The Budget Act of 2018 appropriated $50,000,000 to the Board of State and Community Corrections for a grant program, known as the Adult Reentry Grant Program, for the purpose of awarding competitive grants to community based organizations to support offenders formerly incarcerated in state prison. The Budget Act of 2018 allocated a specified amount of those funds for, among other things, rental assistance, rehabilitation of existing property or buildings, and to support the warm hand-off and reentry of offenders transitioning from prison to communities. Subsequent budget acts have continued to fund the program.

This bill, instead, commencing July 1, 2026, and upon appropriation of funds, would transfer the administration of the grant program to the Department of Housing and Community Development. The bill would require the department, on or before December 1, 2026, to modify the grant program to provide 5-year renewable grants to geographically diverse regional administrators responsible for funding permanent supportive housing and reentry services for eligible people, as specified. The bill would require the department to issue proposed guidelines or a draft notice, as specified, establishing the grant program and require the department to competitively score applicants applying for grant funds as regional administrators. The bill would require the department to work collaboratively with the State Department of Health Care Services, Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, and homeless continuums of care, and seek to work collaboratively with county probation departments, to establish a process for referrals of people eligible to participate in the program, as specified. The bill would also require the department to establish specified benchmarks to promote and track ideal outcomes from the program.

This bill would require the department to distribute program funds by executing contracts with awarded regional administrators and would impose certain requirements on those regional administrators. The bill would prescribe eligibility requirements for a person scheduled for release from, or who has been be formerly incarcerated in, state prison, to participate in the program. The bill would require program funds to be used for specified purposes, including specified administrative fees, permanent housing, rental and operating subsidies, incentives to landlords, and voluntary multidisciplinary services, as specified. The bill would require the department, upon implementation of the program, to design an evaluation and hire an independent evaluator to assess outcomes from the program, and would require the evaluation to be submitted to specified committees of the Legislature.

This bill would require the board to continue to oversee and administer existing program grants that have not yet expired, using resources allocated to the board through funds allocated by the Budget Act of 2025.

This bill would require the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to establish a process to engage an individual scheduled for discharge, within at least 210 days of the scheduled release date, for the purpose of assessing the individuals risk of homelessness upon discharge, as specified.

The Budget Act of 2018 appropriated $50,000,000 to the Board of State and Community Corrections for a grant program, known as the Adult Reentry Grant Program, for the purpose of awarding competitive grants to community based organizations to support offenders formerly incarcerated in state prison. The Budget Act of 2018 allocated a specified amount of those funds for, among other things, rental assistance, rehabilitation of existing property or buildings, and to support the warm hand-off and reentry of offenders transitioning from prison to communities. Subsequent budget acts have continued to fund the program.

This bill, instead, commencing July 1, 2026, and upon appropriation of funds, would transfer the administration of the grant program to the Department of Housing and Community Development. The bill would require the department, on or before December 1, 2026, to modify the grant program to provide 5-year renewable grants to up to 6 geographically diverse regional administrators responsible for funding permanent affordable supportive housing and reentry services for people who were formerly incarcerated in state prison and are experiencing homelessness or are at risk of homelessness. eligible people, as specified. The bill would require the department to issue proposed guidelines or a draft notice, as specified, establishing the grant program and require the department to competitively score applicants applying for grant funds competitively. as regional administrators. The bill would require the department to work collaboratively with the State Department of Health Care Services and the Services, Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Rehabilitation, and homeless continuums of care, and seek to work collaboratively with county probation departments, to establish a process for referrals of people eligible to participate in the program, as specified. The bill would also require the department to establish specified benchmarks to promote and track ideal outcomes from the program.

This bill would require the department to distribute program funds by executing contracts with awarded regional administrators and would impose certain requirements on those regional administrators. The bill would prescribe eligibility requirements for a person scheduled for release from, or who has been be formerly incarcerated in, state prison, to participate in the program. The bill would require a certain percentage of the program funds to be used for specified purposes, including specified administrative fees, permanent housing, rental and operating subsidies, incentives to landlords, and voluntary multidisciplinary services, as specified. The bill would require the department, within one year of program implementation, upon implementation of the program, to design an evaluation and hire an independent evaluator to assess outcomes from the program, and would require the evaluation to be submitted to specified committees of the Legislature.

This bill would require the board to continue to oversee and administer existing program grants that have not yet expired, using resources allocated to the board, including board through funds allocated by the Budget Act of 2025.

This bill would require the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to establish a process to engage an individual scheduled for discharge, within at least 210 days of the scheduled release date, for the purpose of assessing the individuals risk of homelessness upon discharge, as specified.

The Budget Act of 2018 appropriated $50,000,000 to the Board of State and Community Corrections for a grant program, known as the Adult Reentry Grant Program, for the purpose of awarding competitive grants to community based organizations to support offenders formerly incarcerated in state prison. The Budget Act of 2018 allocated a specified amount of those funds for, among other things, rental assistance, rehabilitation of existing property or buildings, and to support the warm hand-off and reentry of offenders transitioning from prison to communities. Subsequent budget acts have continued to fund the program.

This bill, instead, commencing July 1, 2026, and upon appropriation of funds, would transfer the administration of the grant program to the Department of Housing and Community Development. The bill would require the department, on or before December 1, 2026, to modify the grant program to provide 5-year renewable grants to up to 6 regional administrators responsible for funding permanent affordable housing and services for people who were formerly incarcerated in state prison and are experiencing homelessness or are at risk of homelessness. The bill would require the department to issue proposed guidelines or a draft notice, as specified, establishing the grant program and require the department to score applicants applying for grant funds competitively. The bill would require the department to work collaboratively with the State Department of Health Care Services and the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to establish a process for referrals of people eligible to participate in the program, as specified.

This bill would require the department to distribute program funds by executing contracts with awarded regional administrators and would impose certain requirements on those regional administrators. The bill would prescribe eligibility requirements for a person scheduled for release from, or who has been be formerly incarcerated in, state prison, to participate in the program. The bill would require a certain percentage of the program funds to be used for specified purposes, including rental and operating subsidies, incentives to landlords, and voluntary multidisciplinary services, as specified. The bill would require the department, within one year of program implementation, to design an evaluation and hire an independent evaluator to assess outcomes from the program, and would require the evaluation to be submitted to specified committees of the Legislature.

This bill would require the board to continue to oversee and administer existing program grants that have not yet expired, using resources allocated to the board, including funds allocated by Budget Act of 2025.

This bill would require the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to establish a process to engage an individual scheduled for discharge, within at least 210 days of the scheduled release date, for the purpose of assessing the individuals risk of homelessness upon discharge, as specified.

 THIRD READING  

Bill No: AB 1229

Author: Schultz (D) and Quirk-Silva (D), et al.

Amended: 8/29/25 in Senate

Vote: 21

SENATE HOUSING COMMITTEE: 10-1, 7/1/25

AYES: Wahab, Arreguín, Cabaldon, Caballero, Cortese, Durazo, Gonzalez, Grayson, Ochoa Bogh, Padilla

NOES: Seyarto

SENATE PUBLIC SAFETY COMMITTEE: 5-1, 7/15/25

AYES: Arreguín, Caballero, Gonzalez, Pérez, Wiener

NOES: Seyarto

SENATE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE: 5-2, 8/29/25

AYES: Caballero, Cabaldon, Grayson, Richardson, Wahab

NOES: Seyarto, Dahle

ASSEMBLY FLOOR: 62-10, 6/2/25 - See last page for vote

SUBJECT: Adult Reentry Grant Program

SOURCE: Author

DIGEST:

This bill moves the Adult Reentry Grant (ARG) Program from the Board of State and Community Corrections (BSCC) to the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) to administer and makes specified changes to the program.

ANALYSIS:

Existing law:

1. Creates and continuously funded the ARG program at BSCC to provide competitive grant funds to community-based organizations to support people who were formerly incarcerated in prison avoid falling into homelessness through rental subsidies, rehabilitation of existing housing, and the “warm hand-off” of people transitioning from prison to communities.

This bill:

1. Requires HCD, on or before December 1, 2026, to modify ARG to provide grants geographically diverse regional administrators responsible for funding permanent supportive housing and reentry services for eligible people.
2. Requires regional administrator applicants to demonstrate all of the following:
3. At least three years of experience administering a rental subsidy program, master leasing to tenants with a history of homelessness, or subcontracting to administer rental subsidies in permanent housing that follows evidence-based practices;
4. A relationship with a public housing authority to connect people to federal vouchers as they turn over;
5. Experience working with a homelessness continuum of care (CoC) and, if the regional administrator is different from the CoC in the region, a coordinated entry system administrator;
6. A relationship with at least one managed care plan or at least two community supports providers, or a direct contract with a managed care plan as a provider;
7. A viable plan to administer or contract with subrecipients to administer rental subsidies for permanent housing to connect participants to permanent housing as quickly as possible;
8. A viable plan to connect participants, as needed and eligible, to community supports, Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative in-reach services, and behavioral health treatment and services for so long as medically necessary; and
9. A viable plan to meet reporting requirements, as required by this bill.
10. A viable strategy to assess participants’ ability to move on from the program, including through relationships with housing authorities.
11. Requires HCD to establish guidelines for administering the program, as specified.
12. Requires HCD to work collaboratively with the State Department of Health Care Services, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), and homeless continuums of care, and seek to work collaboratively with county probation departments, to establish a process for referrals of people eligible to participate in the program through the Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative, parole or probation agents under post release community supervision, or other avenues of referrals.
13. Requires HCD establish benchmarks to promote and track ideal outcomes from the program. 
14. Requires BSCC to continue to oversee and administer existing grants that have not yet expired, using resources allocated to the board, including funds allocated by Budget Act of 2025.
15. Establishes criteria for a person eligible to participate in ARG:
16. The individual voluntarily chooses to participate; and
17. A person has either:
18. Been assigned a date of release from prison within 30 to 180 days and is likely to become homeless upon release; or
19. The person is currently experiencing homelessness as a person on parole or post release community supervision and has an experience of prison incarceration within the last five years.
20. Specifies eligible uses of funds, including but not limited to rental subsides, operating subsides, incentives to landlords, services assisting participants in transitioning from prison to the community, and evidence-based supported employment services.
21. Requires HCD to design an evaluation form and hire an independent evaluator to assess outcomes from the program on or before July 1, 2030, and submit the evaluation to the chairs of the Joint Legislative Budget Committee, the Senate Committee on Budget and Fiscal Review, the Assembly Committee on Budget, the Senate and Assembly Committees on Public Safety, the Senate Committee on Housing, and the Assembly Committee on Housing and Community Development.
22. Requires CDCR to establish a process for engaging an individual scheduled for discharge, within 210 days of the scheduled release date, for the purpose of assessing the individual’s risk of homelessness upon discharge as specified.
23. Prohibits CDCR from using any of the answers provided to lengthen an individual’s term or to otherwise punish or discipline the individual.
24. Requires, for the first two years of the program, up to 5% of program funds may be used for administration of the program. For subsequent years of the program, up to 3% of program funds may be used for the administration of the program.

