Homelessness in California

A tent city on East 12th Street in Oakland, California, set up by local homeless people, 2019

Homeless man in Fresno, California, 2019

The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development estimated that more than 181,399 people were experiencing homelessness in California in January 2023. This is one of the highest per capita rates in the nation, with 0.46% of residents estimated as being homeless. More than two-thirds of homeless people in California are unsheltered (meaning they sleep on the streets, in encampments, or in their cars), which is the highest percentage of any state in the United States. 49% of the unsheltered homeless people in the United States live in California. Even those who are sheltered are so insecurely, with 90% of homeless adults in California reporting that they spent at least one night unsheltered in the past six months.

A statewide housing shortage is the primary driver of the homelessness crisis. A 2022 study found that differences in per capita homelessness rates across the United States are not due to differing rates of mental illness, drug addiction, or poverty, but to differences in the cost of housing. West Coast cities including San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego have homelessness rates five times as high as areas with much lower housing costs like Arkansas, West Virginia, and Detroit, even though the latter locations have high burdens of opioid addiction and poverty. California has the second lowest number of housing units per capita, and an estimated shortage of one million homes affordable to the lowest income renters. Another 2022 study found that moderate decreases in rents would lead to significant declines in homelessness. A 2023 study published by the University of California, San Francisco also found that the high cost of housing was the greatest obstacle to reducing homelessness.

Scope of the issue

In 2007–2023, California experienced higher increases in the number of people experiencing homelessness than any other state. Between 2010 and 2020, the number of people experiencing homelessness in California increased by 31%, while nationwide the number fell by 18%. Between 2020 and 2022, the number increased 6% in California, and less than half a percent in the rest of the country. In 2021, 19% of Californians surveyed said they or someone close to them had been homeless at some point during the previous five years. 36% of homeless people in California are categorized as "chronically homeless"—which means that "they have a long-standing disability that significantly impedes their ability to live independently and have been unhoused for a consecutive year or on at least four occasions within a three-year period." The other 64% are categorized as "experiencing short-term homelessness" though many of them may have been homeless for similarly long periods of time but do not have "a long-standing disability" of the sort that meets the "chronically homeless" definition. 80% of homeless people in California are adults not with children, and an estimated 40% of those are aged 50 and older. 14% are families with children. 7% are unaccompanied youth (where "youth" is defined as being under age 25).

Health aspects

See also: Homelessness in the United States § Health

In 2019, homeless people were hospitalized in California 119,815 times and made 324,823 emergency department visits.

In a survey of homeless adults in California, 45% rated their health as "poor or fair" and 60% reported having a chronic disease.

In March 2019 The Atlantic reported that outbreaks of what it called "Medieval diseases" such as tuberculosis and typhus were spreading in homeless shelters throughout California. These outbreaks have been described as a "public-health crisis" and a "disaster" by public health officials who are concerned they might spread into the general population.

Street medicine is defined as "health and social services developed specifically to address the unique needs and circumstances of the unsheltered homeless, delivered directly to them in their own environment." Health services provided via street medicine include chronic condition diagnosis, disease management, and preventive medicine. As of 2021 there were at least 25 street medicine programs operating in California. The average program had 615 patients and conducted 2,352 patient visits, but most programs had fewer than 500 patients and conducted fewer than 500 visits.

A representative survey of homeless adults in California found that 82% had experienced a mental health condition at some point, 66% were currently experiencing symptoms of mental illness, and 27% had been hospitalized for mental health reasons.

65% of those surveyed said they had regularly used illegal drugs at some point in their lives, and 62% said they had at some point been heavy drinkers. 57% had been treated for substance use disorder at some point. 31% were current users of methamphetamines, 16% abused alcohol. 20% had required medical attention for an overdose. 24% saw their substance use as a problem. Of those who used drugs or alcohol regularly, 20% wanted treatment but were unable to obtain it.

Possible causes

Insufficient housing

Main article: California housing shortage

In California housing costs are exceptionally high and the supply of affordable housing is low. California ranks second from the bottom among U.S. states in the number of housing units per capita. As of 2021 California had only 24 homes that were considered affordable and available for each 100 of the lowest income renter households, putting the housing shortage in California for this category of renters at about one million homes.

