Taxpayers Watchdog Requests Transparency from Homelessness Task Force
San Diego, CA (February 23, 2024) --- Today, the San Diego County Taxpayers Association (SDCTA) sent the following letter to the Regional Task Force on Homelessness (RTFH) and requested deidentified/ anonymous data in the Homeless Management Information System from County-funded contracts.
SDCTA has been working for an entire year to push RTFH to share with all public agencies and the public deidentified/ anonymous client enrollment data from across the system. Until the public has the entire deidentified/ anonymous data set from across all eighteen cities and the county, no one except RTFH can conduct systematic analysis of movement through the system. SDCTA intends to work with each city to ensure all deidentified/ anonymous data sets for all contractors can be released. Of note, the RTFH had given SDCTA and SDTEF the data set requested before, but required the destruction of the data a year ago.
Once the deidentified/ anonymous data are compiled, SDCTA's research affiliate, the San Diego Taxpayers Educational Foundation (SDTEF), intends to identify through econometric analyses what is effective and what is efficient. SDCTA and SDTEF define "effective" simply: when an individual experiencing homelessness moves to permanent housing of any type, they have been helped effectively so long as they do not return to homelessness for at least one year.