Comments

1. Author’s statement. “People on parole in California are 17 times more likely to experience homelessness than Californians overall, and individuals who have been incarcerated and are experiencing homelessness are seven times more likely to be re-arrested than those who are housed. Successful programs across the country have demonstrated that people with incarceration histories can become stably housed and avoid reoffending when they have access to longer term rental subsidies and the services they need to build a solid foundation for their lives. These successes rely on implementation of evidence-based practices administered by housing agencies. Building on learnings from those programs, AB 1229 restructures the Adult Reentry Grant Program to become a more targeted program that provides longer term rental subsidies to individuals who need assistance the most and promotes alignment with state healthcare and behavioral health programs that prioritize the justice-involved reentry population, like the CalAIM Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative, CalAIM Enhanced Care Management, CalAIM Community Supports, BH-CONNECT, and the Behavioral Health Services Act. Thus, AB 1229 will use existing ARG funds more effectively, while also leveraging other programs the state is already funding, to reduce people’s risk of reoffending.”

2) Exits from prisons/jails to homelessness. According to the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative’s comprehensive California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness, of those participants who were interviewed, 19% entered homelessness from an institutional setting, such as prolonged jail and prison stays. A larger proportion of participants had institutional stays in the six months prior to homelessness than those that entered homelessness directly from those institutions, suggesting that some who became homeless had short housing stays between their institutional stay and homelessness. In the six months prior to homelessness, 20% of participants spent time in jail, 9% spent time on probation, 10% were released from prison, and 4% served parole. In survey data, participants who had been incarcerated reported receiving minimal support upon exiting prisons or jails. Few reported having received services prior to having exited. This bill would require CDCR to establish a process for engaging an individual scheduled for discharge, within at least 210 days of the scheduled release date, to assess the individual’s risk of homelessness upon discharge. The process must include basic questions about where an individual’s plan to live after they leave incarceration.

3) Adult Reentry Grant Program. SB 840 (Committee on Budget, Chapter 29, Statutes of 2018) funded the creation of a program at BSCC to provide competitive grant funds to community-based organizations to support people who were formerly incarcerated in prison through rental subsidies, rehabilitation of existing housing, and the warm hand-off of people transitioning from prison to communities. This funding became known as the ARG program and currently receives $37 million in funding each year. The program provides only short-term rental assistance of six months to a year. Publicly available data on ARG shows just 27.1% of individuals who completed a program supported by the second round of ARG’s warm handoff grants were placed in housing. In November 2024, BSCC made $108 million available to community organizations to be divided evenly between the Warm Handoff and the Reentry Services and Rental Assistance (Housing).

4) HCD. HCD administers many of the state’s affordable housing and homelessness programs. In 2024, the Homeless Housing, Assistance, and Prevention Program (HHAPP) and the Encampment Resolution Program were moved from the Interagency Council on Homelessness (Cal-ICH) to HCD. HHAPP requires applicants – cities with populations over 300,000, CoCs, and counties – to report monthly on the use of funds and to develop a regional plan demonstrating how funds will be used in a coordinated manner to address homelessness. HCD also administered COVID rental assistance, the California Emergency Services Grant program, and Housing for a Healthy California – all programs that provided rental assistance to individuals at risk of or experiencing homelessness.

This bill would align with the overall goal coordinating existing housing and homelessness programs by moving this homelessness programs under HCD.

5) Senate Appropriations Amendments. Author’s amendments taken in the Senate Appropriations:

1. Revise the criteria for scoring regional administrator grant applicants to add a criteria indicating the extent to which the applicant has experience providing or coordinating housing, homeless services, or reentry services in the region or is based in the region, or the extent the applicant’s partners have that experience.
2. Revise the eligibility criteria for program participants by requiring the individual to have an assigned release date within 210 days, rather than within 30 to 180 days, as specified.

FISCAL EFFECT: Appropriation: No Fiscal Com.: Yes Local: No

According to the Senate Appropriations Committee:

• HCD estimates ongoing costs of approximately $1.2 million (General Fund) for 6.0 PY of permanent staff to facilitate the transfer of the program to HCD, develop and issue program guidelines, issue notices of funding availability for awarding funds to regional administrators, and for ongoing administration of the program. HCD notes that the transfer of the program may involve transfers of existing BSCC staff to HCD, but staff notes that the bill requires BSCC to continue to oversee and administer existing grants using resources allocated by the 2025 Budget Act. BSCC has begun to administer the Cohort 4 funding round from the $37 million appropriated in the Budget Act, and expects to conclude administration of that round at the end of 2028.
  
• HCD also estimates one-time contract costs of approximately $500,000 to hire an independent evaluator to assess the outcomes of the program. Staff notes that the bill requires HCD to hire the evaluator upon implementation of the program, but the assessment of program outcomes is to be based on annual reports submitted by regional administrators. HCD indicates that these contract costs would be incurred in the first year, but the independent evaluator workload would continue through the 2029-30 fiscal year. HCD must submit the assessment to the Legislature by July 1, 2030. (General Fund)
  
• The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) anticipates a minimal fiscal impact as the requirements of the bill, including an assessment for individuals within 210 days of their scheduled release, aligns with the department’s current practice. (General Fund)
  
• Unknown, likely minor costs for the Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) to work collaboratively with HCD to establish a process for referrals of people eligible to participate in the program. (General Fund)

SUPPORT: (8/29/25)

Abode Services
ACLU California Action
All of US or None (HQ)
Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment
Brilliant Corners
California Housing Partnership
California Innocence Coalition
City and County of San Francisco
Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice
Corporation for Supportive Housing
County Behavioral Health Directors Association
Courage California
Destination: Home
Disability Rights California
Drug Policy Alliance
Eah Housing
East Bay Housing Organizations
Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
Fair Chance Project
Friends Committee on Legislation of California
Housing Action Coalition
Housing California
Housing Is a Human Right - Orange County
Initiate Justice
Initiate Justice Action
Justice in Aging
Justice2jobs Coalition
LA Defensa
Legal Services for Prisoners With Children
Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority
Multi-faith Action Coalition
National Alliance to End Homelessness
Non-profit Housing Association of Northern California
Orange County Equality Coalition
Path (People Assisting the Homeless)
Rubicon Programs
San Francisco Public Defender
Smart Justice California, a Project of Tides Advocacy
Steinberg Institute
The Bride's Chamber
The W. Haywood Burns Institute
Third Sector Capital Partners
Transitions Clinic Network
Vera California
Western Center on Law and Poverty

OPPOSITION: (8/29/25)

None received

ASSEMBLY FLOOR: 62-10, 6/2/25

AYES: Addis, Aguiar-Curry, Ahrens, Alanis, Alvarez, Arambula, Ávila Farías, Bains, Bauer-Kahan, Bennett, Berman, Boerner, Bonta, Bryan, Calderon, Caloza, Carrillo, Connolly, Elhawary, Fong, Gabriel, Garcia, Gipson, Mark González, Haney, Harabedian, Hart, Irwin, Jackson, Kalra, Krell, Lee, Lowenthal, McKinnor, Muratsuchi, Nguyen, Ortega, Pacheco, Papan, Patel, Pellerin, Petrie-Norris, Quirk-Silva, Ramos, Ransom, Celeste Rodriguez, Michelle Rodriguez, Rogers, Blanca Rubio, Schiavo, Schultz, Sharp-Collins, Solache, Soria, Stefani, Valencia, Wallis, Ward, Wicks, Wilson, Zbur, Rivas

NOES: Chen, Davies, DeMaio, Dixon, Ellis, Gallagher, Hoover, Macedo, Sanchez, Tangipa

NO VOTE RECORDED: Castillo, Flora, Jeff Gonzalez, Hadwick, Lackey, Patterson, Ta

Prepared by: Alison Hughes / HOUSING / (916) 651-4124

9/2/25 18:19:11

**** END ****

SENATE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS

Senator Anna Caballero, Chair

2025 - 2026 Regular Session

AB 1229 (Schultz) - Adult Reentry Grant Program

Bill Summary:

AB 1229 would codify the Adult Reentry Grant (ARG) Program, transfer administration of the program from the Board of State and Community Corrections (BSCC) to the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), and make specified changes to the program.

*********** ANALYSIS ADDENDUM – SUSPENSE FILE ***********

The following information is revised to reflect amendments

adopted by the committee on August 29, 2025

Fiscal Impact:

• HCD estimates ongoing costs of approximately $1.2 million (General Fund) for 6.0 PY of permanent staff to facilitate the transfer of the program to HCD, develop and issue program guidelines, issue notices of funding availability for awarding funds to regional administrators, and for ongoing administration of the program. HCD notes that the transfer of the program may involve transfers of existing BSCC staff to HCD, but staff notes that the bill requires BSCC to continue to oversee and administer existing grants using resources allocated by the 2025 Budget Act. BSCC has begun to administer the Cohort 4 funding round from the $37 million appropriated in the Budget Act, and expects to conclude administration of that round at the end of 2028.
  
