As elected leaders around San Diego County weigh what to spend on homelessness in the coming fiscal year, their decisions will have to be made without a key piece of information: What they’ve already spent.
Sure, there’s a paper trail for money that went directly to services like outreach workers and shelters. The city of San Diego, for example, dropped an estimated $42 million on short-term beds in fiscal 2025.
But when it comes to the overall price tag for officers patrolling encampments or cleanup crews scrubbing sidewalks or paramedics waiting outside backed-up emergency rooms? Nobody knows.
“I really want to call on the City Council this year to do a comprehensive analysis, by department, of the cost of homelessness,” John Brady, head of the local advocacy group Lived Experience Advisers, said at a recent public meeting. “Whether it’s the parks department, maintenance, electrics, you name it — undoubtedly there’s a significant amount of money.”
There is at least one example to follow if San Diego were to collaborate on such a study with neighboring cities, the county and a host of other organizations.
A decade ago, Santa Clara County in Northern California decided to calculate exactly what its homelessness was costing. Santa Clara has fewer total residents than San Diego, but the homeless populations are often comparable. The final report, “Home Not Found: The Cost Of Homelessness In Silicon Valley,” concluded that more than a half-billion dollars were being spent on the crisis each year.
That result “shocked the public,” Andrew Hening, the Regional Task Force on Homelessness’ chief strategy officer, said earlier this month at a downtown conference. It also built momentum for a bond measure that set aside significantly more money for affordable housing.
Santa Clara’s study was not easy.
The analysis was overseen by the Los Angeles-based nonprofit Economic Roundtable, and the head of that organization said buy-in from local leaders was crucial. “It takes strong backing from the top to link records of the same individuals across agencies and over time,” Daniel Flaming wrote in an email. The “data is siloed and public agencies are very protective of it.”
Information from court systems, hospitals and nonprofits all had to be pulled. Officials estimated that tens of millions of records were ultimately reviewed and local media reported that the final assessment cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Crucially, the analysis also showed how — and on whom — the money was being used.
Health care was by far the biggest budget item. More than half of the $520 million spent annually went to medical needs, which can easily worsen when somebody lives outside. The criminal justice system used around a third of the total, mainly to house people in jail.
Social services took up only about 13 percent.
“Cost is just a placeholder for suffering,” said Jennifer Loving, CEO of the nonprofit Destination: Home, a major partner on the study.
Furthermore, a large amount of the overall price tag was driven by a relatively small group of people. Certain individuals were requiring an average of $100,000 per year.
The report recommended investments in both affordable units and supportive services. “By prioritizing housing opportunities for the group of 2,800 persistently homeless individuals with the highest costs, it is possible to obtain savings that more than offset the cost of housing,” analysts wrote.
A similar review in San Diego would likely involve the Homeless Management Information System, which tracks how thousands of people participate in local programs. Those records are managed by the regional task force, and while leaders have been protective of HMIS data, noting that it contains personal information about vulnerable people, CEO Tamera Kohler said privacy concerns weren’t a deal breaker.
“We have the capacity and we have the interest to do it,” she added, “it would really be if the county wants to do something that comprehensive.”
The County of San Diego did approve last year a more narrow review of all contracts related to homelessness, and the final assessment found gaps in how officials monitored dozens of programs.
Money was being left on the table, key information hadn’t been tracked and some initiatives measured success in different ways, making their effectiveness difficult to evaluate, the report said.
“I’ve been working to resolve some of the unknowns,” Supervisor Monica Montgomery Steppe said in a statement, and “I look forward to doing more to ensure we move in the right direction.”
Board Chair Nora Vargas similarly promised to make changes based on the report’s findings, yet her pledge came shortly before the surprise announcement that she wouldn’t serve out a second term, which would have begun early next year, potentially complicating reforms.
None of the supervisors responded to questions about whether they would consider a deeper dive.
On the San Diego City Council, Raul Campillo and Vivian Moreno are open to a wide-ranging review. “I would be very interested in seeing a holistic study,” Moreno said.
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