In the 2022 book Homelessness is a Housing Problem, the authors studied per capita homelessness rates across the country along with what possible factors might be influencing the rates. They found that high rates of homelessness are caused by shortages of affordable housing, not by mental illness, drug addiction, or poverty. They found that mental illness, drug addiction, and poverty occur nationwide, but not all places have equally expensive housing costs. For example, two states with high rates of opioid addiction—Arkansas and West Virginia—both have low per capita rates of homelessness, because of low housing prices. With respect to poverty, the city of Detroit is one of the poorest cities, yet Detroit's per capita homelessness rate is 20% that of West Coast cities like Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego. The Sacramento Bee noted that large cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco attribute increases in the number of people experiencing homelessness to the housing shortage.

A 2002 study found "that the incidence of homelessness [in California] varies inversely with housing vacancy rates and positively with the market rent for just-standard housing" and concluded that "moderate increases in housing vacancy rates and moderate decreases in market rents are sufficient to generate substantial declines in homelessness."

In San Diego, according to a 2023 report by the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, Blackstone Inc. has contributed to the problem through aggressive evictions and rent increases of some 43-64% on vacant properties in two years.

Deinstitutionalization

A nationwide policy of deinstitutionalization (the closing of state mental hospitals which confined mentally ill people) between the 1960s and 1980s, ostensibly in favor of smaller community-based psychiatric inpatient units, was not accompanied by a compensatory increase in such community-based units. This was also the case in California, and as a result there are fewer adult psychiatric residential, acute, and sub-acute slots available than would be necessary to meet the need. A survey of homeless adults in California found that 19% had transitioned into homelessness directly from an institutional setting such as a jail or prison, and most reported having received no sort of transitional services to prevent this.

Deinstitutionalization coincided with the swelling of the U.S. prison system, and many people who previously would have been confined and/or treated in state mental hospitals became imprisoned in jails and state prisons instead. In 2012 there were about ten seriously mentally ill people incarcerated in the United States for each such person hospitalized. More than three-quarters of homeless California adults surveyed reported having been jailed or imprisoned at some point. Recent California reforms meant to relax this mass incarceration have had the effect of releasing many mentally ill prisoners, whose mental illnesses, compounded by the trauma of incarceration, and combined with the stigma of being an ex-con, can make it especially difficult for them to find housing.

Climate

It does not appear to be the case that large numbers of homeless people migrate to California from elsewhere. A representative survey of homeless adults in California found that 90% had been living in California at the time they became homeless (and 75% were currently living in the same county in which they had last had housing).

The climate in California is relatively mild compared to many other regions of the United States. Especially because housing is very expensive in California, people with limited resources may rationally prioritize spending on things other than housing even if this threatens to lead to homelessness, in a way that would be less-rational in a place where homelessness means exposure to a more dire environment. Some evidence for this is that even within California, rates of homelessness are lower in regions that experience colder winter temperatures.

Youth

According to the Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress for 2020, 36% of homeless youth (defined as people under the age of 25) in the United States live in California. As of January 2022, 7% of those who are homeless in California are considered to be unaccompanied youth (people under the age of 25 not accompanied by parents or guardians). More than 220,000 public school (K–12) students in California experienced homelessness in 2020–21.

Many homeless youth are considered to be "throwaway youth", e.g. adolescents that were forced out of their homes and onto the streets. There may be multiple reasons for this, such as parents unaccepting of gender identity or sexual orientation, pregnancy, abuse, etc. Other homeless youth may be "runaway youth" who flee their homes and live on the streets. Abuse, neglect, conflict, or poverty are among the reasons they run away.

The issue of youth homelessness is recognized by the federal government and in the 2016 fiscal year (FY) the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) created and began funding the Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program (YHDP) to prevent, reduce, and end youth homelessness by developing and implementing targeted funding and resources through a community approach. For FY 2022, the HUD awarded $60 million to target youth homelessness in 16 specific communities, including California's Riverside County, which received a $7,487,462 grant. A press release by the HUD said this funding is to "support a wide range of housing programs, including rapid rehousing, permanent supportive housing, transitional housing, and host homes."

Women and LGBTQ+

A 2023 study called The California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness (CASPEH), conducted and published by a research team at the University of California, San Francisco, explored the current state of homelessness in California, providing insights into the current realities of those experiencing homelessness, including women and people in the LGBTQ+ community.

The study showed that the majority of the homeless population consists of cisgender men (69%) while women make up 30% and those identified as non-binary or trans are 1%. As for sexuality, about "9% of participants identified as being lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, queer, or another non-heterosexual sexual identity".

