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Conversations with Frank Fabozzi, CFA, Featuring Alicia Vidler, PhD


Watch this illuminating conversation with Alicia Vidler, PhD, a seasoned expert at the intersection of artificial intelligence and financial markets. Vidler maps out the challenges and opportunities for institutional finance embedded in Agentic AI. Programming and coding are table stakes today, but developing sophisticated AI models that can think and make decisions will be akin to learning to play an orchestral instrument in the future, she tells Frank Fabozzi, CFA.

The Back Half of the Marketing Hourglass Is Where the Real Growth Is


The Marketing Hourglass has 7 stages: Know, Like, Trust, Try, Buy, Repeat, Refer.

Most small businesses have systems for the first five. They know how to get found, how to build some trust, how to close. Then the marketing ends.

Repeat and Refer, the back half, get left to chance. Good work, happy customers, and hope.

That’s expensive. And it leaves most of the growth on the table.

What a customer is actually worth

A customer who buys, comes back, and refers is worth between 3 and 10 times a customer who buys once. That ratio shows up in the data of almost every small business that tracks it.

And yet. Acquisition gets the meetings. Acquisition gets the budget. Customer experience gets the leftovers.

I worked with a landscape services business at about $4 million in revenue. Growing through Google ads, word of mouth, and one partnership. The owner knew he had loyal customers but had never systematized any of the customer work. Within 12 months of installing a Customer Engine, it accounted for roughly 45% of total new revenue, up from about 10%. Paid acquisition spend dropped by a third. Because the back half of the Hourglass was finally doing its job.

Four things the Customer Engine does

Onboarding

The first 90 days after a customer buys is where the relationship gets established. Most businesses treat it as operations: deliver the thing that was sold, move on.

A structured onboarding process does something different. It confirms the customer made the right decision. It surfaces anything that needs fixing before it becomes a problem. And it creates the natural moment to ask for a review, a referral, or both.

Most businesses skip the ask entirely. The onboarding sequence is what makes it feel natural instead of awkward.

Repeat engagement

What specifically brings your customers back? Most businesses rely on the customer remembering to return. The Customer Engine removes that dependency.

Maintenance plans, seasonal offers, anniversary touchpoints, check-ins anchored to natural moments in the customer’s life. The landscape business introduced seasonal maintenance plans and converted about 40% of project customers. Recurring revenue went from essentially zero to a meaningful line.

That happened because they asked.

The referral system

Same 3 parts as the Growth Engine: a specific ask, at the right moment, with an easy path for the referrer. All 3 matter. Most businesses have none of them.

The right moment is right after something good, while the experience is still fresh. The landscape business built this properly. Referred customers went from about 10% of new work to 25% within 6 months. That’s a system, not luck.

Reactivation

A one-time outreach to every customer from the prior 3 years who hasn’t purchased anything new. Simple, direct, personal note from the founder.

The landscape business converted about 8% of that list into some form of re-engagement within 90 days.

Reactivation is probably the highest ROI marketing move available to most small businesses. Almost nobody does it, mostly because it feels like admitting you lost touch. Reframe it: it’s a welcome reconnection, and customers respond to it that way.

What the Customer Engine actually powers

This is the part most founders miss. The Customer Engine doesn’t just produce direct revenue from existing customers. It feeds every other engine you have.

The Trust stage needs customer stories. The Customer Engine produces them. The Refer stage needs actual referring behavior. The Customer Engine systematizes it. The content engine needs real situations and wins. The Customer Engine surfaces them.

Under-investing in the Customer Engine under-powers everything else. Fixing it lifts the whole system, not just retention.

One thing to do this week

Write your referral system in one sentence.

If it turns into a paragraph of caveats, or “we don’t really have one,” that’s your answer. And it tells you exactly where to start.


The Customer Engine is step 6 of a seven-step system I’ve been refining for over 20 years. The full framework is in my new ebook, “7 Steps to Small Business Marketing Success.” Get it at dtm.world/7steps.

The AI Boom’s Next Bottleneck Is Electricity. These 3 Stocks Are Positioned to Power the Build-Out.


