Danger And Dysfunction Plague California's Homeless Shelter System

Here are the morning’s top stories on Wednesday, February 26, 2025…

• California’s homeless shelters are deadlier than the state’s jails and only a fraction of the people in them end up in permanent housing. Those are just a couple of the startling findings in a new investigation out this week from our California newsroom partner CalMatters. 
• More than 50,000 University of California workers are set to go on strike statewide starting Wednesday.
• Despite community concerns, LA County supervisors have voted unanimously to allow a county owned landfill in the city of Calabasas to receive ash and debris from properties destroyed in the recent L.A. fires.

‘A Volunteer Jail:’ Inside The Scandals And Abuse Pushing California’s Homeless Out Of Shelters

Even if residents of the state’s roughly 61,000 emergency shelter beds endure the gauntlet, they’ll likely get stuck in housing purgatory. New state data obtained by CalMatters shows that fewer than 1 in 4 residents who cycle through shelters each year move into permanent homes, far below what many shelter operators promised in their contracts with public agencies.

As homelessness rises in California, state and local officials keep relying on shelters as the backbone of their increasingly aggressive efforts to get people off the streets. But the conditions inside, combined with low housing rates, now have some experts and even shelter executives calling on governments to fundamentally rethink their approach.

To better understand what’s happening inside shelters, CalMatters requested and analyzed previously unreleased state performance data, reviewed thousands of police calls and incident reports, and interviewed more than 80 shelter residents and personnel.

No state agency could provide an estimate for how much total taxpayer money is spent on shelters, so CalMatters analyzed local contracts and state funding data. The news organization found that governments have invested at least $1 billion since 2018. The number of emergency shelter beds in the state more than doubled, from around 27,000 to 61,000, federal data shows. There are still three times as many homeless people as there are shelter beds in California. Annual shelter death rates tripled between 2018 and mid-2024. A total of 2,007 people died, according to data obtained from the California Interagency Council on Homelessness. That’s nearly twice as many deaths as California jails saw during the same period.

Thousands Of UC Workers To Strike, Disrupting Campuses, Hospitals And Labs

Tens of thousands of University of California health care, research and technical employees have begun a multiday strike on Wednesday, potentially disrupting daily operations at UC campuses, hospitals and laboratories statewide.

More than 50,000 UC workers represented by the University Professional and Technical Employees Local 9119 and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299 could walk out over top union concerns such as low wages and severe understaffing, which the university disputes.

Contract negotiations between the two unions and UC — one of the state’s largest employers with over 200,000 workers — began months ago, but no agreements have been reached.

Three LA County Landfills Are Set To Accept Wildfire Debris

L.A. County supervisors cleared the way Tuesday for large amounts of wildfire debris to be disposed of at the Calabasas, Sunshine Canyon and Lancaster landfills.

The debris will come from Phase 2 of the cleanup process, which includes ash, soil and the remnants of homes, including foundations and chimneys. Hazardous material such as asbestos, propane tanks, solvents and lithium batteries should have been removed as part of Phase 1 of the cleanup. That should be wrapping up this week, according to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Col. Eric Swenson, who spoke during the supervisors’ meeting.

“The fire ash and debris is in an uncontrolled state, and what is most important for the health of this community … is that we get it from an uncontrolled environment to a controlled environment as quickly and safely as possible,” Swenson said.