Additionally, the study found that women and trans and gender-non-conforming people were more prone to experiencing physical and especially sexual violence than cisgender men were. Physical violence is a common experience for all groups: 70% of cisgenderf men experience it, 75% of cisgender women, and 87% of transgender/ non-binary people. Sexual violence was "more common among cisgender women (43%) and trans/non-binary (74%) participants rather than cisgender men (17%)."

State-level political action

In 2016, California adopted the Housing First model to govern all of its state programs that provide shelter to people experiencing homelessness. The chronic housing shortage in California made such a model difficult to implement in practice.

The California State Auditor reported in 2021 that "[a]t least nine state agencies administer and oversee 41 different programs that provide funding to mitigate homelessness, yet no single entity oversees the State's efforts or is responsible for developing a statewide strategic plan."

In November 2022, Governor Newsom briefly threatened to withhold homelessness-related state financial support from the state's counties in response to what he called "simply unacceptable" homelessness reduction plans that the counties had submitted. Those plans, if successful, would have reduced homelessness by a mere 2% over four years. Newsom relented two weeks later, releasing the funds on the condition that the counties submit more ambitious plans for the next set of grants.

In February 2023, California's Interagency Council on Homelessness reported that the state had spent $9.6 billion on alleviating homelessness between 2018 and 2021, and had provided related services to 571,000 people during that time. However, most of those served did not end up housed, and the number of homeless people in the state increased during that period.

On September 22, 2023, Governor Newsom announced $20 million in grants to 22 Native American tribes in California. The goal was to address housing insecurity and to prevent homelessness in Native American communities.

During the 2024 primary elections, voters passed Proposition 1 the Behavioral Health Services Program and Bond Measure, which will authorize and issue up to $6.38 billion in bonds to fund housing for veterans and the homeless, as well as mental health and drug and alcohol treatment facilities.

An April 2024 joint investigation by The Guardian and Type Investigations found that the state has paid $100 million to private companies to clear homeless encampments, with allegations of mistreatment by the homeless and their advocates.

Homeless Data Integration System

In 1993 the U.S. government created the "Continuum of Care" (CoC) system, which divides states into regions containing organizations like homeless services providers and local governments, for the purpose of Housing and Urban Development department funding. There are 44 such CoCs in California.

In an attempt to improve policymaker legibility, California adopted the Homeless Data Integration System (HDIS) in April 2021. It coordinates and consolidates data collected by the state CoCs. HDIS is administered by the California Interagency Council on Homelessness.

Housing roadblock reforms

California Senate Bill 35 (2017) and Senate Bill 9 (2021)—which both became law—aimed to reduce bureaucratic and local government roadblocks to building housing. SB35 made it easier to get multifamily housing developments approved, while SB9 allowed many homeowners to build granny units on their property or to subdivide their property into an additional lot on which a house could be built.

Local NIMBY sentiment, in part from homeowners who benefit from the rising prices associated with restricted housing supply, has led to single-family zoning and other restrictions on residential development. In 2021 new California laws limited the ability of local governments to prevent the building of housing with regulations like these, and in 2023 the state government became more assertive about rejecting local housing & zoning plans that it viewed as being unreasonably restrictive—in some cases this meant that proposed developments would be approved by default without the explicit approval of local authorities.

Tiny house villages

In 2023, California announced plans to spend $30 million to build 1,200 tiny houses in parts of the state as alternatives to homeless encampments. A total of 1,200 small homes would be distributed among four locations: Los Angeles (500 units), San Diego County (150 units), San Jose (200 units), and Sacramento (350 units). The goal, to provide safe, interim housing for individuals experiencing homelessness. Such tiny houses can be built for about $73,000, which is a fraction of the cost of building permanent housing in the state.

Hospital discharge plans

In 2019, California Governor Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 1152, mandating that hospitals have a discharge plan for homeless patients before discharging them and that they ensure such patients have food, shelter, medicine, and clothes for their posthospital care. While many homeless people are eligible for free health insurance from Medi-Cal, it can be arduous for homeless people to apply, causing many homeless people to not have health insurance.

Projects Roomkey and Homekey

Clifton Hall, a former dormitory at California College of the Arts, was bought by the city of Oakland using Homekey funds and converted to public housing for people experiencing homelessness.

Project Roomkey is a homeless relief program designed to mitigate the spread of the COVID-19 virus among homeless people. It began in March 2020, with funding largely coming from FEMA. The program was slated to end in late 2020, but continued with state and local funding. The program housed homeless people in vacant motel or hotel rooms, particularly people aged 65 or older or who had an underlying medical condition.