The numbers behind the artificial intelligence (AI) build-out keep getting bigger. On Tuesday, chip designer Broadcom announced a financing platform with investment giants Apollo Global Management and Blackstone designed to enable more than 20 gigawatts of AI compute capacity through 2028, launching with an initial $35 billion tranche.

Even automakers want in. General Motors said this week it is developing a sodium-ion battery (a chemistry built on abundant sodium rather than scarcer lithium) aimed at energy storage for data centers and the grid.

All of this demand is landing on an electric grid that can take years to expand. Securing a grid connection for a large data center campus can be a multiyear wait, and the equipment needed to build new power plants is in short supply. That mismatch is where Bloom Energy (BE +4.56%), GE Vernova (GEV +3.74%), and Vistra (VST +1.12%) come in.

Here’s a closer look at how each company is positioned to power the build-out.

Image source: Getty Images.

1. Bloom Energy

Bloom makes solid oxide fuel cells — systems that generate electricity on-site from natural gas without combustion — letting data centers skip the wait for a grid hookup. Bloom’s first-quarter revenue soared 130% year over year to $751.1 million, driven by a 208% jump in product revenue. The company also posted net income of $70.7 million, reversing a year-ago loss. And management raised its full-year outlook, now expecting 2026 revenue of $3.4 billion to $3.8 billion — about 80% growth at the midpoint, up from prior guidance of about 60%.

Bloom Energy Stock Quote

Today’s Change

(4.56%) $11.34

Current Price

$260.22

In April, Oracle said Bloom fuel cells will fully power Project Jupiter, its AI data center campus in New Mexico, with up to 2.45 gigawatts of capacity, replacing the gas turbines and diesel generators originally planned for the site. Notably, management said more than half of Bloom’s data center backlog comes from customers other than Oracle.

“Bloom is rapidly becoming the standard and go-to choice for on-site power,” said Bloom founder and CEO KR Sridhar during the company’s first-quarter earnings call.

2. GE Vernova

While Bloom helps data centers bypass the grid, GE Vernova supplies the grid itself — along with the gas turbines utilities are waiting in line to order. The power equipment maker’s first-quarter orders surged 71% on an organic basis to $18.3 billion, pushing its total backlog to $163 billion. Its gas turbine backlog and slot reservation agreements grew from 83 gigawatts to 100 gigawatts in a single quarter, and management now expects to reach at least 110 gigawatts by the end of 2026.

GE Vernova Stock Quote

Today’s Change

(3.74%) $33.87

Current Price

$940.66

GE Vernova’s electrification segment, which makes grid equipment like transformers and switchgear, booked $2.4 billion of equipment orders to support data centers during the first quarter — more than in all of 2025. Further, the company’s free cash flow more than quadrupled year over year to $4.8 billion, and management raised its 2026 guidance.

3. Vistra

Vistra is one of the largest competitive power producers in the U.S., with a generation fleet spanning natural gas and nuclear. And AI’s biggest spenders are locking up that fleet years in advance. Last year, the company signed a 20-year power purchase agreement with Amazon’s cloud unit for up to 1,200 megawatts of nuclear power from its Comanche Peak plant in Texas. It also signed 20-year agreements to supply Meta Platforms with 2,609 megawatts of nuclear energy and capacity from its plants in the eastern U.S.

Vistra Stock Quote

Today’s Change

(1.12%) $1.64

Current Price

$148.02

The company is adding natural gas capacity, too, with its pending acquisition of about 5,500 megawatts of generation from Cogentrix, targeted to close in the second half of this year. Last month, Vistra reported first-quarter ongoing operations adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) of about $1.5 billion and reaffirmed its full-year forecast of $6.8 billion to $7.6 billion.

What could trip up the power trade

Of course, these stocks face risks. Project timing, for instance, is one. In fact, Bloom Energy shares fell this week after a partner reportedly paused work on a data center site in Wyoming. Additionally, these companies operate in highly regulated markets.

The bigger risk may be the demand side itself. All three stocks have rallied on the assumption that AI capital expenditures keep climbing, and AI infrastructure stocks have pulled back recently on concerns about the pace of that spending. If the build-out decelerates meaningfully, backlogs could stop growing and these valuations could compress quickly.

