The incompetence of California’s single-party Democratic rule shines through on every issue facing the state, but now homelessness is again taking the spotlight.

Over the past five years, California has spent $24 billion on addressing homelessness. An audit examined how over half of that, $13.7 billion, was spent on five programs across the state. According to State Auditor Grant Parks, “This report concludes that the state must do more to assess the cost-effectiveness of its homelessness programs.” The report also said, “In the absence of this information, the State cannot determine whether these programs represent the best use of its funds.”

In other words, California spent $13.7 billion on homelessness over the past five years with no idea if it was worth spending that money in the first place. In fact, according to the audit, the California Interagency Council on Homelessness has not been tracking whether spending on homeless programs has been effective since 2021. California, living up to the Democratic stereotype, has been blindly throwing billions of taxpayer dollars at the problem for years.

This has tracked California’s homeless spending over the last several years. The state’s desperation to solve the crisis led to it burning $100 million on a homeless project that the state attorney general is now describing as a Ponzi scheme. California has around 12% of the country’s population, nearly 30% of the country’s homeless population, and a whopping 49% of the country’s unsheltered homeless population. The state keeps funneling billions in taxpayer funds through its bloated bureaucracy to various organizations that do little if anything to solve the problem.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Meanwhile, California is currently battling a $38 billion to $73 billion budget deficit leading it to cut several programs and delay others for inevitable future cuts. Safe to say that burning through billions on homeless programs that may not be doing anything at all as homelessness continues to get worse throughout the state while other large states spend far less for better results is not an ideal situation.

This is California, though, where irresponsible governance is not punished because every mediocre politician, from Kamala Harris to Gov. Gavin Newsom, is treated as a possible Democratic presidential candidate. California is, without a doubt, the worst-run state in the country, and this is yet more proof that this is the case.