Project Homekey is a continuation of Project Roomkey that focuses on the creation of low-cost housing by repurposing hotels, motels, vacant apartments, and other buildings. Phase one received $600 million in funding from the United States federal government's Coronavirus Aid Relief Fund (CARES Act) and California's general fund, and ended in December 2020. Under this program, local governments purchased 94 hotels and motels and converted them into some 6,000 permanent housing units.

In early 2024, Gov. Newsom reported that a total of 15,000 units of housing had been created through Project Homekey, exhausting the $3.5 billion allocated to the project.

In September 2024, Homekey+, a program announced by Gov. Newsom. Which is planned to offer up to $2.2 billion in funding to build permanent supportive housing for veterans, as well as those experiencing mental health or substance use disorders.

Forced mental-health and addiction treatment

Former state Assemblyman Mike Gatto proposed in a 2018 opinion piece that a new form of detention be created as a method to force drug-addicted and mentally ill homeless people (who he claims make up two-thirds of California's homeless population) off the streets and into treatment, as well as to lengthen the jail terms for misdemeanors.

A law enacted in September 2022 with broad bipartisan support established county-level "CARE courts", which can order some people with untreated schizophrenia or psychosis into housing and treatment programs. It includes sanctions for counties that do not comply with the program by December 2024; some counties are to begin implementing the program in Fall 2023. Under the provisions of the bill, families, clinicians, first-responders, and behavior control specialists may petition the CARE Court, and after a clinical assessment that the person who is the subject of the petition is severely endangered or a threat to others as a result of untreated schizophrenia or psychosis, a judge would be authorized to mandate up to 24 months of court-ordered medication, substance abuse treatment, and housing. A bipartisan group of mayors gave tentative support. The group Disability Rights California has sued in an attempt to stop the implementation of the law.

Another bill, 2023's SB43, makes it easier for the government to involuntarily confine and treat a person with a mental illness (which for the purposes of this law includes someone with a substance use disorder) who is "unable to provide for their personal safety or necessary medical care." The bill was signed into law in October 2023. The new law undoes some of the reforms of the Lanterman–Petris–Short Act, a law dating to the governorship of Ronald Reagan in 1967, which restricted the government's ability to involuntarily confine and treat people with mental illnesses.

Mental health housing and residential services

A ballot initiative is anticipated in California in 2024 under the provisions of which the state would issue bonds to pay for new residential behavioral health facilities as well as housing and residential services for people with mental illness and substance abuse disorders.

Housing assistance via Medi-Cal

In 2022 California launched the CalAIM program under which a small number of particularly vulnerable patients can use their health insurance plans to help them find affordable housing, pay rental deposits, prevent evictions, or address health hazards in the home. A pilot program conducted in Alameda County in 2016–2021 assisted 30,000 patients. Of those who were homeless, 36% ended up in permanent housing.

California asked the federal government for permission to also issue short-term rent subsidies through Medi-Cal, California's version of Medicaid, to patients who are homeless or who are vulnerable to losing their homes.

Criminalization of homelessness

See also: 41.18 and Sit-lie ordinance

Local governments in California have experimented with criminalizing homelessness. For example, some jurisdictions have tried criminalizing sleeping outdoors or in motor vehicles.

The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit's 2018 ruling in Martin v. Boise temporarily restricted California governments' abilities to enforce such anti-vagrancy laws. The court held that cities could not criminalize sleeping outdoors on public property if there were not enough shelter beds available for homeless people, as this would be a violation of the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution.

[T]he Eighth Amendment prohibits the imposition of criminal penalties for sitting, sleeping, or lying outside on public property for homeless individuals who cannot obtain shelter.... That is, as long as there is no option of sleeping indoors, the government cannot criminalize indigent, homeless people for sleeping outdoors, on public property, on the false premise they had a choice in the matter.

— Martin v. Boise

In September 2022, the Ninth Circuit reaffirmed this restriction, invalidating the use of anti-sleeping, anti-camping, and park exclusion ordinances to criminalize homelessness:

...the City of Grants Pass cannot, consistent with the Eighth Amendment, enforce its anti-camping ordinances against homeless persons for the mere act of sleeping outside with rudimentary protection from the elements, or for sleeping in their car at night, when there is no other place in the City for them to go.

