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All over California, cities are falling far short when it comes to providing enough shelter for their homeless communities. 

More than 69,000 homeless residents live in Los Angeles County, for instance, but that county has just over 21,000 beds in shelters and temporary housing programs.

It’s a similar story in Sacramento County, which counted nearly 9,300 unhoused residents in its last census, but has just over 3,000 shelter and temporary housing beds. 

Those massive gaps – which ensure thousands of people remain homeless – are visible in cities throughout California. But despite constant reassurances from Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers that getting people off the street is a top priority, there’s no state requirement for cities and counties to make sure they have enough shelters or housing for homeless residents. 

A bill working its way through the Legislature could change that, and potentially lead to sanctions against local governments that fail to plan for the needs of homeless Californians. 

Senate Bill 7 would — for the first time — require cities and counties to plan enough beds for everyone living without a place to call home. It would go beyond just temporary shelter, also including permanent housing placements.

Its author, Sen. Catherine Blakespear, a Democrat from Encinitas, called it a “transformational idea” that could help move the needle on homelessness where other attempts have failed.

“Everything we’re doing currently, it will result in homelessness growing,” Blakespear said in an interview. “It will not result in homelessness going down.”

California cities’ housing goals

Currently, the state makes sure every city and county plans for new housing through a process known as the regional housing needs allocation. In all, the state requires cities and counties to plan for 2.5 million new homes over the next eight years — about 25% of which must be affordable for very low-income occupants. 

But this method doesn’t require cities and counties to plan any housing that is specifically for homeless residents. 

If the bill passes, local officials would have to include homeless housing in their plans. How much is yet to be determined, but it would be based on each city’s point-in-time census count of its homeless population. Ideally, Blakespear said, the plans would require a unit for every single person counted.

The idea comes at a time when the state is forcing local governments to take more responsibility for providing housing.

Newsom’s administration sued the Orange County coastal enclave of Huntington Beach earlier this year for failing to adopt a housing plan. And cities that flout state housing law also are subject to the “builder’s remedy,” which allows developers to bypass local zoning laws for certain projects.   

Blakespear’s bill has gained some early support from housing activists, and recently passed out of the Senate Governance and Finance Committee by a 6-2 vote. While some local leaders are sure to chafe under yet another state-imposed housing requirement, several big-city mayors are tentatively supportive.

Learn more about legislators mentioned in this story

D

Catherine Blakespear

State Senate, District 38 (Encinitas)

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D

Catherine Blakespear

State Senate, District 38 (Encinitas)

Time in office

2022—present

Background

Mayor of Encinitas

Contact

Email

District 38 Demographics

Voter Registration

Dem 38%

GOP 32%

No party 24%

Campaign Contributions

Sen. Catherine Blakespear has taken at least $2.7 million from the Party sector since she was elected to the legislature. That represents 86% of her total campaign contributions.

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“The final details in the bill matter,” Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said in an emailed statement, “but any bill that moves the state and cities closer to making housing and services for the homeless a mandatory obligation for government is a step in the right direction.”

Data collected by Sacramento County’s homeless services agencies shows the county has 3,080 beds in its year-round shelters and transitional housing programs — 6,198 fewer than its estimated total number of unhoused residents. 

Los Angeles County has 21,100 placements in its temporary housing, safe parking and motel programs, according to a county dashboard — not enough to accommodate even a third of its unhoused population. 

Advocates want more money for homeless housing

At a recent hearing, some bill critics wondered where the money would come from to build all this extra housing.

“The funding’s going to be incredibly critical,” said Jason Rhine, assistant director of legislative affairs for the League of California Cities. “If we do not have the money, we will not be able to house individuals.”

The league hasn’t officially opposed the bill, but says it has concerns.

Blakespear wants to pair her bill with a new state fund, which would help cities, counties and nonprofits build housing for people who are homeless or at risk of losing their homes. But it remains to be seen how much — if any — money the Legislature allocates, as the state faces a budget deficit of at least $22.5 billion this year.

Some aspects of the legislation are still up for negotiation. It’s unclear what type of homeless housing cities and counties could use to fulfill the new requirements. Blakespear envisions it would include both permanent and temporary — meaning apartments, but also shelters, RV sites, single-room-occupancy hotels, and more. 

It’s also unclear exactly what each city and county would be on the hook for under the new bill, and what the penalties would be for noncompliance. The state’s current process requires cities to plan for housing, including zoning for it and removing roadblocks from its construction, but doesn’t require them to get it built.

Much of the housing cities plan for during that state-mandated process never gets constructed. And low-income housing fares the worst. In the last eight-year planning cycle, just 20% of the very-low-income units needed statewide were permitted. 

The California Building Industry Association opposes Blakespear’s bill, worrying money to fund it would come from raising taxes and fees paid by homebuilders. Furthermore, existing law already requires cities and counties to assess their need for emergency shelter, said Cornelious Burke, the association’s vice president of legislative affairs.

Blakespear said she has no intention of using construction fees to cover the cost of her bill. And she disagreed the state’s existing shelter-assessment requirement renders her bill unnecessary. 

“Those are just words,” she said. “That is not an actual obligation to provide anything for people who are unhoused.”

Ray Bramson of Destination: Home, a nonprofit that helps spearhead the homelessness response in Santa Clara County, said the bill could help get more homeless housing built. But it depends on how the details of the bill shake out, he said. For one thing, the bill should focus on permanent housing that comes with supportive services like mental health care – not on temporary shelter, Bramson said. 

And, the bill must come with funding. 

“If not,” he said, “then it’s just another goal that we’re going to struggle to meet collectively.”

Technically, the encampment of about a dozen tents at W Street and Alhambra Boulevard in Sacramento is illegal. 

The tents, tarps and associated debris — clothing, a discarded crib, boxes of rotting food — are blocking the sidewalk in violation of a new city ordinance. Located on a major thoroughfare and across the street from a neighborhood of houses, the camp is one of the most complained about in the city, said Hezekiah Allen with Sacramento’s Department of Community Response. 

But on a recent Tuesday morning, his team wasn’t out there threatening to arrest people, or even telling them to move. Instead, city outreach worker Jawid Sharifi was greeting encampment residents, whom he knew by name, with fist bumps. Gently, he inquired whether they’d given any more thought to moving into a city-run trailer park for unhoused residents.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Sharifi told a man in a black hoodie who emerged from a tent. “We’ll come back here in the afternoon also to talk to you guys.” 

As in many California cities, Sacramento’s shortage of affordable housing and shelter options makes it difficult to enforce anti-camping laws. But despite obvious challenges, local ordinances designed to crack down on encampments are becoming increasingly common.

Liberal leaders in cities and counties throughout California, pushed to their wits’ end by massive encampments and irate voters, are taking steps to ban camps. Cities including Los Angeles, Sacramento, Elk Grove, Oakland, Santa Cruz and Milpitas — all run by Democrats — passed ordinances in the past three years to target behavior such as setting up tents near schools and other buildings, blocking sidewalks or even camping at all when shelter is available. Officials in San Jose and San Diego are considering similar measures.  

“It’s a reflection of where we’ve gotten to as a society on this issue,” said Democratic political strategist Daniel Conway, who led support for a 2022 Sacramento ballot measure that will make large encampments illegal if shelter is available. “Because I think there’s a recognition that the kind of status quo of having over 100,000 people in California living and dying on the streets, it’s terrible for those people…And at the same time there’s this increased sense that people don’t feel safe in their own neighborhoods and their own communities anymore.”

So far, state lawmakers have been reluctant to follow with new anti-camping laws. Two bills backed by Republican legislators would take the unprecedented step of making it illegal for unhoused people to camp in certain areas — including near schools — throughout the entire state. To date, the state’s involvement in encampment management mostly has been restricted to agencies such as Caltrans and the California Highway Patrol clearing camps from state land. 

Broader anti-camping measures can be politically and morally fraught, as well as logistically complicated. Activists argue displacing unhoused people from their camps is traumatizing and dangerous to their health. 

And such laws run the risk, particularly for liberal lawmakers, of appearing to criminalize homelessness — so far, Democratic legislators by and large have been unwilling to sign on in support. 

The new local ordinances, which come with penalties that can include fines or even arrest, have become a flashpoint in a heated debate. Advocates for the rights of unhoused people argue they’re cruel and unconstitutional, while some housed neighbors – sick of seeing human waste, trash and discarded needles in the street – say they don’t go far enough. Enforcement of the new ordinances, which largely is driven by complaints, has been uneven, and most cities don’t have the resources to respond to every encampment.

And then there’s the state’s legendary affordable housing shortage. Sky-high rental prices have forced multitudes of Californians onto the street, where they’re confronted with a dearth of shelter beds, addiction treatment and mental health help. Though anti-camping laws may score political points for officials under immense pressure to clean up their city’s streets, without places for unhoused people to go, they continue to move block by block around our cities. 

For example, Sacramento County, which counted more than 9,000 unhoused residents in its 2022 homeless census, has about 2,400 shelter beds. 

“The overarching issue is if you don’t have actually acceptable places for people to go, then people can be forced to leave but then they’ll just go somewhere else,” said Jennifer Wolch, a professor emerita at UC Berkeley who specializes in issues surrounding homelessness. “And it will become a problem for another neighborhood.”

