Politics & Government
California’s Homeless Crisis Shows Need for Government Accountability
With 187,000 homeless residents California leads the nation—not in solutions but expensive failures Richard Stern-LA Daily News. More Fact$.
From the Daily Signal (which cited the L. A. Daily News) to this writer for MHProNews as today's installment of the "Reality Check" series for this Patch is Part I. More insights on roadblocks as well as solutions plus other topics follow in Part II.
Part I
Commentary
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California’s Homeless Crisis Shows the Need for Government Accountability
Richard Stern | April 26, 2025
Find out what's happening in Lakelandfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
With 187,000 residents homeless, California leads the nation—not in solutions, but in expensive failures. This year, major cities like Oakland saw a 9% increase in homelessness. If the state’s goal was to increase homelessness, its policies are a resounding success.
The state isn’t short on resources. California has some of the nation’s highest taxpayers and receives $322 billion in annual revenue. But it burned through $24 billion of that on homelessness over the past five years—and it’s still failed to halt the bleeding.
In large part, this failure is due to incompetence. The crisis keeps spiraling because no one has bothered to track where the money is going. A state audit confirmed that the government had no idea what it was doing.
Local governments aren’t any better. San Diego and San Jose funneled millions into homeless programs with little oversight and unreliable success metrics. San Diego didn’t track its funds, while San Jose renewed an $8-million contract based on wildly inflated data overstating the program’s effectiveness.
California’s homelessness crisis isn’t just a state failure—it’s a case study of reckless government spending.
At the same time, California pretends its budget is balanced, claiming a $363 million surplus. But in reality, the state is pulling $7.1 billion from its reserves just to stay afloat. The same lack of oversight plaguing California extends to the federal level, where billions vanish into mismanaged programs with no accountability.
Washington is just as good as California at setting taxpayer money on fire.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development, the federal agency overseeing housing assistance, put $319 million in homeless funds at risk by sinking money into programs that cost more and accomplish less.
At the federal level, spending without accountability isn’t a crisis to politicians—it’s a time-honored tradition. But the U.S. debt is climbing by over $3 trillion a year. Misuse of taxpayer dollars isn’t just inefficiency, it’s theft.
Like California’s homeless programs, federal initiatives also suffer from poor oversight and wasteful spending.
Both the federal and California governments practically beg for DOGE auditors, independent watchdogs with the power to track taxpayer dollars, root out inefficiency, and expose failed spending. Without this kind of oversight, taxpayers will keep footing the bill for incompetence.
DOGE has already proven targeted audits work. In one recent example, it shut down 146,000 government credit cards just two weeks after uncovering $40 billion in wasted spending. By expanding its authority and adopting similar oversight measures at the state level, we can ensure every dollar is accounted for and prevent future misuse.
But oversight is just the beginning. The government should also implement a public spending scorecard, which would bring real transparency by requiring agencies to show where every dollar goes and what it actually achieves.
If a program wastes money or fails to meet its goals, taxpayers deserve to know who’s responsible so they can demand accountability. Bureaucrats can’t be allowed to continue hiding failures behind empty rhetoric. By implementing a scorecard, the government could force bureaucrats to release spending reports that rely on real data, not on whatever numbers look good on a press release.
Transparency alone isn’t enough. Taxpayers aren’t just funders for government programs—they’re investors, and they deserve returns, not excuses. Every federal program should have a designated agency head responsible for tracking outcomes and proving that spending delivers measurable results, not political talking points.
Government waste isn’t just bureaucratic failure—it’s a system built to squander billions with no consequences. If agency heads can’t justify their budgets, then they shouldn’t have them.
Originally published by the Los Angeles Daily News.
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Part II More Facts-Evidence-Analysis (FEA) on Housing and Homelessness plus other topics
1) While Richard Stern raised several interesting and sobering facts, perhaps the most important statement is the closing paragraph. Stern's wrap up merits repeating. "Government waste isn’t just bureaucratic failure—it’s a system built to squander billions with no consequences. If agency heads can’t justify their budgets, then they shouldn’t have them." Unfortunately, in all too many situations, when some public agency fails to achieve its stated goals the 'solution' is to throw more money at the problem, even if the current programs clearly aren't working. That is true for housing programs, but for other issues - like public health - too.
2) Leftist Michael Weinstein aptly noted that 'tens of billions of dollars to the affordable housing industrial complex are wasted.'
https://www.manufacturedhomepr...
3) It isn't just Weinstein that has wrapped the knuckles of fellow leftists/Democrats. Left-leaning New York Times video opinion pundit Johnny Harris did a 'viral' video on the subject of how Democrats and the left have failed on the housing issue and have also failed Americans on inequality, topics that politicians may campaign on but then routinely fail to deliver on.
4) MHProNews and our MHLivingNews sister site have said for years that there is a direct relationship between unaffordable housing, increased homelessness, and the lack of manufactured homes. While the relationship is not always 1 to 1, the map below is an indicator of the point. California has very few manufactured homes. Per the sources cited, only 3.5 percent of all CA housing are a pre-HUD Code mobile home or a post-HUD Code manufactured homes. They have high homelessness.
Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB), in a state which also has a sizable homeless population, noted that the lack of affordable housing is a prime cause for homelessness.
https://www.manufacturedhomepr...
https://www.manufacturedhomeli...
5) There are researchers and pundits who think that more home ownership leads to less crime. There are also those who have said that more manufactured home ownership can accomplish the same wealth-generating power that more costly conventional housing offers.
https://www.manufacturedhomeli...
6) A previous post in this series for the Patch explored the (false) claim that having manufactured homes nearby lowers conventional property values. This may be easier in one sense to test claim in Lakeland/Polk County FL than many other places because the percentage of mobile homes and manufactured homes in Polk County are among the highest in the nation.
https://patch.com/florida/lake...
But the truth is that something similar was studied by HUD using university level research back in the Obama-Biden era. Manufactured homes next door to conventional housing was studied in different cities in different parts of the country. The result? Conventional housing rose in value next to manufactured homes that also rose in value.
https://www.manufacturedhomeli...
Lending Tree studied something similar. They found that in many states, manufactured homes rose in value faster than conventional housing.
7) When just a few hundred words and linked evidence to support it is laid out, people who don't have an agenda and simply want solutions instead of costly (and often failed) promises that are off in the distance that never arrive may wonder. Why is it that the Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI) seems to do such a poor job of educating the public on such issues?
https://www.manufacturedhomepr...
According to a range of researchers and experts, it appears to be that the Manufactured Housing Institute is beholden to its larger members who are more interested in consolidation of the industry into a few of their 'insiders' hands than they are to see the industry grow. That's not unimportant, because the need for affordable housing is costing our country some $2 trillion dollars annually. See the report above for examples and supporting evidence.
8) One of those who is cited in the article above is Mark Weiss, J.D. (an attorney with expertise in laws pertaining to manufactured housing). Weiss is the president and CEO of the Manufactured Housing Association for Regulatory Reform (MHARR) and has more years more tenure in manufactured housing than any senior staffer at MHI has with their association. Weiss said the following.
"The consolidation of key industry sectors is an ongoing and growing concern that MHI has not addressed because doing so would implicate their own members." Mark Weiss, J.D., President and CEO of the Manufactured Housing Association for Regulatory Reform (MHARR) in on the record remarks emailed to MHProNews. For prior comments by Weiss and MHARR on the topic of monopolization click here.
9) An array of artificial intelligence (AI) powered platforms have been tested in the past two years to see what they found about the affordable housing crisis. See the most recent of those tests using Google's AI (which cited other articles that used AI fact-checks) unpacked at this link here (shorter) and here (more detailed).
10) When someone looks at some of the history of the board-corporate leadership or senior staff leaders at MHI, what emerges is a troubling picture. MHI's CEO Lesli Gooch, Ph.D., has years of documented conflicts of interest and allegations backed by documented and photographic evidence.
https://patch.com/florida/lake...
One may wonder why Gooch wasn't or hasn't been indicted?
11) Why would MHI leaders pick someone like Gooch to lead their organization unless, given several such concerns that can be uncovered by a simple Google search of her name? Perhaps they saw in Ms. Gooch someone like themselves that would go along with their schemes to consolidate the industry? Now recall the evidence-backed allegations launched by Blue Orca against prominent MHI member Sun Communities (SUI).
https://patch.com/florida/lake...
12) Without more affordable housing, more and more people are and will be living out of cars, older RVs, tents, or boxes. More and more families are living on the streets that are working but can't earn enough to pay for rent or to buy a home where they live. This isn't mere speculation. HUD's own report to Congress reveals it sobering truth.
https://www.manufacturedhomepr...
13) To the point that Richard Stern made in the "California’s Homeless Crisis Shows the Need for Government Accountability" shown in Part I, it should be obvious that what that state and many others are doing does not work. Yet tens of billions of dollars are poured into programs that do not work. Nor will they. This writer for MHProNews and this Patch has documented, using third-party facts that have been reviewed and confirmed by three different AI platforms, a simple point. While ALL forms of new construction are needed, perhaps the most needed is what MHARR calls "inherently" affordable manufactured homes.
14) Will HUD Secretary Scott Turner act where his predecessors have failed? Time will tell. But MHARR had a face to face discussion with Turner on some of these issues recently.
https://manufacturedhousingass...
15) Housing impacts almost everything that you or anyone else in the U.S. or any other country does. Related as well as other topics follow. Thanks for checking in to this installment of the "Reality Check" series for this Patch.
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L. A. “Tony” Kovach is a publisher who has earned multiple awards in history. He and his family live in a manufactured home on private property in Winter Haven, FL. He is the co-founder of Manufactured Home Living News.com (MHLivingNews.com) and Manufactured Home Pro News.com (MHProNews.com), trade publications serving segments of the manufactured home industry. Having worked in several segments of the manufactured home industry for over 3 decades, Kovach is a widely acknowledged and often praised expert on manufactured housing. ###
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