Can Newsom Build on Pandemic Lessons to End Homelessness?
A motel in Marin County was scheduled to be converted into housing for the homeless under Project Homekey. Photo by Anne Wernikoff, CalMatters
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From the lobby of a former extended-stay motel in San Diego, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced what he called a historic proposal to end a California crisis by converting thousands more hotel rooms into housing for people who are homeless.
In all, he proposed spending $12 billion over two years, about 10 times what he proposed spending on homelessness in January, thanks to a budget windfall pegged at more than $100 billion.
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Anger and frustration rightfully jump out from each page of the recent federal court order creating a right to shelter for the 4,600 unhoused residents in downtown Los Angeles’ skid row neighborhood. The 110-page document powerfully critiques the decades-long history of counterproductive public policies that drove up housing costs, exacerbated racial wealth disparities and sought to contain homelessness within skid row.
As U.S. District Judge David O. Carter observes in his April 20 order, these policies have led us to a point where more than 66,000 Los Angeles County residents are homeless each night, 42% of whom are Black even though only 8% of county residents are Black and where 1,383 people died on our streets last year.
Californians: Here’s Why Your Housing Costs Are So High
Back CalMatters Apr 13, 2021 By Manuela Tobias, Matt Levin & Ben Christopher Tenants and landlords are hurting, homelessness is skyrocketing and the housing market is out of control. The COVID-19 pandemic isn’t the only reason for that, but it’s making California’s longstanding housing crisis even worse. In 2021, nine out of ten Californians consider housing affordability a problem, and nearly one in three Californians are considering leaving the state because of it, according to a March survey by the Public Policy Institute of California. So how did things get so bad? Here’s what you need to know about
Dive Brief:
California launched its first-ever data warehouse to provide a more complete picture of homelessness in the state, helping local officials make more data-informed policy decisions to prevent and end homelessness.
The state’s Homeless Coordinating and Financing Council, in partnership with 44 continuums of care (CoCs), created the Homeless Data Integration System (HDIS) to compile data about homelessness into a single repository.
The HDIS will help the state and CoCs determine which homelessness services are being provided across the state; who is accessing those services; and which interventions are the most effective.
Dive Insight:
California’s homeless population increased almost 7% last year, to 161,548 people, according to a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) January 2020 point-in-time count, a number that is reported to likely have been exacerbated amid the pandemic. And the number of people served by homeless prevention se
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