Should the state decide where encampments can be?

Despite what’s going on at the local level — and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s repeated insistence that clearing California homeless camps is a top priority — Democrats in the Legislature have been reluctant to jump on board.

Senate Bill 31, which would make it illegal to sit, lie or sleep within 1,000 feet of a school, daycare, park or library, failed to make it out of the Senate Public Safety Committee and is awaiting reconsideration. The bill, introduced by Senate GOP leader Brian Jones of San Diego County and backed by seven other Republicans, has just one Democratic co-author – Sen. Bill Dodd of Napa. Representatives from 15 different organizations across the state spoke out against the bill during its committee hearing last month, calling it “misguided” and accusing supporters of prioritizing criminalization instead of health and safety.

Assembly Bill 257, another GOP bill that would make it illegal to camp within 500 feet of a school or daycare center, also was voted down in committee. Author Josh Hoover, a Folsom Republican, tried to assuage critics by narrowing its focus — it no longer applies to parks or libraries and now prohibits “camping” instead of “sitting” or “lying” — but to no avail. Even so, it’s not dead yet. The bill was granted reconsideration and Hoover remains hopeful.

“I personally have found needles in the park where my kids play, and I think this is something that most of the public finds unacceptable,” he said in an interview. “It needs to be addressed immediately statewide.”

At least two newly elected Democratic lawmakers voted for local anti-camping ordinances while serving on city councils last year, Sen. Angelique Ashby of Sacramento and Assemblymember Stephanie Nguyen of Elk Grove. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re sold on a statewide ban. 

“I believe that addressing these concerns at a local level rather than a statewide level is the best approach,” Nguyen said in an emailed statement. 

Ashby refused an interview request and her office wouldn’t say whether the senator supported the statewide efforts. 

City leaders also don’t necessarily want the state to step in. 

“When it comes to where do you enforce a no-encampment zone, I feel like that should be a city decision,” said San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan.

San Jose City Council voted in 2021 to target homeless encampments near schools for removal, and since then has cleared 42 school-zone camps. Mahan said the experiment has been successful, as people have agreed to move from the school zones without creating “a huge tax on city resources or a big controversy.”

But Shaunn Cartwright, a local advocate for the rights of unhoused people, said many of those displaced from school zones just move their camps to other locations in the city. 

“All it does is stigmatize unhoused people as these are people we can’t trust around children,” she said of the city’s policy. “And it’s ridiculous because many unhoused people obviously are parents.” 

Mahan is considering eventually implementing broader no-camping zones in places like key business districts, but only after his city increases its temporary housing capacity.

Brigitte Nicoletti with the East Bay Community Law Center said in addition to being a “really cruel and shortsighted way of addressing homelessness,” ordinances that ban camping when there’s not enough shelter may violate unhoused people’s constitutional rights. Another problem: When clearing encampments, many cities will offer shelter not everyone can accept – whether it’s because of mental or physical health conditions, or because it would force them to leave behind beloved pets or important possessions. 

“It’s really just pandering to people who are freaked out by health and public safety issues,” she said of the uptick in no-camping ordinances, “but it does nothing to address people’s actual needs.” 

Democratic leaders want more California homeless shelters

Several factors led to the growth of massive homeless encampments throughout the state and prompted the recent spate of anti-camping ordinances. In addition to an overall increase in the state’s homeless population – it’s estimated more than 170,000 unhoused people lived in the state last year, compared to just over 150,000 in 2019 – many cities stopped clearing homeless camps during the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing them to grow and become more entrenched. 

A 2018 ruling from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals also changed the game. In Martin vs. Boise, the court ruled cities cannot penalize someone for sleeping on public property if no other options exist – which many cities have interpreted to mean they can’t clear an encampment unless they have enough shelter beds for the displaced residents. 

Cities’ new anti-camping ordinances take advantage of a loophole in that ruling – even if they have no space in their shelters, they still can make it illegal to sleep outside in certain places or at certain times.

But no liberal California leader wants to be accused of “criminalizing” homelessness. So most are pairing anti-camping ordinances with a push for resources. Mahan of San Jose wants to build 1,000 new temporary housing units this year before he expands no-camping zones. Santa Cruz’s no camping ordinance has yet to take effect, and won’t do so until the city can create 150 new shelter beds and establish a place for unhoused people to store their belongings.

Sacramento’s Measure O, passed by voters in November, includes a requirement to set up more shelter beds before cracking down further on camps – something city leaders plan to achieve via a new partnership with the county. 

“It’s first up to the society through its government to provide safe dignified alternatives to people,” said Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, who has become one of the state’s most high-profile examples of a progressive politician caught between the pressures to clear camps and to respond to homelessness with compassion. “And if that test is met…to say people cannot choose to live out on the streets.”

Uneven enforcement

Enforcement of these ordinances presents a tricky question: How do cities get unhoused people to comply without punishing them for having no home? Approaches vary widely throughout the state – and even within cities. 

• In Elk Grove, the city can confiscate homeless people’s belongings if they violate the city’s new anti-camping ordinance, but can’t fine or arrest them. The Sacramento suburb has not yet seized anyone’s belongings. 
• San Diego, on the other hand, after issuing warnings and offering people shelter and other help, wrote 925 citations and made 513 arrests last year for violations of laws aimed at homeless camps, according to Voice of San Diego. 

San Diego is trying to do even more. Last year, Mayor Todd Gloria directed police to target anyone who had a tent up during daytime hours. But follow-through was “somewhat uneven,” Gloria admitted in an interview, due to police understaffing and COVID-related issues. Now he’s backing a proposal that would prohibit all encampments on public property when shelter is available, and bar camps near schools and shelters even when it’s not. 

“The city is providing more solutions than it ever has,” Gloria said. “And I think as a result the taxpayers helping to fund this should have a right to expect safe and hygienic public spaces.”

• Oakland passed a controversial encampment management policy in 2020 that prioritizes clearing camps near schools, homes and businesses, but doesn’t give authorities the ability to cite or arrest people for camping. The city cleared encampments in 226 locations over the past year.

• Sacramento in 2020 passed an ordinance making it illegal to camp within 25 feet of “critical infrastructure” such as government buildings, bridges and electrical wires. In August, the City Council passed a measure banning homeless encampments that block sidewalks, and in October they expanded the critical infrastructure ordinance to ban camping within 500 feet of schools.

The Sacramento ordinances are enforced selectively, generally based on complaints made by residents calling 311. The city has about 20 outreach workers, like Sharifi, who try to connect people to shelters and warn occupants of problem camps that they need to move. If they refuse, police or code enforcement may take over.  

The intention isn’t to be punitive, said Assistant City Manager Mario Lara.

“We’ve responded to thousands of calls,” he said. “We’ve not issued any citations or any arrests.”

Camps on route to Sacramento school

Though encampments still dot the city, some Sacramento residents say they’ve seen a little improvement. Last year, the route Amy Gardner’s 8th-grade daughter walked to Sutter Middle School got so bad that she and other parent and community volunteers formed a group to escort kids past an environment she characterized as rife with snarling dogs, human waste, broken glass, needles and people in the throes of mental health crises. 

It took months, but the city finally cleared the main camp on the route, under an Interstate 80 overpass, Gardner said. The kids now feel safe walking to school.

But the problem didn’t go away.

“The camps have shifted and moved,” she said. “It’s not that everyone got shelter.”

Some people from under the overpass relocated about eight blocks over, where more than a dozen tents recently lined 29th Street. Damian Newton, who has been homeless for a dozen years, was one of them. The city told him and his neighbors the bridge they slept under is off-limits because it’s “critical infrastructure,” Newton said. 

“They just didn’t want us in sight,” 38-year-old Newton said. “What damage have we really done to schools? What damage have we really done to bridges?” 

Soon, he’ll have to move again. As he talked to a reporter on a recent Thursday, while sitting on a bare mattress in the doorway of his tent, Newton said the California Highway Patrol had been by that morning to tell him and other camp residents they had to leave their new home within four days. 

Newton said he’s been offered a shelter bed before, but after seeing friends accept and then end up back on the street, he doesn’t see the point. Activists and those who have lived in shelters throughout California say residents sometimes chafe under a shelter’s strict rules, feel uncomfortable or unsafe there or get frustrated by the lack of options to transition from there into permanent housing.   

So where will Newton go next? He’s not sure. Maybe across the street, until someone complains and he has to pack up again. 

“Not many places that’s left to go, really,” he said. 

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Two weeks after withholding $1 billion in homelessness funding over lackluster local plans, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Friday that most cities and counties would get the funds as early as next week anyway — as long as in the next round, they commit to more aggressive plans to reduce street homelessness.

But it’s been a whiplash-inducing couple of weeks, triggered by a funding process that frustrated both the governor and the locals. Newsom dissed local applicants for seeming too complacent about a dire California problem, while the applicants retorted that the Newsom administration sent conflicting signals — and that in any case, state lawmakers had inadvertently given them a financial motive to lowball their goals. 

More than 100 local mayors and county officials gathered virtually and in-person in a sleek downtown Sacramento government building Friday afternoon to broadly discuss how to better tackle the state’s most pernicious crisis.

“It was nice to hear their progress, and it was nice to hear their recognition that we have to get to another level,” Newsom told reporters following the over two hour-long private meeting.

