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Lea este artículo en español.
In Sacramento, there’s a word that keeps popping up during discussions about the state’s homelessness crisis: “accountability.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom has scolded cities and counties for failing to get more people off the street, hundreds of millions in state spending notwithstanding. “Californians demand accountability and results, not settling for the status quo,” the governor said last November.
Republicans in the Legislature have called for an audit of the state’s homelessness spending. Democrats are still absorbing the last one from 2021, but many want to see the state’s money come with strings attached. This week, Assemblymember Luz Rivas, an Arleta Democrat, introduced a bill that would demand “tangible results” from local governments before they receive homelessness grants — mirroring an idea from the governor’s own budget proposal.
The increasingly bipartisan chorus points to two stark, seemingly contradictory trends: The state keeps spending more to address the crisis, and the crisis keeps getting worse. So where, they ask, is all the money going?
On Feb. 15, California lawmakers got something that resembles an answer.
The state’s Interagency Council on Homelessness, a state body tasked with overseeing the state’s homelessness strategy and divvying up funding to local governments, issued a report detailing just how much the state has spent on the crisis between 2018 and 2021 — and what it’s gotten in return.
The answer to those questions, according to the report: The state has spent nearly $10 billion and provided services to more than 571,000 people, each year helping more people than the last.
And despite all that, at the end of year three, the majority of those more than half a million Californians still didn’t end up with a roof over their heads. The number of unsheltered Californians continues to swell.
Presented at a three-hour joint committee hearing in the Assembly, the report has sent housing policy experts across the state into a twitter. Services for the homeless are so disjointed — split among nine state agencies, hundreds of county and municipal governments, nonprofits and charitable organizations — the 253-page document may be the first statistical birds-eye view of the state’s many-tentacled efforts.
But it also shows just how intractable the problem is.
“One of the largest challenges facing the state is the inflow of new people into homelessness, even as efforts to help people experiencing homelessness expand,” the report reads.
What the report did not address is how the state can spend its money more effectively. Nor was it asked to. The report comes at the request of the Legislature, which included an ask in its 2021 budget for a “comprehensive view of the homelessness response system,” not an audit nor a list of recommendations.
But it may provide lawmakers, service providers and advocates with some helpful hints about what’s working, what isn’t and for whom.
“We’ve sent people to the moon,” said Oakland Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, a Democrat who chairs the Assembly’s housing committee. “We can solve homelessness in California.”
Here are four takeaways from the homelessness assessment:
1. California has been spending a lot to remedy homelessness — mostly on housing
Between 2018 and 2021, the state spent $9.6 billion trying to move the needle on homelessness.
Many Californians will be able to relate: The bulk of the spending, $5.5 billion in this case, went to the cost of housing.
That includes everything from building new units to preserving old ones, converting unused hotel rooms during the pandemic into temporary housing, building shelters, and setting up permanent supportive housing facilities that provide a long-term subsidized place to stay along with other on-site social services.
According to the report, the state produced or kept online 58,714 affordable housing units in the three year period, and added 17,000 new shelter beds.
Some of that spending has been more likely to lead people out of homelessness than others. Of the more than 75,000 people placed into permanent supportive housing of some kind, for example, only 8% wound up back on the street within six months.
Conversely, for those who left a state funded program to live with a family member or a friend, the rate of those who were homeless again within six months doubled. And for those who left for a rental with only a temporary subsidy, that rate of return to homelessness was 23%.
For some legislators and advocates, the figures underscored the importance of building more housing above all other interventions.
“Shelters are very expensive to build; they’re very expensive to operate,” said Emily Halcon, the director of Sacramento County’s Department of Homeless Services and Housing. “What we know is a real solution is housing.”
But building more housing — particularly with subsidized rents or other wrap-around services — is expensive. That’s in part why some homelessness and housing advocates say the 10-figure sum that the state has spread across the three years of the assessment isn’t even close to enough. A report from the Corporation for Supportive Housing and the California Housing Partnership at the end of last year put the price tag of “solving” homelessness in California at $8.1 billion every year for more than a decade.