Still, the demand signals keep arriving week after week, and from new directions — financiers one day, automakers the next. For investors who believe the electricity bottleneck is real and durable, these three companies arguably offer a more grounded way to invest in the AI boom than chasing the chipmakers themselves.

Mortgage borrowing slows as household debt burden keeps rising




Canadians added mortgage debt at the slowest pace in two years in the first quarter, even as overall household leverage and debt payments continued to climb, new Statistics Canada data shows.

Amex Resy Credit Will Require Eligible Resy Restaurants


Amex Resy Credit Will Require Eligible Resy Restaurants

American Express is making an unfavorable change to its Resy Credit benefit. Cardholders are now seeing notices on their Platinum and Gold card statements advising that, beginning August 1, 2026, restaurants and other food and beverage establishments must be specifically marked as eligible for the Resy Credit in order to qualify.

Previously, any restaurant listed on Resy would generally qualify for the credit. Going forward, that will no longer be the case. The change appears to coincide with a new indicator within the Resy app and website that labels participating restaurants with a message stating: “This venue currently qualifies for the Resy Credit, a benefit for select American Express® Card Members.

What Is Changing?

Here’s the full text of the notice:

Update to the Resy Credit Benefit

Effective August 1, 2026, U.S. restaurants and other food and beverage establishments (e.g., wineries, cafes) must be indicated as eligible for the Resy Credit on the Resy website or the Resy app at the time of purchase to qualify for the benefit. Qualifying restaurants and other food and beverage establishments will be indicated as eligible on their booking page on the Resy website or the Resy app and are subject to change at any time.”

Why This Matters

This appears to be a significant restriction of the Resy Credit benefit.

Since the credit launched, cardholders could generally use it at any restaurant that was available through Resy. Starting August 1, American Express will maintain a separate list of eligible establishments, and only those specifically marked with “This venue qualifies for the Resy Credit” will trigger the benefit.

Amex Resy Credit Will Require Eligible Resy Restaurants

The new labeling system gives American Express greater control over which restaurants qualify, and will most certainly reduce the number of eligible establishments.

If you regularly use your Resy Credits, you’ll now need to verify eligibility before making a purchase rather than simply checking whether a restaurant is listed on Resy.

Guru’s Wrap-up

This is a devaluation of the Resy Credit benefit. For many cardholders, one of the best aspects of the benefit was its simplicity, even if selection is not great if you’re not in one of the big cities. If a restaurant was on Resy, you could generally expect the credit to work.

Starting August 1, you’ll need to pay much closer attention. Hopefully American Express keeps most existing restaurants eligible, but the new language gives them the ability to narrow the list of qualifying merchants in the future.

HT: r/amex

Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, Valor, and the biggest VC winners from SpaceX’s IPO



The SpaceX IPO is a culmination—not only of the rocket and AI company’s journey but of a decades-long shift in venture capital.

Consider: In 2002, the year Elon Musk founded SpaceX, venture capital was in the aftermath of the dotcom bust and far smaller as an industry than it is today. Though it’s hard to say exactly the size, contemporary reports say that U.S. VCs deployed $20.3 billion into private companies in 2002. Some numbers come in higher, others lower, but regardless: Those 2002 numbers for all of VC are quaint next to the tens of billions poured into one funding round in OpenAI or Anthropic today. 

Venture’s scaled way up, and SpaceX going public means VC’s behemoths are set to win even more. Some great investor winners in the SpaceX IPO didn’t exist at the time SpaceX was first founded: For one, Founders Fund—started by PayPal mafiosos Peter Thiel, Luke Nosek, and Ken Howery in 2005—which first backed Musk’s rocket moonshot in 2008 to the tune of $20 million. Or Andreessen Horowitz, founded in 2009, which first backed SpaceX in 2023 when the company was still valued at $137 billion. 

Other key winners: Sequoia, which first backed SpaceX in 2019 with partner Shaun Maguire leading, has invested more than $2 billion in the company across funds, a source familiar with the matter confirmed. There’s Valor Equity Partners—run by longtime Musk ally Antonio Gracias—whose stake in SpaceX could even (impossible as it may seem) go north of $90 billion. (Other Valor investments include Zipline and WEKA.) 