It was a quick reversal some local leaders and advocates saw as a political stunt: The episode gave everyone a chance to air their grievances, but landed on no specific targets, while briefly risking the continuity of services for people experiencing homelessness.

“If you asked me what emerged from the meeting, I don’t know. I did not hear any specific policy changes,” said Sam Liccardo, mayor of San Jose. But, he added, “Nobody’s going to criticize the state or the governor at a time when it’s critical to get resources to bring people out of the cold. Lives depend on this.”

Other local leaders said they welcomed the prodding.

“Sometimes, you have to provoke,” said Darrel Steinberg, mayor of Sacramento. “And then gather around a table like we did today, and actually talk about what it’s going to take to provide a further jolt to this problem.”

The governor sent shockwaves through the state two weeks ago, just days before Election Day, when he summarily rejected every local homeless action plan. On the line: nearly $1 billion in homelessness funding. The plans, altogether, promised to reduce visible street homelessness by 2% between 2020 and 2024, or 2,000 fewer people statewide — which Newsom had called “simply unacceptable.”

His move triggered chaos among many of the 13 largest cities, 58 counties and 44 homeless service providers who went through the process. Many of them thought they had been approved after workshopping the plans with Newsom’s own homelessness agency, only to learn of their rejection en masse.

But local governments didn’t have much of an incentive to shoot for the stars in their plans, either, because of the way the governor and Legislature wrote the grant. In the name of accountability, they tied nearly a fifth of the $1 billion to local governments meeting their own unsheltered targets. With more people falling into homelessness than they can catch, many felt ambition might set them up for failure.

That criticism came up during the meeting, Newsom told reporters, holding up yellow pages ripped from a notepad.

“We worked with 120 members of the Legislature to put this forward,” he chuckled. “And now we’re working with 75 jurisdictions on these plans… In fact, literally right here, the recommendations: ‘What specifically do you want to change in terms of these metrics and plans?’ And that’s exactly what this conversation was about going forward.”

As soon as applicants sign a pledge to submit more ambitious unsheltered targets and try harder in their plans for the next $1 billion grant — the final round of flexible local homelessness funding approved in the 2021 budget —  the state will start cutting checks for this round, according to Jason Elliott, Newsom’s deputy chief of staff. Those new plans are due Nov. 29. A handful of local governments will have to work with the state to adjust their current plans before seeing the funding, although Elliott declined to name which ones.

Punishing the emergency room

During the pandemic, homelessness only spiked, and experts expect to continue to see its fallout on the streets in the coming years as rental assistance and eviction bans end. Between 2019 and 2022, homelessness increased by at least 22,500, to 173,800 people statewide, according to a CalMatters analysis of local point-in-time counts. Nearly 70% of those people were sleeping outdoors or in vehicles, while the rest stayed in shelters and transitional housing.  (These biennial visual headcounts on a given night often are criticized for their inaccuracies.)

Yet the state asked cities and counties to calculate their 2024 goals based on their lower pre-pandemic counts of homeless people. At the time the application was due this summer, most localities simply figured they couldn’t promise to make homelessness that much better when it had already grown so much worse, and was on track to keep worsening. And being too ambitious risked failure to meet their targets and losing any shot at the bonus money.

Newsom saw what they did and cried foul. He called out the Sacramento region in particular — though not by name — for its lack of ambition: Instead of promising a reduction, the local governments and service providers foresaw a 71% hike in homelessness in their report. Why? That’s exactly how much homelessness had already risen in the capital city this year, and the latest data that would be available by the time communities were evaluated on their progress to qualify for $180 million in bonus funding statewide.

Comparing the relatively current 2022 numbers with the 2024 goals, communities had really signed up for a 4% or 5,000 person reduction, according to a CalMatters analysis — which if achieved would be better than the state has done in years. Since 2015, homelessness has only increased in California, by an average of 7% a year, or about 8,300 people.

After the turmoil of the past couple of weeks, Steinberg said Sacramento has now put forth a new goal, promising a reduction of 15%, or 1,000 fewer unsheltered people, by 2024. How progress might be measured differently remains unclear.

The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which promised a 10% decline, or 4,600 less unsheltered people between 2020 and 2024, took a similar approach.

“If the (count) alone can mean that we receive 0% of the bonus funding, of course we’re going to approach it conservatively,” said Molly Rysman, the authority’s chief program officer.

Still, Newsom had a point: Some regions had set targets that would represent more than 30% growth between 2022 and their 2024 goals. Bakersfield, for example, initially promised to lower street homelessness by 1%. But after a big fall in unsheltered homelessness this year, their new goal would represent a hike of 37%, or 266 people.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development — which mandates the homeless count — has often advised against tying it to funding because shooting for a certain number could influence its accuracy. Still, the point-in-time count remains the only uniform way to measure the number of people sleeping on the streets.

“It’s imperfect at the moment and over the years… I hope we can evolve and consider different strategies,” Newsom said, suggesting the count can miss homeless people who are less visible. “Now what I see is what I see on the streets. And that’s a challenge.”

The federal department instead advises measuring success using the count in conjunction with other outcomes, like higher placements into permanent housing or fewer returns to homelessness.

“If I see positive trends in those other areas, and either stagnation or maybe just a slight downturn in the (count) that’s actually probably a positive thing,” a HUD spokesperson who would only speak anonymously told CalMatters.

California, like many other states, has seen a massive jump in homelessness since 2015, “way beyond the great work that many communities are doing to house people,” the spokesperson added. The driver: a housing shortage propelling skyrocketing rents. 

Newsom himself promised to abate that shortage when he first ran for governor, vowing to oversee the building of 3.5 million homes. He’s fallen dramatically short of his goals.

Local service providers felt unfairly stung by Newsom’s criticism because they have no control over housing unaffordability and the other system failures that cause homelessness. And while they are getting more state funds than ever before, their resources don’t match demand. Funding the current affordable housing need alone would require nearly $18 billion a year, according to an analysis from Housing California and California Housing Partnership, two affordable housing policy advocacy groups.

“This would be like the governor saying, I’m going to hold funding to emergency departments because the number of car accidents in your community hasn’t gone down,” said Anna Laven, executive director of the Bakersfield Kern Regional Homeless Collaborative. The collaborative is one of 44 “continuums of care” in California that oversee the region’s homelessness response and applied for the grants in conjunction with city and county governments.

‘He surprised everyone’

When Newsom withheld the funds earlier this month, service providers were aghast.

“He surprised everyone, up and down the state,” said Stephen Simon, interim executive director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, another continuum of care.

Laven, from Bakersfield, shared with CalMatters a Sept. 1  email from the California Interagency Council on Homelessness — which ultimately reports to Newsom —  saying their application had been “moved forward for final review in preparation for the award and disbursement process.” She thought it had been approved. But when she asked for a contract and check, it never came. Instead, they got additional questions about their application weeks later, which she thought was a mistake. Then came Newsom’s announcement that he was yanking the money.

“We were all feeling pretty blindsided and you know, sort of reeling,” she said.

The council “conducted intensive technical assistance over a six-month period” with all applicants, grants director Victor Duron reported during a Nov. 10 meeting. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority said its own meetings with the council had gone so well, it had already struck contracts, including one to fund more than 1,000 interim housing beds, with its $84 million share.

“They wanted to see impact as soon as possible, and so we followed that guidance and allocated all of the dollars,” said the authority’s Rysman.

The state had approved none of the applications before requesting additional information, according to Lourdes Castro Ramírez, secretary of the Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency, which directly oversees the council. She told CalMatters “there was no conflicting communication” from her agency and the governor’s office.

“At the end of the day we all have the same goal,” said Laven of Bakersfield. “I just wish we were working together.”

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As she headed to her car after two hours of counting and surveying Sacramento’s homeless population, the state’s top housing official acknowledged there is a long road ahead.

“We’re building the system, building the capacity, building the data, and communities are rising to the occasion. I know people are really frustrated because they feel like they don’t see that change,” said Lourdes Castro Ramírez, secretary of the Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency. “But I don’t think you can see change that is going to be long-lasting overnight.”

As she spoke, just a few blocks away, a homeless encampment was going up in flames. 

No one was injured, unlike a fire earlier the same day at a San Francisco encampment that killed a woman and that Gov. Gavin Newsom called “unconscionable.” But dozens of people — who had been camping beneath the on-ramp to Highway 50 on one of the coldest nights of the year — watched as firefighters sprayed hundreds of gallons of water at the inferno they had once called home.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” said John Vasquez, who said he had been living there for nearly two years. “We don’t have anything. Everything got burned. Clothes, tents, IDs.”

The 911 call came from another volunteer for Sacramento’s point-in-time count, a Census-like tally of people experiencing homelessness that took place across California last week. As those numbers trickle in over the summer, experts believe the data will help illustrate the reality Californians can no longer ignore: Homelessness has reached a tipping point.

California last tallied its homeless population in January 2020, and found at least 161,000 people without a roof over their heads on any given night, with the biggest concentration in Los Angeles. Most were single adults, about a third were chronically homeless and Black Californians were over-represented in the count nearly five-fold.

The world has changed a lot during the deadliest pandemic in a century.