• HCD also estimates one-time contract costs of approximately $500,000 to hire an independent evaluator to assess the outcomes of the program. Staff notes that the bill requires HCD to hire the evaluator upon implementation of the program, but the assessment of program outcomes is to be based on annual reports submitted by regional administrators. HCD indicates that these contract costs would be incurred in the first year, but the independent evaluator workload would continue through the 2029-30 fiscal year. HCD must submit the assessment to the Legislature by July 1, 2030. (General Fund)
  
• The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) anticipates a minimal fiscal impact as the requirements of the bill, including an assessment for individuals within 210 days of their scheduled release, aligns with the department’s current practice. (General Fund)
  
• Unknown, likely minor costs for the Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) to work collaboratively with HCD to establish a process for referrals of people eligible to participate in the program. (General Fund)
  

Author Amendments:

• Revise the criteria for scoring regional administrator grant applicants as follows:
  • Delete the scoring criteria related to general needs in a region.
  • Add a criteria indicating the extent to which the applicant has experience providing or coordinating housing, homeless services, or reentry services in the region or is based in the region, or the extent the applicant’s partners have that experience.
• Revise the eligibility criteria for program participants by requiring the individual to have an assigned release date within 210 days, rather than within 30 to 180 days, as specified.
  

-- END --

SENATE COMMITTEE ON

Senator Anna Caballero, Chair

2025 - 2026 Regular Session

AB 1229 (Schultz) - Adult Reentry Grant Program

Bill Summary:

AB 1229 would codify the Adult Reentry Grant (ARG) Program, transfer administration of the program from the Board of State and Community Corrections (BSCC) to the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), and make specified changes to the program.

Fiscal Impact:

• HCD estimates ongoing costs of approximately $1.2 million (General Fund) for 6.0 PY of permanent staff to facilitate the transfer of the program to HCD, develop and issue program guidelines, issue notices of funding availability for awarding funds to regional administrators, and for ongoing administration of the program. HCD notes that the transfer of the program may involve transfers of existing BSCC staff to HCD, but staff notes that the bill requires BSCC to continue to oversee and administer existing grants using resources allocated by the 2025 Budget Act. As noted below, BSCC has begun to administer the Cohort 4 funding round from the $37 million appropriated in the Budget Act, and expects to conclude administration of that round at the end of 2028.
  
• HCD also estimates one-time contract costs of approximately $500,000 to hire an independent evaluator to assess the outcomes of the program. Staff notes that the bill requires HCD to hire the evaluator upon implementation of the program, but the assessment of program outcomes is to be based on annual reports submitted by regional administrators. As such, it is unclear whether those contract costs would be incurred in the first year, or in a future fiscal year, after sufficient data on program outcomes have been reported by regional administrators. HCD must submit the assessment to the Legislature by July 1, 2030. (General Fund)
  
• The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) anticipates a minimal fiscal impact as the requirements of the bill, including an assessment for individuals within 210 days of their scheduled release, aligns with the department’s current practice. (General Fund)
  
• Unknown, likely minor costs for the Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) to work collaboratively with HCD to establish a process for referrals of people eligible to participate in the program. (General Fund)

Background:

Many of the 40,000 Californians released from prison every year fall into homelessness. As of February 2025, 15% of people on parole were unhoused, nearly all unsheltered. Studies indicate that formerly incarcerated individuals are roughly 10 times more likely to experience homeless relative to the general population, and parolees are seven times more likely to recidivate when homeless than when housed.

The Budget Act of 2018 (SB 840, Mitchell, Chap. 29/2028) appropriated $50 million to the BSCC for a program to award competitive grants to community-based organizations to support people formerly incarcerated in state prison, and required specified amounts of those funds be used for, among other things, rental assistance, rehabilitation of existing property or buildings, and to support the warm hand-off and reentry of offenders transitioning from prison to communities. This program, which is known as the ARG Program, has received General Fund appropriations almost every year in the annual state budget, with up to 5% of the funds made available to BSCC for its administrative costs, as follows: $37 million in 2020-21; $67 million in 2021-22; $57 million in 2022-23; $57 million in 2024-25; and $37 million in 2025-26.

There have been four ARG Program grant cohorts. The grants in each cohort are separated by category: rental assistance grants and warm hand-off reentry services grants. The first cohort grant period ran from July 2019 to February 2023, with 69 grantees receiving $65.7 million, more than half of which funded rental assistance grants. The grants for the second cohort ran for different periods because the rental assistance grants for this round were expedited to aid early prison releases during the COVID-19 pandemic. The grant period for rental assistance grantees ran from September 2020 to February 2023, and eight community-based organizations from the ranked list of unfunded applicants in the previous round of grant recipients were awarded $17.5 million. There were 39 warm hand-off grantees who received $17.5 million, and the grant period ran from July 2021 to February 2025. Data on the outcomes of Cohort 2 warm hand-off project participants indicated that more than 7,500 participants enrolled, half of whom had been released from prison within the six months prior to enrollment. Of participants who successfully completed a program, 31.1% were placed into housing, 35% experienced improved employment, and 42.5% experienced improved protective factors.

For Cohort 3, which runs from October 2022 to April of 2026, 23 rental assistance grantees were awarded over $58 million and 79 warm hand-off grantees were awarded over $58 million. For Cohort 4, which runs from July 2025 to December 2028, over $108 million in overall funding is available for equal distribution to rental assistance grantees and warm hand-off grantees. A final evaluation report and program evaluation is due on December 31, 2028.

In October 2024, Governor Newsom announced a partnership between HCD and CDCR to create long-term supportive housing and comprehensive wrap-around services for individuals leaving prison. The federally-funded Reentry Housing Pilot Project accepted applications through the end of last year. HCD is administering the program and expects to announce awards.

Proposed Law:

AB 1229 would codify the ARG Program, transfer administration of the program from the BSCC to HCD, and make specified changes to the program. Specifically, this bill would:

• Require HCD to begin administering the ARG Program on July 1, 2026, upon appropriation of funds for this purpsose.
• Require HCD to do all of the following by December 31, 2026:
  • Modify the ARG Program to provide grants to geographically diverse regional administrators responsible for funding permanent supportive housing and reentry services for eligible persons.
  • Issue proposed guidelines establishing the grant program, or a draft notice of funding availability (NOFA), to select regional administrators for five-year renewable grants. The guidelines or draft NOFA must include specified requirements for regional administrators to demonstrate appropriate experience, relationships, and plans to meet the bill’s requirements, as specified.
  • Establish criteria to competitively score applicants for grant funding as regional administrators, as specified.
  • Work collaboratively with DHCS, CDCR, homeless continuums of care (COCs), and seek to work collaboratively with county probation departments to establish a process for referrals of eligible program participants.
  • Establish benchmarks to promote and track program outcomes, as specified.
• Specify that HCD may use up to 5% of program funds for the first two years of the program, and up to 3% of funds in subsequent years, for its administrative costs.
• Require the BSCC to continue to oversee and administer existing grants that have not yet expired, using resources allocated to the board, including funds allocated by Budget Act of 2025,
• Specify that a person is eligible for participation in the program if they voluntary choose to participate and either of the following apply:
  • The individual has an assigned release date from prison within 30-180 days and is likely to become homeless upon release.
  • The individual is currently experiencing homelessness as a person on parole or post-release community supervision, and has been incarcerated within the past five years.
• Require regional administrators and subrecipients to use program funds for specified eligible activities, including reasonable administrative fees, assistance necessary for housing stability and community reentry (which may include rental subsidies, operating subsidies, incentives to landlords, services to assist in transitioning from prison to the community, and evidence-based supported employment services), and operating support for interim interventions while awaiting referral to permanent housing, as specified.
• Require the regional administrator or subrecipient provider, upon receipt of the referral of a participant identified prior to release from prison, to collaborate with the parole agent or probation officer, and when possible, to do all of the following:
  • Draft a plan for the participant’s transition into permanent housing in collaboration with the participant.
  • Engage the participant to actively participate in services upon release on a voluntary basis.
  • Engage the participant to actively participate in services upon release on a voluntary basis.
  • Assist the participant in obtaining identification and other documentation the participant may need to access housing and services.
  • Assist the participant in applying for any benefits for which the participant is eligible.
• Require a regional administrator or subrecipient to take specified actions in providing reentry services, housing, community supports, and supported employment.
• Require regional administrators or subrecipients to identify specified housing opportunities for participants prior to release from prison or as quickly upon release from prison as possible, or as quickly as possible when participants are identified during parole or post-release community supervision.
• Require HCD to distribute funds by executing contracts with awarded regional administrators for a term of five years, subject to automatic renewal, provided the regional administrator complies with the provisions of this bill and has achieved the benchmarks identified by HCD. Any unexpended funds would revert to HCD one year after a contract has expired.
• Require regional administrators to submit an annual report to HCD, pertaining to the recipient’s program, provider selection process, contract expenditures, and progress toward meeting state goals, and specify the disaggregated data that regional administrators must report to HCD.
• Require HCD, upon implementation of the program, to design an evaluation and hire an independent evaluator to assess outcomes from the program based upon an analysis of data submitted by regional administrators in their annual reports.
• Require HCD to submit the evaluation of the program to the Legislature by July 1, 2030.
• Require CDCR to establish a process for engaging an individual scheduled for discharge within at least 210 days of the scheduled release date, for the purpose of assessing the individual’s risk of homelessness upon discharge, as specified.
• Prohibit CDCR from using any of the answers provided in their assessment to lengthen an individual’s term or to otherwise punish or discipline the individual.

Related Legislation:

AB 722 (Avila Farias), which was held on the Assembly Appropriations Committee’s Suspense File this year, would have established the Reentry Housing and Workforce Development Program within HCD to provide stable housing and workforce training for recently incarcerated individuals experiencing or at risk of homelessness.

SB 840 (Mitchell), Chap. 29/2018, the 2018 Budget Act, included an appropriation of $50 million to the BSCC for establishment of the ARG Program.

