SAN DIEGO — The San Diego County Taxpayers Association joined forces with several mayors Wednesday to ask the San Diego Regional Task Force on Homelessness to provide more transparency when it comes to data sharing.

“We want to see effective and efficient use of our taxpayer dollars,” said Haney Hong, President and CEO of the San Diego County Taxpayers Association. “So much money is going into homelessness services and it is unclear to you and me whether that money is working.”

Standing with Vista Mayor John Franklin and Chula Vista Mayor John McCann, they are prescribing best practices for transparency and information sharing across all public entities that serve the homeless, they say, to better learn what’s working and what’s not. 

“We were disheartened to learn that the Regional Task Force on Homelessness doesn’t automatically share their data with agencies that fund various homeless service programs,” Hong said.

Hong says when asked for specific data on the homeless population, the task force declined to provide it, citing privacy issues.

“Taxpayers have a right to know how their taxpayer dollars are being spent,” Hong said.

Franklin says transparency is key to understanding success and failures. He says, in his city, they looked at each individual case, found the failures and are now able to correct them.

“I need granular information,” Franklin said. “I need to know why people were rejected. We do not want to compromise anyone’s personally identifiable information. We will respect everyone’s confidentiality. But we must be able to … follow the progress of individuals through their journey.”

FOX 5 reached out to the San Diego Regional Task Force on Homelessness for comment but did not hear back.