The state poured billions of dollars into alleviating homelessness, creating thousands of new shelter beds and housing units. But the housing affordability crisis — to which most experts attribute homelessness — only worsened as millions lost their jobs and rents skyrocketed. Shelters also reduced bed capacity and federal officials urged local law enforcement not to disband camps like the one in Sacramento to guard against the coronavirus, making tent cities more visible than ever.

That’s why most researchers aren’t wondering whether the new homeless numbers will show an increase. The only question is, by how much.

The result of California’s tally is very likely to be an undercount, in part because the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which orders the count, excludes people who are couch-surfing or staying in cheap motels in their definition of homelessness. Researchers say that means families with children who are teetering on the edge are most likely to be overlooked.

It also relies largely on volunteers to count what they think they see, and on local agencies to calculate the population of the areas they don’t cover, estimations later verified by HUD.

“I’m counting one, two, three, four, five, six down there, seven, maybe eight tents on this side,” said Jason Pu, HUD’s regional administrator in charge of California, Arizona, Hawaii and Nevada, pointing across the dimly lit street at a string of tents and tarps beside Highway 50. “What do you think?”

Cities with a dropoff in volunteers because of the ongoing pandemic may report a drop in the homeless population, even if it actually grew, said Chris Weare, a UC Berkeley lecturer who researches homelessness. Weare believes some jurisdictions keep their count artificially low for political optics, even though a city’s share of state and federal homeless dollars is based on these numbers.

“Think of the headlines,” he said.

Is all the money making a difference?

For all its flaws, the count is still an invitation for policymakers to interact with the people affected by their decisions, Castro Ramírez said at a small kickoff event at CSU Sacramento.

“Very few people come over here and talk to us,” said Jessica Hud, who’s been homeless for five years, and had been staying in the encampment on X and 10th Street for about seven months.

But like their housed neighbors — who in recent polls have expressed despair over the government’s handling of homelessness — many also say the situation is at its worst.

“I’ve lived in Sacramento all my life and I’ve never seen it like this,” said Rocknie Simon, Hud’s partner, who has been homeless for about 10 years.

Why isn’t the state’s generous spending more visible on the state’s streets? 

Officials and advocates chalk it up to decades of disinvestment. ​In 2012, for example, the state began unwinding its redevelopment agencies, which were in charge of revitalizing “blighted” areas across the state.​ With the end of redevelopment came the end of the single largest source of non-federal money for affordable housing in the state, and California lawmakers didn’t begin to plug that hole until around 2019.

“We’re trying to correct decades of disinvestment, lack of prioritization, gentrification gone wild…. We don’t fix a problem that’s been brewing since Vietnam and exacerbated over the last two decades by tech and other things in five years,” said Jennifer Loving, chief executive officer of Destination: Home, a homelessness nonprofit in San Jose. For every two people who are housed in her community, another three become homeless.

But if tracking data on how many people are homeless is difficult, tracking the payoff from billions of dollars the state is now spending to help them is even more challenging.

“I know (the governor) is frustrated, I know the Legislature is frustrated, the public is frustrated,” Assembly Budget Chairperson Phil Ting, a San Francisco Democrat, said during a recent hearing. “We have appropriated billions and billions of dollars to this issue. And it’s not clear where we’ve made progress.”

The reason for the limited available data is, in part, because local entities serving people on the ground hadn’t always been required to report outcomes to the state, and no state body provided effective oversight of the myriad agencies that address homelessness, the State Auditor found. A slew of laws passed last year are supposed to change that.

This summer, using $5.6 million, the newly created Interagency Council on Homelessness is set to release a report detailing the outcomes of state spending between 2018 and 2021, to be followed by a final report in December. Newly appropriated dollars are tied to more stringent planning and reporting requirements: Cities and counties will set goals for the $2 billion they will receive over two years from the state to address homelessness, and about a fifth of that money will be set aside as bonus funds for those who meet their goals. 

Newly available metrics collected by local officials still reveal some information about how they are serving the homeless population. Over the course of 2020, for example, the state reported that local agencies served more than 246,000 people, and nearly 40% of them moved into some form of housing. (That number is higher than the one-night snapshot because someone may have been homeless at the start of the year, but housed by the end.) What the data doesn’t reveal is where people went, which types of programs worked better than others, or which service providers excelled and which ones fell behind.

“We’re in this state that’s driving the data revolution and it’s just not showing up in the homelessness field,” said Weare, from UC Berkeley.

Last summer, with a historic budget windfall, state lawmakers allocated $12 billion for homelessness, most of which hasn’t hit the streets. This year, they have an even bigger surplus, but the dearth of data is making it difficult to evaluate the additional spending Newsom proposed: $1.5 billion for temporary bridge housing and $500 million to deal with encampments, building on the $50 million in grants Newsom announced last week to shelter or rehouse 1,400 people now in camps.

“We’re stuck,” said Wendy Carrillo, a Democratic Assemblymember from Los Angeles who leads the state Assembly’s budget subcommittee that deals with homelessness. “We’re releasing this funding to be able to help address the issue, but in return, the data is not coming back fast enough for the Legislature to be able to make an informed decision as to, are we going to put more dollars into something, and does it work?”

Republican lawmakers have called for a special session to address homelessness parallel to the ongoing legislative session — an idea they say hasn’t gotten any traction in the supermajority Democratic legislature.

“When you have a special session, you can put your entire focus on that. So we’re hoping that the governor will take up a special look at that perhaps that comes on the heels of the homeless count,” said state Sen. Patricia Bates, a Republican from Laguna Hills.

Learn more about legislators mentioned in this story

D

Wendy Carrillo

State Assembly, District 52 (Los Angeles)

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D

Wendy Carrillo

State Assembly, District 52 (Los Angeles)

Time in office

2017—present

Background

Journalist / Community Advocate

Contact

Email Legislator

How she voted 2021-2022

Liberal Conservative

District 52 Demographics

Voter Registration

Dem 62%

GOP 10%

No party 22%

Campaign Contributions

Asm. Wendy Carrillo has taken at least $179,000 from the Labor sector since she was elected to the legislature. That represents 34% of her total campaign contributions.

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Pat Bates

Former State Senate, District 36 (Huntington Beach)

Click to learn more about this former legislator

On the ground in Sacramento

“Counting people is different from helping people get off the streets,” Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said at the Feb. 23 kickoff event, before about 600 volunteers fanned out. The last point-in-time survey found at least 5,500 homeless people in the county in 2019, a number he expects will only increase this year.

“Here in the city and county of Sacramento, we are committed to making housing and shelter a human and a legal right, and mental health care and treatment as a human and legal right,” he continued. “That has to be our commitment coming out of this point-in-time count.”

Steinberg was referring to an ordinance he introduced last November that would require the city to create enough housing units or temporary shelter spaces for everyone who needs them by 2023. If a person living on the street turned down two available housing or shelter options, they would be compelled to come inside. But if those spots weren’t made available, the person could sue the city.

The proposal, which met fierce opposition from some advocates for favoring shelter over housing, is now undergoing a legal review. Local voters may be asked to consider two similar ballot initiatives in November. Their aim: to clear the growing number of encampments sprouting across the city, which are not only upsetting housed residents and businesses, but threatening the safety of the people living there. The city would have to dramatically increase options for people to go indoors, which it has thus far failed to do.

Sacramento fire spokesperson Keith Wade told CalMatters the department responds to fires in homeless encampments on a daily basis. Fires with the potential to damage critical infrastructure — like the one under the Highway 50 on-ramp — are more rare, he said. CalTrans had to shut down the on-ramp “for a while” to ensure it could hold up oncoming traffic. The fire remains under investigation, but Wade said it was likely arson.

“It’s not uncommon for one person experiencing homelessness who has a disagreement or some sort of issue with another to burn that person’s personal items because that’s the one thing that person has left in this world,” he said.

Vasquez, who was displaced from the camp, doesn’t know what comes next. He said he had been living in an apartment before becoming homeless, but could no longer afford rent after his roommates moved out.

“What can we do?” he asked. “Start all over again, with nothing. We had nothing, and we start with nothing.”

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Getting off the streets and into housing is often touted as a statistical success.

But reality is much more complicated.

Jackie Botts recently took CalMatters readers on an intimate tour of the winding road Fernando Maya, a formerly homeless veteran, traveled from the streets of Los Angeles to a Project Roomkey hotel room to his own studio apartment in subsidized housing.

His story highlights the myriad personal and systemic factors that make it difficult for people to find housing and stay housed – including the collision with a car while bicycling and head injury that hampered Maya’s efforts to rebuild his life.

In the latest episode of “Gimme Shelter: The California Housing Crisis Podcast,” CalMatters’ Manuela Tobias and the Los Angeles Times’ Liam Dillon interviewed Jackie and Maya about his story and her reporting process.

So where is Maya now, and what lays in store for him next?

“Well, I’ve got a door. I’ve got a door with a key. I have seven days a week for cop shows,” he joked. 

On being inside, he reflected, “This is always a positive for me, every day. Because it is secure. I have the walls to secure me from the elements, I don’t have crashes blowing by me.”

Jackie recounted first meeting Maya two years ago, while reporting on the state’s food aid program.

“You were excited to talk to a journalist and I remember you saying, like, ‘I can be your eyes and your ears on the street,’” she said. “It just seemed like you had a story worth telling and so we kept in touch and I would just like, check in and ask you little questions.”

