The city council for Santa Monica, a small coastal city located just west of downtown Los Angeles, approved a measure last week that would authorize authorities to build a multi-unit housing complex for homeless people living in the city. The plan authorized the planning and development of a $123 million housing complex with 122 units in the structure. The complex would be a mix of studio, one-, two-, and three-bedroom units, along with parking to accommodate all three. According to the city's website, the plans for the structure show the project costing over $123 million and that the units themselves will cost $1 million each. 

"Moving forward in bringing affordable and permanent supportive housing to city-owned land is a key step in our strategy to fulfill our Housing Element requirements," Mayor Phil Brock said. "I look forward to the next steps and ultimately seeing families move into these new homes and thrive."

Santa Monica's plans come just days after a bombshell report released in mid-April that showed the state of California could not account for at least $24 billion of taxpayer funds that it spent between 2018 and 2023 to address the state's rampant homeless problems. The report showed that the California Interagency Council on Homelessness (Cal ICH), which is supposed to track and account for money spent on homeless programs in the state, not only lost track of the $24 billion, in 2021, but it stopped looking at whether the homeless programs were even working. The agency could not even collect and evaluate outcome data for these programs due to not having a reliable and consistent method. In a shirking of responsibility and general lack of accountability, Cal ICH went on to blame the local municipalities and governments for the failure, saying that they needed to be held accountable, not Cal ICH. 

Santa Monica's plans for the new homeless apartment building are drawing ire from locals, as well as residents all across the state. With the average price tag of each individual unit coming in at $1 million, taxpayers are now on the hook for paying the price for an apartment that costs more than the median price of a single-family home in Los Angeles County, which costs around $890,00. The average single-family home in Santa Monica is just over $1.7 million; however, having a price tag of one million paid by the taxpayer for an apartment that will be built solely for homeless people is still a hard pill to swallow. 

The report on Cal ICH shows a compounding problem of both massive public spending on the homeless and not being able to accurately monitor and account for it. However, it also showed another massive compounding problem of government spending, AND the problem getting much worse. During the time period of the audit, between 2019 and 2023, despite the government throwing billions of dollars at the problem, homelessness did not go down. It actually exploded by 32 percent. In fact, over the last 10 years, homelessness has gone up over 50 percent. 

Despite the billions in spending, California’s homelessness crisis has gotten worse. According to the audit, California’s homelessness population grew 32% over the last five years, and by 53% over the last 10. Five programs that accounted for a combined $13.7 billion in funding were analyzed by the state auditor, who found that just two of them are “likely cost-effective.”

Governor Gavin Newsom was recently asked by Elex Michaelson, host of CA’s statewide political show “The Issue Is:” on FOX 11, about another round of spending bills aimed at fighting homelessness. Newsom was asked what everyone is thinking, why should we trust him or the government to solve a problem that has repeatedly and spectacularly failed to solve? 

.@GavinNewsom announced $192 million in grants to fight homelessness in 17 California communities.

I asked him:

-What specific changes we'll see with this $?
-Why we should trust the government after so much previous spending led to more homeless people?

Here's his response: pic.twitter.com/VgehwFUKtO

— Elex Michaelson (@Elex_Michaelson) April 19, 2024

Santa Monica city officials are defending their plan, citing in part their self-established requirement to adopt a housing element that includes access to affordable housing. The city plans to develop this particular project on land that is already owned by the city, in what they hope will reduce costs.