For the record, this feeling is valid and I’m in support of continuing scrutiny here.
That said, the actual amount spent on homeless support (and excluding bond money devoted to affordable housing that might also help provide housing for the homeless) is such a SMALL part of the budget. We’re talking 1500 beds, and that’s 1500 people NOT sleeping on sidewalks or living in tent encampments and making garbage mountains along shoal creek. It’s food for people that would be panhandling more aggressively otherwise, and pretty much every dollar being spent in this regard is supplemented by 3 or 4 dollars in private money to expand the support.
I think there’s been this really bad sales job done on the left that makes tax payers feel they are getting a raw deal. Unless the state is going to involuntarily commit them (and cover the expense), homeless people are a byproduct of a society with very few social safety nets, and in which mental health treatment is mostly left to the individual, and along with a level of access to drugs that appears to be almost impossible to curb. It’s a negative externality of the economic system we’ve chosen and they won’t magically disappear if we decide to vote against prop Q.
TL:DR What we spend on the homeless is some of the best dollar for dollar value we get as tax payers AND comprises such a small part of the budget that canceling it entirely won’t result in the savings needed to forgo a tax increase.