California Considers More Homeless Shelter Oversight After CalMatters Investigation

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A new state bill would add more oversight to California homeless shelters after a CalMatters investigation exposed that many taxpayer-funded facilities are plagued by violence, mismanagement and low success rates.

The bill would build on an existing state law that was supposed to add basic checks on homeless shelter safety and sanitation. Previous CalMatters reporting found all but a handful of cities and counties have ignored the law.

Under the new proposal, local governments would be required to perform annual inspections of taxpayer-funded shelters, and cities and counties could lose state funding if they fail to correct code violations or keep neglecting to file mandatory reports. Shelter operators would also have to do more to inform residents of their rights to file complaints.

The oversight push comes amid a statewide boom in homeless shelters. California governments have spent at least $1 billion to more than double the state’s emergency shelter beds since 2018, federal data shows. The 61,000 beds aren’t nearly enough; the state still has three times as many homeless residents as shelter beds. Many of those who do get in also report serious problems: violence, filth, theft, mismanagement and a nagging lack of real housing to move onto.

“We’re really new in this field of operating shelters in California,” said Assemblymember Sharon Quirk-Silva, a Democrat who represents parts of Orange and L.A. counties. She authored both the initial state law and the new proposed changes. “Local municipalities need to be responsible for upholding basic standards of care, ensuring that shelters are safe, well managed and serving their intended purpose.”

Quirk-Silva first proposed more state shelter monitoring after a 2019 ACLU report revealed maggots, flooding and sexual harassment in Orange County shelters. Over the past year, CalMatters reviewed thousands of statewide shelter records, complaints, lawsuits and police logs that reveal lasting and more widespread issues, including stabbings, sex crimes, fraud allegations, staff stealing from homeless clients and shelters that kick out far more people than they house.

The existing state shelter law is supposed to require cities and counties to perform inspections and report to the state if they receive complaints about shelter conditions. But public records requested by CalMatters from the California Department of Housing and Community Development showed that, as of last summer, just nine of California’s more than 500 total cities and counties had filed the required reports.

“It was really some of your work that brought this issue of non-reporting to us,” Quirk-Silva said. “The numbers definitely showed that we had very little compliance.”

The new shelter bill, AB 750, is expected to be considered by the California State Assembly Committee on Housing and Community Development in the coming weeks. While the housing agency said it is unable to comment on proposed legislation, Quirk-Silva said that more analysis is forthcoming on the resources that could be required to implement the changes.

What happens next will be significant for cities across the state, where officials have rushed to open new shelters in recent years as they ramp up street encampment clearings. Bunk bed-lined group shelters have existed in big cities since the 1980s, but communities across California are now hiring contract shelter operators to demonstrate that they’re offering alternatives to street crackdowns. The shelters are supposed to get people off the street, connect them to social services, then provide a bridge to permanent housing.

Still, statewide data obtained by CalMatters shows that fewer than 1 in 4 shelter residents move onto permanent housing. The majority keep cycling through tents, jails, hospitals and other short-term programs.

Some shelter operators and local governments say that the challenges are no surprise. The facilities are often manned by low-paid frontline workers who struggle to manage shifting budgets, scarce housing options and residents with drastically different needs — sober and addicted, healthy and severely ill, families and individuals, recently paroled and crime survivors, newly evicted and chronically homeless.

The new state shelter bill is limited in scope to focus on inspections and complaints related to building standards for public health and sanitation. Advocates say that could limit recourse for broader issues.

“This bill definitely does not at all address these other forms of abuse and malfeasance and sometimes crime,” said Eve Garrow, a senior policy analyst and advocate for the ACLU of Southern California who authored the 2019 Orange County shelter report. “We need other forms of accountability. It really is still the Wild West out there.”

Some places, including San Francisco and Monterey County, have created systems for outside groups to review shelter complaints after concerns about lacking follow up and residents facing retaliation for speaking up. Homelessness researchers also emphasize the potential of more specialized shelters to help people work through widely varied health, substance use or financial issues.

Longer term, housing experts question how the state is balancing immediate offerings like shelters with solutions to deliver lasting homes. Many favor increasing investment in subsidized housing or redirecting funds to rent assistance programs to quickly get people off the street or keep them from becoming homeless in the first place.

“We’re trying to make a broken system a little safer and cleaner,” Garrow said. “But we know that what people actually need is safe, permanent housing that they can afford.”

Need help? Read our guide on how to file a shelter complaint or find legal resources.

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This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.