Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 7 on Accountability and Oversight, Wednesday, February 18, 2026
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Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 7 on Accountability and Oversight California State Assembly
Follow its sittingsSpeaker 1
The public deserves to know where these funds are going and what outcomes they're producing. Transparency builds trust. Clear metrics drive performance. Accountability ensures that limited resources are aligned with measurable progress. I look forward to today's discussion and to continue our work to strengthen the program and improve results for Californians.
I don't see our vice chair or chair here, so, I will just go to our first speaker, who is Margo Kochel, professor of medicine, UCSF, director of the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations, and the UCSF Bidding Off Homelessness and Housing Initiative. Thank you, doctor Kochel.
Speaker 2
Thank you so much, chair Hart, and, other members of the assembly, budget subcommittee. I am here to focus on a broad overview of what we should think about or consider as we address a really important issue of accountability provisions for HEP. You know, the amount of homelessness in a region, it's really important to realize, is very closely tied to the mismatch between the cost of housing and the ability of extremely low income households to afford that. In California, we have and continue to struggle deeply with that measure. We currently have only 24 units of housing that's affordable and available for every a 100 extremely low income household.
Those are households that make less than 30% of the area median income. This means we're a million units short of where we need to be. And at its heart, this is why California struggles so deeply with homelessness. There is no doubt that California's homelessness crisis is absolutely terrible. There's also no doubt in my mind that without HAP, it would be much worse.
HAP funding, has been absolutely essential, and it has decreased since its peak in the pandemic. To truly understand the impact of HAP, one would have to consider the counterfactual or what would it look like in California had we not had HAP. Some indicators of that measure is during the pandemic and from, let's say, twenty three to twenty four, homelessness across the country increased by 24%. But in California where we made these local investments, we saw only a very modest increase. In a way, that is our counterfactual.
These victories, such as they are with HAP, have been hard fought, difficult to see or celebrate, and tenuous. Right now, they are particularly tenuous because of the federal environment that we are dealing with. Between, cuts to health care and food benefits and others through HR one, the sunsetting of 15,000 emergency housing vouchers in California, and threats to funding for permanent supportive housing really present a real threat to how HAP can succeed, but it also emphasizes the importance. Well designed accountability measures understand that to keep systems or organizations accountable, they must be held accountable for what is in their control and not blame for what falls deeply outside their control. Accountability demands that we have an agreement on what problem we're trying to solve, that we have clear timelines, and that we have appropriate ways to determine this.
So I'm just gonna highlight a few measures to consider. First is the outside impacts. Homelessness rates overall are deeply affected by general economic trends, and they are more deeply affected, as I've said, by the current federal environment. One time funding versus ongoing funding. High performing homeless assistance plan investments over the long term so that they can coordinate their efforts and make, make you know, use the best evidence.
One time funding, as HEP has been, can lead to a focus on short term wins rather than a system that is well coordinated and seeks a permanent end to homelessness. The need for jurisdictions to apply every year may inadvertently reward short term solutions rather than the lasting solutions that we need. Jurisdictions face this sort of, issue between obligating and expending funds for programs without knowing if funding will come in the next year. If they don't obligate and spend them, then they're ineligible. Achieving true accountability may require longer term and more stable funding.
Administrative burden versus flexibility. There are clear trade offs between accountability measures and evidence based work. As a researcher, I can tell you that everything that we know about preventing and ending homelessness means that funds need to be expended quickly and flexibly and that the workforce is spent doing the work rather than keeping track of measures. I don't disagree with the need to measure. I'm a academic who measures things for a living.
I like measurement. But I think it's worth keeping in mind what the burden of measuring is if that is pulling your workforce from the field and if doing so decreases what we know works in homelessness, which is getting money out to the people in a flexible and quick way. Control. For instance, the measures tying hack funding to having pro housing designation, a compliant housing element, and progress on key housing metrics in some ways makes a lot of sense because what we really need to do to end this crisis is end our housing crisis. But I think there's a risk we're surfacing.
Communities without these policies may wind up struggling more with homelessness because they don't have these policies. If we think of the homeless system as the emergency department for our housing system, we would be very sort of worried about decreasing our funding for emergency department while pandemics or gun violence or whatever, you know, was worse outside. I'm a little worried about the tying it if we're gonna actually take away funds from jurisdictions who might need it the most. What problem are we trying to solve? The design of HAP accountability measures and determinations of funding will obviously have a large influence in how jurisdictions spend the money.
We need to decide whether our goal is to address unsheltered homelessness or homelessness overall. There's no doubt that unsheltered homelessness is the most dire con crisis we face, but there's also no doubt that the only way to address unsheltered homelessness is to get at the root cause of the problem, which is homelessness overall. When you reduce homelessness overall, you're can cycle people through shelters and get them into permanent housing quickly. Measurement. Measuring success in homelessness is remarkably difficult.
I would say more difficult than it should be. HAP funding is mostly counted by HMIS and whether, you know, how the numbers look. Here's the issue I wanna surface. When jurisdictions show more people experiencing homelessness in HMIS, as an academic, I don't know if that's bad news or good news. More people in HMIS may show that a jurisdiction's level of homelessness is increasing, but it actually may show exactly the opposite that the system is working as designed and that we are reaching more people.
There is no doubt in my mind that we are missing many Californians experiencing homelessness. California is working hard at getting to systems that will give us more accurate reporting. When doing so, it may be a little shocking because the numbers may look worse than they do, but be careful of punishing people for doing what they might actually do well, and we need to have a much better understanding of what these numbers mean. There is, in my mind, absolutely no doubt that HAP has been a critical piece of California's response to homelessness and that our crisis as absolutely terrible as it is would have been worse without it. But the very real threat of the loss of federal funding and the movement of federal funding away from evidence based policies and potential economic disruptions, will has the potential to really worsen the crisis.
In that setting, funds are more important than ever, and we do absolutely need to demand accountability, but we need to be sure that we craft our accountability measures to give us the best possible result. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1
Thank you, doctor Kushel. Appreciate your comments. We also now have our budget chair and vice chair here, and so, like to create an opportunity for them to make some opening remarks. So, chair Gabriel or vice chair Tangipa?
Speaker 3
Well, again, I'll just keep this quick. I really look forward, to hearing a lot about this. This area is fairly personal to me. About a decade ago, I was homeless. I was living on a bunch of my teammates' couch when my parents' home got red tagged, and so I understand exactly, like, this position.
So the fiscal portion of it, again, is very personal because I understand, what a lot of these families go through and shifts, changes, what people could do. You know, I was I I share this often. Was caught by the social safety net.
Speaker 3
We just gotta make sure it's not a social safety hammock Mhmm. For a lot of those and figure out ways that we can transition people from, being homeless, being unsheltered into permanent housing, and finding situations where they can be self sustaining as well. I did a lot of work when I was with the Fresno County Board of Supervisors with a lot of the HomeKey funding, you know, and I can see where properly managed funds allocated by the state can do a lot of really good work. I worked personally on the Smugglers Inn. That was re RH Community Home Builders did a really good job on that one, and I look forward to asking some questions after hearing everything done.
Thank you.
Speaker 4
Yeah. Thank you very much, mister chair. Just wanna start by acknowledging and appreciating your tremendous leadership and just appreciate the the thoughtfulness and the seriousness with which you approach this issue and all issues. So thank you.
Speaker 4
And just to everybody here, you know, I made a point. I wanted to be here today just at least for a little bit because of how important this topic is to the state, how important it is to me personally, how important it is I know to many members of the legislature. I don't think we need to belabor that. We understand how intensely the public is focused on this and how desperately they want us to make progress on it. And given the magnitude of state investment, I think we owe it to them to make sure that every dollar is being spent in the most efficient way.
We both have a moral obligation to do that for those who are suffering on our streets, and we have an obligation to the taxpayers who are sending money to local jurisdictions and who are asking us to be thoughtful and effective in the way that we solve this. And so I've been, you know, focused on the issue of accountability for the reason that I believe that it helps to drive us in the direction of actually solving the problem. Right? And that's what we all want. I think collectively all of us irrespective of the geography that we represent, our our partisan affiliation, we wanna make sure that we're achieving results.
At the same time I think, know, Doctor. Khushil you spoke to this. I think we need to be careful that the strategies that we're implementing aren't actually getting in the way of the results that we're all trying to achieve. And so that is a very delicate balance because we need to be able to go back to the members of the public, look them in the eye and tell them that we are spending their hard earned money in a way that is actually moving the needle, in a way that is actually helping the people that are suffering on our streets, in a way that is actually making a difference on something that is a a tremendous moral and economic crisis that is facing our state. But at the same time, we need to be doing that in a way that is not undermining our goals.
And I'm not sure that we have always gotten that balance right. And so as we think about how we're gonna move forward here from a policy perspective, trailer bill language that we need to negotiate with administration, I wanna make sure that our approach is calibrated. I wanna make sure that our approach is delivering on both of those objectives. And so we're gonna lean on all of you who have the expertise, who are doing the work on the streets, who are, you know, both recipients of state funding and interacting with, these vulnerable folks, to make sure that we get that right. And I think that is one of the most important conversations that we're gonna have this year both because in terms of what's at stake for human beings and also what's at stake in terms of the dollars that are represented here.
So thank you all for being here. I look forward to hearing to what you have to say, I look forward to the conversations ahead.
Speaker 1
Thank you, chair Gabriel. That's exactly the frame that we're talking about today. Next, we'll start with the person the generalist office, Paul Steenhausen. Paul? Yes.
Speaker 6
Thank you. Good morning, chair Hart and members. Paul Steenhausen with legislative analyst office. Staff has asked me to provide a brief overview of the accountability framework for HAP, and you should have a handout, overview of, homeless housing assistance prevention program funding and accountability. I'm gonna focus my remarks on the accountability part, but you can see in the first several pages of the handout an overview of the HAP program, its purpose, its funding, spending trends, and some other information.
