Bay EvidenceInvestigative research · Bay Area public systemsWhat changed?
A dated ledger of important shifts in data, method, law, oversight, funding, institutions, and policy. The goal is to make change over time inspectable rather than overwrite yesterday's state with today's page.
| Date | Subject | Previous state | New state | Evidence | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | San Francisco PIT count cycle Reported trend changes require explicit comparability cautions and should be read alongside annual service-system flow. | 2024 PIT cycle and prior enumeration approach | 2026 results released under a changed count approach | San Francisco PIT hub, system-trends reporting, and methodology coverage in the corpus | CRITICAL |
| 2026 | Alameda County PIT estimate Observed decline does not by itself identify how many people entered permanent housing, shelter, another geography, or disappeared from observation. | 2024 countywide PIT estimate | 2026 countywide estimate reported lower, with Oakland also reporting a decline | Alameda County official PIT hub and contemporaneous reporting | HIGH |
| 2026 | San Francisco homelessness-system oversight The accountability question shifts from spending totals toward contract-level performance, safety, and durable outcomes. | Existing performance, contracting, and data-governance framework | Civil Grand Jury report identifies major data, oversight, contractor-performance, and safety concerns | At Scale, At Risk primary report and companion accountability journalism | CRITICAL |
| 2025 | Post-Grants Pass enforcement evidence Legality and effectiveness are separate empirical questions. | Legal debate centered heavily on Eighth Amendment limits | Research and reporting increasingly examine displacement, health effects, settlement reforms, and downstream outcomes | KQED enforcement, health, and settlement reporting in the corpus | HIGH |
| 2024-06-28 | City of Grants Pass v. Johnson The holding does not establish blanket legality under every other legal doctrine or answer whether an enforcement program produces durable outcomes. | Ninth Circuit Eighth Amendment framework constrained some enforcement against involuntary public sleeping | Supreme Court holds that generally applicable public-camping laws do not constitute cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment | U.S. Supreme Court opinion | CRITICAL |
| 2024 | California homelessness fiscal accountability Appropriation, expenditure, activity, and durable outcome must remain distinct accountability stages. | Large multi-program spending landscape without consistent centralized cost-effectiveness assessment | State Auditor publicly documents major tracking and evaluation weaknesses while identifying stronger evidence for selected programs | California State Auditor reports 2023-102.1 and 2023-102.2 | CRITICAL |