Homelessness Services

In 2017, the homeless population in San Diego County exceeded 9,000 individuals on any given night, decreasing slightly over the next year. Over the past ten years, there has been little real change homelessness, taking a toll on a jurisdiction’s economy, the environment, its housing policy, and its health care and criminal justice systems. The San Diego County Taxpayers Association conducted a study to inform the public, government agencies, philanthropic organizations, and other funders about trends on homeless-specific funds and their allocations to improve policy and practice.

"While data limitations prevent us from confirming causal links in observational data, we explore how homelessness fluctuates and how it relates to spending at an aggregate level to note that higher spending is not necessarily correlated to lower homeless population counts. SDTEF also finds that local spending relative to total spending has increased by 2,015% over the last 10 years. Agencies heavily rely on the Regional Task Force on Homeless’ data to inform policy decisions and funding allocation. This reliance, in turn, creates severe data records issues that can be traced back to reporting and administrative deficiencies that undermine the validity of the trends hereby observed."