Newsom Announces $830 Million in Homelessness Spending — With Strings

Nearly $830 million in state funding for shelter and services to address homelessness will come with new accountability and reporting requirements, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday.

The announcement comes nearly three months after the governor issued an executive order urging local governments to crack down on homeless encampments, which in turn followed a June Supreme Court ruling that expanded cities’ ability to fine and jail people camping outside, even when no shelter is available.

The Bay Area is set to receive a significant tranche of the new funds, which were awarded regionally. The Alameda and Santa Clara regions were awarded $56 million each, while San Francisco got $43 million. The San Mateo, Marin, Napa and Solano regions also received smaller grants.

California allocated nearly $24 billion to housing and services between 2019 and 2023, but earlier this year, a state audit found it has little data on how well its homelessness spending is working.

“No one is naive about the public’s perception of our progress on this issue. No one is denying how angry people are, how frustrated they are, and how heartbroken they are,” Newsom said.

The funding is the latest installment of the Homeless Housing Assistance and Prevention (HHAP) grant program, which can be used to build new shelters and housing and provide services to people experiencing homelessness.

To get the money, recipients had to sign on to new transparency and compliance requirements aimed at better tracking outcomes. They’re expected to make regular reports on spending, which will be publicly available, and quarterly reports on the success of their programs. Cities, counties and coordinating agencies also had to commit to working together to lay out a plan for tackling homelessness regionally.

Newsom on Tuesday also announced new guidance to cities from the California Interagency Council on Homelessness on how to carry out homeless encampment sweeps. The recommendations include giving camp residents at least 48 hours notice, establishing clear policies for handling people’s belongings, keeping tabs on immediately available shelter options and making “every effort” to offer shelter to residents before clearing an encampment.

If no shelter is available, the guidance instructs local governments to make sure “reasonably accessible” locations are available where people can sleep without breaking the law.

Speaking at the press conference on Tuesday, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass lauded the new approach, saying that “bickering and finger-pointing” between cities, counties and the state had historically bogged down the homelessness response.

“This is the type of collaboration, the type of financial support, and the type of regulatory change that we need to finally solve homelessness,” she said.

Other conditions include prioritizing permanent housing over temporary shelter, working to address racial inequities in homelessness and using the expertise of people with lived experience to help design programs.

Newsom said the sixth round of HHAP funding — an additional $1 billion, for which applications are expected to open next year — will come with even more stringent accountability requirements.