State Lawmakers Pursue One-Stop Shop for Homeless Funding

A group of Democratic state lawmakers is pushing to consolidate the funding available for California cities to take on homelessness.

They say California's current system of helping the homeless is a bureaucratic maze, and want $450 million in the state budget to create a one-stop shop for local governments to access funds for everything from rental assistance, to health services, to shelters.

"It's a huge investment and it's a huge system change," said Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva, D-Fullerton.

Last year, California funded more than a dozen programs to address homelessness across six different departments — a web of deadlines and requirements for local governments looking for a slice of funding.

"Smaller cities that don't have lobbyists and grant writers, they really often miss this opportunity, just because of a lack of a workforce," Quirk-Silva said.

The Flexible Housing Program proposed in Assembly Bill 816 would pool together money at the state level, and allow local governments to apply for it with something akin to the college "common app." Funding would be prioritized for initiatives that work across city lines, and the money could be used for a variety of services that help individuals and families off the streets.

"There should be no silos, there should be no jurisdictional differences, we should all come together," said Assemblyman Todd Gloria, D-San Diego. "Because people don’t care what government program, what charity or neighborhood group got them off the street. They just want to get off the streets."

Supporters of the idea point to the success of flexible housing pools in Los Angeles and Napa counties.

"The pool has six or seven different funding sources inside of it," said Vivian Wan, Chief Operating Officer of Abode Services, a non-profit that has operated Napa's program since 2007. "So instead of having six or seven different contracts and different programs, we're able to bring folks in and then find the source that best fits that household and that housing placement."

The faster that service providers can access money, Wan said, the faster they can secure an apartment lease for a homeless family.

She points to the example of two counties that both received money through the state CalWORKS Housing Support Program.

"In the county that had the Flex pool, which was Santa Clara County, we had housed over 75 families before we were even in contract to serve anyone [in the other county]," said Wan.

But Wan cautioned state lawmakers that there's a cost to creating a dynamic pool of money: lots of work on the back end to make sure that grants are fulfilling their intended purpose.

"You need to have the back end finance folks," she added. "I kid you not, we get invoices pushed back because the federal scrutiny is so great. If it's rounding the wrong way at the thousandths of a penny level we get pushback."

In the competitive state budget process, a mayor's request to cut a ribbon on a new shelter could outweigh calls to spend millions building administrative support (or what politicians sometimes derisively refer to as "overhead") into a new state funding pool.

"When you make that type of investment and a real systemic change, that can be challenging," Assemblywoman Quirk-Silva said. "But I think we'll all see the progress we're hoping for  because I truly do not think anybody feels happy when they see people in such distress."