— Opinion, Johnson v. Grants Pass

However, in June 2024, the Supreme Court in Grants Pass v. Johnson, ruled that the Ninth Circuit had decided the case wrongly, and that "The enforcement of generally applicable laws regulating camping on public property does not constitute 'cruel and unusual punishment' prohibited by the Eighth Amendment."

This opinion frees up California governments to again criminalize homelessness (not directly, by criminalizing the status of being homeless, which would still be unconstitutional under surviving precedent, but indirectly, by criminalizing, for example, sleeping outdoors because one is homeless).

In July 2024, following a Supreme Court ruling in the case of City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, which allows cities to enforce bans or criminalize people on outdoor sleeping in public places. California Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order directing the California Departments of Parks and Recreation and Fish and Wildlife to adopt the California Department of Transportation's model of eliminating health and safety hazards in homeless encampments, regardless of whether homeless shelters were available in surrounding areas. The National Homelessness Law Center stated that the order was "a misdirection of a systemic problem onto the victims." The order did not explicitly mandate that alternative shelter be provided to homeless encampment residents, although it does require agencies and urges local leaders to connect people with service providers.

Public bathrooms

Existing law in California requires that establishments run by public agencies must have bathroom facilities available for the public, provided without any cost or charge. However, the Right to Restrooms Act of 2021 introduced by Calif. Assembly member Quirk-Silva would have required that local governments take inventory of existing public restroom facilities and provide a report to the State Department of Public Health so that public databases with information on the availability, location, etc. of these facilities could be created and accessed by the public. This bill mentioned creating internet databases and a dissemination of this information in "user-friendly" formats particularly so that it was "available to agencies and service providers that work directly with homeless populations within the local government's jurisdiction." This bill died in committee for the 2021–2022 legislature session but was reintroduced by Quirk-Silva under the same name for the 23–24 session and is currently being reviewed in committee.

Comparisons to and lessons from Texas

From 2012 to 2022, California's state-wide homeless population increased by 43%, while Texas's decreased by 28%. For select cities and localities, the divergence was even greater, with Sacramento County's homelessness increasing by 230% over the same period, Los Angeles County's increasing by 106%, while Houston's decreased by 57%.

Politicians and policy makers from California visited Texas cities and homeless organizations to try and learn how Texas's solutions have succeeded and how those lessons can be applied in California. Experts say that the largest reason that California has a per-capita homelessness rate of five times that of Texas is because housing is much more expensive in California; with the median one-bedroom unit in California renting for $2,200 per month, while in Texas it is $1,200. Housing costs are higher because California has much stricter land-use regulation and zoning laws (Houston, for example, has no zoning) making it much harder to build housing: in 2022, Texas issued more than twice as many housing permits as California, even though California has nine million more people.

Texas spends almost all of its homeless dollars on permanent housing, while California splits its funding between temporary shelters and permanent housing. Texas agencies coordinate and work together, whereas in California they do not, as exemplified by Los Angeles County, where four separate government agencies all compete for the same state dollars.

Central Valley

Fresno

Despite having some of the most affordable housing, Fresno has seen a substantial increase in homeless population. During the COVID 19 pandemic, financial insecurity had worsened for many residents in Fresno and left more homeless people unsheltered. According to the 2023 Fresno-Madera Continuum of Care Point-in-Time count, Fresno-Madera had experienced the largest increase in the number of unsheltered people from the year 2019 to 2020 in the past decade preceding 2023. Low housing costs in Fresno appealed to many people across the state who were financially impacted by COVID 19. Consequently, many people seeking housing security flooded Fresno causing a shortfall of affordable housing for pre-existing, unhoused residents. Pre-existing financial insecurity coupled with rising population drove housing precarity amongst low-income individuals in Fresno. As rental rates increased, the availability of affordable housing decreased.

County and local-level poltical action

Los Angeles County

Tents of the homeless on the sidewalk in Skid Row, Los Angeles, 2018

As of February 2022 more than 40% of people experiencing homelessness in California lived in Los Angeles County. The homeless population of L.A. County increased by 65% between 2020 and 2022.

In June 2023, L.A. County officials reported that according to a point-in-time survey, over 75,500 people were homeless in the county, which was up from 69,000 the previous year, and 70% higher than 2015. The number who were unsheltered rose at an even higher rate, to 55,000 (the number of sheltered homeless people in L.A. County declined slightly). The number who were "chronically homeless" (homeless for more than a year with a disabling condition) had increased to 32,000 people. 31% of homeless residents of L.A. County were Black, 43% Latino, 2% Asian. 25% reported experiencing severe mental illness, and 30% reported having a substance use disorder.

