nation’s unsheltered homeless, an estimated 115,000 people, according to federal and state data last year. It also has among the highest average rent and median home prices in the U.S. State officials said it was the city’s responsibility to house people kicked off the Wood Street property. Oakland officials said they didn’t have enough shelter beds. Residents fortunate enough to get a federal housing voucher struggled to find an apartment they could afford with it. Many of the drug addicts and mentally ill on Wood Street wanted nothing more than to be left alone. About 30 people filed a federal lawsuit against the state transportation department, known as Caltrans, and the city of Oakland for the right to continue living at the Wood Street encampment.
They were among those who initially rejected spots at shelters because they couldn’t bring their pets or all their belongings. “You have to give up everything you own just for a place to sleep for a night,” said Jaz Colibri. She was one of those who filed the lawsuit, which after months of back and forth was decided against her and the others. By March, those who resisted authorities were still living on a sliver of the property that the Oakland Fire Department called unsafe, unsanitary and which posed “a range of public health risks for the unhoused people living there, neighbors in the surrounding area, and the firefighters who respond to incidents 24 hours a day.”
https://archive.fo/jQbEf#selection-419.0-431.208California spent a record $17 billion combating homelessness in the past four fiscal years. For the state budget year starting in July, Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed another $3.7 billion. Voters in Los Angeles and San Francisco, which have some of the largest homeless populations in California, were unhappy enough about it to approve taxes costing them billions of dollars to fund anti-homelessness programs and housing in recent years. So far, cost overruns and delays have left little to show for the money. State and local officials have bickered over responsibility. Mr. Newsom late last year threatened to withhold funding from local governments that he believed weren’t attacking the problem aggressively enough. That included programs to move squatters, willingly or not.
Local leaders said the Newsom administration hasn’t provided enough stable funding for programs to treat and house the homeless. “These systems are made effective when they are tethered to the resources necessary,” said LaTonda Simmons, Oakland’s acting homelessness administrator. “Oakland and many other cities are experiencing the same sort of bottleneck in terms of being able to move people through the system.”
CA has thrown billions at their homeless problem, it's still there. There is a reason that people are homeless: drug addiction, mental illness, unemployment, income...