How much does California really spend on homelessness? Democrat wants a final answer

A California Democrat is calling for a statewide assessment of every dollar cities and agencies spend on homelessness so the Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom can calibrate a new strategy to fight the crisis.

Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, said the Legislature and Newsom lack insight into how cities, counties and agencies are using the state’s budget to shelter and care for the 151,000 homeless Californians. Without centralized data, he said, it’s hard to know if California is effectively financing solutions.

He’s introducing a proposal on Tuesday that would mandate the state Homeless Coordinating and Financing Council to conduct a “statewide needs and gaps analysis” of programs and services, to be completed and sent back to the Legislature by July 31, 2021, according to the bill language.

“No one today can tell me how much money is being spent on homelessness in California on all levels,” Chiu said. “They always say, to know where you gotta go, you have to know where you’re starting from.”

Homelessness surged 12 percent in Los Angeles County from 2018, 17 percent in the city of San Francisco and 19 percent in Sacramento County since 2017, despite the financial and legislative attention from local and statewide officials to solve the problem.

Nearly half of the nation’s unsheltered homeless people live in California, according to a fall 2019 report from the White House Council of Economic Advisers, and 15 percent of residents ranked the issue as one of the state’s top concerns in a September 2019 survey by the Public Policy Institute of California.

That’s despite statewide investments to curb homelessness and assist local governments desperate for a sustainable fix.

Former Gov. Jerry Brown and lawmakers steered $500 million in 2018 to local governments to help homeless people. They also approved an additional $100 million in homeless aid through the state’s health, social services and emergency departments.

Last year, Newsom and lawmakers approved $650 million for local governments and $450 million through health and human services programs aimed at homeless people and those at risk of losing their homes.

This year, Newsom wants to spend $750 million on homeless aid through a new fund that would provide grants to local organizations.

The second-year governor is also calling for a study of what’s causing homelessness in California, overseen by the state Health and Human Services Agency in collaboration with University of California researchers. His office also wants to measure whether local efforts to get people off the streets are paying off and to require cities to report their progress to access state homelessness money.

“The state of California is treating homelessness as a real emergency – because it is one,” Newsom said in a January statement. “Californians are demanding that all levels of government – federal, state and local – do more to get people off the streets and into services – whether that’s housing, mental health services, substance abuse treatment or all of the above.”

But the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office questioned Newsom’s homeless budget last week, arguing the state should instead allocate that money to local governments, following the tactic used in past budgets.

“We find the governor’s budget proposal falls short of articulating a clear strategy for curbing homelessness in California,” the Legislative Analyst’s Office wrote in its report.

Chiu said the LAO report demonstrates the urgency of his legislation, which he wants to answer three questions: What is working, how much more would it cost to “do what we need to do,” and what does accountability from a state to local level look like?

The assessment would evaluate continuum of care programs, state departments and services that provide housing or are related to shelter and homelessness and other state-funded work, including the foster care and criminal justice systems, according to his office.

Chiu also estimates a smooth process, because communities are already undertaking their own needs assessments, from which the state could pluck available data.

The assessment would demonstrate the disparity between what’s needed and what the state’s already providing in supportive, affordable and rapid re-housing, shelters, rental subsidies and other services. From there, the state could more accurately pinpoint how and where resources should be spent, Chiu said, and the analysis would provide a financial model to close the gap.

“To envision a state where 150,000 Californians are not sleeping on the streets every night,” he said, “we have to be clear eyed on what kind of investment that’s going to take,” he said.

This story was originally published February 18, 2020 at 4:45 AM with the headline "How much does California really spend on homelessness? Democrat wants a final answer."