California Statistics on Homelessness and Housing

The Golden State's homeless population of more than 130,000 people is now about 25 percent of the nationwide total, and cleaning up after the surging group is getting costly -- topping $10 million in 2016-17.
Source: Fox News

According to Caltrans’ in-house publication, Mile Marker magazine, the department has spent about $29.2 million cleaning up encampments since fiscal 2012-13. Caltrans estimated the bill in 2016-17 to be more than $10 million – a 34 percent increase over the previous year – and involved all 12 regional districts.

The rising costs coincide with California’s growing homeless population, which increased by nearly 14 percent between 2016 and 2017 to an estimated 134,278, according to the most recent annual report by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. More than half of the nation’s homeless individuals were found in four states: California, New York, Florida and Texas, the report said.
Source: SacBee

The Los Angeles metro area has alone seen a 75 percent increase in unsheltered homelessness in the last six years, partly due to the lack of affordable housing in the area, according to federal data.
Source: Business Insider

California has about 134,000 homeless people, roughly 24 percent of the nation's total homeless population, and Los Angeles County has the most within the state — at least 55,000 people, an audit summary said.

With 68 percent of its homeless people living in vehicles, abandoned buildings, parks or on streets, California has the highest rate of unsheltered homeless of any state.
Source:

Newsom has been pushing an ambitious target to address the state’s dire housing shortage — an issue closely related to the large homeless population in Sonoma County and other parts of the state. He said he wants California to aim for building 3.5 million new homes by 2025, which would require the state to go from constructing roughly 100,000 homes per year to about 378,000 annually, he said.

California hasn’t built that many homes in one year since 1954, Newsom said, drawing on an analysis from the McKinsey Global Institute.
Source: Argus Courier