And then you'll hear, in a bit from the Department of housing and community development that round six is just being awarded now. That's money from 02/2425, so get an update on that. If you turn to page, page five of the handout, it provides a brief summary of the HAP accountability structure and how it's evolved over time since it began in twenty nineteen twenty. Page five describes, how a central part of the application right now is regional planning in which regional partners must identify their respective roles and responsibilities. And that started in round five and has continued into round six.
Each region, is generally defined as a county, must also identify key actions and local, state, and federal funding sources they are leveraging to move the needle on homelessness objectives. And you can actually see on page five a list of seven what's known as system performance measures the state has adopted, and it's one of the main ways the state is tracking, and local locals are tracking, their progress toward their, homelessness objectives. Page six notes that in recent rounds, the state has tied half funding or spending to certain policies that it wants locals to adopt. And we'll, on the next page, get into that a little bit more. It's important to note also that as the state has added requirements, as it's added to this accountability framework over the past number of rounds since twenty nineteen twenty, the whole process has taken longer, not surprisingly.
It takes longer for HCD to get the app the the notice out, the notice for applications out, takes longer for the regions to apply, and then for HCD to go ahead and review and approve or modify those applications. In fact, I was looking in round one back again in 2019. It took nine months from the date of appropriation to when the awards were made. Now we're looking at we're and this is in statute, by the way, about nineteen months total time, and that's for round six, which is which is the money's going out now. Again, it was appropriated back in July 2024.
So just something to keep in mind. The legislature really has has recognized that. And, chair Hart, you mentioned that in your opening remarks about a desire by the legislature to see that money go up faster for round seven. So the next page of the handout summarizes the accountability framework for round six. You can see the number of requirements, a number of plans.
There's those policy requirements, and actually doctor Kuchel mentioned some of them. Having a compliant housing element is now a requirement to get a second disbursement of round six funds once once the locals receive those funds. And then there's other requirements such as specifying an intention to seek pro housing designation status and and some other things as well. Encampment policy, having a plan to address encampments, and having a formal or informal policy to address those encampments, that's also now a condition of round six funds. If you go to the next page, Chair Hart, you mentioned this already.
So just I'll just say very quickly that as a condition of that $500,000,000 going out in 2627, the 2526 budget package included the trailer bill, s b one fifty eight, which laid out six, elements or components that may be included in that round seven. And that's up for the legislature to decide in through enacting or subsequent enacting legislation what that round seven accountability framework is gonna look like and how it might compare with round six. And just to note that you'll see those those six listed, starting with having a compliant housing element, again, on page eight. You'll see the number of those are already incorporated to some extent in round six. And then, Cherhardt, you mentioned this desire in SB one fifty eight for these funds to go out much faster than they have in the in the past with a goal actually by September 2026 for those round seven funds to be dispersed for those grantees that are have have met all the requirements.
So just on the last page there of the handout, number of issues for legislative consideration. Obviously, the accounting framework has evolved quite a bit through the years, and the legislature has around six, which has got a number of requirements, more than two dozen requirements already. And so the legislature wanna ask itself, we think, is there something missing? Are are there things not in that on that previous, what, two pages back that that should be in around seven? But also considering the consider the tension between what's in one fifty eight about potentially modifying the framework for round seven and and weighing that against the expressed desire in the trailer bill language to get that money out on an in an expedited fashion.
Because everything is that gets added, it's gonna take more time for HCD to incorporate in the application and then the locals, the regions to actually, you know, develop an application that speaks to those that addresses those requirements. Another question is, are there opportunities to streamline round seven application? For example, these regions just completed their application in August for round six money. And should they be required to do another regional plan for round seven when they just finished that a few weeks a few months ago? So it's just something maybe, you know, some opportunities there for legislature to to look at ways to expedite things and not place too many burdens unnecessary burdens on the regions.
And then just the last point is, you know, thinking beyond round seven, legislature obviously has a big decision to make about what is the future of HAP. What is the future of HAP in light of the state's budget deficit? We've heard a lot, you know, about the multiyear budget deficit, twenty five to thirty five billion dollars out for the next you know, through through the budget window and into through 2930 even. And so thinking about, you know, the HAP funding in light of the deficit as well as other considerations about if the legislature wants to provide money, is this the right way to do it? Providing a large amount to locals and giving them four or five years to spend it.
And so thinking about the timing perhaps of of how that money is allocated and and how much is appropriated in a given year. So thank you.
Speaker 1
Thank you, mister Seenhouse. Appreciate that. Next, we have Megan Kirkby, the deputy director for the housing, policy development at the Department of Housing and Community Development. Thanks, Megan.
Speaker 7
Thank you. Good morning. Can everyone hear me alright? Great. Yes.
I'm Megan Kirkby here with HCD, and, this is our second round administering the homeless housing assistance program, the encampment resolution fund, and the tribe tribal HAP program, the tribal homeless housing assistance program. We'd be and, really great intro by Paul there to hear about the various accountability measures that have been put in place in the last few years. And I just wanna kinda highlight a little bit of that that, some of what's really important, I think, since we've taken on the administration of the program is leveraging the policy solutions that actually address homelessness upstream. So our cities and counties, are are part of these regional partnerships. Right?
We have 42 regional partnerships that apply for the HAP program. And what the research shows and and, doctor Kischel mentioned this to a certain degree, is, you know, homelessness is a housing problem. When folks are paying too much of their, their income toward rent and housing costs each month, that has two main consequences. One, it puts them at a big risk for homelessness because if you don't have any cushion, we all have emergency shocks that happen to us. Right?
You have a car breakdown or a job loss, and if that cushion is too low, that can start off a cycle of homelessness. And then the other big consequence that we're not talking about today, but, the other big consequence is homeownership. So when we the it can feel counterintuitive, but when we don't have enough affordable rental housing, the big impact is we see declines in homeownership because people don't, again, have that buffer that they need to save for a down payment and to be able to to move into homeownership later. And so it's kind of a wonky term, but paying attention to that cost burden piece is really important for us. And the things that are within our control that we can do to make a difference are those upfront planning things, making sure that we have, again, things within their control that cities and counties can do.
Having it having a compliant housing element means you've actually set aside sufficient capacity for homes to be able to happen. You have programs in place that remove governmental constraints that are that you're looking at at various opportunities to set the table for that development to to happen. And that's important to us. If we're gonna if we're gonna invest large, large state funding, we wanna make sure that, our cities and counties are doing those pieces within their control that we know make the biggest difference and that are required by law. So, things like that are really important to us, that we also wanna I think one of the tenants that's been really important for us is making sure that the the spending in these programs is directed to evidence based solutions.
Right? So some of the some of that early fast dispersion that you're talking about didn't involve having these kinds of conversations about budgets and what we spend the dollars on. And since since those changes, we see a dramatic increase in spending these dollars on housing solutions. Now that's not just permanent housing. That's all sorts of housing.
That can be rental assistance. That can be rapid rehousing. That can be interim, housing that, has connections to permanent housing. All sorts of things that we know, again, make those lasting differences in homelessness. So we as a state, I think we should care about the those uses.
And, you know, after our goal, I think, our sort of north star with accountability has to be impact. And so I think that, you know, that's something I'd leave this committee with today is, you know, we we agree that gotchas don't lead to less homelessness. Like, that's that's not, that's not helpful. But but what does? It's what we spend the money on.
It's these housing policies that are brought to bear. It's the, concrete plans and ensuring that coordination is placed. You know, we all, you all come from different parts of the state, but I'm sure you have, similar versions of the same story. Regions, a lot of different folks and a lot of different organizations work together to address homelessness, and so this is an opportunity to make sure everyone's swimming in the same direction and everyone, is on the same page. Right?
And so with with our regional partners, we do wanna move expeditiously. And so, you know, we're part of the one of the other things that, I think has evolved is just a lot more transparency. I think something we heard from the legislature over and over again was, but where what is this money going to? What's happening? What are the outcomes?
And so a lot of things that weren't available in the past are now available. The we were the first program the HAP program was the first program to post its, homelessness data information, system data online in a public dashboard, you know, anonymize where it needs to be, but we're hoping that sets the tenor for other programs to post their data as well is, you know, we should be upfront about what the outcomes are coming out of these programs. And, you know, that that's something where I feel like putting it there are, positive repercussions. Right? When we put that data online, that also helps people prioritize making sure that data is accurate.
And so the those are those are administratively burdensome things to to do that data work, but we partner with CalICH to try and provide extra support to our grantees so that we can get that that information into a better state. So, doctor Kushel is nodding her head, I assume, because academics like it when we have more access to to good data. But, those are some of the things I kinda wanted to highlight for all of you and just, you know, a a real a real small sample of the outcomes we're seeing. You know, more than 330,000 folks, and this is probably a conservative estimate because we are still working with some of our grantees on their, data, but, more than 330,000 people are receiving services, touched by the HAP funding, and nearly 91,000 people have been able to move into permanent homes, as a result of this money. We also, these programs were named in a audit on homelessness several years ago, and we last year had the pleasure of giving an update to the state auditor's office.
And some of them, we were able to show them a lot of the transparency tools I just talked about, and that was sufficient for them to take half off of the high risk report, and so to feel, some confidence in in what's going on here. So those are some things to share with you today, and happy to answer any questions.
Speaker 1
Thanks, miss Kirkby, and thanks for the good news about the transition and the audit, and that's always important to make progress like that. The next person we have speaking is Sasha Hoswold, the interim chief homelessness solutions officer for the city of Oakland. Oh, do you mind
Speaker 4
if I just offer Please go right ahead. Yeah. Thank you. Sorry to jump in here. So thank you, miss Kirby.
I I appreciate that. And and I really agree with a lot of your testimony. I guess the one thing I would offer respectfully back is, you know, I've been the recipient of a lot of incoming from our big city mayors and others who who've expressed some frustration with HCD. Absolutely. And I take that very seriously.