Arguably the most interesting investor winner: DFJ Growth—founded in the 2000s after spinning off legendary-eventually-embattled firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson on the then-crazy idea there would be numerous unicorns staying private longer—invested in SpaceX from its first institutional fund in 2009. Initially, DFJ Growth backed SpaceX to the tune of $10 million, and since has invested more than $800 million in the company. Randy Glein, cofounder and managing partner at DFJ Growth, has been a SpaceX board observer since 2009. 

I spoke to Glein last year as I covered the firm’s $1.2 billion fifth fund: “When we were telling our prospective investors for that first fund, ‘we’re going to find companies that will be worth $1 billion or more,’ they’d start counting on their fingers: ‘How many of those have there been in the last five years?’” 

How much has changed, with SpaceX’s nearly $1.8 trillion valuation that popped on debut. So, SpaceX is a win for these investors, to be sure. But, given that returns will be concentrated among a limited number of VCs, is SpaceX a win for venture? It’s complicated: on one hand, absolutely, said Kyle Stanford, PitchBook director of U.S. venture capital research.

“It’s a huge win for VC firms,” he said. “It’s a concentrated win, but the sentiment is that everyone can say: ‘VC is still creating these returns.’ Now, you have something where you can say that IPOs are on their way back. Because if SpaceX does great, we have some momentum. And if OpenAI and Anthropic go out, maybe we have some companies starting to build a pipeline for an IPO in early 2027—regular unicorns, between $10 and $20 billion, that could be a big narrative.”

On the other hand, these returns are extremely concentrated, and the venture haves will have more, while the have-nots will have even less.

“If you look at SpaceX’s full cap table that we have, it’s not a bunch of emerging managers or mid-tier VCs,” said Stanford. “It’s the best, and then all the other major asset managers in the world.”

The SpaceX IPO is really the first time we have proof that the sometimes-multi-decade hold period for venture-backed companies (which has created massive tension between VCs and their limited partners waiting for cash) can produce spectacular results. The sector will grasp onto this for dear life, even if SpaceX is ultimately anomalous, as will be Anthropic and OpenAI. These three examples, if indeed the latter two are out by the end of the year, will be held up as what’s truly possible. Even if nothing like this is probably ever going to happen again. 

“These three IPOs are the biggest example of the power law of venture,” said Stanford. “Everyone’s going to say, ‘well, look at SpaceX and Anthropic and OpenAI’ forever. And when you look at the 2026 exit value charts—$4 trillion in exit value—every other bar is going to be tiny.” 

This Financial Advice Can Save Your Future #shorts #marathi #moneymanagement Marathi Podcast



CA Rachana Ranade shares powerful wealth-building advice in this eye-opening podcast clip about the difference between being truly rich and simply looking rich. In this conversation, she explains why financial discipline, smart spending habits, and increasing your income are the real secrets behind long-term wealth creation. She talks about living according to your income level, avoiding unnecessary lifestyle pressure, and focusing on building multiple income sources through side hustles, gigs, and online earning opportunities instead of blindly chasing luxury.
This episode is packed with practical financial lessons for students, salaried employees, entrepreneurs, and anyone who wants to become financially strong in today’s social media-driven world. If you want to learn how rich people actually think, how to manage money wisely, how to create extra income streams, and why discipline matters more than showing off — this is a must-watch conversation.

#rachanaranade #wealthcreation #moneymanagement #financialfreedom #personalfinance #sidehustle #passiveincome #financepodcast #richmindset #investing #businesspodcast #financialdiscipline #moneytips #indianfinance #entrepreneurship #successmindset #financialeducation #incomegrowth #marathipodcast #sarvakaahi

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Your Pool Is an Asset—It’s Also a Lawsuit Waiting to Happen


Summer contains the best three months of the year in short-term rental investing: occupancy and rates climb, guests book further out, and your calendar looks like the one you dreamed about when you underwrote the deal.

They are also the three months when a pool, hot tub, or wet deck can turn a profitable property into a six-figure legal problem faster than you can respond to a bad review.

This is not intended to be a scare piece. The numbers are what they are, and if you own a short-term rental with a water amenity, you should know about them.