-- END --

SENATE COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC SAFETY

Senator Jesse Arreguín, Chair

2025 - 2026 Regular

Bill No: AB 1229 Hearing Date: July 15, 2025

Subject: Adult Reentry Grant Program

HISTORY

Source: Corporation for Supportive Housing

Housing California

Prior Legislation: AB 107 (Ting), Ch. 22, Stats. of 2024

AB 102 (Ting), Ch. 38, Stats. of 2023

SB 154 (Skinner), Ch. 43, Stats. of 2022

AB 128 (Ting), Ch. 21, Stats. of 2021

AB 89 (Ting), Ch. 7, Stats. of 2020

SB 840 (Mitchell), Ch. 29, Stats. of 2018

Support: A New Way of Life Re-Entry Project; Abode Services; All of Us or None; Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment; Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California; Brilliant Corners; California Alliance for Youth and Community Justice; California Catholic Conference; California Housing Partnership; California Innocence Coalition; California Public Defenders Association; Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice; County Behavioral Health Directors Association; Courage California; Destination: Home; Disability Rights California; Drug Policy Alliance; EAH Housing; East Bay Housing Organizations; Ella Baker Center for Human Rights; Fair Chance Project; Friends Committee on Legislation of California; Housing Action Coalition; Housing is a Human Right - Orange County; Initiate Justice; Initiate Justice Action; Justice in Aging; Justice2Jobs Coalition; La Defensa; Legal Services for Prisoners With Children; Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority; Multi-Faith Action Coalition; National Alliance to End Homelessness; Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California; Orange County Equality Coalition; PATH; Rubicon Programs; San Francisco Public Defender; Smart Justice California; Steinberg Institute; The Bride’s Chamber; The W. Haywood Burns Institute; Third Sector; Transitions Clinic Network; Vera California; Vera Institute of Justice; Viet Voices; Western Center on Law and Poverty

Opposition: None known

Assembly Floor Vote: 62 - 10

PURPOSE

The purpose of this bill is to codify the Adult Reentry Grant (ARG) Program, move the administration of the program from the Board of State and Community Corrections (BSCC) to the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), and make specified changes to the program.

Existing law establishes the BSCC to provide statewide leadership, coordination, and technical assistance to promote effective state and local efforts and partnerships in California’s adult and juvenile criminal justice system. (Pen. Code, § 6024.)

Existing law requires the BSCC to develop comprehensive, unified, and orderly procedures to ensure that applications for grants are processed fairly, efficiently, and in a manner consistent with its mission. (Pen. Code, § 6027, subd. (b)(5).)

Existing law requires that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) make every effort to ensure that releases to homelessness are extremely rare. (Welf. & Inst. Code, § 8256, subd. (v)(1).)

Existing law requires that CDCR make efforts to reduce recidivism by offering participation to formerly incarcerated persons in recovery housing programs. Defines “recovery housing” as “sober living facilities and programs that provide housing in a recovery-focused and peer-supported community for people recovering from substance use issues.” Specifies that participation is voluntary unless required by a court order or a condition of release. (Welf. & Inst. Code, § 8256, subd. (v)(2) & (3).)

Existing law requires agencies and departments administering state programs created on or after July 1, 2017, to collaborate with the California Interagency Council on Homelessness to adopt guidelines and regulations to incorporate core components of Housing First. (Welf. & Inst. Code, § 8256, subd. (a).)

Existing law outlines requirements for CDCR programs pertaining to parolee housing and includes exemptions to the core components of Housing First for recovery housing. (Welf. & Inst. Code, § 8256, subd. (c)(1).)

This bill requires HCD, upon an appropriation, to begin administering the ARG Program beginning July 1, 2026.

This bill requires HCD, on or before December 1, 2026, to modify ARG to provide grants to up to geographically diverse regional administrators responsible for funding permanent supportive housing and reentry services for eligible people.

This bill requires HCD to issue proposed guidelines establishing the grant program to select regional administrators for five-year renewable grants. 

This bill requires regional administrator applicants to demonstrate all of the following:

• At least three years of experience administering a rental subsidy program, master leasing to tenants with a history of homelessness, or subcontracting to administer rental subsidies in permanent housing that follows evidence-based practices;
• Experience administering requests for proposals or a similar competitive process for selecting subrecipients meeting the criteria of the program and a viable plan for judging applications based on an assessment of subrecipient applicants’ ability to offer supportive services using evidence-based practices;
• A relationship with a public housing authority to connect people to federal vouchers as they turn over;
• Experience working with a homelessness continuum of care (CoC) and, if the regional administrator is different from the CoC in the region, a coordinated entry system administrator;
• A relationship with at least one managed care plan or at least two community supports providers, or a direct contract with a managed care plan contracted provider;
• A viable plan to administer or contract with subrecipients to administer rental subsidies for permanent housing to connect participants to permanent housing as quickly as possible;
• A viable plan to connect participants, as needed and eligible, to community supports, Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative in-reach services, and behavioral health treatment and services for so long as medically necessary; and
• A viable plan to meet reporting requirements, as required by this bill.
• A viable strategy to assess participants’ ability to move on from the program, including through relationships with housing authorities.

This bill requires HCD to establish criteria to competitively score applicants applying for grants as regional administrators. Specifies what must be included in the scoring criteria such as need in the region; viability of plans; the applicant’s proposed use of funds; the extent to which the proposed use of funds will lead to overall reductions in homelessness and recidivism based on evidence; and the applicant’s documented partnerships with affordable and supportive housing providers in the jurisdiction, among other things.

This bill requires HCD to work collaboratively with the State Department of Health Care Services, CDCR, and homeless CoC, and seek to work collaboratively with county probation departments, to establish a process for referrals of people eligible to participate in the program through the Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative, parole or probation agents under postrelease community supervision (PRCS), or other avenues of referrals.

This bill requires HCD to establish benchmarks to promote and track ideal outcomes from the program, including the percentage of participants currently residing in permanent housing; the housing retention rates at 12 and 24 months; and the rate of increase in employment and access to benefits that participants are receiving, among others. Requires HCD to offer support to regional administrators failing to meet outcome benchmarks.

This bill requires the BSCC to continue to oversee and administer existing grants that have not yet expired, using resources allocated to the board, including funds allocated by Budget Act of 2025.

This bill establishes criteria for a person eligible to participate in ARG:

• The individual voluntarily chooses to participate; and
• A person has either:
  • Been assigned a date of release from prison within 30 to 180 days and is likely to become homeless upon release; or
  • The person is currently experiencing homelessness while on parole or PRCS and has been incarcerated in prison within the last five years.

This bill specifies that a participant may remain eligible and continue to receive housing and services funded under ARG after discharge from parole or PRCS if the participant continues to need assistance from the program.

This bill specifies eligible uses for funds, including rental subsides, operating subsides, incentives to landlords, services assisting participants in transitioning from prison to the community, and evidence-based supported employment services, among others.

This bill requires the regional administrator or subrecipient provider, upon receipt of the referral of a participant identified prior to release from prison, to collaborate with the parole agent or probation officer, and when possible, to do all of the following:

• Draft a plan for the participant’s transition into permanent housing in collaboration with the participant.
• Engage the participant to actively participate in services upon release on a voluntary basis.
• Assist the participant in obtaining identification and other documentation the participant may need to access housing and services.
• Assist the participant in applying for any benefits for which the participant is eligible.

This bill specifies the actions a regional administrator or subrecipient must undertake in providing reentry services, housing, community supports, and supported employment.

This bill requires regional administrators or subrecipients to identify housing opportunities for participants prior to release from prison or as quickly upon release from prison as possible, or as quickly as possible when participants are identified during parole or PRCS. Specifies the criteria the housing must meet.

This bill requires HCD to distribute funds by executing contracts with awarded regional administrators for a term of five years, subject to automatic renewal, provided the regional administrator complies with the provisions of this bill and has achieved the benchmarks identified by HCD. Requires that unexpended funds revert to HCD one year after a contract has expired.

This bill requires a regional administrator to submit an annual report to HCD, pertaining to the recipient’s program, provider selection process, contract expenditures, and progress toward meeting state goals. Specifies the disaggregated data regional administrators must report.

This bill requires HCD to design an evaluation and hire an independent evaluator to assess outcomes from the program on or before July 1, 2030.

This bill requires CDCR to establish a process for engaging an individual scheduled for discharge, within at least 210 days of the scheduled release date, for the purpose of assessing the individual’s risk of homelessness upon discharge. Requires the process to include the following questions:

• Do you have a plan for where you will live when you get out?
• If you have a plan, where do you plan to sleep after returning to your community?
• Where were you living when you were arrested, prior to your conviction?
• Have you ever slept in a place not meant to be a place to live long-term, such as a shelter, transitional housing, a bus or train station, on the streets, or a motel or hotel?

This bill prohibits CDCR from using any of the answers provided to lengthen an individual’s term or to otherwise punish or discipline the individual.

This bill includes a list of defined terms.

This bill includes legislative findings and declarations.

COMMENTS

1. Need For This Bill

According to the author:

People on parole in California are 17 times more likely to experience homelessness than Californians overall, and individuals who have been incarcerated and are experiencing homelessness are seven times more likely to be re-arrested than those who are housed. Successful programs across the country have demonstrated that people with incarceration histories can become stably housed and avoid reoffending when they have access to longer term rental subsidies and the services they need to build a solid foundation for their lives. These successes rely on implementation of evidence-based practices administered by housing agencies.

Building on learnings from those programs, AB 1229 restructures the Adult Reentry Grant Program to become a more targeted program that provides longer term rental subsidies to individuals who need assistance the most and promotes alignment with state healthcare and behavioral health programs that prioritize the justice-involved reentry population, like the CalAIM Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative, CalAIM Enhanced Care Management, CalAIM Community Supports, BH-CONNECT, and the Behavioral Health Services Act. Thus, AB 1229 will use existing ARG funds more effectively, while also leveraging other programs the state is already funding, to reduce people’s risk of reoffending.

1. Homelessness Following Incarceration

Homelessness continues to be a crisis in California. According to a 2023 report on homelessness, more than 171,000 people experience homelessness daily in the state—two times more than the next highest state. (Kushel et al., Toward a New Understanding: The California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness (Jun. 2023), p. 11 available at <https://homelessness.ucsf.edu/sites/default/files/2023-06/CASPEH_Report_62023.pdf>.) While only home to 12% of the nation’s population, California is home to 30% of the nation’s overall homeless population and half of the nation’s unsheltered population. (Ibid.)