And I think I appreciated that your North Star's impact. I appreciated what you said about acting expeditiously, and I think that that's something that we need to really dive into together and figure out how we, working together, can make sure that we're moving quickly here. The data is important. The transparency is important. But for those of us sitting on this tight side of the table, when we, you know, vote to authorize money and make resources available and find out many months later that those resources have not yet hit the street, it makes all of our heads wanna
Speaker 4
And so I think that's a conversation that we need to have. And I would really like to have that conversation with you, with your department, with our partners administration to figure out where can we be more efficient. Where can we still focus on impact? Where can we still get the data that researchers like doctor Kushal and others need to make sure that our interventions are working? But we've got to do it quicker.
We've gotta do it quicker, and I believe that we can. And so I would love to have HCV come to the table with some solutions about how to decrease bureaucracy, how to increase the speed, because I do think that our friends who are out there doing the work on the street have some really important points to make about how quickly we we can move together. So I'll just offer that, and I'll look forward to continuing those conversations.
Speaker 8
Thank you. So, I'm here today on behalf of the city of Oakland. We co apply to HAP with our partner, County of Alameda, so I am honored to be here representing the local perspective. But I actually am relatively recently from the state perspective. I was working on affordable housing development finance with HCD for a number of years.
And for the past two years, I have been, working with the city of Oakland on homelessness and affordable housing policy. And so I can bring the two sides of the conversation, and it has been a tremendous learning opportunity for me coming in from affordable housing development and beginning to learn through doing Oakland's strategic homelessness plan what it takes to end homelessness. And I'm really excited to talk about the incredibly important role that HAP plays and will play in our homelessness strategic plan to reduce homelessness by 50% over the next five years. Now that we've done the number crunching, I can tell you just exactly how important it is in terms of units and dollars and cents. And I can also tell you that in order to reduce homelessness by 50, there is not, unfortunately, a single best practice program.
There is not a silver bullet. There is not a thing that we have all been missing and not investing enough in yet that hap is just going to be the incentive for. We have to invest across the spectrum of short term and permanent housing solutions because it's a continuum, and they work together. I learned also through doing the homelessness strategic plan that homelessness is not static. People are exiting every day, every year, and our homelessness service system is tremendously successful.
We are exiting 1,500 people a year from our, services and interim housing into permanent housing solutions. Unfortunately, because of the housing instability that doctor Kushal spoke about, we also have 2,500 people becoming unhoused in Oakland annually, so we are falling behind. And this is not because our programs are not working. This is because we have not invested in bringing them to scale and the and the scale that we need. So to keep up with inflow and turn the tide against homelessness, we need to reduce that inflow by investing 10 times what we currently invest in the city of Oakland in targeted homelessness prevention, which is an eligible use of HAP, although we don't use our HAP in that particular way.
We also need to accelerate our outflow with a combination of outreach to get people the information they need about where to go, interim housing solutions that stabilize folks and get them document ready, and, of course, the permanent housing solutions where people can survive no matter what income they make. In Oakland, our use of HAP is particularly critical in the outflow side of the equation because we put our HAP toward interim housing solutions, shelter and transitional housing, and predominantly for the operation and services of programs that we know are working. They survive on HAP, but we keep the doors open with HAP. We fund over 800 interim beds and program slots. They include tiny homes, safe parking, transitional housing programs for youth and families.
And from here, these unhoused Oaklanders can stabilize. They can be protected from the violence and trauma of unsheltered living, and as I mentioned, become document ready and transition ready for permanent housing. In terms of accountability, I wanna emphasize that accountability can be incredibly strong and tied to the use of the funds by looking at the program outcomes for which you are using HOP. And we're, in some ways, really lucky that HMIS has been built out so much that there are pretty clearly defined and very rational program outcomes for each type of program that HAP might be invested in. So in Oakland, for instance, with interim housing, we expect to see that our nonprofit partners are exiting folks to permanent housing solutions, that they are not exiting folks to places unfit for human habitation, and that folks are not staying for excessive periods of time without a reason.
These are easy things to measure, and they will tell you that if you put your HAP dollars into those programs, those programs are working. I would caution against using system wide homelessness reduction as an accountability metric. Again, along the lines of doctor Kuchel, there are a lot of reasons for homelessness to rise and fall. However, I can see that as the state is moving toward a more consolidated system, a one stop shop for housing finance and a single housing agency, that HAP could be a really important way of just asking for some contextual information so that legislators like yourself know what the heck is going on at the jurisdictional level, how we are weaving together state and local funds. And so I'd like to offer the idea of two different types of metrics collected via HAP.
One, that is contextual data, things like progress toward your arena goals or number of people exiting homelessness annually. These are incredibly important in terms of understanding how we are layering your funds, how we are leveraging funds with quite a lot, frankly, of local investment. But they are not HAP accountability measures because we do not use HAP for most of those things that you would be measuring. I would also like to double down on the idea that HAP is uniquely suited and uniquely valuable as an ongoing sorry, as a resource for ongoing expenses and services, meaning running programs, not standing up new buildings, we have capital resources, not nearly enough. But we certainly do have, at least in Oakland, more capital resources for creating new buildings for affordable housing and for interim housing than we have for keeping the doors open on the programs that we already have.
And as doctor Kuchel mentioned again, we do need for those funds to be stable. And so what we do in Oakland is we spread each year of HAP over multiyear contracts. That we do in order to keep our programs alive to prevent turnover in staffing to make sure that we don't have a fiscal cliff at the end of each year, which would introduce even more chaos into our already stretched system. So the speed of expenditure has very little to do with good program performance or good HAP performance. I'd strongly encourage you to maintain HAP as a stable source of funding to minimize the annual changes in the applications, the reporting metrics, the terminology, the eligible uses.
This not only makes it much harder for us to report back our performance, but I imagine it makes it much harder for HCD to see year over year improvement when each year you see slightly different things that are being measured. I'll leave you again with a final thank you. Thank you for advocating for HAP. It is an absolutely critical program for us to address homelessness in Oakland.
Speaker 1
Thank you, miss Hoswell. Appreciate that. Mister Russell, the director of housing and homelessness for Alameda County Health.
Speaker 9
Thank you, chair Hart and members of the committee for the ongoing opportunity to testify before you today. My name is Jonathan Russell. I'm the director for Alameda County's housing and homelessness services department. We're located in our health agency, and I'm also we're also the lead agency for the continuum of care. So I believe I'm speaking in some ways from both those continuum of care and county seats, but we have another wonderful county representative that will speak as well.
Obviously, Alameda County is a large county, so we we have 13 cities and one big city. It is also a recipient, so there are three HAP grantees in Alameda County. We're a large homelessness response system. We serve more than 25,000 people across our system every year, 18,000 of those that are experiencing unsheltered homelessness of one kind or another during the course of that year. A little bit about Continuum of Cares.
What are they? What are we? These are entities designated by HUD to oversee some of the basic functions of homelessness response in local communities. There's 44 of them across California, and each community is covered by one or another COC. Among their functions, COCs are required by HUD to first and foremost collect and administer data systems, including the homeless management information system that doctor Kuchel mentioned, which hold its datas and outcomes from across the homelessness system.
These systems feed upward into the very important state HDIS system. In addition to that, functions like the point in time count and others are administered by the continuum of care. In Alameda County, our COC is contiguous with the county. So my department is both the homeless, services lead for the county wide strategic response as well as the continuum of care's lead agency. So we, in that way, jointly administer the COC and the county portions.
A bit about HAP and the accounting measures to date. We've been able to achieve a lot of success across the state with HAP dollars in recent years. Within Alameda County, we've used it for a wide range of purposes, a couple of those being significantly expanding access to street medicine services, housing navigation, and both interim and permanent housing resources. This has contributed to over 6,000 people across Alameda County moving into permanent housing with HAP funded programs between January 2023 and June 2025. Statewide, over 90,000 people, as Megan mentioned, have moved into permanent housing, thanks to HAP over that period.
In Alameda County, in addition to the reductions that doctor Kuchel mentioned where we're seeing some moderation in the state's increases in homelessness, in Alameda County, for the first time in 2024, we saw a reduction for the first time in ten years in our point in time count of 3% and an 11% reduction in unsheltered homelessness. And we expect those trends to continue in the point in time count we just completed in 2026. For context in our system, to Sasha's point around our systems do perform well, more than 4,500 people exited to permanent housing last year in our homelessness response system. A number of accountability measures thus far have helped us to get to this place, both with HAP producing real results and also where we have digestible, easy to understand data that shows what's working and what's not. With the third round of HAP, we moved to setting more tangible outcome measures to drive spending to the highest and best uses.
As was mentioned, with the fifth round, the state required us to come together as communities, city, county, and COC to plan together and, leverage our respective resources and collaborate. And since then, HCD has worked closely with grantees to better understand the gaps in our local response system, pushing us to, to where appropriate, use the HAP funds to fill those gaps so that more people can access shelter and housing. As we consider how to move forward in the future and ensure that we keep the progress we've made going, there's four things I'd hope you consider. First is that HAP and homeless programs that move people off the street to provide services and shelter only represent half the ledger on the visibility of homelessness. Limited as that amount of funding ultimately is in being made available, I e, HAP is really funding it's just a fraction of our overall funding, and the ability that it's able to serve.
Programs like HAP can be extremely effective at moving people out of homelessness with alacrity. But if we aren't stopping the inflow, we're going to continue to see homeless. In many ways, that's the conversation we need to have. We need to realize that for every 10 people that become homeless, even if we're housing five to six and leveraging HAP to do that with myriad other sources, we need to improve and expand our system to rehouse people faster. Yes.
But we also need to go upstream and ask why people continue to fall in. HAP is a limited but crucial funding source that measures our effort to triage and support those people as they fall in, but we need to talk about what's happening upstream as well. Second, we need to also make sure that accountability measures are focusing on managing the effectiveness of programs and outcomes and focused on ensuring services and dollars are reaching the end user, which is folks on the street. There's a trade off with additional reporting, which is that the limited resources were taking people away from actually managing the performance in some cases that we care about. I question whether, to be candid, having exhaustively detailed monthly fin monthly financial reports, which is now required for us every month for every round of HAP and requires a lot more administrative work for both government and community based agency providers that are boots on the ground is actually generating any better outcomes than quarterly reporting does.