The Data That Should Get Your Attention This Summer

The CDC estimates over 4,000 fatal unintentional drownings happen in the United States every year. That is 11 people every single day. Another 8,000 nonfatal drownings are treated in emergency departments annually, which works out to 22 per day. 

For children, the numbers are worse. Drowning is the leading cause of death for kids ages 1 to 4 and the second-leading cause of unintentional injury death for kids ages 5 to 14. 

The number that should matter most to anyone reading this: According to Pool Guard USA, about 81% of fatal child pool and spa drownings occur in residential settings, not public pools or water parks. These are properties that look exactly like yours. 

And all this peaks May through August, right on top of your highest-revenue booking window.

Hot Tubs Are Not Safer Just Because They Are Smaller and Shallower

A lot of STR hosts assume the liability risk is mostly about the pool. The hot tub feels lower stakes because the water is shallow and nobody is swimming laps.

The data says otherwise. Hospitality safety resources compiled from CPSC data report that more than 300 people die from hot tub-related accidents in the United States every year, with children under 5 accounting for roughly one-fifth of all hot tub drownings. 

About half of all hot tub injuries are caused by slips and falls around the tub. Around 10% involve heat overexposure. The rest are near-drownings and entrapment incidents.

That last category, entrapment, is what keeps liability attorneys busy. Entrapment means a drain cover that has not been inspected, a child who gets a limb or hair caught, or a guest who did not read the posted depth or temperature warning. These are the same mechanisms of injury that show up in wrongful death filings, just at a property that happens to be listed on Airbnb.

What a Claim Actually Costs

Nobody publishes a clean “average drowning settlement at a vacation rental” number, but wrongful death data across premises liability cases gives you a range worth knowing.

Recent wrongful death settlement analyses show that serious negligence cases typically land in the high-six-figure-to-seven-figure range. One review of 956 wrongful death cases found a mean settlement of around $973,000. Other analyses describe settlements ranging from $500,000 to over $1 million, with cases involving clear negligence and substantial lost earnings that reach several million dollars.

Even before you get to drowning, the slip-and-fall numbers are significant. A 2026 premises liability review puts the average residential slip-and-fall settlement on private property at around $105,000, with severe injuries regularly exceeding $500,000 and catastrophic cases topping $1 million. 

A wet pool deck, a missing antislip mat at the hot tub steps, and an unlit path from the back door to the spa at 10 p.m. are not edge cases. These are Tuesday nights in a vacation rental.

Before you scroll past that number, run your own property through the BiggerPockets landlord insurance calculator powered by Steadily and see what adequate coverage on your specific property actually costs. The gap between what you are paying now and what you should be paying is usually smaller than people expect, but the gap between your current coverage and a seven-figure claim is usually larger.

The Gap Your Standard Homeowner’s Policy Leaves Open

This is where many STR hosts find out too late that they were not actually covered.

Insurance industry guides treat a home pool as an “attractive nuisance,” which increases your premises liability exposure and leads standard insurers to recommend raising liability limits to at least $300,000 to $500,000, or adding an umbrella policy. That is for a standard residential property with occasional social guests. An STR is not that.

Standard homeowner’s insurance provides some personal liability coverage, but it is designed for the occasional dinner guest, not paying strangers booking through a platform three weekends a month. 

Multiple STR insurance guides, such as Guesty and Uplisting, are explicit on this point: Standard homeowner’s policies typically do not cover any sort of rental activity, especially at an STR when the property is regularly used for paying guests. Pools and hot tubs are specifically flagged as amenities that standard carriers often exclude or tightly limit.

The practical risk: If something goes wrong at your pool or hot tub during a guest’s stay and you are relying on a standard homeowner’s policy, you may face a denied claim on top of the injury itself. Some carriers will cancel or non-renew entirely when they discover regular STR use combined with a pool on the property.

If you are not sure where your current policy stands, the Steadily insurance calculator on BiggerPockets is a fast way to get a real number on what STR-specific coverage would cost for your property, without talking to anyone or filling out a lengthy application.