Formerly incarcerated individuals are approximately ten times more likely to experience homelessness relative to the general public, and are most likely to be homeless in the period shortly after release. (Lucius Couloute, Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people (Aug. 2018) available at <https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html>.) In a survey of adults experiencing homelessness in California, six percent of all participants entered homelessness directly from prison. (Kushel et al., supra, at p. 35.) The same survey reported that most participants had not received support obtaining housing upon leaving prison, with only 14% indicating that they had received that type of support. (Ibid.)

This bill requires CDCR to establish a process for engaging an individual scheduled for discharge, within at least 210 days of their expected release date, for the purpose of assessing the individual’s risk of homelessness. The bill requires the department to inquire about the person’s housing plans following release as well as the person’s history of homelessness or housing instability prior to incarceration.

1. Adult Reentry Grant Program

The 2018 Budget Act established the Adult Reentry Grant (ARG) Program which is administered by the BSCC and provides funding for community-based organizations to deliver reentry services for individuals who were formerly incarcerated in state prison. The ARG program has been funded annually through the Budget Act or related legislation. Permissible uses of ARG grants include, but are not limited to, case management, reentry and barrier removal support, housing and service navigation, and transitional and permanent housing. (BSCC, Adult Reentry Grant Program available at <https://www.bscc.ca.gov/s_argrant/#rehab>.)

There have been four ARG Program grant cohorts. The grants in each cohort are separated by category: rental assistance grants and warm hand-off reentry services grants. The first cohort grant period ran from July 2019 to February 2023. Sixty-nine grantees were awarded $65.7 million, more than half of which funded rental assistance grants. (BSCC, Cohort 1 – Adult Reentry Grant List of Awards available at <https:// www.bscc.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/Adult-Reentry-Grant-List-of-Awards.pdf>.) The grants for the second cohort ran for different periods because the rental assistance grants for Cohort 2 were expedited to aid early prison releases during the COVID-19 pandemic. The grant period for rental assistance grantees ran from September 2020 to February 2023, and eight community-based organizations from the ranked list of unfunded applicants in the previous round of grant recipients were awarded $17.5 million. (BSCC, Grant Proposals Recommended for Funding available at <https://www.bscc.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/Attachment-E-7-List-of-awards-with-2020-Budget-Act.pdf>.) Thirty-nine warm hand-off grantees were awarded $17.5 million, and the grant period ran from July 2021 to February 2025. (BSCC, Adult Reentry Grant Program—Warm Handoff Reentry Services Cohort II Project Summaries available at <https://www.bscc.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/ARG-WHO-Cohort-II-Project-Summaries-REVISED-6-9-21.pdf>.)

Data on the outcomes of Cohort 2 warm hand-off project participants indicated that more than 7,500 participants enrolled, half of whom had been released from prison within the six months prior to enrollment. (BSCC, ARG-Cohort II Warm Handoff & Reentry Services Participant and Outcome Dashboard available at <https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/kstevens/viz/ARGWHOCohort2ParticipantsOutcomesDashboard/AboutARGWHOCohort2>.) Of participants who successfully completed a program, 31.1% were placed into housing, 35% experienced improved employment, and 42.5% experienced improved protective factors. (Ibid.)

Twenty-three rental assistance grantees were awarded over $58 million and 79 warm hand-off grantees were awarded over $58 million in Cohort 3 which runs from October 2022 to April 2026. (BSCC, Adult Reentry Grant Program—Cohort III Project Summaries available at <https://www.bscc.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/Attachment-G-3-ARG-III-Project-Summaries.pdf>.) Over $108 million was available, to be divided evenly between rental assistance grantees and warm hand-off grantees, for Cohort 4 which runs from July 2025 to December 2028.

Proponents of this bill assert that the ARG Program should be codified and that program grants should be administered by HCD given the department’s expertise in housing and homelessness. Proponents also argue that the program should be modified so that grants are awarded for longer periods of time and renewed if the grantee satisfies specified criteria, serve a broader population of justice-involved individuals, and maximize efficiency by improving coordination of services provided.

This bill makes a number of changes to the ARG Program. First, the bill provides that grants are awarded to regional administrators responsible for funding permanent supportive housing and reentry services. The bill specifies the types of experience and other criteria that would qualify an organization—either local government or a community-based organization—to serve in that role. The regional administrators are required to provide specified services, housing, and supports, or to contract with community-based organizations to do so.

The bill additionally provides that the following individuals are eligible to receive services from a regional administrator: a person who is going to be released from prison within 30 to 180 days and likely to become homeless upon release; or a person who is currently experiencing homelessness while on parole or PRCS and who has been incarcerated in prison within the last five years. Finally, the bill includes provisions pertaining to program benchmarks for the regional administrators to meet, reporting requirements by the regional administrators to HCD, and an evaluation of the entire program.

1. Role of HCD in Addressing Homelessness

HCD administers many of the state’s affordable housing and homelessness programs. In 2024, the Homeless Housing, Assistance, and Prevention Program (HHAPP) and the Encampment Resolution Program (ERP) were moved from the Interagency Council on Homelessness to HCD. HCD also administered COVID-19 rental assistance, the California Emergency Services Grant (ESG) program, and Housing for a Healthy California—all of which provided rental assistance to individuals at risk of or experiencing homelessness.

In October 2024, Governor Newsom announced a partnership between HCD and CDCR to create long-term supportive housing and comprehensive wrap-around services for individuals leaving prison. (HCD, California launches new program to improve public safety by reducing homelessness and recidivism (Oct. 31, 2024) available at <https://www.hcd.ca.gov/about-hcd/newsroom/reentry-housing-pilot-project-nofa>.) The federally-funded Reentry Housing Pilot Project (RHPP) accepted applications through the end of last year. The program is administered by HCD, and awards are expected to be announced this summer.

This bill moves the administration of the ARG Program from the BSCC, a corrections-focused government agency, to HCD.

1. Argument in Support

A coalition of organizations, including the bill’s co-sponsors, Housing California and the Corporation for Supportive Housing writes:

As of November 2024, 15% of people on parole were unhoused, nearly all unsheltered. People formerly incarcerated and experiencing homelessness are seven more times likely to recidivate than people who are housed.

AB 1229 will restructure the existing Adult Reentry Grant program (ARG), which currently receives ongoing funding to pay for rental assistance and warm hand-off reentry services to individuals who have existed state prison. Restructuring will implement four key changes:

• Moving the program from the Board of State and Community Corrections to the Housing and Community Development department (HCD) to take advantage of HCD’s housing specialists who understand the intricacies of rental assistance.
• Connecting all participants to housing and rental assistance to ensure a greater share of participants exit homelessness for good.
• Dedicating program resources to individuals who are at risk of or experiencing homelessness.
• Similar to successful programs in other states, funding regional administrators that are regionally-based organizations, and to promote a holistic approach that coordinates existing programs, such as the Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative services, Behavioral Health-CONNECT, CalAIM Community Supports and Enhanced Care Management, and other support programs that did not exist when ARG was created.

With these changes, AB 1229 would allow roughly 1,200 individuals – about one-third of Californians currently on parole experiencing homelessness – to exit to housing and health stability and reduce their risk of recidivating, without the need for new funding.

-- END --

SENATE COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC SAFETY

Senator Jesse Arreguín, Chair

2025 - 2026 Regular

Bill No: AB 1229 Hearing Date: July 15, 2025

Subject: Adult Reentry Grant Program

HISTORY

Source: Corporation for Supportive Housing

Housing California

Prior Legislation: AB 107 (Ting), Ch. 22, Stats. of 2024

AB 102 (Ting), Ch. 38, Stats. of 2023

SB 154 (Skinner), Ch. 43, Stats. of 2022

AB 128 (Ting), Ch. 21, Stats. of 2021

AB 89 (Ting), Ch. 7, Stats. of 2020

SB 840 (Mitchell), Ch. 29, Stats. of 2018

Support: A New Way of Life Re-Entry Project; Abode Services; All of Us or None; Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment; Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California; Brilliant Corners; California Alliance for Youth and Community Justice; California Catholic Conference; California Housing Partnership; California Innocence Coalition; California Public Defenders Association; Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice; County Behavioral Health Directors Association; Courage California; Destination: Home; Disability Rights California; Drug Policy Alliance; EAH Housing; East Bay Housing Organizations; Ella Baker Center for Human Rights; Fair Chance Project; Friends Committee on Legislation of California; Housing Action Coalition; Housing is a Human Right - Orange County; Initiate Justice; Initiate Justice Action; Justice in Aging; Justice2Jobs Coalition; La Defensa; Legal Services for Prisoners With Children; Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority; Multi-Faith Action Coalition; National Alliance to End Homelessness; Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California; Orange County Equality Coalition; PATH; Rubicon Programs; San Francisco Public Defender; Smart Justice California; Steinberg Institute; The Bride’s Chamber; The W. Haywood Burns Institute; Third Sector; Transitions Clinic Network; Vera California; Vera Institute of Justice; Viet Voices; Western Center on Law and Poverty

Opposition: None known

Assembly Floor Vote: 62 - 10

PURPOSE

The purpose of this bill is to codify the Adult Reentry Grant (ARG) Program, move the administration of the program from the Board of State and Community Corrections (BSCC) to the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), and make specified changes to the program.

Existing law establishes the BSCC to provide statewide leadership, coordination, and technical assistance to promote effective state and local efforts and partnerships in California’s adult and juvenile criminal justice system. (Pen. Code, § 6024.)

Existing law requires the BSCC to develop comprehensive, unified, and orderly procedures to ensure that applications for grants are processed fairly, efficiently, and in a manner consistent with its mission. (Pen. Code, § 6027, subd. (b)(5).)

Existing law requires that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) make every effort to ensure that releases to homelessness are extremely rare. (Welf. & Inst. Code, § 8256, subd. (v)(1).)