The story gained urgency as the state announced a $12 billion appropriation last summer to address the California homeless crisis, a chunk of which recently became available to expand mental health housing and treatment.

But a severe worker shortage in the California homeless services field threatens the state’s ability to massively expand services. Many homeless service workers — who make low wages for high-stress jobs — are burned out.

Maya talked about the importance of case workers to him and other people experiencing homelessness. “Some of us need help,” he said. “Some of us don’t know we need help.”  

“Not all the services reach everybody. If everybody was like The People Concern,” Maya added, referring to the nonprofit organization that helped place him in his apartment, “I think that a lot more people would get out. I mean, it has to be quicker. While the construction is going on out there, how is it that nobody’s housed?”

Maya plans to look for a job in food delivery with DoorDash next because, he explains, general relief and food stamps are simply not enough to pay the bills.

His message for Sacramento policymakers: “There’s a lot of people out there on the streets that complain about the same thing: that the rent is too high. Now, I don’t know who’s responsible for that at the end of the day, but I mean, it can’t just be about whoever the governing body is.”

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In the middle of March last year, Los Angeles officials were gearing up to clear a 200-person homeless encampment at Echo Park Lake.

For Denise Velazquez, 53, then an outreach worker with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, her task was clear: Get 10 people indoors.

She helped her clients – who were cold, tired and desperate to shower – pack their bags and sign intake forms. She gave them hope that warmth was around the corner: Hotel rooms under Project Roomkey, the state’s program to shelter unhoused people most at risk of catching COVID-19.

But orders changed overnight. Her agency had access to only three beds, and when she told her clients, they yelled, spit and lunged at her partner. Velazquez says she broke their trust – and that broke her heart.

“My stomach is feeling so uncomfortable and heart broken,” Velazquez wrote in an email to her supervisor on March 18, 2021.

LAHSA spokesman Ahmad Chapman said various local service providers placed 176 of those at the Echo Park encampment in interim housing programs.

In the weeks that followed, Velazquez said her health deteriorated. Her blood pressure spiked, her diabetes worsened, and her anxiety and depression spiraled. Her employer granted her a medical leave of absence, but therapy revealed that the only way to heal, she said, was to quit. Abandoning her clients broke her heart all over again.

Turnover has long plagued the homeless services field. COVID-19 has only made the problem worse as the omicron surge causes worker shortages across California’s economy. And without enough service workers, the state’s ambitious, multibillion-dollar strategy for reducing homelessness is unlikely to work.    

Most people who enter social work know to expect small paychecks; they’re driven by compassion and a desire for positive change. But caring too much can be crushing when housing is elusive, mental health services scant, and communication splintered among the myriad entities who decide the fate of the unhoused.

“We’re paying these folks pennies on the dollar to burn themselves out completely,” said Tami McVay, assistant program director at Self-Help Enterprises, which serves disadvantaged communities in the San Joaquin Valley.

When you bring up staff turnover or vacancies with any provider or advocate, they nod vigorously. The mostly government-contracted private organizations serving people experiencing homelessness have waged an uphill battle to recruit and retain workers into their fast-growing workforce, including some formerly homeless individuals.

L.A.-based People Assisting The Homeless, or PATH, which serves about a fifth of the state’s homeless population, has hired seven recruiters to help fill 340 vacancies, out of 1,100 jobs, said CEO Jennifer Hark Dietz. It’s now taking an average of four months to fill any given spot.

And that’s before the latest homelessness budget, approved last summer by Gov. Gavin Newsom and the  Legislature, floods providers with $12 billion over the next two years. The state says the funding will require thousands of new positions in the homeless response system.

“We have all this money,” said Farrah McDaid Ting, a senior legislative representative with the California State Association of Counties. “Can we really do this if we don’t have the people? I think there could be a real limitation.”

Good jobs wanted

At the root of the worker shortage – which advocates say is really a shortage of good jobs – is low wages. Most homeless services organizations CalMatters spoke with pay starting frontline workers between $16 and $18 an hour, barely higher than minimum wage. They openly admit it’s far too little for the grueling labor, and often isn’t enough to live in expensive California cities.

“In the homeless services sector, it’s like: You didn’t get this paperwork in on time, I lost my housing, or my legs are hurting, I think I might have a blood clot,” said Mel Tillekeratne, executive director of Shower of Hope, which runs 22 mobile shower sites across Los Angeles County. “It’s an unbelievably high amount of stress. I’ve seen so many outreach workers completely checked out.”

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, people employed in emergency and other relief services – including homeless service providers – made an average annual salary of $49,616 in 2020. 

Why not pay more? Tillekeratne says government contracts usually cap personnel costs. He had to raise money privately, for example, to offer hazard pay at the start of the pandemic. Federal and state grants usually come in bursts and have short timelines, forcing organizations to fill temporary positions before they expire.

If they don’t leave homeless services completely, workers will switch jobs for $1 or $2 more an hour. Or, if they get promoted, they often lose direct contact with clients, adding to a sense that frontline work is undervalued, said Earl Edwards, a graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles who interviewed 11 case managers.

“A lot of individuals didn’t see a pathway for them to stay doing this work,” Edwards said.

Most organizations that serve homeless individuals often hire people who are just exiting homelessness themselves: “That also adds an additional level of trauma,” he said.

Shelter workers in Fresno constantly reach out about “unstable living arrangements of their own, asking for housing,” said Katie Wilbur, executive director of RH Community Builders.

The fewer employees with master’s degrees in social work often earn higher salaries, but even those aren’t high enough to keep them from more lucrative jobs, explains Donna Gallup, an assistant professor at Azusa Pacific’s Department of Social Work, who runs a pilot program to recruit more students into the homeless services field.

“If you have an opportunity as a graduate student, with student debt, you may select a school, a hospital or another nonprofit where you are not having to work with a stigmatized population that is very demanding and the work conditions, especially with COVID,” Gallup said. “It has been a challenge.”

Newsom’s proposed 2022 budget, which still has to be negotiated with the Legislature, includes $1.7 billion over three years to expand the state’s health and human services workforce “with improved diversity, wages, and health equity outcomes,” said Rodger Butler, a spokesman for the California Health and Human Services Agency. There’s also a bill with some bipartisan support to increase the mental health workforce. But even that may not be enough.

“Until… funding is commensurate to offer living wages across positions in the sector, it’ll be hard to train our way out of this crisis,” said Mari Castaldi, senior legislative advocate on homelessness at Housing California.

To increase the wages of the lowest-paid workers, the nonprofit is calling for a supplemental appropriation – on top of $2 billion over two years in flexible spending in last year’s budget that cities and counties will use to pay nonprofit partners to run most of these homeless programs. 

“We don’t think it makes sense to say to service providers, ‘You get to choose between serving the number of clients that you set forth to serve, or increasing wages,’” Castaldi said.

Underpaid and burned out

But pay is only one part of the problem, says Deborah Son, executive director of the National Association of Social Workers’ California chapter. She represents 9,000 of the state’s roughly 75,000 certified social workers – and says all of them are impacted by the severe shortage of affordable housing in California.

“We can bulk up the workforce and get people jobs and create jobs,” she said, “but if we don’t create the housing structures that are necessary, and we’re talking about the intricate systems necessary, your efforts become moot.”

Following her stint at LAHSA, Velazquez found a new job at Union Station Homeless Services as a care coordinator, earning $24 an hour. Half of her 20 clients are in housing, and her job is to keep them there. Her other clients are trying – unsuccessfully since September – to get into a place using housing vouchers, which cover two-thirds of the rent.

“There’s not enough apartments, and landlords don’t want them,” she said. “Legally (landlords) can’t say, ‘No, I’m not going to take a voucher.’ But they can say, ‘Oh, but your client has to have 650 credit score, and no evictions, and no criminal record.’”

“This is where the burnout comes,” she added. “It’s like, a case manager can do and do and do and we still feel we’re not doing it.”

In her new job, Velazquez said she feels heard when she brings up concerns. She gets a day off every two weeks to unwind, checks in with her supervisor regularly and participates in training and meditation.

Her own self-care is essential, too, she explains, holding up an angel aura quartz around her neck, which she uses to steel herself for difficult encounters. “This is like my sanctuary, away from everything,” she said, gesturing around her two-bedroom in Monterey Park. “When I sit in that chair, I feel like I’m getting a hug from my grandpa.”

The impact on clients

Clients feel the brunt of turnover just as acutely.

A recent study found that in the last decade more than a fifth of the 16,026 people in Los Angeles placed in permanent supportive housing – which pairs rental assistance with case management, substance use programs and mental health treatment – plunged back into homelessness. Black tenants were the most likely to return to the streets or a shelter, and they cited high case manager turnover as one of several factors.

“When you have a case manager who is trying to help you create long-term goals, but they’re only staying for three to six months, it prevents you from actually being able to follow through,” said Edwards, a co-author of the study.

Some tenants he spoke with were already on their sixth or seventh case manager while in permanent housing. In turn, some clients didn’t bother to learn their case manager’s names for a couple of months, making their jobs that much harder.

“Once you have one you can actually work with, next thing you know, you get a notice on your door, ‘Oh, well, hi, this will be my last week.’ And you’re like, ‘Damn. You just got here,’” said Theresa Winkler, who lives with her husband in permanent supportive housing on downtown L.A.’s Skid Row.