What STR-Specific Insurance Coverage Actually Looks Like

A dedicated STR or landlord policy built for vacation rental use treats the property as the business it is. That means:

  • Liability limits that explicitly include guests using pools and hot tubs, often $1 million or more per occurrence
  • Medical payments coverage for injured guests
  • Legal defense costs, which add up fast even when you win
  • Property damage coverage for guest misuse of water amenities
  • Loss of rental income if you have to take the property offline after an incident

A policy like this will cost more than a standard homeowner’s policy. That is the right trade-off. The extra annual premium is not large compared to the six- and seven-figure exposure a single serious incident creates.

Steadily is the official landlord insurance provider of BiggerPockets, built specifically for STR operators and landlords who need coverage that matches the actual risk profile of their properties, including water amenities. BiggerPockets Pro members get a 5% discount on premiums through the Pro Perks dashboard, worth up to $256 per year. 

The Practical Checklist Before Your First Summer Booking

Good insurance does not replace good operations. The properties that generate claims are usually the ones where the physical safety setup has been ignored

Before your peak season bookings check-in, run through this list:

  1. Pool fencing and gate latches: Self-closing, self-latching gates are code in most jurisdictions and a basic line of defense. Inspect them before every season.
  2. Drain covers: CPSC-compliant anti-entrapment drain covers are required by federal law under the Virginia Graeme Baker Pool and Spa Safety Act. If yours have not been inspected recently, have them inspected now.
  3. Antislip surfaces: The deck around your pool and the steps leading to your hot tub should have nonslip surfaces in good condition. Replace anything worn.
  4. Depth and safety signage: Posted pool depth markers, “no diving” signage in shallow areas, and hot tub temperature and time limit warnings are cheap. Replacing them after an incident does not help you.
  5. Lifesaving equipment: Have a reaching pole and life ring within easy access of the pool, with their location documented in your house manual.
  6. Lighting: Guests use pools and hot tubs at night. Unlit decks and steps are how slip-and-fall claims start.
  7. Hot tub chemical logs: Documented maintenance records are evidence of due diligence if a waterborne illness claim is ever filed.
  8. House rules in the listing: Explicit pool rules, hot tub occupancy limits, and prohibited hours in your listing and house manual create a paper trail that matters if a guest ignores them.

Final Thoughts

A pool or hot tub is one of the most effective revenue drivers in the STR category. Listings with hot tubs can see occupancy increases of up to 13% and charge meaningfully more per night compared to similar properties without them. That premium is real and worth having.

So is the liability. The same amenity that fills your calendar in July is also the one that generates the most serious guest-injury claims in the vacation rental space. 

The operators who run this well treat insurance, safety setup, and guest communication as part of the same system rather than separate tasks. They know exactly what their policy covers, have the physical safety basics dialed in, and are not finding out for the first time during a claim what their homeowner’s policy does and does not cover.

Summer is too good a season to spend it exposed. Run your property through the calculator and see where you stand.

This post is sponsored by Steadily, the official landlord insurance provider of BiggerPockets. Get an instant estimate at the BiggerPockets landlord insurance calculator powered by Steadily. BiggerPockets Pro members save 5% on premiums through the Pro Perks dashboard.

Newsom called homelessness California’s calling in 2020. His budget still spends less than 0.5% on it


“I know homelessness can be solved,” Gov. Gavin Newsom declared in his 2020 state of the state address. “This is our cause. This is our calling.”

But six years later, his state is spending just a small sliver of its budget, less than 0.5%, on helping the state’s estimated 181,934 people who are homeless on any given night by providing them with shelter, rental assistance and supportive housing. That share is essentially the same as in 2020.

And yet homelessness is also a big priority for the public. In 2023, for example, 22% of the registered California voters told Quinnipiac University pollsters that it was the most urgent issue facing their state – the biggest share for any challenge. In a 2025 Politico and University of California Berkeley poll, 58% of the state’s voters said state government most needed to improve its performance on homelessness and housing – more than any other policy area.

I study what drives homelessness and what reduces it as the director of the University of Southern California’s Homelessness Policy Research Institute. My research team recently analyzed state spending on addressing the needs of homeless people and reducing homelessness to see if state budgets back up that stated political commitment to make the issue a high priority.

