Gov. Newsom pledges 1,200 tiny homes
California will give 200 units to San Jose though none to Oakland, San Francisco
Embracing a trend that has swept cities in the Bay Area and beyond, Gov. Gavin Newsom is doling out 1,200 new tiny homes to shelter homeless people across the state — including 200 in San Jose.
The move is Newsom's latest attempt to fight the homelessness crisis that has swept California, where more than 115,000 people live on the street, in cars or in places deemed unfit for habitation. One- or tworoom tiny homes, where people live temporarily while they wait for permanent housing, have become a popular strategy among officials desperate to move people out of encampments that have taken over city streets, sidewalks, parks and vacant lots.
The new program also is an attempt to help California's cities and counties achieve a new goal unveiled Thursday: reducing homelessness 15% statewide by 2025. By setting ambitious plans to reduce homelessness, cities and counties became eligible for $1 billion in new funding that Newsom's office will dole out this month.
“You want to see progress. And you want to see it now. I get it,” Newsom said March 16 at the Cal Expo event center in Sacramento in front of several different brands of tiny home prototypes. “You want to see progress in terms of encampments. You want to see progress in terms of people off the street.”
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, who joined Newsom for March 16's news conference, said the governor's new program is a “great opportunity for our city.”
“This commitment from the governor is going to enable us to accelerate basic, dignified housing for people who need it and start to end this era of encampments that we've been struggling with,” Mahan said. “We've seen the success just in the last few years in San Jose.”
Los Angeles also will receive 500 tiny homes, San Diego County will get 150 and Sacramento will get 350. None will go to San Francisco or Oakland, both of which are grappling with large homeless populations. Neither San Francisco nor Oakland immediately responded to requests for comment. An Alameda County spokesperson said the county was “not made aware” of a selection process for the tiny homes.
Newsom said his office gave preference to communities that already have a track record of operating successful tiny home communities, have potential sites available to open new ones and were eager to participate.
“We wanted enthusiastic partners,” he said. “We didn't want people we had to coerce.”
The state will cover the cost of buying and installing the tiny homes — which Newsom estimates will be about $30 million — and the National Guard will help deliver them. But local governments will be responsible for providing the services people living in those units will need, such as meals, counseling and help finding long-term housing.
Newsom's office said the state hopes to have the units installed by the fall.
The governor's office hasn't nailed down exactly what the tiny homes will look like, who will manufacture them or what kind of amenities they will have. Tiny homes range in size and quality, from rudimentary shed-like dwellings in Oakland that lack running water, to larger units in San Jose with en suite bathrooms. Proponents say they are safer and more dignified than traditional homeless shelters where dozens of people sleep on cots in a single room. And they can be set up quickly on scraps of unused land, often under overpasses or on small, vacant lots.
Though the idea is to move people from the street into a tiny home and then
quickly from a tiny home into permanent housing, that doesn't always pan out. A Bay Area News Group investigation found that though tiny homes work better than dormstyle traditional shelters, tiny home residents in Alameda County failed to find permanent housing nearly three-quarters of the time between June 2019 and June 2022. In Santa Clara County, they failed to find permanent housing more than half of the time.
The Bay Area News Group investigation also found tiny homes with en suite bathrooms are more successful. Activists say that's because having a bathroom and shower gives residents the dignity they need to reach their goals. But it's unclear if Newsom's tiny homes will come with
those amenities.
Mahan said San Jose's “strong preference” is for tiny homes with en suite bathrooms, like those the city has set up on Evans Lane. That site, which caters to homeless families with children, is the most successful in San Jose — moving people into permanent housing at a rate of nearly 70%.
San Jose has set up nearly 500 tiny homes for homeless residents in the past three years, Mahan said, and officials expect to open another site near the San Jose police headquarters in the coming weeks. In the city's latest census of homeless residents, the number of people living on the street dropped slightly since 2019 — to just under 5,000 — while the number of people living in temporary
shelters increased.
Newsom's announcement March 16 comes after he briefly held state funding hostage last year, saying he was disappointed by the failure of cities and counties to set ambitious goals to reduce homelessness. The 2022 plans cities and counties submitted set a paltry goal of reducing homelessness statewide 2% by 2024, Newsom said, which was “simply unacceptable.” He backed down less than three weeks later after he said cities and counties agreed to step up and increase their goals in future plans.
Now, Newsom's office says that has paid off. In their 2023-2024 plans, California cities and counties have upped their goals to a 15% reduction in homelessness statewide by 2025.