2. A lot of people have been housed — but most have not
The report tracked more than half a million Californians who, over the three year period, made use of at least one of the services that the state funds, as recorded in a new state database.
The good news: More than 40% ended up in housing — supportive, subsidized or otherwise.
The bad news: The majority didn’t, or the state lost track of their whereabouts.
Nearly 17% were, at the end of the period, still in a shelter or temporary housing of some other kind or had exited whatever program they were enrolled in “into homelessness.” Another quarter fell out of the system entirely, their “destination” unknown.
Assemblymember Corey Jackson, a Democrat from Perris who chairs the Assembly Human Services committee, asked about the 17% who return to homelessness, which he called a “red flag” in the data.
“We need to remember that this is the emergency response system, if you will,” responded Dhakshike Wickrema, the deputy secretary of California’s Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency. “What more can we be doing which is outside the homeless system? It’s like when you go to the emergency room — what could the primary care physician have done to prevent the acute diabetes?”
3. The burden of homelessness is not equally distributed
Drawing on the most recent “point-in-time” survey, which provides a blurry snapshot of how many people are living outside on a given night, the report emphasizes the stark racial and ethnic disparities that exist across the state’s unsheltered population. Black people made up roughly 30% of the people counted on the street, more than five times their share of the state population. Indigenous Californians likewise were overrepresented five-fold.
And though Latino Californians were underrepresented, between 2015 and 2020, their numbers in surveys of the unsheltered increased by 65%, the fastest growing ethnic or racial group.
4. Not all homelessness looks the same
When politicians or talking heads use the word “homelessness,” it’s often meant to evoke a particular person experiencing a particular set of problems: someone asleep on the sidewalk, unbathed, suffering from acute mental illness, addiction, physical disability or some combination of the three.
That’s the most visible version of the state’s homelessness crisis, but as the new figures show, it isn’t the most common one.
According to the report, 1 in 5 people who enrolled in state-funded homelessness programs were considered “chronically homeless” — unsheltered for at least a year while living with a complicating health issue.
But more than three times as many — two-thirds of all who sought state-funded services for homelessness — were people who hadn’t popped up in the system for at least two years, if ever.
These might be families evicted and temporarily residing in a car, someone couch surfing while gathering the money for a rental deposit, or people who got their own apartment only to get slammed with an unexpected car payment and find themselves back in a shelter.
Acknowledging that continuum matters — not just for the sake of accuracy, said Assemblymember Wendy Carillo, a Los Angeles Democrat, but because different paths into homelessness might be best met with different pathways out.
“Whether it’s someone living in their vehicle, being evicted from their home, someone experiencing chronic homelessness for decades, living on the streets of Skid Row for many, many years, all of these things are different,” she said. “They need to have different solutions.”
“The answer to those questions, according to the report: The state has spent nearly $10 billion and provided services to more than 571,000 people, each year helping more people than the last.”
Alert readers can see: this isn’t actually an answer to the question, “Where are the state’s billions going?”
In order to solve a problem, one must properly diagnose it. Is it possible that politicians are spending lots of $$$ on the WRONG programs, and that $$$ is flowing into the WRONG pockets? After reading this article, I still don’t understand where the $$$ is going.
Data from the last 8 year RHNA cycle shows that in MV, housing targets for the lowest wage earners (over half of all residents according to 2020 census data) were not met, yet developers wildly exceeded targets for expensive, market-rate units. Do these failures affect homelessness? If so, don’t we need to ask “why is this happening” and make efforts to achieve our affordable housing targets?