I'd argue that it's actually taking people away from focusing on that end product of the programs. For context, in Alameda County, under the monthly financial reporting requirements, we have to develop individual ports for each of the five rounds of HAP, and we're spending twenty plus staff hours just going through the excruciating detail on each of those 300 plus projects that now receive HAP funding in one form or another, some with just a fraction of dollars in that program. I want housing navigators with our clients on the streets. I want program managers looking at ways to improve their programs, not spending half their day on paperwork. I want county analysts measuring program quality and effectiveness, not just expenditure reports.
I think we can do both, having people be accountable and transparent while also being realistic about how we collect that information in a real world way where frontline workers are constantly strained and burning out based on the accumulating caseloads and accumulating administrative requirements. In summary, accounting does not equate to accountability, and there are helpful analogs to other state programs such as the Mental Health Services Act, now Behavioral Health Services Act funding, which has very rigorous fiscal reporting, but it's annual expenditure reporting. The focus should be on holistic impacts appropriate to the scale of our investments, not onerous invoicing. Third, we need to also make sure as we consider whether stripping funding from jurisdictions that don't have a pro housing designation as is proposed in hab seven is actually going to just end up punishing people potentially who need the services and housing in that jurisdiction instead of actually inspiring movement in the right direction from cities and counties. Of course, having pro housing zoning and all the complex requirements for the designation is critical to addressing homelessness at a structural level over time.
But do we need to risk penalizing the individuals in a community who desperately need those funds if that community is mired in moving these needed reforms through, but just not getting it done in time for this round. Lastly, fourth, we need to remember that everyone is trying to manage to keep our homelessness response system afloat in a time when the federal government is actually trying to pull some of the rug out from under us. They've signaled through the COC program that they're actively seeking to reduce resources. They're sunsetting 15,000 emergency housing vouchers across the state that are serving people experiencing homelessness, seeking to cut funding for 27,000 formerly homeless Californians living in supportive housing right now. And, of course, they passed devastating cuts through the health care system.
This is resulting and can will likely result in tens of thousands of additional people potentially falling back into homelessness or being pushed in for the first time. Again, for context, if the changes proposed in the 2025 NOFO were to move forward, it would immediately preclude Alameda County from receiving more than $33,000,000 a year going toward permanent housing that serves more than 2,200 people that are disabled and vulnerable in house in housing right now. That's almost three times the projected amount of HAP seven we might be able to receive at the reduced amount in this year's budget. No accountability measure can fix that. It takes dollars to keep people in housing.
So let's have the robust conversation around accountability, but also remember that none of this work will happen if we're not able to have consistent funding there. And a final thought, it's important to realize that accountability for us goes both ways. Certainly down to the communities who need to leverage dollars in concert with others to get real lasting outcomes, but also up to our state partners to ensure that the way we are applying those reporting expectations support achieving versus detracting from those ultimate ultimate outcomes we all want.
Speaker 1
Thank you. Thank you, mister Russell. Next, we have, Heidi Marshall, the director of housing and workforce solutions for the County Riverside.
Speaker 10
Thank you. Good morning, chair Hart and members of the committee. My name is Heidi. And as you just heard, I serve as the director of the department of housing and workforce solutions for the county of Riverside. And, as such, we have we are the department that also oversees our continuum of care.
In addition to that, in 2020, our county decided to start this new department that truly included a lot of the services and programs that you all mentioned were important to you. We believe that homelessness is not doesn't just require one intervention, but it truly requires a host of other things. Like you, we fully believe that a house is not the only thing we want to be able to facilitate. We wanna make sure that individuals go back into the workforce and really are integrated back into our communities. In Riverside County, we take our obligation to serve persons experiencing homelessness very seriously.
Accountability to us means truly owning the outcomes that we are achieving. I will be sharing some of those with you today. And I'm going to start with one that we're truly proud of, and that is the 19% reduction that we experienced in the unsheltered population just this past year during our last pit count. Nineteen percent is a number that is more than double the state average. It is by far our best performance indicator.
We also saw decreases across all of our subpopulations with regard to the unsheltered. That is inclusive of the transitional age youth, our veterans, our seniors, and households with children. However, we still counted a total of 1,978 unsheltered persons, but there were 19% of them less than there were the last time that we counted, and that is very significant for us. We also counted 2,012 individuals in our shelters. We were we're very happy to report that we used HAP to increase our shelter capacity by 57%.
That is extremely significant in our region. HHAP played a significant part of how we achieved these outcomes. It has been a true system builder for us, not just a grant. Our system of care that HAP has supported includes a host of services, homelessness prevention, emergency shelter, rapid rehousing, and most importantly, transitional and permanent supportive housing. Each of these is a very critical component and HAP has provided us that flexibility, excuse me, to deploy these services where they are most needed throughout our county.
We moved a total of 6,916 people into permanent housing last year, a 21% increase in our systems performance. And crucially, to one of your earlier points, 81% of those folks remain housed today. While we have had this great progress thus far, I also want to be very candid about our challenges. Our overall count rose by 7% because we are seeing an unprecedented number of seniors, first time seniors and families enter our system of care. But make no mistake, this 7% increase is for us an economic reality and not a systemic failure because the system that we have in place is truly working.
We are successfully identifying and bringing people into the system of care. But we need your continued support to fund the needed services and really the permanent housing that is required to move them out of the other side. Accountability requires us to be fully honest. If HAP funds, especially the future rounds, are cut or its flexibility is reduced, we're not going to be able to continue to sustain the very beds that delivered that 19% reduction in our unsheltered category. Accountability should mean that we work hard to sustain what works, and Riverside County has proof that this model that we have in place is working.
We just need you to remain our full partner with us to help us finish that job. Again, thank you for all that you're doing for this system of care.
Speaker 1
Thank you, miss Marshall. Appreciate that. Next, we'll go to questions from the colleagues, and we'll start with vice chair Tingipa.
Speaker 3
Thank you all for those reports. I have a couple questions when it comes to Homekey funding and the continuum of care. So who do I ask on those? Any volunteers? Any volunteers?
Perfect. But the the I will say it's interesting information when I look at the continuum of of care. Last year, I mean, I have the September 2025 general report on that. 14 counties did not report their continuum of care numbers. Why is that?
Speaker 9
I think I would need a little more information on on what you mean by continuum of care numbers. But I know, again, in our county, we are contiguous. The continuum of care boundaries are the same as the county, and we're the lead for both. So
Speaker 9
Can you clarify what what you mean by continuum of care numbers? They're the same as the county numbers.
Speaker 3
Yes. The point in time count. So they did not submit that to the state. And the main reason why I asked that is, especially if we're the ones allocating funds, and we have 14 counties, Sacramento County including in in that, which is the highest homelessness county in the entire nation, is not on that. How can we realize that we're allocating funds properly?
Speaker 9
Yeah. That's a a really easy one to clarify. So the point in time count, the unsheltered part of point in time count, there's two parts to a point in time count. There's the sheltered count, obviously, folks that are inside in one way or another, and then the unsheltered count. Mhmm.
HUD mandates the unsheltered point in time count to happen biannually, which is every two years. So the majority of counties, I know there are some that do also the unsheltered count annually, we do it in a biannual way. So it's 2024 and 2026. The sheltered count happens every year because that's just pulling data from HMIS. So it wasn't that we didn't report or didn't do something that we needed to.
It's that we did it in 2026 as the federal cadence requires.
Speaker 3
So when I'm looking at HUD's report, 14 of the counties, they don't it it's not showing any of the information even when it comes to some of the sheltered information. When San Francisco County, there was even a a newspaper that was just written about it in San Francisco talking about how the point in time count was completely off, and then a lot of the information was removed, Information was put online. Things were shifted. It it really puts a fog out there. Same thing with Sacramento County as well.
I mean, Orange County didn't submit their numbers. So it's more from a clarity standpoint. Again, if we're doing and I was I worked a lot with the Fresno Modera continuum of care, and I understand the process. It's very interesting. I mean, we all just put on a bunch of vest, and then we just go count people.
I think there are probably other ways we should really think about that, and I understand the complexities of that. It just the even in this report, it says fourteen of the 44 continuum of cares only completed a sheltered count only. So that means thirty of them completed both?
Speaker 9
Right. There can be different cadences. Some people are doing it on on different cadences in the biannual way, and some local communities have elected to do the unsheltered count every year as well. Mhmm. But I think all communities have to complete it in that biannual way for HUD, and I don't know of a of a county that has not done so because it would risk that federal funding as well.
But, yeah, I'm not sure which report that is, but I can speak for the counties that I work closely with. It is a rigorous process. I also would say it's one way we capture data. Often when I tell people the point in time count numbers, I say that is a moment in time that is imperfect, which is why I use our 25,000 annual numbers to really show just how many people are experiencing it.
Speaker 3
And this was done by Joe Coletti with HUD for urban initiatives, homeless and housing strategies for California. So that's their report.
Speaker 2
Right. Because I I think the issue here is that HUD has been requiring point in time counts since I think the nineties. And, intentionally, they designed it to be an every other year process. Now in places like New York, where they have a right to shelter, they just pull their numbers out of the shelter. They have very few unsheltered.
It's not a big deal. Obviously, on the West Coast, we have much higher proportions who are unsheltered. I think in recognition of how many resources it takes and, frankly, how hard it is to interpret just year to year, they've actually only required it every other year. There are a fair number of counties in California that for their own planning reasons do it every year, but that's pretty optional. Across the country, most places only do it every other year.