Existing law requires that CDCR make efforts to reduce recidivism by offering participation to formerly incarcerated persons in recovery housing programs. Defines “recovery housing” as “sober living facilities and programs that provide housing in a recovery-focused and peer-supported community for people recovering from substance use issues.” Specifies that participation is voluntary unless required by a court order or a condition of release. (Welf. & Inst. Code, § 8256, subd. (v)(2) & (3).)

Existing law requires agencies and departments administering state programs created on or after July 1, 2017, to collaborate with the California Interagency Council on Homelessness to adopt guidelines and regulations to incorporate core components of Housing First. (Welf. & Inst. Code, § 8256, subd. (a).)

Existing law outlines requirements for CDCR programs pertaining to parolee housing and includes exemptions to the core components of Housing First for recovery housing. (Welf. & Inst. Code, § 8256, subd. (c)(1).)

This bill requires HCD, upon an appropriation, to begin administering the ARG Program beginning July 1, 2026.

This bill requires HCD, on or before December 1, 2026, to modify ARG to provide grants to up to geographically diverse regional administrators responsible for funding permanent supportive housing and reentry services for eligible people.

This bill requires HCD to issue proposed guidelines establishing the grant program to select regional administrators for five-year renewable grants. 

This bill requires regional administrator applicants to demonstrate all of the following:

• At least three years of experience administering a rental subsidy program, master leasing to tenants with a history of homelessness, or subcontracting to administer rental subsidies in permanent housing that follows evidence-based practices;
• Experience administering requests for proposals or a similar competitive process for selecting subrecipients meeting the criteria of the program and a viable plan for judging applications based on an assessment of subrecipient applicants’ ability to offer supportive services using evidence-based practices;
• A relationship with a public housing authority to connect people to federal vouchers as they turn over;
• Experience working with a homelessness continuum of care (CoC) and, if the regional administrator is different from the CoC in the region, a coordinated entry system administrator;
• A relationship with at least one managed care plan or at least two community supports providers, or a direct contract with a managed care plan contracted provider;
• A viable plan to administer or contract with subrecipients to administer rental subsidies for permanent housing to connect participants to permanent housing as quickly as possible;
• A viable plan to connect participants, as needed and eligible, to community supports, Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative in-reach services, and behavioral health treatment and services for so long as medically necessary; and
• A viable plan to meet reporting requirements, as required by this bill.
• A viable strategy to assess participants’ ability to move on from the program, including through relationships with housing authorities.

This bill requires HCD to establish criteria to competitively score applicants applying for grants as regional administrators. Specifies what must be included in the scoring criteria such as need in the region; viability of plans; the applicant’s proposed use of funds; the extent to which the proposed use of funds will lead to overall reductions in homelessness and recidivism based on evidence; and the applicant’s documented partnerships with affordable and supportive housing providers in the jurisdiction, among other things.

This bill requires HCD to work collaboratively with the State Department of Health Care Services, CDCR, and homeless CoC, and seek to work collaboratively with county probation departments, to establish a process for referrals of people eligible to participate in the program through the Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative, parole or probation agents under postrelease community supervision (PRCS), or other avenues of referrals.

This bill requires HCD to establish benchmarks to promote and track ideal outcomes from the program, including the percentage of participants currently residing in permanent housing; the housing retention rates at 12 and 24 months; and the rate of increase in employment and access to benefits that participants are receiving, among others. Requires HCD to offer support to regional administrators failing to meet outcome benchmarks.

This bill requires the BSCC to continue to oversee and administer existing grants that have not yet expired, using resources allocated to the board, including funds allocated by Budget Act of 2025.

This bill establishes criteria for a person eligible to participate in ARG:

• The individual voluntarily chooses to participate; and
• A person has either:
  • Been assigned a date of release from prison within 30 to 180 days and is likely to become homeless upon release; or
  • The person is currently experiencing homelessness while on parole or PRCS and has been incarcerated in prison within the last five years.

This bill specifies that a participant may remain eligible and continue to receive housing and services funded under ARG after discharge from parole or PRCS if the participant continues to need assistance from the program.

This bill specifies eligible uses for funds, including rental subsides, operating subsides, incentives to landlords, services assisting participants in transitioning from prison to the community, and evidence-based supported employment services, among others.

This bill requires the regional administrator or subrecipient provider, upon receipt of the referral of a participant identified prior to release from prison, to collaborate with the parole agent or probation officer, and when possible, to do all of the following:

• Draft a plan for the participant’s transition into permanent housing in collaboration with the participant.
• Engage the participant to actively participate in services upon release on a voluntary basis.
• Assist the participant in obtaining identification and other documentation the participant may need to access housing and services.
• Assist the participant in applying for any benefits for which the participant is eligible.

This bill specifies the actions a regional administrator or subrecipient must undertake in providing reentry services, housing, community supports, and supported employment.

This bill requires regional administrators or subrecipients to identify housing opportunities for participants prior to release from prison or as quickly upon release from prison as possible, or as quickly as possible when participants are identified during parole or PRCS. Specifies the criteria the housing must meet.

This bill requires HCD to distribute funds by executing contracts with awarded regional administrators for a term of five years, subject to automatic renewal, provided the regional administrator complies with the provisions of this bill and has achieved the benchmarks identified by HCD. Requires that unexpended funds revert to HCD one year after a contract has expired.

This bill requires a regional administrator to submit an annual report to HCD, pertaining to the recipient’s program, provider selection process, contract expenditures, and progress toward meeting state goals. Specifies the disaggregated data regional administrators must report.

This bill requires HCD to design an evaluation and hire an independent evaluator to assess outcomes from the program on or before July 1, 2030.

This bill requires CDCR to establish a process for engaging an individual scheduled for discharge, within at least 210 days of the scheduled release date, for the purpose of assessing the individual’s risk of homelessness upon discharge. Requires the process to include the following questions:

• Do you have a plan for where you will live when you get out?
• If you have a plan, where do you plan to sleep after returning to your community?
• Where were you living when you were arrested, prior to your conviction?
• Have you ever slept in a place not meant to be a place to live long-term, such as a shelter, transitional housing, a bus or train station, on the streets, or a motel or hotel?

This bill prohibits CDCR from using any of the answers provided to lengthen an individual’s term or to otherwise punish or discipline the individual.

This bill includes a list of defined terms.

This bill includes legislative findings and declarations.

COMMENTS

1. Need For This Bill

According to the author:

People on parole in California are 17 times more likely to experience homelessness than Californians overall, and individuals who have been incarcerated and are experiencing homelessness are seven times more likely to be re-arrested than those who are housed. Successful programs across the country have demonstrated that people with incarceration histories can become stably housed and avoid reoffending when they have access to longer term rental subsidies and the services they need to build a solid foundation for their lives. These successes rely on implementation of evidence-based practices administered by housing agencies.

Building on learnings from those programs, AB 1229 restructures the Adult Reentry Grant Program to become a more targeted program that provides longer term rental subsidies to individuals who need assistance the most and promotes alignment with state healthcare and behavioral health programs that prioritize the justice-involved reentry population, like the CalAIM Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative, CalAIM Enhanced Care Management, CalAIM Community Supports, BH-CONNECT, and the Behavioral Health Services Act. Thus, AB 1229 will use existing ARG funds more effectively, while also leveraging other programs the state is already funding, to reduce people’s risk of reoffending.

1. Homelessness Following Incarceration

Homelessness continues to be a crisis in California. According to a 2023 report on homelessness, more than 171,000 people experience homelessness daily in the state—two times more than the next highest state. (Kushel et al., Toward a New Understanding: The California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness (Jun. 2023), p. 11 available at <https://homelessness.ucsf.edu/sites/default/files/2023-06/CASPEH_Report_62023.pdf>.) While only home to 12% of the nation’s population, California is home to 30% of the nation’s overall homeless population and half of the nation’s unsheltered population. (Ibid.)

Formerly incarcerated individuals are approximately ten times more likely to experience homelessness relative to the general public, and are most likely to be homeless in the period shortly after release. (Lucius Couloute, Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people (Aug. 2018) available at <https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html>.) In a survey of adults experiencing homelessness in California, six percent of all participants entered homelessness directly from prison. (Kushel et al., supra, at p. 35.) The same survey reported that most participants had not received support obtaining housing upon leaving prison, with only 14% indicating that they had received that type of support. (Ibid.)

This bill requires CDCR to establish a process for engaging an individual scheduled for discharge, within at least 210 days of their expected release date, for the purpose of assessing the individual’s risk of homelessness. The bill requires the department to inquire about the person’s housing plans following release as well as the person’s history of homelessness or housing instability prior to incarceration.

1. Adult Reentry Grant Program

The 2018 Budget Act established the Adult Reentry Grant (ARG) Program which is administered by the BSCC and provides funding for community-based organizations to deliver reentry services for individuals who were formerly incarcerated in state prison. The ARG program has been funded annually through the Budget Act or related legislation. Permissible uses of ARG grants include, but are not limited to, case management, reentry and barrier removal support, housing and service navigation, and transitional and permanent housing. (BSCC, Adult Reentry Grant Program available at <https://www.bscc.ca.gov/s_argrant/#rehab>.)

There have been four ARG Program grant cohorts. The grants in each cohort are separated by category: rental assistance grants and warm hand-off reentry services grants. The first cohort grant period ran from July 2019 to February 2023. Sixty-nine grantees were awarded $65.7 million, more than half of which funded rental assistance grants. (BSCC, Cohort 1 – Adult Reentry Grant List of Awards available at <https:// www.bscc.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/Adult-Reentry-Grant-List-of-Awards.pdf>.) The grants for the second cohort ran for different periods because the rental assistance grants for Cohort 2 were expedited to aid early prison releases during the COVID-19 pandemic. The grant period for rental assistance grantees ran from September 2020 to February 2023, and eight community-based organizations from the ranked list of unfunded applicants in the previous round of grant recipients were awarded $17.5 million. (BSCC, Grant Proposals Recommended for Funding available at <https://www.bscc.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/Attachment-E-7-List-of-awards-with-2020-Budget-Act.pdf>.) Thirty-nine warm hand-off grantees were awarded $17.5 million, and the grant period ran from July 2021 to February 2025. (BSCC, Adult Reentry Grant Program—Warm Handoff Reentry Services Cohort II Project Summaries available at <https://www.bscc.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/ARG-WHO-Cohort-II-Project-Summaries-REVISED-6-9-21.pdf>.)

