State push on homelessness accountability could be issue
Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislators plan to require cities and counties to show they are making headway on homelessness in return for state grants.
Right now, that could be a problem for San Diego.
Monthly reports have consistently shown the region is losing ground in housing homeless people.
The tallies by the Downtown San Diego Partnership have consistently shown increases in the homeless population in the city’s core. Likewise, the Regional Task Force on Homelessness regularly reveals more people are falling into homelessness than are moving into housing.
San Diego has plenty of company in this misery, and, as it stands, likely wouldn’t be the only city potentially losing grants. Homelessness has increased significantly across California, considerably faster than in the rest of the country, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Nearly a third of the nation’s homeless people live in California.
Newsom recently began insisting local governments show quantifiable improvements in combating homelessness to receive grants, and legislation recently has been introduced to put that into law.
The metrics to gauge progress haven’t been defined yet, but the bottom line, of course, is to reduce homelessness.
A bill by Assemblymember Luz Rivas, a Democrat from the San Fernando Valley, would tie grants from the state’s Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention fund to “successful programs that have tangible results.” Assembly Bill 799 also would make the funding ongoing, rather than an annual allocation, though no dollar amount is attached to the bill.
Local officials, including San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, have urged the state to provide such consistent funding, maintaining that would help with long-term planning and potentially cut costs. On Wednesday, Gloria was in Sacramento making that point before an Assembly budget subcommittee.
“If you want us to be able to do more, we need more,” he said. “That’s just the fact of the matter.”
Tension between the governor and local officials has grown along with the homeless population. In a surprise last fall, Newsom rejected every local application for homeless grants. He soon relented and allowed the money to f low, but set the stage for more scrutiny of local efforts down the line.
“We’re not just going to hand out another billion dollars of brand new discretionary money unless it aligns with our goals and we see real progress,” Newsom said in January when he unveiled his budget.
The frustration is palpable at all levels of government. Despite spending billions on homelessness over the years, neither the state nor local jurisdictions have much of a sense of what is working and what isn’t. Even finding out how much money is being spent and where is difficult.
Numerous state agencies are involved in addressing homelessness, and the players expand exponentially when considering all the local government departments and nonprofits that are involved.
All the while, homelessness has continued to rise.
Last week, a new state
report looked at the amount of state funding for homelessness programs from 2018 through 2021 and what it has done. Nearly $10 billion has been spent providing homeless services to more than 500,000 people, according to the report by the state’s Interagency Council on Homelessness.
More than 40 percent of homeless residents ended up housed — less than half.
The council was not tasked with recommending how the state can best spend its money. But among the breadth of data in the report, researchers noted that people placed into permanent supportive housing had a lower rate of becoming homeless again than people in other kinds of
shelter and programs.
Newsom’s 2023-24 budget includes the aforementioned $1 billion in local grant funding that he wants to be conditioned on results, along with ongoing billions aimed at homelessness and housing. He said he would keep his commitment and not ratchet back past unspent outlays, despite the state’s projected $22.5 billion budget deficit.
“We’re following through on that — no cuts,” Newsom said in January.
To end the homelessness crisis in California, a whole lot more money is going to be needed, according to the California Homeless Housing Needs Assessment.
The Corporation for Supportive Housing and the California Housing Partnership, which conducted the research, concluded $8.1 billion will be needed annually
over the next dozen years to house everyone in California who needs it.
The report estimates current state and federal funding toward affordable and supportive housing will average $1.2 billion annually, leaving a $6.9 billion gap.
Authors of the report say that amounts to 2.7 percent of the state’s annual budget. After homelessness is “solved” in California, the report says it will take $4.7 billion each year after that to meet ongoing needs.
Those are eye-popping numbers. Even if the actual amount needed to do the job is less, it’s still going to be a lot. Whatever the state spends, determining whether it’s doing any good is paramount. Public opinion polls have identified homelessness and housing costs as top concerns among Californians, and
they are demanding improvements.
Meanwhile, keep in mind that the cost of homelessness is already in the billions, when taking into account emergency room visits, jail and public safety resources and mental health services, in addition to the money directly allocated for assisting people with housing and other programs.
“It costs about $40,000 a year for a homeless person to be on the streets,” former U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan said on “The Daily Show” — in 2012.
The annual point-intime homeless counts may be f lawed and lowball the true number of unhoused people, as critics contend. But the results have become a standard yardstick in assessing homelessness. The last tally made public for San Diego was from 2022, when the county’s homeless population was pegged at 8,427, an increase of 10 percent from two years earlier.
The statewide point-intime count found 171,521 homeless people.
You do the math.