Speaker 3
And I bring that up again because we know, especially with HAP funding, it's one time funding. And if the data has to be Yeah. You know, we're allocating resources every year Yeah. And some counties are doing it, some counties are not. How can we make sure that we're being the most accurate on which areas are actually need the most funding?
You know, the we've all seen the data Yeah. Here that homelessness is something that a lot of people recognize as a major issue in California. I see it myself. I mean, we are in the richest state and the richest country in the history of the world, and we have a homeless population larger than cities in other states. So when we're allocating resources, especially when it's one time funding
Speaker 3
We have to be very, very accurate. What what is needed? And I grew up in Sacramento. I grew up off of Roseville Road and Watt Avenue
Speaker 3
Which people know was Tent City. And people want us to do something Yeah. About homelessness. And it it's, you know, it's hard to say, like, yes. Let's allocate more resources here when, again, there's discrepancies in the data.
And and especially, it makes it hard too when we like to put out there that homelessness has dropped Right. This year over year, when how can we even say that if we don't even have all the numbers, especially when it comes to out of those 14 counties, the largest counties with the largest homelessness population isn't reporting their unsheltered data. Yeah. Because I I feel like it's a very wrong thing to report out that we're we're actually doing better.
Speaker 6
Yeah. So doctor Kuchel was was talking about how this is a requirement by the federal government to do unsheltered point in time count every two years, and it's historically been in an odd year, odd numbered year. And so every all 44 were doing it in an odd year. COVID comes along, so it's 2021, and it's determined that it's gonna be it's just not safe Yeah. To do an unsheltered count in 2021.
So that year is scrapped. We don't have data for unsheltered for 2021. The problem emerged with this some reporting in some years and some others are all off track now in California because you had 14 continuous care say, well, we don't wanna wait till 2023 to do our next unsheltered. Let's do it in 2022. Yeah.
Speaker 6
they got in 2022 kind of the even year track of unsheltered that they keep. And then the others, '29 or '30, stuck to the odd year. They they do 2023 and then 2025. So as a result, I I think we, share the frustration, that you you never we we are not in a place in California right now where we have this same all 44 counting and reporting unsheltered. On top of all this, of course, is the the January 2025 count was over a year ago
Speaker 6
And the federal government still hasn't released those data. Normally, we'd get that by the 2025. It hasn't so so we end up having, I think, a researcher referring to a researcher that independently contacted Continuous of Care to to get their information, but there is no official publicly, available numbers right now for unsheltered for those odd number years
Speaker 3
I doing their accounting. I I completely understand too, and that's why it's
Speaker 3
You know, again, I think it's it's almost disingenuous for us to say, you know, we're we're reducing when the numbers are so scrambled. Mhmm. Like, that's and and, specifically, we're talking about one time funding right now.
Speaker 3
So we need the most Yeah. Available data for us if we're allocating another half $1,000,000,000. If we spent $5,000,000,000 over the last few years, you know, that immediate data is where we can say, okay. This place is working. Because, again Yeah.
I have seen it work in Fresno. Mhmm. They took smugglers in, worked with RH community homebuilders, $2,500,000 to acquire a tore down abandoned building, 150 units, 100 and actually 64 units at a $100,000 a door. Fresno County puts in behavioral health services there so people can go transition. It's in a large scale commercial corridor.
They can walk to work, whether it's Walmart. So I know exactly what it can do, but it's about the data, especially that's in front of us. That shifts me to the home key funding and some of the issues that we have seen now in the reports for fraud, waste, and abuse, we have seen the attorney general come out and talk about the Shangri La properties. We've seen the governor talk about this. We've seen the reports.
What additional steps have we really taken to find this area? Because if we look at the Shangri La property and what's happening with, that was LA HCD that really allocated that funds, but the state of California was the past well, used them as the pass through entity. They submitted over a $160,000,000 in fake bank records. Have we taken new steps now to make sure that other HomeKey funding grant funding isn't actually being stolen from the California people?
Speaker 7
Yes. Absolutely. I'm I'm not the lead on HomeKey, but obviously aware of of aware of the the issue there. And, I'm sure we could have someone give you a better briefing than I'm about to say right now. But, yes, absolutely, there's been many additional accountability measures there, and that was caught very early, in the process, partially because of the accountability measures that were in place and sort of seeing seeing some red flags there.
But, you know, this is this is one of the the conversations you all are trying to bring up today is, speed and accountability, can can, have attention. And, you know, I think it is important to remember that with the HAP money, with the Homekey money, that those are those are dollars we're giving up front, with expectations that our local partners are gonna follow through. And we we that that involves trust with our partners, and it also involves us following up with our partners to make sure, that things are going right. And so the that's, I think, a tenor of the conversation you heard from me on where we're trying to balance that impact, but limit bureaucracy where we can, but make sure that we are, that we are building systems in place that it isn't just trust with our local partners, but that it is we're able to see real time results of of impact that help us catch red flags early and intervene. But they someone someone by size myself could tell you much more detail about the the home key accountability work as well.
Speaker 1
Well, thank you, miss Gripi. And and mister vice chair, the home key issue is really important, and I appreciate the offer to provide more information. But we're really focusing on the the HAP funding today. So let's keep our questions there, and you've had a lot of time. So if you would if you don't have more questions about HAP funding, we'll go to other members of the committee.
Speaker 3
Well, the the question I have on that is specifically with HAP funding, I would say that a lot of the grant mechanisms similar to HomeKey, and I want what I want to make sure is that the money is protected. And, again, I know we we said that this was caught very early, but these properties were acquired in 2021 for millions and millions of dollars, and the thirty
Speaker 1
year just going back to the HomeKey question. Let's stay on HAP funding.
Speaker 1
No. We're talking about HAP funding. Different programs, different hearing, different subject. So with that, assemblymember Quirk Silva, why don't you pick up the line of questioning? We'll come back to you if you have questions about what's on our agenda today.
Speaker 12
Thank you to the panelists. Much to say in so little time, but some of you know that this is a space that I care deeply about. But I wanna kind of set the stage for who we're talking about. And we, in fact, are talking about seniors, many women who are falling into homelessness. We're talking about our veterans.
We're talking about, working and many times single parents, who, simply may have lost a job or who cannot afford their rent. We're talking about young people who are aging out of foster care. And we know that when we say homeless, there's often a image because now it is not hidden in our communities. It's on our streets as we walk to the capital. I want us to set the stage for last night where the temperatures probably dipped into the thirties, and it's been cold and raining.
So we know that people on our streets die. We know in one of the wealthiest counties where I live, Orange County, there's an average of about thirty individuals a month who die on the streets of Orange County. So these funds are important, and we certainly need transparency and accountability. And I have been on this committee and talked about this issue for well over a decade. And as we know with legislation, we can swing too far or too slow.
And in this case, we've seen such an urgency for more accountability and more accountability. And what I've heard today, it appears that it's almost doubled the time now to get an HHAP grant into the wardie's hands. That I want us to, in this year, this legislative year, get solutions from this body who came to us. So that is a request of what can we take out of all of this accountability that you would say that would still protect the program. And I and I do concur with my colleague right here, mister Tengepa
Speaker 12
On any fraud, whether it's the HomeKey program or the hate HAP program or our EDD programs, any fraud in our system, takes dollars away from the recipients that we just mentioned. So we know that, looking at fraud, flagging it early, and getting those dollars back into the system can amount to millions of dollars, and we want those dollars going to where, they should go. But I do have a few questions, and, obviously, this is under my budget sub five, so we will be having follow-up questions. And as much as I respect the people who work in this space, because this is not an easy space to work in. I mean, simply saying homelessness in California on the radar of local electeds to county elected to state is really in its infancy.
About fifteen years, even though we know it, the seeds were planted much earlier by not producing housing. We know that affordability has continued to go up. But where local cities, local counties have been grappling with this now for fifteen years, when we look at the scope of our body of work, it's actually a very short amount of time. And the hardest thing that I have seen myself as a legislator is to attain these permanent supportive housing units for anybody, anywhere. So one of my questions will be to you, and I'll just kind of add the questions, was you said that you found 6,000 permanent support in Riverside.
So I wanna know how you found those or built them and what you did because that's a huge amount to find. Secondly,
Speaker 12
No. It was for oh oh, I believe it was, Megan, that you said we're gonna be sunsetting 15,000 vouchers or maybe you said it.
Speaker 12
You can from the federal government. And is that the section eight vouchers that or is this separate? So if you can answer that after. And then if somebody can speak to not just the 15,000 vouchers that are going to be sunsetted, also the 6,000 units you were able to attain, but also to the federal government on the HUD housing with the section eight that we are actually predicting that may be ripped away from many, many vulnerable seniors and what that looks like, how many, what that would look like we're talking about. So those three questions, and I think I'll stop there.
But, again, thank you.
Speaker 10
Thank you so much for for that question. It gives me an opportunity to to tell you a little bit more about our Riverside County story. But I'll begin by addressing your comment about it's really about the folks who are out in the streets in all types of of conditions. One of the things in addition to the data that I've shared with you that we're proud of is that the coroner's report that we receive on an annual basis that indicates the number of people who have perished in our streets, HAP has done such an incredible job to make a difference with those reports. In Riverside County alone, in 2024, we experienced a twenty seven percent decrease in the number of deaths.
Last year, that number rose to thirty percent. How we did it, how we achieved those additional permanent supportive units goes back to one of the things that make us unique is that our board of supervisors in 2020 decided that they wanted to bring under one roof, a department that truly had all of the tools at its disposal that made that effort to build easier. So what that looks like in our county is we have at our disposal in the same under the same, excuse me, roof, the housing authority. The housing authority brings all of those section eight vouchers, tenant based and project based, that can be used to incentivize development with developers. Under the same roof, we have our development team that really started during the redevelopment era and has folks who have that expertise to build and work with developers day in and day out and have funding sources from home and a variety of other state and federal sources as well.