The devil is usually in the details. FYI, the State’s “density bonus laws” actually reward developers for building a relatively trivial amount of affordable housing (11% of a project). Its nuclear weapon, “builder’s remedy”, ups those rewards if they build 20% affordable units. And yet, the State mandates that 6000 of the 11000 target units for MV be affordable, which would require that over 50% of construction be affordable. 11% is too low! 20% is too low! and yet the state REWARDS developers for construction at those levels. Obviously these State programs don’t go far enough to help MV construct the amount of affordable housing that is needed, they need to be changed.
Newsom is just playing politics by blaming cities and counties for not solving the problem. In old days, a great leader would say, “The buck stops here”. Today it is fashionable for those at the top to put all blame on underlings.
The report seems to say that $5.5 billion was spent to create 75,000 housing units which works out to the cost to the state per unit was $73,000. That’s a bargain price. I don’t believe it. I think they must of utilized other funding sources besides what the state paid. However, it is the bulk of the money having been spent, not the services portion.
@Leslie Bain I agree that 20% is way too low to meet the State’s housing targets. But the projects still have to pencil out for the developers. If they don’t, no high density housing will get built at all. No developer is ever going to just break even or lose money on a project like that. Not worth the effort.
Perhaps that suggests a sliding scale for rewards to motivate developers to accommodate a higher percentage of affordable units. But, yes, the current guidelines are too rigid and too weak.
The point of this article that sticks out for me is that shelters are really expensive to build and operate. Many homeless people avoid shelters because they are crowded, unsafe, and stuff gets stolen often. So if shelters are also expensive, why is the government throwing tons of cash into them? Seems like that’s a failure and we should hard pivot to other solutions. Tiny homes come to mind.
If ~ $10,000,000,000 has been spent to provide ‘services’ to ~ 500,000, that is ~ $20,000 per person. Would not be surprise if $18,000 (just guessing here) of that is going to salaries of case workers, ‘services’ providers, and others. That comes out to only $1,000,000,000 directly going toward impacting people in need. That is 10% of the state spending.
Accountability, for where every $ spent/went must be done; it is just good sense, we know that when $ are given/provided some $ always goes improperly used.
The cities, the counties, the state, and maybe the Feds, have properties that can be relatively inexpensively transformed to neighborhoods for those that have needs of shelters. And stop the push for case workers that are always pushed as a condition for receiving a safe location. Tiny House communities, can be made to work.
For those in / with vehicles, the Safe Parking Lots is upfront a great idea, but needs improvements, the cities, the county, the state can provide some Safe Parking Lots for vehicle dwellers that are not necessarily free. Say $400 per months, a lot with 100 vehicles, develops $40,000 per months, equals, $480,000 a year. That is enough to hire 6 people at 1.5 minimum wage to work a lot 24/7 maintaing clean, security, per 100 sites, and still have many $$ to provide standard services, like trash collection, porta-potty rentals, cleaning everyday, potable water, weekly shower / laundry trucks, and even services for ‘honey wagons’, that is, trucks for dumping tanks for motorhomes if they are not drivable. They can be financially self sustaining.
Most importantly, the cities, the counties, and the state must address and stop/reverse the greedy forces that they currently support, that are ever increasing rentals faster than income, and driving people to live on the streets in ever increasing numbers. If the ‘greedy forces’ are not stopped, or a workaround implemented, then every year more state $ will be needed for ever and ever.
“The bulk of the spending, $5.5 billion in this case, went to the cost of housing. That includes everything from building new units to preserving old ones, converting unused hotel rooms during the pandemic into temporary housing, building shelters, and setting up permanent supportive housing facilities …”
snip
“Some of that spending has been more likely to lead people out of homelessness than others. Of the more than 75,000 people placed into permanent supportive housing of some kind, for example, only 8% wound up back on the street within six months.”
Question: What % of the $5.5 billion has been spent on “permanent supportive housing”? Apparently, those programs are one of the best solutions for homelessness. Shouldn’t we be spending MORE on that, and less on the other stuff? How much EXACTLY are we spending on the other stuff?
@Jerry – My view is that relying on for-profit developers to build affordable housing is nothing but a path to failure. As you say, “No developer is ever going to just break even or lose money on a project like that. Not worth the effort.”