Winkler, 58, said she has been living in permanent supportive housing for about a decade and was homeless for about half her life before that. She said she has been clean from crack, heroin and alcohol for 15 years, and continues to seek help for post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and depression. But cycling through caseworker after caseworker – at least three in the last two years – is “straight frustrating.”

“With addiction, a relapse happens weeks before you pick up,” she explained. “If you know yourself and you see it coming, you’re able to go downstairs, talk to your caseworker, and tell her, ‘Hey, look, can I talk to you for a few minutes?’ But if you don’t have anybody you can trust to go in and talk to –  because that’s the biggest word right there, trust – then hey, I’m back out there doing what I was doing in the beginning.”

Her husband, her doctors, and her 12-step recovery program have helped her stay on track and find solace. So has reflecting on her progress.

“It’s nice for me to finally say, ‘You know what? I finally found peace,’ she said. “Because it’s hard to find peace. Look at where I’m at. I’m in the pits of hell.”

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In his January budget proposal to the state Legislature, Gov. Gavin Newsom gave a clear message: California needs to move people off the streets.

“I don’t want to see any more people die in the streets and call that compassion,” Newsom said Monday, detailing his $286.4 billion blueprint. “There is nothing compassionate about someone dying in the streets or stepping over someone on the streets or sidewalks.”

Newsom proposed $2 billion to address California homelessness – including $1.5 billion to buy and set up “tiny homes” and other temporary shelter options, which tend to fall far short of need and which he conceded would only be a “bridge” to permanent housing with services.

While substantial, the governor’s request pales in comparison to the funding he and the Legislature approved last year – $12 billion to create mostly homeless housing and board and care facilities, as well as to fund green-lit affordable housing projects.

“What we’re offering this year is additional money to find a bridge to the permanent supportive housing, and that’s tiny homes, that’s procuring treatment, that’s house slots and shelter slots in the interim,” Newsom said.

The governor projected that the money would mean another 11,000 beds for people experiencing homelessness, on top of 44,000 that will be created with last year’s budget.

The remaining $500 million in homeless dollars would go toward grants for local governments to relocate people living in encampments on vacant lots and freeway overpasses – a ten-fold increase from the funding approved last year and that will be distributed this summer. 

Demand so far has outpaced supply, according to the agency in charge of reviewing grant applications: on Jan. 6, the state’s Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency reported it had received requests for $120 million from more than 26 cities and 10 counties.

Christopher Martin, policy director for Housing California, lamented the lack of funds to move people experiencing homelessness into already-existing housing more quickly.

“There’s not a dime in here that is going towards rental assistance or permanent housing,” he said. “Building shelter and treatment beds, that takes time. That’s going to take years. These people are dealing with the elements today.”

Rental assistance to keep those housed in their homes is also running out, however. The state has received relief applications totalling $6.8 billion, according to its dashboard, but received $5.2 billion from the federal government, about half of which local jurisdictions administer.

The agency previously expressed confidence the need would be filled by another round of federal funding, but in response to California’s $1.9 billion request to the U.S. Treasury Department, the state received only $62 million on Friday, Newsom said.

“And so for the purposes of this budget, we are looking to continue to engage directly with Treasury, the Biden administration, as we have been, and directly with legislative leaders,” he added.

Housing and climate change

Newsom’s blueprint to tackle California’s housing crisis totals another $2 billion and prioritizes the state’s climate goals.

“I just want to reinforce, to some extent … moving away from investments in housing that don’t focus on climate, health, integrating downtown schools, jobs, parks and restaurants,” Newsom said.

That includes about $800 million in grants to develop units and the infrastructure around them in mostly downtown areas, “in that space away from the sprawl,” the governor said. The idea is to avoid building in areas prone to wildfires, and to avoid the greenhouse gas emissions that result from long commutes.

Of that money, Newsom wants to set aside $100 million to help offset the high costs that make it difficult to turn old offices and other buildings into apartments – a practice UC Berkeley’s Terner Center found is most common in Los Angeles. Besides prioritizing downtown buildings, the grant helps meet the state’s climate goals by slashing the main culprit of construction waste: demolition. The remaining $100 million would go toward affordable housing on excess land already owned by the state.

The other $1 billion in Newsom’s housing budget is more specifically set aside for housing that is affordable to the lowest earners, with $500 million going toward the largest funding source for developers to build subsidized housing, the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit. The other $500 million is broken down into several measures, including $200 million to preserve deteriorating affordable housing in downtown areas, and $100 million to rehabilitate mobile home parks.

Matt Schwartz, president and CEO of the nonprofit California Housing Partnership, said while he applauds the new “short-term investments”, the money won’t come close to building the 1.2 million homes his group estimates the state needs by 2030.

“It’s time for the governor and state leaders to go beyond proposing another year of short-term assistance and instead commit to a long-term plan with sustained investments at the scale needed to solve the homeless and housing affordability crises and address climate change,” Schwartz said.

The League of California Cities was more positive on Newsom’s blueprint.

“The proposal makes good on last year’s promises by the state to continue investing in housing production, as well as housing coupled with mental health services for those experiencing homelessness,” Carolyn Coleman, the league’s CEO, said in a statement. “These proposed investments are a critical down payment by the state on the long-term funding needed to solve a decades-in-the-making crisis.”  

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The law says that every student is entitled to a free public education. 

What if it said the same about housing?

That’s what Darrell Steinberg, the mayor of Sacramento, believes to be the key to addressing California’s homelessness. He recently proposed an ordinance that would require the city to provide at least two housing or shelter options to people living on the streets.

If those options weren’t available, the person could sue the city. But if the homeless individual turned down the available options, they would be compelled to come inside, albeit using social workers, not police.

In the latest episode of the California Housing Crisis Podcast, The Los Angeles Times’ Liam Dillon and CalMatters’ Manuela Tobias interview Steinberg on his proposal, and how it has evolved over the years.

“I want to put out what I believe, which is fundamentally, that the public policy of the society must be that people live indoors,” he said. “Ninety to 95% of that is the government’s obligation. The last five to 10% may fall on some individuals.”

Aside from housing or shelter, two of the options that a person must be offered include spaces at “Safe Ground” sanctioned tent encampments, hotel rooms, tiny homes and trailers. 

“People have a much better chance to get permanent housing if they’re indoors rather than outdoors,” Steinberg explained. “We can’t get mental health treatment or substance abuse treatment for people living on the river.”

But, like the rest of the state, Sacramento is far from able to provide at least a single shelter bed per person, much less an affordable housing unit. If approved by the City Council, Steinberg’s plan would take effect starting in 2023, or later if the city makes substantial progress on housing options by fall 2022.

Liam and Manuela also discussed the results of a poll on homelessness in Los Angeles County conducted by the L.A. Business Council Institute and the L.A. Times.

The poll found 94% of voters viewed homelessness as a serious or very serious problem – a similar number as two years ago. However, over the past couple years the city and county have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to deal with homelessness.

What has changed, however, is how people think the issue must be addressed: While voters were evenly split last time about spending money on short-term solutions such as shelter and on long-term solutions such as housing, 57% said officials should focus on “short-term shelter sites.”

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The first time William Joseph Brown filled out a survey to try to get into permanent housing, he was living beside a highway. That was December 2019. 

In late August this year, when California’s transportation agency cleared him from the same strip of land tucked behind the San Clemente off-ramp on the northbound Interstate 5, he still had nowhere to live.

Caltrans removed Brown and about 20 other campers due to the “immediate safety threat of fire,” as they were “using open flames to cook near dry vegetation,” a spokesperson told CalMatters.

The agency said six of those people were matched to permanent housing. Brown said he got a voucher for a hotel room for about a week, and then another, which recently expired. 

But he’s still waiting on the permanent housing voucher he was promised two years ago. Brown said none of his friends exited homelessness since they were removed from the camp, either: “They’re just in a different place.” 

“We were on the off-ramp because we were out of the way,” he said. “People don’t want to see homeless people. A lot of us were there because that was the last place to go.”

California is spending more than ever before on homelessness — $12 billion between 2021 and 2023 — which also means there’s more pressure to make an impact. The bulk of that money will go to creating more living spaces and providing mental health resources for people who are now on the streets.

But some of the money is being used by Caltrans in a ramped-up effort to move people like Brown off the state’s bustling freeways in the name of safety.

“We’ve got to deal with homelessness,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said at the 2021 California Economic Summit in Monterey on Nov. 9. “We’ve got to deal with cleaning the state, the streets, cleaning up our thoroughfares, our underpasses, our overpasses, removing graffiti, dealing with encampments.”

At a cleanup event in Los Angeles on Dec. 15, Newsom said his administration’s “multi-dimensional strategy” is the most comprehensive in state history. “The goal is not just out of sight, out of mind,” he said.

Reducing homelessness is top of mind for many voters. And it’s likely to be a big campaign issue in 2022, as it was for the Sept. 14 election on whether to recall Newsom. 

But while it may be good politics to move homeless people out of visible public locations, experts say it’s just moving the problem somewhere else.

“Spending state money on harassing people who are struggling under the impacts of local, state and federal policy failures is counterproductive,” said Margot Kushel, director of the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative at the University of California, San Francisco. “I would present the radical idea of taking the perspective of the people living there.”