We also have the community action partnership. So there are funds that come from community services block grant that could also go to supplement and make sure that we're leveraging those dollars so that people who are housing insecure can become secure. In addition to that, we have the continuum of care that I already spoke about. And also what rounds us out is our workforce development board is also part of that department. So the the workforce innovation act dollars also come into play because it helps us bring those folks up from out of the streets into a training and employment opportunity.
So on any given Monday, you will have the leaders of all of those units come together and talk about the funding that we have access to and how that facilitates the building of those units. It's part of building real partnerships, leveraging those dollars, and ultimately getting people in from out of the street.
Speaker 12
So just a follow-up. Are those 6,000 units new units or units that have been readapted or that have just a combination?
Speaker 12
has have these units taken to build? Because that's been one of our most pressing question is how do we get this housing production move forward in a timely manner?
Speaker 10
It takes time to build, as you know. You cannot build a project overnight, but those 6,000 units are an annual number that has been planned for the last several years. But it is an annual number that reflects the ability to leverage HAP with other funding sources. Homekey to to And
Speaker 12
then last question just for anybody. What is that 6,000 unit compared to other counties? Because I'm just gonna think of Orange County, and I would think that and again, don't quote me, but they are probably building less than half, maybe 2,000 permanent supportive. So that seems like an astonishing number, and I thank you for doing it. But It
Speaker 10
is inclusive of all of a combination of several units in addition to the new build.
Speaker 13
Thank you so much, chair Hart, for, your leadership and for today's, hearing. I appreciate the panelists and all of you bringing your expertise here. I think that the more I learn about our homelessness systems, whether it's at the local level, the state, or the federal level. We have so many, increasing systems of bureaucracy, a lot of, measures of accountability, which we asked for, on the state programs, and also, the amount of funding, though I know, the amount in question that we have in our budget currently is half than what was it was last year. I did wanna take a moment to appreciate governor Newsom and this administration, I believe, to be the first administration, the first governor to put state dollars towards homelessness because I don't believe we've ever seen that before.
And and I think that is really important, and that's really critical. I know our colleague, who brought up HUD, had to step out, but I think that's really important to note because I know that as he was reading the HUD report, this federal administration under the Trump administration has, as Ms. Quirk Silva pointed out, put a lot of really horrific limits around the use of our dollars, federal funding dollars on homelessness, capping the dollars that could be used towards permanent supportive housing at 30. And I know the attorney general and the governor are in the middle of all of that trying to claw back our federal dollars. And, I know what that does to all of you is put a tremendous amount of pressure on the programs that you're managing, including HAP, including the dollars that you are trying to piece together with a whole set of different accountability measures and HAP having two dozen accountability measures.
You know, I think one of the things that I did appreciate about HAP and this program, and and I don't know if this was a change that was made when this administration changed it over to HCD for these funds, was that I could actually go to your dashboard and to see, pretty quickly where your dollars are, who your grantees are. There's a lot of information there. So for, colleagues of mine who really care about transparency, metrics, outcomes, I really encourage you to look on the HAP dashboard online because that's something that, at least from what I've seen, with other dollars, especially at the federal level, you're not easily able to pull up. So I think the state is actually doing a much better job at that transparency than other levels of government. Thank you.
I wanted to spend a little bit of time on the accountability measures because I know that's been raised, and our budget chair also, I know, is wanting to talk about how quickly we can get those funds out, which I completely agree with.
Speaker 13
And so, I wanted to echo how can we really align some of these measures, so that they're more streamlined across the board and that you're not having to do. And you can correct me if I'm wrong, but how do the accountability measures with HAP, how do they relate to the other accountability measures that you have to produce for the other streams of funding that you're having to that you're that you're that you're, receiving for homelessness? Do you
Speaker 7
guys wanna talk about that last one? Yeah. The like, they grade? Yeah. Okay.
So, yeah, I I I think it's a I think it's actually I've been taking a lot of notes as you all have been talking, and I think there are ways for us to, continue to follow that north star of impact and and make sure we keep the transparency of things, but, like, look for opportunities where we can, you know, I think we're two years in and we're we're big believers in continuous improvement at HCD. And so I think some of it will be looking for opportunities, opportunities to adjust our processes. And, you know, one of the things that comes to mind for me that we've learned a lot over the past few years is how interim housing is tracked very differently than permanent housing. And I promise I won't get too far in the weeds here, but, just, as my colleague from Oak Oakland was sharing is we're noticing a lot of our grantees on the interim housing side. They might be good grantees in the sense they are obligating those funds.
They're programming those funds very quickly, but they in order to stretch those dollars out, they're, like, planning the expenditure down to the last minute so it can give the appearance what can give the appearance of slow spending is actually trying to to meter out the funds, you know, to to stretch them as far as possible. And so those are things where it's like those those are interactions we're having with the grantees in real time and sort of, you know, when you fund permanent housing, that housing is gonna last for fifty five years plus, but we don't say it's not expended until year 50 five. You know? Like so there might be way opportunities for us to kinda, like, adjust the way that we're looking at some of these metrics, I think, are is worth talking about. And I think I think there's a few other places where we can, work together to try and try and add in some speed to that relationship.
But one of the things I wanted to make sure I said as well is, in terms of the ways in which we're tracking, and I think that conversation has come up a lot today Yeah. Both in terms of the the point in time count, but also the HDIS system
Speaker 7
And the system performance measures is, we'd like we these some of this is about communication, but where we're coming from is not to use those tools, to stop funding, but to use those tools as an aid to work with our grantees to say, okay. It looks like you're having trouble on permanent housing, or it looks like you're having trouble, with returns to homelessness. And so, get into a rhythm where that doesn't mean that we're saying so you don't get funding. But that means, okay. How do we help you with these particular places where your metrics are falling short?
And so the way our disbursements work is if you accept, technical assistance support from us, you can unlock those funds even if your performance is falling behind in certain metrics. And so that's something we know we need to do more communication about. We hear from grantees all the time, oh, I can't get my second disbursement because my metrics are behind. And that's not that's not the posture we wanna be showing up with our grantees. So, anyway, that those are a few things I'll add on that point, but I think, my regional colleagues can talk more about the braiding of funding and how you all, do that.
Speaker 9
Yeah. I can I can start? And I think this ties back to your question that we didn't answer around the 1,500 emergency housing vouchers, which I'll which I'll try to tie in. I think one of the things is it's shifting sands. Right?
If each round of HAP as they have had have had different eligible use categories that have changed over time, we have this accretion effect where things get layered on, but other previous requirements don't get layered off. So the grants end up being very segmented. There's a structural segmentation in how they can be reported into you know, they can't be there's no consolidated reporting. Mhmm. And there's also different requirements of how each can be used in the way those change.
So I I think I I often talk about this a lot with our local electives when they say, I see we got the our HAP this year. What are we gonna do with And I say, keep funding the things we funded the previous round of HAP with. Right? So a lot of the history of HAP, you know, is really connects with with Heap, the first state funding sources that a lot of communities, cities, and county partners used to stand up shelters and new programs. Right?
But with one time funding sources, it's to say, great. What are we gonna do with the navigation center next year? And then HAP was created. So it became this really important, really needed gap filler for our community. I mentioned 300 grants over those five we have 300 different projects, some with $3,000, some with 3,000,000.
Speaker 9
That's all need to be reported with the same level of rigor for all five rounds because of the way this kind of accretion processes happen. So one of my recommendation is create a more consolidated reporting structure that rolls these into a more cohesive way in which the funds can be used, right, to do more consolidated reporting. In a lot of ways, to your question, we have 60 plus funding sources in our community between city sources, state sources, and federal sources over the course of a year that Alameda County is braiding in different projects. That is a patchwork, the vast majority of which are one time funds. So what we often have to do is make those funds work over time.
And to be candid, have funds as one time funds much as we want to push them toward permanent housing uses. They're not the best uses for permanent housing dollars because that knee you need to know it's gonna be there in year 15. So we have to really make sure we're appropriately thinking about the system wide goals and helping HCD work with the local community to understand, absolutely, we need to prioritize permanent housing, but the funding source parameters need to be oriented that way in order to make it useful. So an example of where we're struggling, 15,000 emergency housing vouchers. Yeah.
You mentioned section eight. They are a subset of 70,000 vouchers that were created under the Biden administration during the pandemic that are section eight for folks experiencing homelessness, essentially. The state received 15,000 of those. That funding is being cut off. Most of the housing authorities that received it and work with local continuance of care are losing it by sometime in 2026.
So we're looking down the barrel to absorb those folks either on existing lists or take a a selection of local sources to sort of backfill for those. So we are in a we are not just in a sort of fractured different different patchwork system.
Speaker 12
Does does that include the 15,000 plus the additional section eight drop down that I heard that was over 40,000 for California?
Speaker 9
That's that's funding from the continuum of care that is also from HUD. That if those restrictions that you mentioned, 30 the 30% cap, that would result in twenty seven thousand people in addition to those EHVs that would be cut off from their assistance if not backfilled.
Speaker 12
be So we're saying 15,000 plus about 27,000 is a potential that we could see in 2026 not receive, any support from HUD, that, in fact, could possibly, have them not be able to afford their rent?
Speaker 9
Would not be able to. Most of those to be to receive those are disabled, permanent disabling conditions, and so they would be at risk of within that same month falling back into homelessness.
Speaker 8
Oh, you were there. I just wanna add on a couple of things. One thing is that, you know, HOP, I think, had a it had an era where it where there was very, very little accountability, and that was a huge problem. Yeah. And I think that we're maybe sometimes mentally still worried that that's where we are.
But I think HAP has come a tremendous distance since then. And thanks to the leadership of the legislature and HCD, now HAP actually has swung a little bit the opposite direction. I think Sherhart was mentioning that spectrum of accountability and that, I think it's time, as Jonathan was saying, that that we look at, consolidating across multiple years so that we're looking at the same performance measures for every year of HAP funds. Right? So look backward and say, okay.
