If you want to ensure that a problem never gets solved, get the government involved. While that may not be a hard, fast rule, it often seems to be.

Take vagrancy, more often referred to today as homelessness. It has become a growing problem, especially in some of America’s largest cities, such as Los Angeles. Politicians have repeatedly run on the claim that they will tackle the problem, but lo and behold, it only seems to get worse.

California Governor Gavin Newsom famously made dealing with the state’s growing homelessness crisis a key issue of his campaign back in 2018. Six years later, Newsom is touting himself as the first governor to devise a plan to address the Golden State’s vagrancy epidemic. But has that plan ended homelessness? Has it even diminished it?

If anything, California’s homeless population has only grown, topping 180,000 as of June of this year.

Indeed, it’s almost as if the more money California taxpayers have shelled out to tackle homelessness, the worse it has gotten. As Republican state assembly leader James Gallagher has pointed out, “Gavin Newsom spent $24 billion on homelessness while the problem got 20 percent worse. There is only one word to describe that record: failure. The fact that Newsom thinks he’s done a good job on this issue shows just how unqualified he is to solve the problem.”

Of course, Newsom is quick with excuses. He points to the COVID pandemic and its negative impact on the economy and the cost of housing. He also points to drug abuse and increasing levels of mental illness. And in fairness, those are genuine factors contributing to the problem.

In Newsom’s defense, one of the biggest problems he and other states have in addressing homelessness is Washington. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) doles out billions in taxpayer funds to ostensibly help with the problem. These funds are given to the states with strings attached, or they are given to non-state local entities that purportedly exist to provide for the homeless.

HUD’s primary homelessness program, “Continuum of Care,” shells out some $3 billion to these local organizations. The most significant string that HUD attaches to this funding is that these organizations conform to HUD’s “Housing First” policy that prioritizes rental assistance with no requirements and no time limits. In other words, HUD is fueling a population dependent on rent subsidies.

The problem for states like California is that HUD primarily views homelessness as a lack-of-home problem and not a vagrancy issue. Therefore, its prescription for solving the problem is to focus on getting people into affordable housing.

State governments are not given federal funds to apply toward programs that may address the root problems behind homelessness. Instead, Washington limits how they address the issue.

One immediate solution would be for Congress to get HUD out of the homelessness policy-making business. Affordable housing is first an economic issue, not a vagrancy issue. It’s not always true, but it’s primarily the case that people are not vagrants because they can’t find an affordable home; they are homeless because they are vagrants. Their condition of homelessness is due to factors that have nothing to do with the cost of housing. The two biggest reasons are drug addiction and mental illness.

Leaning into federalism and empowering states to tackle the issue within their unique local jurisdictions will reap better results than simply having a bunch of Washington bureaucrats pushing down their latest ream of do-gooder regulations.