California’s Supplemental Security Income (SSI) rate increased less than 1% from 2024 to 2025. An SSI resident’s personal and incidental needs allowance increased just $2 a month to $179. The room and board rate went to $694.07, and care and supervision increased to $726, or a total monthly increase of $24. Will facilities be enticed to admit SSI residents with a monthly payment of $1,420.07? With the Assisted Living Waiver Program in shambles, this is NOT the time for facilities to accept SSI residents even though California’s Governor Gavin Newsom has deluded himself enough to believe his “master plan” will work.
The deceit contained in the master plan is that the government will properly and efficiently manage taxpayer money to fix all of the state’s problems, including the current homeless “crisis.” This master plan seeks to place the homeless and those at risk of being homeless into both adult and elderly residential care. The state has not completely wiped out its severe budget deficit from 2024, and the current budget is described as “roughly balanced.” However, the state’s spending growth is expected to drive increasing deficits in the years ahead. Shortfalls will reach approximately $30 billion by the 2028-2029 fiscal year according to CalMatters.
California has 25% of the nation’s homeless population, but since the US Supreme Court ruled that “cities no longer are prohibited from punishing homeless people for camping if they have nowhere else to go” in its Grants Pass v. Johnson decision, Newsom ordered all California cities and counties to “crack down” on homeless encampments. According to CalMatters, Newsom ordered all state agencies to “clear homeless encampments” and urged cities to do the same or “risk losing out on state funding.”
Was that out of character for this pro-immigration governor? Keep reading.
Los Angeles put the homeless into hotels and San Diego put people into “sanctioned encampments.” However, a 2024 state audit found San Diego failed to thoroughly account for its spending and program results because there is “so little data available, it’s impossible to even tell if several of California’s largest homelessness programs are working.” The audit concluded that no one knows how much is spent on combating homelessness and no one knows if the statewide homeless projects are working. The Interagency Council on Homelessness cannot account for money “spent” on homelessness since 2021 because “it lacks the funding for data collection.”
There are nine state agencies administrating 30 homeless programs at a cost of “tens of billions of dollars” and the audit could not conclude how any of these state’s agencies spent at least $24 billion. The governor’s Homekey program pays cities and counties up to $144,000 per unit to house one homeless person per year, but the housing is temporary. What statistics are obtainable show that of the 85% of persons that are placed, 40% leave their housing preferring to return to the street. The unit can then remain empty as the program does not report the vacancy for fear of losing funding.
Another Newsom program, the Encampment Resolution Fund, has no data on how any money is spent. Several of the state’s other projects could not account for where people go that leave any of the state’s housing projects. Despite the lack of information, California has continued to fund these projects “authorizing billions of dollars” to continue operating.
Get it now? Showing the taxpayer the money is not going to happen.
The state’s homeless population in 2024 was reported to be nearly 187,000, an increase of 8% from 2022 despite the state’s apparent investment of billions of dollars. Two-thirds are on the street or clearly not in any state-sponsored housing. The National Housing Law Project said the underlying conditions causing homelessness does include the “influx of migrants.”