The YIMBY movement claims that we don’t have enough affordable housing, primarily because of zoning. I disagree. The problem is not zoning, the problem is FUNDING. YIMBYs say that SFH owners are “blocking supply,” which is simply NOT TRUE. Over the past 8 year RHNA cycle, the number of permits issued for market-rate units (7,082) wildly EXCEEDED the RHNA target (1,093). What was “blocked”?
NONE of the targets for AFFORDABLE units were reached, however. Why? Because we are relying PRIMARILY on for-profit builders to build them. This is a truly lousy strategy because there simply isn’t a lot of PROFIT when it comes to affordable housing. Also: the City Council REGULARLY approves projects where <15% of units are affordable, even though 15% is supposed to be a REQUIREMENT.
We need a BETTER funding model. IMHO, we need Prop 15, which reforms Prop 13. Google should pay to end the pain it is causing in MV.
California came up with this requiring of a small amount of managed affordability housing in every project with rental units. The fraction has been creeping up over time, once being as low as 5%.
I think the key to addressing the lack of the purposely controlled as affordable housing units is something else. I think there needs to be a way that public housing can be paid for by the public while existing within a profit-driven housing project but as part of the whole project. So the developer would be required to accommodate that up to some limit, say 50% and with some process defined to assess the cost to the public of the added unit.
I think it’s the only possible way things could work numerically.
Several projects that actually help “teachers, service workers, and kids who don’t code” recently made the news. What do all of these projects have in common?
Feb 3: A teacher housing project in Palo Alto, https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2023/02/03/heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-new-teacher-housing-project-in-palo-alto
Meta put in $25 million.
Feb 4: A Memorandum of Understanding between to the county and MV to allocate 2016 Measure A bond money and other funding for affordable housing projects in MV, https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2023/02/04/guest-opinion-building-affordable-housing-requires-partnerships
“The county Board of Supervisors recently took significant steps toward this effort by voting to receive $16.7 million in Homekey funding from the State.”
Feb 16: Mountain View City Council approves $18 million in funds for two affordable housing projects, https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2023/02/16/mountain-view-city-council-approves-18-million-in-funds-for-two-affordable-housing-projects
“will together add nearly 150 new units for low income residents, including some units reserved for those who are homeless or at risk of being homeless.”
What do all of these projects have in common? They are not relying on for-profit developers to build affordable housing at a ratio of 9 market-rate units to 1 affordable unit. Large amounts of outside FUNDING was required to make these projects real.
Relying on for-profit developers to build affordable housing is nothing but a path to failure.
Building 11K new units using normal developer funding would result in about 2200 affordable units, at the very most. MV still has $39 million, let’s say they can use it to buy 300 or so additional units. 2200+150+300 = 2650 affordable units. The State has given us a target of 6000. Without major sources of additional funding, MV will be lucky to build even half that number.
The problem standing in the way of affordable housing isn’t the zoning. The problem is the FUNDING.
There is in life ’cause’ and ‘effect’, we see the ‘effect’, people living on the streets, it seems that the $$ spent on the Homeless / the Unhoused / living on the streets, are spent addressing the ‘effect’. We need to address the real ’cause’, it seems that $$ spent is focusing on transitioning those living on the streets to renting. But every year there is more and more people pushed to living on the streets, than people on the streets being transitioned to renting. That is treating the ‘effect’, and not treating the ’cause’. Hence things will never get better, and will keep getting worse. If 15 yrs ago there were much less people living on the streets than today, then what was being done then that is not being done today ? What is the real ’cause’ ? Perhaps the real cause, is cities via city councils supporting more and more luxurious apartments / condos built by corporations for huge profits. Guess today, there is small profits from non-luxury apartments for people at the lower end of the economic pay scale. Guess no one wants to invest in small profits.