Can we standardize from HAP two through six? We're gonna be looking at system performance measures at the system wide level per county, and we're gonna be looking at system performance measures for each program that receives HAP funding. And those are standard existing defined terms that we all in homelessness know and track already through the HMIS system that would be far more reliable than anything, sort of innovative and new for each consecutive annual allocation of HUD. I think that's
Speaker 7
And I know we're I know we're all bouncing off each other, but I think I think some of this is is also that communication work and working together to to to try, as especially as the HAIS system has evolved, I think we are beginning to be in a more stable place on the on the system performance measure side. And I just one piece I wanted to emphasize is I think as that HGIS reporting has improved, as the that system has stabilized, that also means that we can reduce duplicative reporting. So there are a lot of places where we were asking folks to answer questions through that the information we're getting through that HMIS system into HAIS, but then we're also manually asking them to report the same thing because there was an era where a lot of regions had not really they hadn't gotten up to speed on their HMIS, HCIS reporting. And so if we weren't asking them to also answer it manually, we were gonna be having gaps in our data. And I think we're entering an evolution where partially, again, that transparency breeds better reporting and better participation, we can sort of reduce some of our manual reporting as well.
And I think that that's one of the things we're trying to explore. And, already, we've taken, steps to, like, per statute, there are basically, like, two reports that we've now turned into the same report to all of our grantees to, like, reduce reduce them having to double report. And so there I think there's other opportunities like that as well. Okay.
Speaker 13
I I thought it was important to point out. I wanna be respectful of the rest of my colleagues and their time. Yeah. Yeah. The last thing that I did just wanna say to HCD specifically, and I'm happy to follow-up with you Mhmm.
And your team directly, is I did wanna talk to you separately about the statewide encampment policies that we're requiring. And I did also want to talk to HCD about our accountability measures for our own state agencies and whether or not, you know, we're asking our own agencies to do the same things that we're asking grantees to do, which I think is really important, but we can have that discussion offline. Agree. Thank you
Speaker 14
Thank you very much, mister chair. Thank you all very much for your presentation. I don't have any questions. I do have very brief comment. Just wanna begin by saying thank you, mister chair, for bringing us together.
Incredibly important topic today, and vice chair is no longer here. But I would say I think this is important to all of us, and I think we all have a connection to the issue. I don't think any one legislator is beholden to this issue. I think we all are. And especially today of all days, I am reminded that we, as a state government, have both a moral and a fiduciary obligation to
Speaker 14
a role in tackling the homeless situation that we see in California. So I wanted to just very quickly say I concur with all of my commie colleagues' comments, especially those of assembly members Kaloza and Quirk Silva. The three things I would just offer, my takeaway from the hearing myself is looking at stability of funding. When I look and I was in local government when HAP really took off. I was on with the city of Burbank.
So during those pandemic years, we saw the influx of funding, and we did some really great things at the local level with it. Obviously, we have a challenging budget environment that we're going to have to navigate, but the thing that I take away is that the legislature and the administration have to come together and find a way to provide some continuous stable funding because the volatility in funding, I think, will be counterproductive to the goals. And we are seeing positive results. We are seeing declines in our unsheltered unhoused population, especially not limited to, but especially in Southern California. The second thing I would mention is I I I do believe we have to look at the stability of our accountability metrics.
I think our emphasis moving forward should be on clarifying existing requirements and potentially entertaining a discussion about eliminating unnecessary ones. I think that the more that we continue to add, it can be very counterproductive, especially for our local partners. We're trying to keep up, and yet as we add more and more, they have to continually, evolve and change their standard. And I think that that can lead to inefficiencies in the system. That's just one legislator's perspective.
The last thing I would just mention is I would personally be interested in looking at longer range planning as highlighted in the report and consolidating reporting requirements, removing duplicative reporting. Monthly reporting sounds really great, but I I I do think to the point that was raised by several of our presenters, quarterly reporting might be a more efficient way to proceed. So with all that, just really appreciate all of you being here. Thank you to all of my colleagues for your comments, and, of course, thank you to mister chair.
Speaker 1
Thank you, assembly member Sholta. It's a great summary. Assembly member Carrillo.
Speaker 15
Thank you, mister chair, and thank you for your insightful information, presentations, and the hard work that you do every day. I just wanna bring up a different way that homelessness looks like in the areas that I represent. Assemblyman Brook Silva mentioned how vivid is homelessness when you walk in Sacramento. Same thing when you walk in LA and other big urban areas. But homelessness looks different in the High Desert.
You see some on the streets on the sidewalks, but they go to the desert. They go deep into the desert, and that's where homelessness happens. So that's a very different way from what we see in urban areas to what we see in the High Desert and the Low Desert, the Coachella Valley as well. To the point of a semi member, Carlos, the transparency and the information that is available through the website, very helpful. Also, the HCD very helpful in answering questions that we had.
But my comment goes really to the report on page two of this report here. And it's a question for me to understand better. On the last paragraph, it reads the HHAP funding is allocated to large cities with a population over 300,000. I think that that puts a lot of our cities at a huge disadvantage. The cities that I represent, Palmdale, Lancaster, Victorville, Atlanta, and Esperia, none of them is over 300,000.
When you combine them together in LA County, Palmdale, and Lancaster, it goes over 750,000, but that does not qualify them individually. And, when we look at, funds that were provided to the city of Los Angeles through the HOP program, a $143,000,000 to LA, the city of LA. Los Angeles County, 85,000,000. So to your point on, how homelessness is very statewide issue that we have, it looks to me like resources are not being spread adequately because this hearsay is that only those that are over $300,000 could qualify for that. That puts us in a big disadvantage, and I speak to LA County because that's what I represent in San Bernardino County.
We get nothing. From the county, the $85,000,000 that goes to the county, a lot of that still stays in the urban areas of LA. And I say that because that's something that we experience time and time again. Some of you may be familiar with Metro H in LA, millions of dollars too. City of Palmdale in Lancaster contributed $15,000,000 for that measure.
We got back less than a million dollars. So my question really is, how can we address those cities that don't reach $300,000 300,000 residents? Because homelessness is there. It exists. Yeah.
It's not vivid. It's not like we see in urban areas. It's in the desert because that's what they do. Yeah. And they just don't get the resources that urban areas receive, we don't get our taxes to the point where everybody pays taxes for that.
Yeah. We keep paying taxes in rural areas, but our populations don't benefit from what we pay. How can we fix that?
Speaker 10
What I would say is the way that the program is structured now is all cities, even those under 300,000 population, are eligible to apply. And I'm using Riverside County as the example to describe that the way we make decisions about how funding goes or where it goes is based on that data. Data. So it's not exclusive to the point in time count. It also includes HMIS, the experience that our street outreach teams provide.
But key to that effort is the participation in the continuum of care discussions. So I would I would wanna know for those cities that are not tapping into that, are they actively participating in those discussions? Because at each continuum of care meeting, where those decisions are being made about where funding goes, are they showing up, are they talking about their needs, and why it is important to bring funds to address those issues. Because I would argue that there are areas where that isn't an issue. And so by further, imposing yet another requirement, you might be addressing a problem somewhere but creating a problem.
Speaker 9
And if I could just add one comment from the county's perspective, I think, one, I really appreciate the the diversity you're pointing to, not just in how people experience homelessness, but the visibility or lack thereof between urban and rural areas. To speak to the the point around access for the cities, we're much smaller than Los Angeles County by way the number of cities and regions, but we have 14 cities and really five regions that we've broken out. For the most part, I think one of the strategies we're pursuing is how can we ensure HAP dollars are impacting regions proportional to need, including our city partners that might have smaller populations, without duplicating the administration and paths pass through, which would continue to pull more dollars to everyone cut contracts. Right? So so for our small cities, it actually is difficult in some ways to receive those small portions of the money, turn it around, have their own contracts do it.
So we try to administer that essentially on their behalf and make sure we're reporting appropriately to all of our city partners, but it is it is a give and take. I just I raised that point to say, how can we assure our regional city partners are and the folks experiencing homelessness are are accessing those resources without, drawing so much of those resources into the spending of those resources by the dollars passing through so many hands? That's the tension, I think, in a system.
Speaker 2
And it seems, you know, our group conducted something called the California statewide study of people experiencing homelessness, largest representative study of homelessness in thirty years. And we had the honor of of studying homelessness not only in the urban areas, but in the rural areas. And one point I would make is that homelessness is very present in rural areas, but it's actually very different. It presents differently. It's found differently, and it often needs a different response.
And one of the most important things about HAP is that flexibility and that local governments often know best what their constituents need. And what will work in Skid Row in LA is very different than what will work in a rural area. Both are important, but their needs are different. It's possible that their metrics may need to be a little bit different, and, how they spend their dollars is gonna be different to get to the same goal that we all want, which is reducing homelessness.
Speaker 1
Thank you for that great question. That was really timely, and that's why we all are here to contribute our own unique perspectives around the state. Really wanna thank the panelists for doing such a great job of presenting today and my colleagues for asking these wonderful questions. We kinda went full circle. We started off with doctor Kushal talking about the devastating impacts of HR one and how challenging that's gonna be to continue to make progress.
She used the perfect analogy about HAP funding being the emergency services department and the housing, services area. Mister Steenhausen set the context for the evolution of HAP funding and how that has changed over time and the accountability has changed as well. And thank you for jumping in to answer the question specifically about the point in time, count timing. That was really excellent. Miss Kirkby talked about the need to invest in areas, across the housing spectrum, not just the HF program, but making sure we prevent homelessness in the first place.
And miss Hoswald made the point that there is no silver bullet to this solution. We need an all of the above strategy and also pointed out how important the HF funding is for the city of Oakland and all local governments for operations and services that, you know, this is a unique source that is flexible, that allows the programmatic side of of housing people, to go forward. And that point, I think, gets missed sometimes is that local governments have a variety of different funding sources, and having this funding to provide the glue and fill in the cracks in all the programs is really essential. And the fact that it is a onetime program that has been continued multiple years presents real planning challenges for local governments. And that oftentimes, to avoid a fiscal cliff, you try to spread those dollars out.
