This California Metropolis Was Making a Distinction on Homelessness. Then the Cash Ran Out

A brand new homeless outreach program pairing a social employee with a police officer in Grass Valley, a small city within the Sierra Nevada foothills, appeared to be working.

The state-funded effort despatched the staff to homeless encampments, the place they helped construct belief amongst susceptible individuals and persuaded them to simply accept assist, in accordance with nonprofit Hospitality Home, which ran this system. 

It blew previous its aim of partaking 90 individuals in three years, as an alternative assembly with greater than 200. It even helped transfer some individuals instantly into housing, together with an 80-year-old veteran. 

However when the three-year grant paying for that outreach led to June, there was no cash to switch it. So this system got here to a screeching halt, to the frustration of all concerned.

“It’s a profound loss to not be capable to do that,” stated Nancy Baglietto, govt director of Hospitality Home. 

That loss embodies the worst fears of homeless service suppliers throughout California, as they battle to piece collectively new funding sources after their state grants expire. Many had hoped that Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders would change that dynamic within the state funds deal they introduced final week by committing ongoing funds for homelessness that nonprofits, cities and counties might depend on yr after yr.

As a substitute, Newsom and lawmakers settled on one other spherical of one-time funding.

“It actually defies logic that the state funds as soon as once more fails to incorporate funding to match the dimensions of the disaster we’re experiencing,” stated Carolyn Coleman, govt director and CEO of the League of California Cities, which pressed Newsom’s administration for a assured $3 billion a yr in homelessness funding.

As California grapples with present for its huge inhabitants of greater than 170,000 unhoused residents, Newsom has stepped up homelessness funding to unprecedented ranges. He’s funneled almost $21 billion into housing and homelessness because the 2018-19 fiscal yr. 

This yr, for the third yr in a row, the state funds allocates $1 billion to the Homeless Housing, Help and Prevention fund, which native officers can use for housing, outreach at encampments, emergency shelters and extra.

However the overwhelming majority of Newsom’s homelessness spending has been in one-time grants, which suppliers say makes it troublesome to fund the form of long-term applications that would make a noticeable dent within the disaster. 

California would wish to spend $8.1 billion a yr for a dozen years to eradicate homelessness within the state, in accordance with a report by the Company for Supportive Housing and the California Housing Partnership, two nonprofit advocacy teams.

The Governor’s Workplace defended this method to funding homelessness, mentioning that the state has supplied an “unprecedented” $15.3 billion for the problem since he took workplace initially of 2019. The governor has additionally proposed a 2024 poll measure to amend the Psychological Well being Companies Act that would offer $1 billion a yr for housing for individuals with psychological diseases and substance abuse problems. That modification would require voter approval to take impact.

“This funds supplies not simply funding to deal with homelessness—it builds within the accountability wanted to make sure that tax {dollars} are being maximized to supply actual outcomes,” Daniel Lopez, Newsom’s deputy communications director, stated in an emailed assertion. “In the end, the problem of homelessness and housing should be met not solely with {dollars}, nevertheless it additionally requires robust accountability coupled with monetary sources to make lasting progress for our state.”

To be eligible for homelessness funding below this funds, cities and counties should submit homeless motion plans—in coordination with different jurisdictions of their area—that element the progress they’ve made.

There was some momentum this yr to maneuver away from one-time spending on homelessness. Greater than two dozen state legislators signed a letter in Could supporting the League of California Cities’ demand for $3 billion a yr. A coalition led by the California State Affiliation of Counties additionally referred to as for ongoing funds and drafted invoice language it urged legislators to undertake. 

However that proved to be a troublesome ask with Newsom’s workplace projecting a $30 billion-plus funds deficit.

For years, metropolis and county leaders, legislators and homelessness nonprofits have been clamoring for a supply of ongoing funding to sort out the homelessness disaster. Assemblymember Luz Rivas, a Democrat from Arleta, pushed a invoice in 2021 that might have established ongoing homelessness funding by elevating taxes on giant companies, however the invoice died with out making it out of the Meeting. Final yr, California voters rejected a poll measure to legalize sports activities betting, which might have directed charges and taxes from these wages right into a fund for homelessness.

Baglietto, of Hospitality Home, says that sort of everlasting funding might have helped save her group’s Grass Valley outreach program. 

Hospitality Home and the Grass Valley Police Division acquired $575,000 in 2020 via a state violence intervention program. The town put the cash towards homeless outreach as a technique to stop unhoused individuals from experiencing violence in encampments, and to scale back confrontations between police and unhoused individuals. By the point the grant ran out this yr, Grass Valley’s crime charge had improved and town was not eligible for the cash, Baglietto stated. 

It wasn’t the primary time the nonprofit was compelled to scramble due to unreliable state funding. Hospitality Home’s 65-bed homeless shelter was as soon as largely funded by the state grants. A number of years in the past, the state modified how that cash was allotted, specializing in everlasting housing as an alternative of shelter, and Hospitality Home’s portion dried up. So the nonprofit cobbled collectively funding from a dozen totally different sources to fill the outlet left by the state cash, Baglietto stated. 

Now, Hospitality Home retains its shelter open via cash from CalAIM, Newsom’s latest Medi-Cal growth. The nonprofit nonetheless has a “huge” hole, which it’s briefly filling with federal Covid funds designed to assist companies retain staff. That cash runs out subsequent yr. 

“We don’t know annually the place the funding goes to come back from,” Baglietto stated. “It’s form of a nail-biting state of affairs.”

Union Station Homeless Companies, which coordinates applications all through the San Gabriel Valley in Los Angeles County, faces the identical points, stated CEO Anne Miskey. Each funds cycle, her staff has to spend two or three months piecing collectively their financing because the funding they get from the state modifications or ends. Typically, the parameters for a state grant shift, and shoppers Union Station has been working with for years all of a sudden are not eligible.

“That is simply creating havoc in our sector,” Miskey stated. “And for this reason persons are leaving. It’s not the shoppers. It’s not the work. It’s this piece.”

The brand new state funds has some new language round homelessness funding. It requires that anybody making use of for a grant be a part of a regional plan that lays out the particular roles and duties of every participant. That was one thing the California State Affiliation of Counties pushed for, arguing that at the moment cities, counties and different teams too usually battle over who ought to be constructing shelters, providing psychological well being assist or offering different homeless companies.

The funds additionally guarantees that it’s the Legislature’s “intent” to offer further the identical funding within the 2024-25 fiscal yr. 

That’s not sufficient, stated Graham Knaus, CEO of the California State Affiliation of Counties. 

“Counties can not funds based mostly on legislative intent,” he stated. “No person can. We actually can’t make multiyear commitments based mostly upon intent the place there’s no readability about what’s going to occur subsequent yr.”