The cities, the counties, the state must each have a list of the real ’causes’ to address, then perhaps the ‘effects’, people needing to go to live on streets will really go down to almost zero. A very desirable ‘effect’.
“Accountability, for where every $ spent/went must be done; it is just good sense, we know that when $ are given/provided some $ always goes improperly used.”
@Rouel, wanted to take a moment to say how much I appreciate your comments. You offer a unique perspective that is not often shared. My grandmother lived in a mobile home much of her life, my parents started their married life in a mobile home as well. I suspect that life in an RV offers a similar experience in some ways, though being able to take your home with you on trips seems like a wonderful ability. I can see how you might prefer RV-living over traditional brick and mortar. An RV is a tiny home on wheels!
Newsom should not get credit for spending $10B on the WRONG solutions. Just the opposite. He should be held accountable for his poor leadership, not rewarded with the presidency of the US. I say this as someone who has voted for Democrats most of my life.
“Most importantly, the cities, the counties, and the state must address and stop/reverse the greedy forces that they currently support, that are ever increasing rentals faster than income, and driving people to live on the streets in ever increasing numbers. If the ‘greedy forces’ are not stopped, or a workaround implemented, then every year more state $ will be needed for ever and ever.”
The YIMBY movement likes to blame the housing crisis on SFH owners, they accuse us of “blocking supply” (which is not true, it is merely a talking point). Another name for “the greedy forces” is capitalism itself. A robust economy is both a blessing and a curse, especially when those at the top of the ladder focus on their own well-being and ignore the hardships of those at the bottom. Capitalism even allows those with money to exploit those who don’t.
There is no profit to be made in affordable housing, that is the honest explanation about why so little of it has been created. However, there are great profits to be made from exploiting the pain of those in need of it.
@Leslie Bain !!
“… Another name for “the greedy forces” is capitalism itself. A robust economy is both a blessing and a curse, especially when those at the top of the ladder focus on their own well-being and ignore the hardships of those at the bottom. Capitalism even allows those with money to exploit those who don’t. … ”
Maybe we need a better understanding of what capitalism is. In 1980 there were ~ 500,000 millionaires in our USA, today, just 40 yrs later, we have ~ 12,000,000 millionaires. This does not seem sustainable. To for ever expect more / higher profits each year than the previous year seems unsustainable. Perhaps It is not capitalism, perhaps it is psychopathic ‘capitalism’. It is time to understand what capitalism is and is not !!
“Maybe we need a better understanding of what capitalism is … Perhaps It is not capitalism, perhaps it is psychopathic ‘capitalism’. It is time to understand what capitalism is and is not !!”
@Rouel, you raise a fundamental question, one that most of us never really take the time to wrestle with, we rarely see a need or opportunity to do so. Things just are the way they are, right? And they’ve always been that way, and they will always be that way, right? Nope.
There was a time when monarchs ruled everywhere, holding “divine rights”. They claimed, and most people truly believed, that God had put these folks in charge of the government. It’s hard to object to a ruler’s decisions when a majority of folks think that God Himself backs them. The French revolution took place when the extravagance of a monarchy that was indifferent to the horrendous suffering of the commoners crossed a line. Ditto the Russian revolution. Today’s elites are mindful of that line.
“Capitalism tries for a delicate balance: It attempts to work things out so that everyone gets just enough stuff to keep them from getting violent and trying to take other people’s stuff.” – George Carlin
Carlin was so brilliant in his comedy. Makes me sad to think that many young people today likely don’t even know who he was.
I think it was Gore Vidal who said that government is primarily a discussion about who gets what and who pays for it. Couldn’t find that exact quote, but came across these:
“Persuading the people to vote against their own best interests has been the awesome genius of the American political elite from the beginning.”
“Of course, it is possible for any citizen with time to spare, and a canny eye, to work out what is actually going on, but for the many there is not time, and the network news is the only news even though it may not be news at all but only a series of flashing fictions.”
That last one rings a bell with me. Suddenly one day I could finally “see”, something just clicked.