There aren’t enough beds

The last time volunteers and local officials counted the number of people experiencing homelessness in California was on a January night in 2020. They came across more than 161,000 people, in and out of shelters. That is the largest number in the nation, but the tally is widely considered an underestimate, and it doesn’t take into account the economic devastation brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic that started two months later.

About 36% of those people had been homeless for at least a year, which means the other two-thirds were newly homeless, according to federal data.

Meanwhile, cities and counties across California reported last year a little more than 53,000 beds in either an emergency shelter or transitional housing — or fewer than one bed for every three people. In some areas, the ratio is as high as five people per bed; no county has at least one full bed per person.

There are, however, some shelter beds — in churches for example — that aren’t counted in these official statistics because they don’t receive any money from the federal government.

A lot more beds became available in California during the pandemic in hotel and motel rooms leased or bought by the state at a record clip. Project Roomkey has provided temporary shelter to more than 48,000 people during the pandemic, and Project Homekey temporarily sheltered thousands more across 94 hotels that created about 6,000 permanent housing units. 

Funding for the latter program was tripled in the most recent budget, from $846 million to $2.75 billion. Another $2.2 billion over the next three years will go to create behavioral health facilities.

In Los Angeles, officials found that between the loss in warehouse-style shelter capacity brought on by COVID safety measures, and the gain mostly in motel rooms made available by the state, total shelter capacity in the city didn’t vary significantly between 2020 and 2021.

But advocates say achieving a one-to-one ratio on shelter beds for people shouldn’t be the ultimate goal. Running shelters can be very expensive, and while it treats the problem temporarily, it can be a dead end when there’s no permanent housing on the other side. The Los Angeles Housing Authority, for example, found it needed more than triple the existing permanent supportive housing supply to match demand.

Besides, many people say they don’t want to go into congregate shelters, where they often are not only exposed to substandard living conditions, but potential assault.

“If you offer traumatized people to be in a huge shelter where there can be violence, where there can be no end in sight, where your things will get stolen, or could get stolen, that's not really an offer,” Kushel said.

At Brown’s camp by I-5, he said he and two other campers were offered a shelter bed, but turned it down. He suffers from a degenerative eye condition that blocks his peripheral vision, and said he had his belongings stolen multiple times at shelters.

What’s in the budget for Caltrans?

The budget includes $1.1 billion for a project called Clean California, with most of the money going to litter pickup and beautification. Newsom has said it will add about 11,000 jobs over three years, with at-risk youth and people who were formerly homeless or incarcerated getting priority. While Clean California money is being used to clean up debris at homeless encampments, it can't be used to remove people, so Caltrans is dipping into a different account.  

“The situation with encampments in California is unacceptable,” Newsom said in a recent statement. “I refuse to accept the status quo — our fellow Californians suffering in tents, under highway overpasses, exposed to the elements, and living in unsanitary conditions.” 

During the economic summit, the governor said that his office had identified 100 encampments as top priorities and was working with Caltrans to clear them “in a thoughtful and strategic way” — a promise he has made multiple times. 

But so far his office and Caltrans have declined to identify the locations, citing privacy and security concerns for the campers. 

“How are we supposed to know what's happening with these resources?” asked Christopher Martin, policy director at Housing California, a nonprofit advocacy group. “It's very behind closed doors, and I think that's a little bit frightening because we need some accountability.”

Caltrans also got an additional $2.7 million this fiscal year for homeless coordinators to mitigate safety risks at encampments, clean trash and debris, and connect people living in these camps to support services and housing.

In a statement to CalMatters, Caltrans said it spent more than $15 million in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 and projects to spend nearly $36 million in the next year specifically on homeless camp cleanups. It conducted just 19 encampment relocations in all of 2020, when federal health officials advised against them during the pandemic. This year, Caltrans has completed 347 through mid-October.

When asked how the agency deals with the shortage of shelter and housing units, Caltrans officials said they “coordinate with cities and social service providers, which can connect people experiencing homelessness with services. However, on high priority encampments where an immediate threat to safety or to essential infrastructure has been identified, the department must proceed with the encampment clearing.”

At the same time, there’s $50 million in new grants to help local governments deal with encampments. The applications opened recently, and the money will be distributed next summer. 

None of that money will fund encampment clearings, according to Russ Heimerich, a spokesman for the California Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency. Instead, he said, grantees will get funds to provide services tailored to the needs of people in those camps.

Heimerich directed any questions about the Caltrans cleanups to the transportation agency, while Caltrans directed questions about the encampment service programs to the California Homeless Coordinating and Financing Council. Both declined multiple requests for phone interviews.

Martin said the apparent lack of coordination between the programs was “a little concerning.”

California’s state auditor in February raised concerns about a lack of coordination between the multiple agencies dealing with homelessness in California: “At least nine state agencies administer and oversee 41 different programs that provide funding to mitigate homelessness, yet no single entity oversees the State’s efforts or is responsible for developing a statewide strategic plan.” 

The new programs raise a bigger question for Josh Barocas, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Colorado who studies homelessness and substance use: Why is transportation money going toward clearing homeless camps?

“It doesn’t actually take into account the long-term health effects of those being displaced and doing the displacement, and their future needs,” he said.

Through a computer modeling study that did not undergo peer review, Barocas found that in Boston, disbanding a homeless camp was more likely to drive up overdoses, hospitalizations and mortality.

“It’s what I would call social theater,” he said. “It's showing your neighborhood that you are trying to do something by literally sweeping the problem away....The only way to actually fix this problem is to get at the social and structural issues that are perpetuating poverty, perpetuating homelessness in the city.”

While Barocas doesn’t believe in clearing encampments, he said there is value in continued community outreach, even when the housing isn’t there yet. “Bringing resources to where people are, and literally meeting them where they're at, never loses utility,” he said.

Eve Garrow, a homelessness policy analyst and advocate at the ACLU of Southern California, said many of the people now camping alongside California’s highways were originally in safer spots such as parks with restrooms. But they’ve moved into the fringes because of law enforcement harassment, often brought on by calls to service made by their housed neighbors. 

“The answer is simple,” she said. “Stop criminalizing people.”

In a recent report, Garrow and her colleagues argue housing status should be a protected social group, a policy Martin’s group and the Western Center on Law and Poverty hope to advance in the Legislature’s next session. 

Seeking stable shelter

Brown, who is 42, said he had worked with several county health workers to get on the waitlist for a permanent housing voucher, but all of them had since quit. “It just seems like nobody can even give me an answer as to why it's not moving forward,” he said. 

The voucher would subsidize Brown’s housing so he has to spend only a third of his disability check on rent. But he’ll still need to find a landlord willing to rent to a man who’s been homeless for more than five years.

Eventually, he wants to be able to host his grandmother, which he couldn’t do on the side of a freeway. He also wants a cure for his vision; he learned about a clinical trial when he was living in the camp, but said it was very difficult for him to consider the option if he had to take medication, as it would likely get stolen. And he wants to stop worrying about getting his stuff stolen every night, when he can barely see.

Since getting kicked out of the camp, Brown connected with another service provider who’s scheduled to call him to sort out his case. Staying in a hotel with his friend, Megan, provided some much-needed stability. “I got very used to that, and then we were told we had to leave.”

Brown and three of his fellow campers wrote a letter urging elected leaders, public officials, and service providers involved in the camp clearing to be honest about the plight of many homeless people:

“Admit that the process of getting assistance is lengthy, that there is not enough housing for everyone who qualifies for it, and that there are people on the street who do want help and are doing what they’re supposed to do to receive it."

For the record: This article has been updated to clarify that the source of money Caltrans is using to remove homeless individuals from camps is not the Clean California program.

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The Gavin Newsom recall may have picked up steam as a referendum on the governor’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, but now homelessness is also taking center stage.

Businessman John Cox — perhaps best known as the guy with the bear — has been hauling an eight-foot ball of garbage around California to symbolize “the trash that’s left behind” by people experiencing homelessness and the state’s response to them.

Kevin Faulconer, former mayor of San Diego, named homelessness as his number one campaign issue and put out several ads showing people camped in cars and tents in “Newsom’s California.”

Celebrity Caitlyn Jenner, best known for “Keeping up with the Kardashians,” noted in an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News that a neighboring private plane owner had moved to Arizona because he couldn’t take seeing homeless people anymore.

While they’re proposing various solutions, the three Republicans agree: Homelessness is getting worse in California — and they can do better than the man they want to replace as governor.

Newsom made reducing homelessness a key part of his 2018 gubernatorial campaign, but the unsheltered population has only increased since then — up by 24% from 2018 to about 161,000 people in 2020. That was before the coronavirus pandemic upended the economy. (A scheduled count in January 2021 was postponed due to COVID-19.) 

The increase is especially discouraging after the state has spent $13 billion on homelessness since 2018. A recent, scathing state auditor’s report points to a main culprit: a lack of coordination and accountability across the complicated web of state agencies and local counties, cities and service providers.

The rise also hasn’t been lost on potential voters, who see growing encampments under highways and along streets in many cities. A recent UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll showed that while 49% of voters opposed the recall, homelessness loomed as a potential Achilles heel for Newsom: 57% of voters rated his job performance on the issue as poor or very poor and only 13% labeled it good or excellent.