A 2013 census noted that 18.2% had a physical disability; 68.2% of homeless people were male, and 57.6% were between 25 and 54 years old.

The Board of Supervisors of L.A. County wrote to the State Legislature asking that California "pass a resolution urging the Governor to declare a state of emergency with respect to homelessness" in June 2016. In 2019, California governor Gavin Newsom fulfilled this request. L.A. County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas in an opinion piece said that homelessness had reached emergency levels in L.A. County, with over 900 people dying on the streets in 2018, and over a thousand projected to die in 2019. Exposure to the elements cuts the lifespan of those who survive on the streets by 20 years. He attributed the crisis to rising rents, lack of affordable housing, and stagnant wages.

There are an estimated 4,021 homeless young-adults between the ages of 18 and 24 on any given night in L.A. County as of 2019, a 22% increase over 2018, per the Greater Los Angeles Youth Homeless Count. The count defines youth as people 24 years old and younger.

Los Angeles spent $619 million on 36,000 homeless people in 2019, approximately $17,194 per person; however, the number of people who are homeless continues to grow. Peter Lynn, head of the Los Angeles Homeless Service Authority (LAHSA) who saw homelessness rise 33% during his five years in spite of $780 million in additional funding, resigned his job at the end of 2019.

In 2018, a count of homeless in Los Angeles County, found 565 homeless Native Americans; it is believed that this count is below the actual amount of homeless Native Americans. In 2019, a count of homeless found 1,692 Native Americans who were unsheltered in Los Angeles County; the majority of those Native Americans counted identified as men, and had a higher rate of identification as LGBT compared to the total unsheltered population. In 2020, of the 66,436 homeless counted in Los Angeles County, 1.1% identified as American-Indian/Alaskan Native.

City of Los Angeles

A homeless person in Los Angeles sleeps on the street, 2010

According to a 2019 Los Angeles Times poll, 95% of voters called homelessness a serious or very serious problem in the city, more than for any other issue. L.A. County officials reported that in 2019 there were over 39,000 homeless people in the city. More homeless people die from hypothermia in Los Angeles (average winter low temperature: 49 °F (9 °C)) than in New York City (average winter low temperature: 26 °F (−3 °C)).

In November 2022, voters approved Measure ULA, a tax on high-price real estate sales with the proceeds designated to fund affordable housing and homelessness services. The tax went into effect on 1 April 2023.

In December, 2022, new mayor Karen Bass declared a "state of emergency" and issued an executive order aimed at removing hurdles to developing affordable housing and shelters for homeless people. The order instructs city agencies to process the bureaucratic paperwork associated with such projects within sixty days, rather than the six to nine months the agencies are accustomed to, and reduces the number of regulatory veto points for such projects.

In 2016, voters approved a $1.2 billion bond measure designed to create permanent supportive housing. A report from the L.A. Controller's office criticized the implementation of the measure: five years after it passed, only 14% of the housing had been completed, and the average per-unit cost was about $600,000.

The Los Angeles Police Department has issued citations and fines against people living in public areas as part of the Safer Cities Initiative that began in September 2006. This Central Police division's initiative entailed assigning fifty full-time officers to clearing out "homeless encampments" in different parts of downtown. Once they cleared an area, they would stay for seven days before moving on to another area. In 2015, the city was spending roughly $100 million a year on homelessness with approximately half of this funding going to policing the homeless population. Proposition HHH was approved by voters 77% to 23% in 2016. This was a $1.2 billion bond measure to build permanent supportive housing for homeless people and people at risk of becoming homeless. Rising rent and relatively few laws protecting tenants from predatory landlords are significant drivers of surging homelessness in Los Angeles.

A sprawling homeless encampment in West Los Angeles, 2022

City of Santa Monica

Santa Monica experienced a 19% decrease in the number of homeless people downtown, with a 3% increase in overall homelessness in 2019. Positive results are credited to outreach and engagement strategies and to prioritizing homelessness. Rising homeless numbers are attributed to the Los Angeles housing crisis. Santa Monica has approximately 400 emergency shelter beds across 330 permanent supportive housing (PSH) units, and provides an access center for showering, mail, and medical assistance.