Same spending levels as 2020

We analyzed California budget documents and legislative analyses, adding up programs specifically targeted at preventing and ending homelessness for every fiscal year from 2020 through 2026. We found that California is spending approximately US$1.5 billion on homelessness programs in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2026. This amounts to 0.47% of the state’s $321 billion general fund, the portion of the budget over which state policymakers have the most control.

As a share of the general fund, homelessness spending in 2026 is essentially the same as it was before the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the 2020 fiscal year, California devoted approximately $1.1 billion, not adjusting for inflation, to programs targeted at preventing and ending homelessness. That was about 0.46% of its budget – and reflected spending priorities set before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Brief surge in spending

Homelessness spending increased dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic, when California was running some of the largest budget surpluses in its history.

That extra revenue came from strong tax collections, capital gains windfalls and federal pandemic aid, producing some of the largest budget surpluses in state history.

In the 2022 fiscal year, California devoted approximately $5.8 billion to homelessness programs, equal to 2.1% of its general fund. Spending remained elevated over the following year at roughly $4.7 billion, or 1.6% of the general fund.

As those temporary surpluses faded, homelessness spending fell sharply. It declined to approximately $2.4 billion, or 0.82% of the general fund, in the 2024 fiscal year. It then fell again to about $1.7 billion, or 0.55% of the general fund, in 2025 before returning to roughly 0.47% in 2026.

Homelessness did not immediately decline during the spending surge. However, the pace of growth in the number of homeless people in California slowed substantially compared with the rapid increases seen in the late 2010s. And in 2025, California recorded a modest decrease for the first time in years.

Other funding sources

To be sure, the share of the federal budget devoted to homelessness is far smaller than California’s.

The Housing and Urban Development Department’s national homelessness assistance budget totaled $4 billion in the federal government’s 2024 fiscal year, which ended on Sept. 30. That is less than 0.06% of the $7 trillion the U.S. spent in 2025.

Around $700 million of that federal spending on homelessness flows to California each year through HUD’s Continuum of Care and Emergency Solutions Grant programs. California’s state spending and this federal funding add up to approximately $2.2 billion annually, which is still less than 1% of California’s total budget.

Some Californian local governments, especially the city of Los Angeles, have tried to fill the gap by spending money out of their own coffers to help the homeless and reduce homelessness.

Los Angeles voters approved Measure HHH in 2016 – a $1.2 billion bond for permanent supportive housing — and Measure H in 2017, a quarter-cent sales tax generating roughly $500 million a year for homeless services.

In November 2024, Los Angeles voters replaced Measure H with Measure A, a half-cent sales tax projected to raise more than $1 billion annually. Taken together, these measures have generated several billion dollars in local homelessness funding over the past decade.

Other jurisdictions have pursued similar strategies. San Francisco voters, for example, approved Proposition C in 2018, creating a dedicated business tax to fund homelessness services and prevention programs.

Private philanthropy adds to the mix as well.

Foundations, such as the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, have channeled tens of millions of dollars into California homelessness initiatives, supporting everything from permanent supportive housing to policy research. These philanthropic contributions are meaningful but small relative to the scale of the problem.

If homelessness is truly one of the defining challenges facing California, then I believe the state must devote resources commensurate with the scale of the problem. Otherwise, we are likely to keep getting what we pay for.

Benjamin F. Henwood, Professor of Social Policy and Health, University of Southern California

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Capital One Savor $250 Signup Bonus After $500 Spend (Plus, 0% APR Intro)


The Offer

Direct Link to offer

  • Capital One Savor Rewards offers a signup bonus of $250 after spending $500 within 3 months.
  • Also: 0% APR on purchases for 12 months.

Card Details

  • No annual fee
  • Card earns the following rewards rates with no earnings limit, no minimum redemption, and no rewards expiration:
    • 3% cashback at Grocery Stores
    • 2% cashback on Dining and Entertainment
    • 1% cashback everywhere else
  • No foreign transaction fees, like all other Capital One cards

Read our original review of the Savor card here. 

Our Verdict

This is a nice easy bonus of $250 with low spend requirement. The 0% APR intro rate might interest some as well.

Typical bonus is $150-$200. We once did see a better offer, but overall this is something to consider. We’ll add this to our List of Best Current Credit Card Signup Bonuses.