California’s program to clear homeless encampments show signs of success, but housing remains elusive

For years, the Guadalupe River Trail — a winding path that snakes through the heart of downtown San Jose — had been home to hundreds of people living in tents and make-shift shacks.

In recent months, many have vanished as part of a $750 million-push by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration — dubbed the Encampment Resolution Fund — to clear homeless encampments from cities throughout California.

“The before and after photos are stark,” said San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan. “You have an area that was just full of trash and tents and RVs and belongings and graffiti. There were literally chickens running around. And now it’s coming back to public use. People are starting to walk the trail, bike the trail, look at the river.”

But an analysis of preliminary progress reports submitted to the state, as well as interviews with early Encampment Resolution Fund grant recipients, shows the program has had mixed results up and down California. Even in San Jose, it hasn’t met its overarching goal of finding permanent housing for most of the people moved off the river trail.

More than a year after the checks went out, nearly two-thirds of the $48 million awarded in the first round of statewide grants has been spent. The money has paid for everything from shelter beds to case workers to security deposits so people living in encampments could rent apartments. But so far, only three of the 19 jurisdictions that got funding reported completely clearing their targeted encampments. Nearly 750 people still lived in those camps as of the end of September, according to the latest data available from the state.

The first-round grants must be spent by the end of June.

Even in cities and counties that have had success moving people off the street and into temporary shelters, it’s proven much harder to find permanent housing. San Jose used the state funding to move nearly 200 people off the river trail — a heavy lift the city previously had been unable to accomplish. But just 11% of those people made it into permanent housing. Another 37% moved into temporary shelter. The city doesn’t know what happened to the others: More than half the people relocated from the trail are unaccounted for.

Across the state, hundreds of people who were moved out of encampments last year and in 2022, using state money, still are in shelters, waiting for a home of their own.

“I think what we’re really seeing across the board and with this funding is it’s just taking so much longer to get people into housing because there’s a lack of affordable resources,” said Jennifer Hark Dietz, CEO of PATH, a homeless services nonprofit that worked with San Jose and several other cities to administer the grants.

From encampment to housing

Instead of merely shuffling unhoused people from one camp to another — as had been widespread practice for years — Newsom insisted this program would focus on getting people into housing.  Cities and counties seeking funding must prove they either will move encampment residents directly into permanent housing, or into temporary shelters with “clear pathways” to permanent housing.  The state rejected an application from Chico because its plan for permanent housing fell short, said Chico Deputy City Manager Jennifer Macarthy.

But drawing a straight line from an encampment to a long-term home is easier said than done.

Tulare, in the Central Valley, used its $1.6 million grant to clear five encampments where about 100 people lived. But it couldn’t come up with enough beds for everyone, and as people moved out of the camps, new people kept showing up.

Instead of finding everyone a home, the city ended up giving 150 people tents and moving them into a sanctioned encampment. As of December, only 44 people from the five camps had landed in permanent housing.

But that’s at least double the rate Tulare was housing people before it got the state money, said Housing and Grants Manager Alexis Costales, who describes the program as a success. Tulare won another $4.8 million in the state’s second round of encampment grants, and hopes that money will get more people housed.

Los Angeles won a $1.7 million grant, which put 45 unhoused people up in a motel for several months. But motel rooms are expensive, and by the time those funds ran out, only about half had found permanent housing, said Hark Dietz. Six people left the program, and the rest moved into shelters, where PATH continues to work with them to find housing.

Santa Barbara County is using part of its $2.5 million grant to open two new tiny homes sites which, starting this spring, will provide temporary shelter to dozens of people living in encampments. So far county workers have reached out to about 200 camp residents, and brought 81 inside. Of those, 52 made it to permanent housing, said the county’s Encampment Response Coordinator Lucille Boss.

“We couldn’t have done a lot of this without the state’s investment,” Boss said.

In San Jose, Mahan said many people declined the city’s shelter beds. One of them was Alicia Spangenberg. Outreach workers offered her a tiny home, but the 27-year-old, who has been homeless nearly five years, isn’t ready to sacrifice her freedom and privacy to live in a tiny dwelling with shared bathrooms and follow the program’s rules.

“At the end of the day,” she said, “it’s whether somebody wants to be helped.”

Alicia Spangenberg, who is unhoused and sleeps along the trail, at Guadalupe River Park in San Jose, Jan. 12, 2024. Photo by Loren Elliott for CalMatters

California cities soon may have more freedom to clear homeless encampments if the Supreme Court strikes down a 2018 ruling that had largely tied their hands. In Martin v. Boise, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found cities cannot punish unhoused people for camping on public land if they have no other option — which cities interpreted to mean they must have shelter beds available before clearing a camp.

Regardless of what happens in that case, Newsom’s administration has made clear that cities hoping to use state encampment resolution funds must do more than simply kick people out of an encampment. They must plan to “resolve the experience of unsheltered homelessness” for the camp residents.

Limited funding

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