City of Long Beach

In a 2022 report from the city of Long Beach, from the seventh most-populated city in California, found that the amount of people unhoused who were experiencing some level of homelessness was 3,296 people. That was a 62% increase compared to 2020, the last time the city conducted a similar report.

In January 2023, the City of Long Beach declared a state of emergency in response to the homeless crisis. The declaration would reduce red tape in approving contracts and projects to address homelessness.

Long Beach Deputy City Manager Teresa Chandler announced in an August 2024 memo the enforcement of the city's anti-camping ordinance by issuing a misdemeanor citation to unhoused individuals. The city did not disclose the cost of the citation or what the length of jail time would be for people who accumulate multiple citations. Simultaneously, the memo called for increasing funding for motel vouchers and permanent housing to provide people a route out of shelters, and called for hiring more staff for the Department of Homeless Services and other agencies working with the homeless.

City of Norwalk

On August 6, 2024, the Norwalk City Council passed an emergency moratorium on several facilities, including shelters, single-room occupancy hotels, public housing, and transitional housing. The City Council passed the moratorium on the basis of the California Housing Crisis Act of 2019, which allows local governments to enact a ban on a housing unit or facility if there is an "imminent threat" to the public health and safety. The State Department of Housing and Community Development sent Mayor Margarita Rios and other officials a violation letter, calling the ordinance "unlawful." The State also argued in the violation letter that “there are no findings of a threat specific to the housing subject to the moratorium, nor any finding of a citywide threat.” Gov. Gavin Newsom threatened a lawsuit against the City of Norwalk to urge city officials to rescind the adopted moratorium.

Orange County

The 2019 Orange County Point in Time count documented 6,860 homeless people. Per the count, 2,899 of them had found some type of shelter, while 3,961 had no shelter. The Point in Time count is a federally required biennial census of homeless people to collect demographic data and other information and to determine how much federal funding Orange County will receive to address homelessness issues.

A 2017 census in Orange County, California recorded 4,792 homeless people. 193 homeless people died in 2017, with drug overdoses and suicides being the leading causes of death.

San Diego County

A report outlining the key findings from the 2017 Point-In-Time (PIT) count and Housing Inventory Count (HIC), found that San Diego County had 9,160 people experiencing homelessness.

In 2017 an outbreak of Hepatitis A throughout California resulted in a declaration of a health emergency by both The County of San Diego and Governor of California Jerry Brown. The outbreak affected the homeless population due to inadequate sanitation in San Diego, from inadequate handwashing stations, and locked public restrooms. In response to the health crisis, San Diego opened three emergency shelters which are expected to cost $12.9 million per year to operate. The city approved a 500-bin storage center for homeless people to store their belongings.

In 2018 San Diego County was the 4th largest in the United States with 8,576 people experiencing homelessness.

A 2023 count showed 10,203 homeless people throughout San Diego County according to the volunteer organization WeAllCount which conducts an annual Point-in-Time count, a 14% increase from 2022. Veterans make up a significant portion of this population, with 814 homeless veterans. This was a 17% increase from the 2022 count.

City of San Diego

San Diego has a history of insufficient healthcare provided to the homeless population, with a majority of homeless people in 1989 lacking any regular access to healthcare. During a criminal trial in 1990, San Diego police officers and supervisors testified that they routinely "cleared" downtown streets of "transients" by rounding them up before dawn and moving them to other jurisdictions such as National City or other unincorporated areas in the county.

The City of San Diego took action to alleviate the homeless population by encouraging housing within vehicles. In February 2019, San Diego repealed a long-standing law that made living within vehicles illegal. This came two years after the construction of a parking lot designed to provide safe residence for people who live in their cars, complete with restroom and shower facilities. The City of San Diego currently has 2,040 emergency and bridge shelters for homeless people, providing temporary housing options. The City of San Diego adopted a "Housing First" program in 2018, which plans to spend $79.7 million for programs assisting homeless people including temporary housing development, permanent housing development, rent assistance, and incentives for landlords to rent to homeless people.

In June 2023, the city of San Diego passed a ban on public camping. Enforcement of the new ordinance went into effect in late July. The ordinance creates a new "3 strike" system in which a person is first informed about the new law and given information for other services, then issued a misdemeanor on their second offence, and on their third offence can be arrested. While enforcement of the policy is contingent on availability of shelter space, police may issue citations to those encamped close to schools, existing shelters, along train and trolley lines, and in public spaces in which encampment may create a public health risk at any time regardless of shelter space. To address the lack of shelter beds, the city is creating two "safe sleeping" lots at Balboa Park's B street lot and parking lot O. The 136 tent and 400 tent sites can house people per-tent and, at full capacity, can accommodate between 516 and 1032 people. The sites provide their own tents as well as bathrooms, showers, meals, assistance to additional housing services, and 24-hour security. Residence may also bring domestic pets such as cats and dogs.