And from our perspective, that looks like slow. From your perspective, that looks like thoughtful and and reasonable planning. And I think that's exactly what we wanna surface here today is the tension between the state looking down and saying, hey. Do it faster and be more accountable. And you saying, we don't necessarily trust that you're gonna be there next year.
And I think that's legitimate critique and that we all take that seriously too because our budgets are challenging and hard to balance on a year year to year basis because of the inherent structural challenges that we have with state government financing. So that that's a real thing that we have to address. Mister Russell, you focused on the problem of incoming unhoused people being a challenge, that we can show great progress on a year to year basis. But if we have more people becoming unhoused because of the supportive systems not working well, We are not making progress even though we're we're being successful, and that's that's a really char hard thing to communicate to the public because that they would like to just see this problem solved. And we're we're really managing a really difficult situation, particularly with our federal government partners.
And, miss Marshall, thank you for reporting these wonderful success stories in Riverside and the progress that you're making, and, that's what we're all trying to do is make improvements. I did have one question, technical question that's kinda lingering out there. I don't understand how, the HDIS system and the HMIS systems work together. Do they? Are they creating information that is synced?
Does this help the system? Are we doing two siloed reporting systems?
Speaker 7
I feel like any of us could probably give a would give you a slightly different version of this, but I'll just say that each COC has HMIS data on all of the homelessness clients. And so to doctor Kushal's point, like, sometimes adding more people to the system is a good thing as long as it's not because the homelessness count is going up. But once we created the infrastructure and it's it's California Interagency Council on Homelessness that that manages that infrastructure for the state system, is every three months, the COCs, export their data to us at the state, into a a larger database. And then thanks to assembly member Gabriel and a b nine seven seven, we also collect additional data through that local HMIS systems, on state homelessness programs, beyond beyond the COC traditional tracking.
Speaker 1
Okay. Thank you. Did I answer your question? Good. Well, thank you all for coming.
This has been really helpful, and, we still have the challenge of trying to figure out how to have accountability, have results, have predictable funding, and also not burden you with, excessive administrative processes that are duplicative and overly detailed. And that's that's what we're gonna do in the next three months. This is an informational hearing to help inform the larger conversation at the budget committee. And, hopefully, because of your input, we're gonna do a better job. Really appreciate you being here.
So thank you all.
Speaker 1
Thank you. Go to public comment, and we've got a microphone over here. Anybody who'd like to come up and speak, if you could limit your comments to a minute, that would be really helpful. Thank you.
Speaker 5
Hi. Justin Garrett with the California State Association of Counties. Just really wanna thank the committee for this great discussion today on HAP accountability. This program is essential, component of our collective efforts and our recent success in reducing homelessness. Counties are committed to using HAP funding urgently, effectively, and in a coordinated manner to meet the needs of our communities.
And counties also welcome accountability. You know, for example, we strongly advocated for some of the key elements, in round five with the regional plans, the joint applications, and, you know, the the MOUs on roles and responsibilities aligned with our at home plan. And so those are really important. But accountability must be aligned with the flexibility, resource, and authority to meet those metrics, and there's some challenges with how this is working for the HAP program. The one year at a time approach to funding and uncertain funding levels leads to instability and makes it more difficult to sustain, successful programs and prevents long term projects and commitments, which is really, critical.
The lengthy review process, expanding requirements, and added elements beyond what's in statute, create delays in funding being distributed. And so it shouldn't take, you know, more than twenty months, for funding to be authorized and then get out into our communities. And there's real world impacts to these challenges, stalled projects, uncertain program commitments to programs that are working, and, you know, less funding for services and more for some of the administrative work. And so just to, talk about what we're advocating for related to HAP, CSAC is advocating for ongoing funding of a billion dollars, including increasing the round seven, from 500,000,000 to a billion. And related to round seven, for it to be implemented in a manner that's simplified, that uses the applications that were just done, and that allows for grantees to demonstrate progress towards meeting these new metrics, you know, so that this fund doesn't get delayed in getting out, and that we can meet the goal date of September 1.
And so, we look forward to the discussion this year, and thank you for, the hearing today. Thank you.
Speaker 16
Good morning, chair and members. Korvavadashkarji with Housing California. Thank you so much for focusing today's hearing on HAP funds. HAP is our state's most important and effective tool for addressing homelessness. Since 2023, HAP has led to over 90,000 people being placed into permanent housing, and this is a big reason why California has done so much better than the rest of the country on homelessness issues.
Since round three, HAP has had some of the strongest accountability measures. HAP five added regional planning that interest collaboration between cities, COCs, counties. This has been a significant factor in HAP's strong outcomes. This year, HAP dollars are more important than ever before, with federal cuts threatening to push at least 41,000 Californians back into homelessness in 2026. HAP, which can fund the rental assistance and operating subsidies, can play an important role in keeping Californians in their homes.
Lastly, making HAP permanent and ongoing rather than one time would give the state more tools to ensure accountability by allowing HCD to use future funding as both carrot and stick. Options to drive better program performance are limited when funding continues to come in one time trenches. We look forward to working with you to ensure that the HAP program continues to improve outcomes for unhoused people in our communities statewide. Thank you.
Speaker 11
Hi. Good morning. Sharon Report with the Corporation for Supportive Housing. As a national nonprofit working to advance evidence based policies, we strongly support the move toward accountability and care deeply about it. We care deeply about accountability at all levels of government to those experiencing or at risk of homelessness.
True accountability should be measured in outcomes, and we have seen really positive outcomes in recent years. And we do think that's in large part thanks to HAP. Some people mentioned some of those outcomes, over ninety thousand people getting housed and exiting homelessness for good over two and a half years. But I think probably the most telling outcome is that for decades, California had historic increases in homelessness every single year. And the last year that we have data shows really flat increases, whereas nationally, we saw an eighteen percent increase in homelessness.
We also saw the number of youth experiencing homelessness has decreased by twenty four percent, and we believe that's thanks to the Set Aside for Youth and HAP funding. And we know that we have a smaller unsheltered population or proportion of our population. We can only protect this progress with funding. With hap with HAP funds, includes rental assistance services, outreach shelter operations, all of these things need ongoing funding. Recent federal actions that you heard about today and reductions in HAP funding at state level threatened the fragile progress we've made.
As more households are falling into homelessness every day than ever than ever before, blocking jurisdictions from HAP funding would only threaten the lives and welfare of those experiencing or at risk of homelessness. Thank you very much.
Speaker 17
Good morning. Susanna Parsons with All Home. I wanna applaud the legislature and the governor's leadership in investments in HAP over the last six years. Those investments and increased accountability measures have led to important successes that you've heard about this morning, decreases in homelessness, decreases in youth homelessness, increasing the number of folks that are being connected to housing every year, and more. I want to just emphasize a couple of points made by our speakers this morning.
One, that the population of people becoming homeless every year is extremely dynamic. Our systems are moving people into housing each year, more and more each year, but not keeping up with the number of new folks that are being pushed into homelessness. The rising cost of living, the federal policy changes and cuts that you've heard about only threaten to worsen that dynamic. Until we get more serious about prevention, this dynamic will undermine our overall success in driving down homelessness and frustrate our ability to hold all actors in the system accountable. Finally, that consolidated reporting, standardized metrics, and multiyear appropriations of HAP allow jurisdictions to resource programs more efficiently and allow the state to more effectively assess impact.
Thank you again for your leadership, and look forward to the conversations.
Speaker 18
Hello. My name is Diviya Shiv, and I'm the senior policy advocate of behavioral health at the California Alliance of Child and Family Services, which represents over 200 CBOs that serve children, youth, and families throughout the state. Addressing homelessness is important to us and our members because of the relationship between homelessness and behavioral health. In fact, almost half of people experiencing homelessness in California have complex behavioral health needs. These two issues are deeply intertwined, and the solution is to make sure that people have both the housing and the services they need.
HAP is therefore critical to address both behavioral health and homelessness in California, And it is imperative that the state fund HAP fully in an ongoing manner and avoid a funding gap by ensuring that round seven funding is distributed early in the twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven budget year. In addition, as previous speakers mentioned, while accountability measures can be useful, it is also important that these HAP accountability measures are not so overly burdensome that they prevent local communities from accessing these funds. Thank you for your time.
Speaker 13
Good morning, mister chair. I'm Erin Evans on behalf of Santa Clara County. The county supports, HAP funding in in '26 and '27 fiscal year 2627. Excuse me. We also welcome accountability measures, including providing data as we share the goals of ending and preventing homelessness in our communities.
We also invite excuse me. We welcome the opportunity to provide suggestions on how these accountability measures can best be utilized by local governments. HAP is working. Mister chair, I appreciate your sort of wrap up of the panelists' points, and I think we too concur. We would appreciate if the state would consider making this funding permanent to really help us, with long term planning locally.
Thank you.
Speaker 1
Thank you, Ed. Welcome to your suggestions about accountability measures. Thank you.
Speaker 19
Good morning, mister chair. Jean Hurst here today on behalf of the urban counties of California. Also, I wanna express my gratitude for the hearing today and for highlighting two of our member counties and the work that they're doing locally. Again, UCC also, I concur with my county colleagues. We support, obviously, the HAP program, but I did wanna underscore two things.
First, the three points that assembly member Schultz had made, particularly about the frequency of reporting. I think that could be a change that would really be really assist our folks at the ground level. And I really appreciate you, mister chair, wrapping up with a reminder that HR one will have an impact on this population and has the potential to destabilize them full further. So we want to make sure that those contextual aspects are also taken into consideration when we consider future funding for the HAP program. Thanks very much.
Speaker 1
Thanks so much for everybody's comments. Appreciate those all. And I just wanna conclude our hearing by thanking Genevieve Morales, our wonderful staff member who's did a fabulous job organizing this panel, running this committee hearing, and helping me in every way. So thank you so much. And we are adjourned.
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