And in a May poll by the Public Policy Institute of California, likely recall voters ranked homelessness the third most important issue in California, after only jobs and COVID-19, with housing costs and availability ranking fourth.

But is what the Republican challengers propose really that much better than what the state is already doing? 

Their ideas reflect one school of thought on how to reduce homelessness, but some experts and advocates warn that while the policies might sound appealing, they could worsen the lives of those experiencing homelessness. 

What comes first: Housing or treatment?

The United States has mostly embraced the “Housing First” strategy since the early 2000s. It was adopted by both George W. Bush’s and Barack Obama’s administrations, and has been law in California since 2016.

The idea is simple: Give people access to stable housing, and let job training and medical treatment follow. In other words, services aren’t a precondition to enter housing, but instead voluntary once the person is housed.

And yet, there’s a growing frustration, particularly among Republicans, that the strategy isn’t working. Robert Marbut, who served a stint as then-President Donald Trump’s homelessness czar, rejected the idea, and touted the opposite model: A person had to stay on the concrete parking lot outside a shelter and test negative for drugs before entering.

Doug Ose, a former Sacramento-area member of Congress running to unseat Newsom, proposes a similar method. “We need to stop enabling, excusing and ignoring these drug addiction and mental health issues,” he said in a recent interview.

Ose wants to make it easier to bring homeless people into the state’s custody, and then establish enough community care centers to treat drug addiction and mental illness. He also proposes that state-funded facilities demand sobriety from all individuals receiving services.

Cox also says the state has spent way too much money sheltering homeless people, and that they should be forced into mental health treatment instead.

“First, you’ve got to have treatment first, not housing first, treatment first,” he said at a recent press conference in Sacramento. “And yes, we’re going to have to force people into that treatment if need be.”

In his homelessness plan, Cox cites a Heritage Foundation blog post pointing to a study of “Treatment First” facilities that found nearly half of participants recovered from substance use, entered housing and maintained steady employment.

Neither Cox nor Ose has put forth a price tag for that treatment — but it is likely far higher than simply providing beds for people, as the current shelter model does. 

The candidates do, however, have a point that more mental health treatment is sorely needed. Board-and-care facilities for low-income Californians with serious mental illness have been shuttering across the state at an alarming rate. The state budget for the next fiscal year includes $805 million for counties to purchase, build, preserve, or rehabilitate such facilities, but the state has yet to patch the growing hole in the availability and delivery of mental health treatment.

The prevalence of mental illness among the homeless is a source of debate, and being on the streets can worsen existing mental health conditions. There is general agreement among experts and elected officials that mental illness alone isn’t responsible for homelessness.

Of the more than 248,000 people who accessed homeless services throughout 2020, 41% reported disabling conditions, which could be anything from diabetes or a broken leg to a mental disorder, according to Ali Sutton, the state’s deputy secretary for homelessness at the California Homeless Coordinating and Financing Council.

Janey Rountree, founding executive director of the California Policy Lab at UCLA, said a recent study found that one-fifth of 37,000 people experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles had a clinically diagnosed serious mental illness.

“The people who are suffering from substance use disorder or mental illness are very visible, they’re very challenging,” she said. “But there is a very large unsheltered population that doesn’t have either.”

Margot Kushel, a professor of medicine at University of California San Francisco, who leads the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, also says there’s little evidence of correlation between mental health and homelessness.

Instead, she says the places with highest homelessness have a split population of high earners who can afford to pay housing costs, and those who can’t, competing for a limited supply of housing. Think: San Francisco. 

Once people are living on the street, they’re much more likely to turn to drugs or alcohol, Kushel said.

“A lot of people on the streets use stimulants so they don’t sleep, because when they sleep, they get assaulted, and their stuff gets stolen,” she said. “Turns out that when you bring people inside and that goes away, people’s lives calm down, and they can engage in therapy.”

Kushel recently conducted a study in which researchers approached the 400 most chronically homeless people in Santa Clara — the people who most frequently ended up in the emergency room or jail you might find “yelling in the middle of the street” — and offered them a permanent home. All but one said yes.

Nearly 90% of the 169 participants placed in supportive housing — which included voluntary but not mandatory treatment — stayed in housing for several years.

“This is in California, the sickest of the sickest, and they mostly all got housed,” she said.

But if “Housing First” is really the answer, why isn’t homelessness declining? 

One reason: The state is about one million housing units short for the lowest earners.

And rents are only increasing. A recent report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition found California to be the most expensive state for tenants, when compared to average wages. Renters would need to make at least $39 an hour to afford a 2-bedroom apartment in California, while the average renter makes less than $25 an hour, and the minimum wage is $14.

Rountree likened the situation to watering only 10% of the garden all summer and claiming watering doesn’t work because the other 90% of the garden died: “That’s what people are saying: ‘Housing first’ doesn’t work. But we haven’t actually housed anyone.”

According to the state’s database, of the roughly 248,000 people who accessed local homeless services last year, nearly 40% of those people moved into permanent housing — which could mean anything from moving in with a family member to getting their own place.

“Housing First” is “working faster and better than it ever has, it’s got more resources than it has in ages. Let’s not upset that piece that we know was working really, really well,” said Sutton, the state’s top official on homelessness. “The problem is much more the inflow, and how do we solve that.”

Forcing treatment

Several candidates in the Newsom recall mentioned using conservatorships, or legal guardianships, to force people into treatment. Both Cox and Ose suggest loosening the Lanterman-Petris Short Act, which limited involuntary treatment to those who are a danger to themselves or others, or gravely disabled, and limited the time for confinement.

Ose, for example, wants to change that definition to include anyone “addicted to drugs” and unwilling or unable to “make reasoned decisions consistent with being self-sufficient.”

Cox said: “Britney Spears doesn’t need a conservator. Thousands of Californians living on the streets are the ones that need conservatorships. And we have to force people to do it.”

Newsom and others have also called for limited expansion of conservatorships. Supporters argue it’s too difficult to get help for their relatives who need it under the strict definition of conservatorship. Others say the outdated system doesn’t address the needs of people dealing with substance abuse.

But Kevin Baker, legislative director for the American Civil Liberties Union’s California Center for Advocacy & Policy, said the candidates’ proposals raise serious concerns, and not just about the violation of people’s civil liberties. Turning this into reality would take “an army” of lawyers, judges and guards the state simply doesn’t have.

“If you put somebody in a conservatorship, they’re yours,” he said. “You have to house, clothe and feed them. You have all the obligations to them that you have to prisoners. If we’re going to house these people and take care of all their needs, why don’t we instead do that in a way that is supportive and voluntary and leaves out all the lawyers and guards and the judges and the court costs and everything else?”

Shelter or permanent housing?

Faulconer calls for an audit into the need for mental health services and how the state is spending that money. But his main idea is to create enough shelter beds to get everyone on the streets inside with services, including mental health treatment. Under his plan, if space in a shelter is available, a homeless person must take it.

How many beds would that take? A lot. The 2020 tally of homeless people found California had the highest share of people living on the streets, or unsheltered, at 70%.

Asked about a price tag, Faulconer said “the cost of not doing it is extraordinary.”

“People are literally dying on our streets. And my whole plan is about giving people the ability to get off the streets, out of an unclean, unsafe, unsanitary environment into one that is supportive with the services that they need,” he told CalMatters.

Faulconer cites a 12% reduction in homelessness in San Diego as evidence that shelters work but local critics have questioned that record.

While Newsom has added record numbers of shelter beds in the last year, he has prioritized more expensive individual hotel rooms, as opposed to the large shelters Faulconer suggests.

Meanwhile, Cox proposes doing away with shelters altogether, saying they are a waste of money. And many advocates agree. Shelter isn’t affordable housing, so continuing to invest in shelters doesn’t fix the underlying cause.

While advocates and homelessness researchers also acknowledge that existing shelter beds sometimes go unused, they blame the rules. Many shelters have strict curfews and don’t allow people to sleep with their partners, bring in pets or store their personal belongings. Most importantly, they don’t allow people privacy, a need that heightened when shelters became hotbeds for COVID-19.

“People want autonomy in their lives,” said Kushel, from UCSF. “These are adults.”

Chris Martin, policy director at the nonprofit advocacy group Housing California, said the state has increasingly shifted away from the congregate shelter model, including the most recent state budget bill. He says that Faulconer’s plan is inhumane. “It’s warehousing. It really is taking us backwards,” he said.

There are several important points where the candidates align, primarily the push to “clean up” the state. Newsom proposed more than $1 billion in the state budget to pick up trash along freeways and downtown areas. Faulconer proposes establishing the “right to public spaces,” which would require that parks, freeways and other areas be kept clear of debris.

Advocates say these plans stigmatize people who are unhoused: “They’re forced to live in that trash,” Martin said. “And oftentimes it’s not trash. It’s all they have in their life.”

The candidates also all agree: California needs more housing, and addressing the homelessness crisis is impossible without that. That’s the same argument Newsom has been making since his 2018 campaign. His challengers propose changes such as streamlining permits and costly environmental reviews. But none of the candidates offer a clear way around the political pressures that make housing construction so difficult.

Like his opponents, Faulconer says the state simply needs a better governor: “I believe this cries out for leadership at the statewide level.”