City of Escondido

A report from The Regional Task Force on Homelessness (RTFH) in 2023 found 304 unhoused people in Escondido. In February 2024 the city rejected the state and county “Housing First” initiatives to solve homelessness. Instead, the Escondido City Council voted 4-1 in favor of their own "public safety first" strategy.

City of Oceanside

The state of California announced in April 2024, the City of Oceanside and subrecipient Carlsbad will receive $11.4 million from the state. The Interagency Council on Homelessness funding will help connect about 350 people camping along the 78 corridor to services and housing. In August 2024, the grant was decided to be distributed between the two cities, with Oceanside receiving nearly $6.1 million and Carlsbad $5.3 million.

During October 2024, the Oceanside’s City Council updated ordances which removes the city's requirement to offer shelter space or a motel voucher before enforcing a prohibition on camping in public places. The ordance also allows Oceanside police to remove homeless encampments from public property regardless of available shelter beds while reducing the removal notice from larger encampments from 48 hours to 24 hours.

Sacramento County

In August 2019, the city of Sacramento filed a lawsuit against seven transients accused of theft, drugs, assaults, and having weapons. The lawsuit seeks to exclude them from the business corridor around Land Park and Curtis Park.

San Francisco County and City

Main article: Homelessness in San Francisco

A homeless camp in San Francisco, 2017

The city of San Francisco, California, has a significant and visible homelessness problem. Approximately 61% of the homeless population were already living and working in San Francisco when they became homeless, indicating that a majority of people experiencing homelessness did not come to the city for its resources but rather are being priced out of their homes. The city's homeless population has been estimated at 7,000–10,000 people, of which approximately 3,000–5,000 refuse shelter due to the conditions within the shelters—including violence, racism, and homophobia and transphobia. There are only 1,339 available shelter beds for the approximately 10,000 people sleeping outdoors. The city spends $200 million a year on homelessness-related programs. On May 3, 2004, San Francisco officially began an attempt to scale back the scope of its homelessness problem by changing its strategy from cash payments to the "Care Not Cash" plan, which however has had no visible impact on reducing homelessness in the city. In 2010, a city ordinance was passed to disallow sitting and lying down on public sidewalks for most of the day.

An October 2018 report by Leilani Farha, the UN's Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing, said that "cruel and inhuman" conditions for homeless people in the Bay Area violate human rights, which include being denied "access to water, sanitation and health services, and other basic necessities." Farha's fact finding mission found conditions in homeless encampments rivaling the most impoverished neighborhoods in Mumbai, Delhi, and Mexico City. She urged the Bay Area to provide more affordable housing.

A proposition on the Nov 2018 elections ballot (Proposition C), would apply a tax to the gross receipts of San Francisco's largest companies. The revenue from the tax would add up to $300 million a year to the city's homelessness budget (double what it is right now). It would also fund shelters, mental health services, addiction treatment, and prevention to keep people from becoming homeless. It passed with 61% of the vote and was upheld as valid by the state Supreme Court.

The City of San Francisco has a program called Homeward Bound, first started when Gavin Newsom was mayor. Between 2005 and 2017, the city of San Francisco sent 10,500 homeless people out of town by bus. A 2019 article in The New York Times reported that many bus ticket recipients were missing, unreachable, in jail, or homeless within a month after leaving San Francisco, and one out of eight returned to the city within a year.

Santa Barbara County

The rising cost of rent and property prices forced hundreds of middle-class people, including teachers, chefs, and nurses, to live out of their cars in parking lots. In 2017 a count showed 1,489 homeless people. There were 44 deaths in Santa Barbara County in 2016.

Ventura County

A preliminary 2018 count released by the Ventura County Continuum of Care Alliance board indicated that the county's population of homeless men, women, and children was 1,299. It was also reported that there was an increase of 24% for the unsheltered population. Overall, in 2017, the City of Ventura experienced a double-digit increase in its homeless population from 2016 and 63 deaths. Ventura residents have placed pressure on city leaders to do more about the growing homelessness problem.

See also

• Homelessness in the United States by state

External links

• Housing articles by CalMatters