Data on the outcomes of Cohort 2 warm hand-off project participants indicated that more than 7,500 participants enrolled, half of whom had been released from prison within the six months prior to enrollment. (BSCC, ARG-Cohort II Warm Handoff & Reentry Services Participant and Outcome Dashboard available at <https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/kstevens/viz/ARGWHOCohort2ParticipantsOutcomesDashboard/AboutARGWHOCohort2>.) Of participants who successfully completed a program, 31.1% were placed into housing, 35% experienced improved employment, and 42.5% experienced improved protective factors. (Ibid.)

Twenty-three rental assistance grantees were awarded over $58 million and 79 warm hand-off grantees were awarded over $58 million in Cohort 3 which runs from October 2022 to April 2026. (BSCC, Adult Reentry Grant Program—Cohort III Project Summaries available at <https://www.bscc.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/Attachment-G-3-ARG-III-Project-Summaries.pdf>.) Over $108 million was available, to be divided evenly between rental assistance grantees and warm hand-off grantees, for Cohort 4 which runs from July 2025 to December 2028.

Proponents of this bill assert that the ARG Program should be codified and that program grants should be administered by HCD given the department’s expertise in housing and homelessness. Proponents also argue that the program should be modified so that grants are awarded for longer periods of time and renewed if the grantee satisfies specified criteria, serve a broader population of justice-involved individuals, and maximize efficiency by improving coordination of services provided.

This bill makes a number of changes to the ARG Program. First, the bill provides that grants are awarded to regional administrators responsible for funding permanent supportive housing and reentry services. The bill specifies the types of experience and other criteria that would qualify an organization—either local government or a community-based organization—to serve in that role. The regional administrators are required to provide specified services, housing, and supports, or to contract with community-based organizations to do so.

The bill additionally provides that the following individuals are eligible to receive services from a regional administrator: a person who is going to be released from prison within 30 to 180 days and likely to become homeless upon release; or a person who is currently experiencing homelessness while on parole or PRCS and who has been incarcerated in prison within the last five years. Finally, the bill includes provisions pertaining to program benchmarks for the regional administrators to meet, reporting requirements by the regional administrators to HCD, and an evaluation of the entire program.

1. Role of HCD in Addressing Homelessness

HCD administers many of the state’s affordable housing and homelessness programs. In 2024, the Homeless Housing, Assistance, and Prevention Program (HHAPP) and the Encampment Resolution Program (ERP) were moved from the Interagency Council on Homelessness to HCD. HCD also administered COVID-19 rental assistance, the California Emergency Services Grant (ESG) program, and Housing for a Healthy California—all of which provided rental assistance to individuals at risk of or experiencing homelessness.

In October 2024, Governor Newsom announced a partnership between HCD and CDCR to create long-term supportive housing and comprehensive wrap-around services for individuals leaving prison. (HCD, California launches new program to improve public safety by reducing homelessness and recidivism (Oct. 31, 2024) available at <https://www.hcd.ca.gov/about-hcd/newsroom/reentry-housing-pilot-project-nofa>.) The federally-funded Reentry Housing Pilot Project (RHPP) accepted applications through the end of last year. The program is administered by HCD, and awards are expected to be announced this summer.

This bill moves the administration of the ARG Program from the BSCC, a corrections-focused government agency, to HCD.

1. Argument in Support

A coalition of organizations, including the bill’s co-sponsors, Housing California and the Corporation for Supportive Housing writes:

As of November 2024, 15% of people on parole were unhoused, nearly all unsheltered. People formerly incarcerated and experiencing homelessness are seven more times likely to recidivate than people who are housed.

AB 1229 will restructure the existing Adult Reentry Grant program (ARG), which currently receives ongoing funding to pay for rental assistance and warm hand-off reentry services to individuals who have existed state prison. Restructuring will implement four key changes:

• Moving the program from the Board of State and Community Corrections to the Housing and Community Development department (HCD) to take advantage of HCD’s housing specialists who understand the intricacies of rental assistance.
• Connecting all participants to housing and rental assistance to ensure a greater share of participants exit homelessness for good.
• Dedicating program resources to individuals who are at risk of or experiencing homelessness.
• Similar to successful programs in other states, funding regional administrators that are regionally-based organizations, and to promote a holistic approach that coordinates existing programs, such as the Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative services, Behavioral Health-CONNECT, CalAIM Community Supports and Enhanced Care Management, and other support programs that did not exist when ARG was created.

With these changes, AB 1229 would allow roughly 1,200 individuals – about one-third of Californians currently on parole experiencing homelessness – to exit to housing and health stability and reduce their risk of recidivating, without the need for new funding.

-- END --

SENATE COMMITTEE ON HOUSING

Senator Aisha Wahab, Chair

2025 - 2026 Regular

Bill No: AB 1229 Hearing Date: 7/1/2025

SUBJECT: Adult Reentry Grant Program

DIGEST: This bill moves the Adult Reentry Grant (ARG) Program from the Board of State and Community Corrections (BSCC) to the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) to administer and makes specified changes to the program.

ANALYSIS:

Existing law:

1. Created and continuously funded the ARG program at BSCC to provide competitive grant funds to community-based organizations to support people who were formerly incarcerated in prison avoid falling into homelessness through rental subsidies, rehabilitation of existing housing, and the “warm hand-off” of people transitioning from prison to communities.

This bill:

1. Requires HCD, on or before December 1, 2026, to modify ARG to provide grants to up to six regional administrators responsible for funding permanent affordable housing and services for people who were formerly incarcerated in state prison and are experiencing homelessness or are at risk of homelessness.
2. Requires regional administrator applicants to demonstrate all of the following:
3. At least three years of experience administering a rental subsidy program, master leasing to tenants with a history of homelessness, or subcontracting to administer rental subsidies in permanent housing that follows evidence-based practices;
4. A relationship with a public housing authority to connect people to federal vouchers as they turn over;
5. Experience working with a homelessness continuum of care (CoC) and, if the regional administrator is different from the CoC in the region, a coordinated entry system administrator;
6. A relationship with at least one managed care plan or at least two community supports providers, or a direct contract with a managed care plan as a provider;
7. A viable plan to administer or contract with subrecipients to administer rental subsidies for permanent housing to connect participants to permanent housing as quickly as possible;
8. A viable plan to connect participants, as needed and eligible, to community supports, Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative in-reach services, and behavioral health treatment and services for so long as medically necessary; and
9. A viable plan to meet reporting requirements, as required by this bill.
10. Requires HCD to establish guidelines for administering the program, as specified.
11. Requires HCD to work collaboratively with the State Department of Health Care Services and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to establish a process for referrals of people eligible to participate in the program through the Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative, parole or probation agents, or other avenues of referrals.
12. Requires BSCC to continue to oversee and administer existing grants that have not yet expired, using resources allocated to the board, including funds allocated by Budget Act of 2025.
13. Establishes criteria for a person eligible to participate in ARG:
14. The individual voluntarily chooses to participate; and
15. A person has either:
16. Been assigned a date of release from prison within 30 to 180 days and is likely to become homeless upon release; or
17. The person is currently experiencing homelessness as a person on parole or post release community supervision and has an experience of prison incarceration within the last five years.
18. Specifies eligible uses of funds, including but not limited to rental subsides, operating subsides, incentives to landlords, services assisting participants in transitioning from prison to the community, and evidence-based supported employment services.
19. Requires HCD to design an evaluation form and hire an independent evaluator to assess outcomes from the program on or before July 1, 2030, and submit the evaluation to the chairs of the Joint Legislative Budget Committee, the Senate Committee on Budget and Fiscal Review, the Assembly Committee on Budget, the Senate and Assembly Committees on Public Safety, the Senate Committee on Housing, and the Assembly Committee on Housing and Community Development.
20. Requires CDCR to establish a process for engaging an individual scheduled for discharge, within at least 210 days of the scheduled release date, for the purpose of assessing the individual’s risk of homelessness upon discharge. The process shall include the following questions:
21. Do you have a plan for where you will live when you get out?
22. If you have a plan, where do you plan to sleep after returning to your community?
23. Where were you living when you were arrested, prior to your conviction?
24. Have you ever slept in a place not meant to be a place to live long-term, such as a shelter, transitional housing, a bus or train station, on the streets, or a motel or hotel?
25. Prohibits CDCR from using any of the answers provided to lengthen an individual’s term or to otherwise punish or discipline the individual.

Comments

1. Author’s statement. “ People on parole in California are 17 times more likely to experience homelessness than Californians overall, and individuals who have been incarcerated and are experiencing homelessness are seven times more likely to be re-arrested than those who are housed. Successful programs across the country have demonstrated that people with incarceration histories can become stably housed and avoid reoffending when they have access to longer term rental subsidies and the services they need to build a solid foundation for their lives. These successes rely on implementation of evidence-based practices administered by housing agencies. Building on learnings from those programs, AB 1229 restructures the Adult Reentry Grant Program to become a more targeted program that provides longer term rental subsidies to individuals who need assistance the most and promotes alignment with state healthcare and behavioral health programs that prioritize the justice-involved reentry population, like the CalAIM Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative, CalAIM Enhanced Care Management, CalAIM Community Supports, BH-CONNECT, and the Behavioral Health Services Act. Thus, AB 1229 will use existing ARG funds more effectively, while also leveraging other programs the state is already funding, to reduce people’s risk of reoffending.”

2) Exits from prisons/jails to homelessness. According to the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative’s comprehensive California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness, of those participants who were interviewed, 19% entered homelessness from an institutional setting, such as prolonged jail and prison stays. A larger proportion of participants had institutional stays in the six months prior to homelessness than those that entered homelessness directly from those institutions, suggesting that some who became homeless had short housing stays between their institutional stay and homelessness. In the six months prior to homelessness, 20% of participants spent time in jail, 9% spent time on probation, 10% were released from prison, and 4% served parole. In survey data, participants who had been incarcerated reported receiving minimal support upon exiting prisons or jails. Few reported having received services prior to having exited. This bill would require CDCR to establish a process for engaging an individual scheduled for discharge, within at least 210 days of the scheduled release date, to assess the individual’s risk of homelessness upon discharge. The process must include basic questions about where an individual’s plan to live after they leave incarceration.

3) Adult Reentry Grant Program. In 2018, SB 840 (Committee on Budget), Chapter 29 funded the creation of a program at BSCC to provide competitive grant funds to community-based organizations to support people who were formerly incarcerated in prison through rental subsidies, rehabilitation of existing housing, and the warm hand-off of people transitioning from prison to communities. This funding became known as the ARG program and currently receives $37 million in funding each year. The program provides only short-term rental assistance of six months to a year. Publicly available data on ARG shows just 27.1% of individuals who completed a program supported by the second round of ARG’s warm handoff grants were placed in housing. In November 2024, BSCC made $108 million available to community organizations to be divided evenly between the Warm Handoff and the Reentry Services and Rental Assistance (Housing).

4) HCD. HCD administers many of the state’s affordable housing and homelessness programs. In 2024, the Homeless Housing, Assistance, and Prevention Program (HHAPP) and the Encampment Resolution Program (ERP) were moved from the Interagency Council on Homelessness (Cal-ICH) to HCD. HHAPP requires applicants – cities with populations over 300,000, CoCs, and counties – to report monthly on the use of funds and to develop a regional plan demonstrating how funds will be used in a coordinated manner to address homelessness. HCD also administered COVID rental assistance, the California Emergency Services Grant (ESG) program, and Housing for a Healthy California – all programs that provided rental assistance to individuals at risk of or experiencing homelessness.

The Governor has proposed to reorganize the Business, Consumer Services, and Housing Agency (BCSH) by pulling programs that fund housing and homelessness out of BCSH and move them into a new Housing and Homelessness Agency. According to a description in the Governor’s January budget, the new agency will:

“create a more integrated and effective administrative framework for addressing the state’s housing and homelessness challenges. This new agency will strengthen California’s ability to plan, produce, and preserve housing while enhancing the state’s homelessness response now and over the long term by aligning housing initiatives with complementary policy areas—such as transportation, health, climate, energy, and community planning. As a result, the agency will foster greater coordination and strategic alignment across state government.”

This bill would align with the overall goal of moving homelessness programs under HCD.

5) Double-referral. This bill was also referred to the Committee on Public Safety.

Prior/Related Legislation

AB 722 (Avila Farias, 2025) – would have established the Reentry Housing and Workforce Development Program. This bill was held on the Assembly Appropriations Committee suspense file.

SB 240 (Ochoa Bogh, Chapter 775, Statutes of 2023) – authorizes a local agency or nonprofit affordable housing sponsor to be considered as a potential priority buyer of surplus state real property upon demonstration that the property is to be used by the agency or sponsor for housing for formerly incarcerated individuals.

AB 89 (Ting, Chapter 7, Statutes of 2020) – appropriated $37 million to the Adult Re-entry Program to be divided evenly between rental assistance and warm handoff services.

SB 840 (Committee on Budget, Chapter 29, Statutes of 2018) – established the ARG Program.

FISCAL EFFECT: Appropriation: No Fiscal Com.: Yes Local: No

POSITIONS: (Communicated to the committee before 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, June 25, 2025.)

SUPPORT:

Abode Services

ACLU California Action

All of US or None (HQ)

Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment

Brilliant Corners

California Housing Partnership

California Innocence Coalition

Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice

Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH)

County Behavioral Health Directors Association, (CBHDA)

Courage California

Disability Rights California

Drug Policy Alliance

Eah Housing

East Bay Housing Organizations

Ella Baker Center for Human Rights

Fair Chance Project

Friends Committee on Legislation of California

Housing Action Coalition

Housing California

Housing Is a Human Right - Orange County

Initiate Justice

Initiate Justice Action

Justice in Aging

Justice2jobs Coalition

LA Defensa

Legal Services for Prisoners With Children

Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority

Multi-faith Action Coalition

National Alliance to End Homelessness

Orange County Equality Coalition

Path (People Assisting the Homeless)

Rubicon Programs

San Francisco Public Defender

Smart Justice California, a Project of Tides Advocacy

Steinberg Institute

The Bride's Chamber

The W. Haywood Burns Institute

Third Sector Capital Partners

Transitions Clinic Network

Vera California

Western Center on Law and Poverty

OPPOSITION:

None received.

-- END --

SENATE COMMITTEE ON HOUSING

Senator Aisha Wahab, Chair

2025 - 2026 Regular

Bill No: AB 1229 Hearing Date: 6/24/2025

SUBJECT: Adult Reentry Grant Program

DIGEST: This bill moves the Adult Reentry Grant (ARG) Program from the Board of State and Community Corrections (BSCC) to the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) to administer and makes specified changes to the program.

ANALYSIS:

Existing law:

1. Created and continuously funded the ARG program at BSCC to provide competitive grant funds to community-based organizations to support people who were formerly incarcerated in prison avoid falling into homelessness through rental subsidies, rehabilitation of existing housing, and the “warm hand-off” of people transitioning from prison to communities.

This bill:

1. Requires HCD, on or before December 1, 2026, to modify ARG to provide grants to up to six regional administrators responsible for funding permanent affordable housing and services for people who were formerly incarcerated in state prison and are experiencing homelessness or are at risk of homelessness.
2. Requires regional administrator applicants to demonstrate all of the following:
3. At least three years of experience administering a rental subsidy program, master leasing to tenants with a history of homelessness, or subcontracting to administer rental subsidies in permanent housing that follows evidence-based practices;
4. A relationship with a public housing authority to connect people to federal vouchers as they turn over;
5. Experience working with a homelessness continuum of care (CoC) and, if the regional administrator is different from the CoC in the region, a coordinated entry system administrator;
6. A relationship with at least one managed care plan or at least two community supports providers, or a direct contract with a managed care plan as a provider;
7. A viable plan to administer or contract with subrecipients to administer rental subsidies for permanent housing to connect participants to permanent housing as quickly as possible;
8. A viable plan to connect participants, as needed and eligible, to community supports, Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative in-reach services, and behavioral health treatment and services for so long as medically necessary; and
9. A viable plan to meet reporting requirements, as required by this bill.
10. Requires HCD to establish guidelines for administering the program, as specified.
11. Requires HCD to work collaboratively with the State Department of Health Care Services and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to establish a process for referrals of people eligible to participate in the program through the Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative, parole or probation agents, or other avenues of referrals.
12. Requires BSCC to continue to oversee and administer existing grants that have not yet expired, using resources allocated to the board, including funds allocated by Budget Act of 2025.
13. Establishes criteria for a person eligible to participate in ARG:
14. The individual voluntarily chooses to participate; and
15. A person has either:
16. Been assigned a date of release from prison within 30 to 180 days and is likely to become homeless upon release; or
17. The person is currently experiencing homelessness as a person on parole or post release community supervision and has an experience of prison incarceration within the last five years.
18. Specifies eligible uses of funds, including but not limited to rental subsides, operating subsides, incentives to landlords, services assisting participants in transitioning from prison to the community, and evidence-based supported employment services.
19. Requires HCD to design an evaluation form and hire an independent evaluator to assess outcomes from the program on or before July 1, 2030, and submit the evaluation to the chairs of the Joint Legislative Budget Committee, the Senate Committee on Budget and Fiscal Review, the Assembly Committee on Budget, the Senate and Assembly Committees on Public Safety, the Senate Committee on Housing, and the Assembly Committee on Housing and Community Development.
20. Requires CDCR to establish a process for engaging an individual scheduled for discharge, within at least 210 days of the scheduled release date, for the purpose of assessing the individual’s risk of homelessness upon discharge. The process shall include the following questions:
21. Do you have a plan for where you will live when you get out?
22. If you have a plan, where do you plan to sleep after returning to your community?
23. Where were you living when you were arrested, prior to your conviction?
24. Have you ever slept in a place not meant to be a place to live long-term, such as a shelter, transitional housing, a bus or train station, on the streets, or a motel or hotel?
25. Prohibits CDCR from using any of the answers provided to lengthen an individual’s term or to otherwise punish or discipline the individual.

Comments

1. Author’s statement. “ People on parole in California are 17 times more likely to experience homelessness than Californians overall, and individuals who have been incarcerated and are experiencing homelessness are seven times more likely to be re-arrested than those who are housed. Successful programs across the country have demonstrated that people with incarceration histories can become stably housed and avoid reoffending when they have access to longer term rental subsidies and the services they need to build a solid foundation for their lives. These successes rely on implementation of evidence-based practices administered by housing agencies. Building on learnings from those programs, AB 1229 restructures the Adult Reentry Grant Program to become a more targeted program that provides longer term rental subsidies to individuals who need assistance the most and promotes alignment with state healthcare and behavioral health programs that prioritize the justice-involved reentry population, like the CalAIM Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative, CalAIM Enhanced Care Management, CalAIM Community Supports, BH-CONNECT, and the Behavioral Health Services Act. Thus, AB 1229 will use existing ARG funds more effectively, while also leveraging other programs the state is already funding, to reduce people’s risk of reoffending.”

2) Exits from prisons/jails to homelessness. According to the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative’s comprehensive California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness, of those participants who were interviewed, 19% entered homelessness from an institutional setting, such as prolonged jail and prison stays. A larger proportion of participants had institutional stays in the six months prior to homelessness than those that entered homelessness directly from those institutions, suggesting that some who became homeless had short housing stays between their institutional stay and homelessness. In the six months prior to homelessness, 20% of participants spent time in jail, 9% spent time on probation, 10% were released from prison, and 4% served parole. In survey data, participants who had been incarcerated reported receiving minimal support upon exiting prisons or jails. Few reported having received services prior to having exited. This bill would require CDCR to establish a process for engaging an individual scheduled for discharge, within at least 210 days of the scheduled release date, to assess the individual’s risk of homelessness upon discharge. The process must include basic questions about where an individual’s plan to live after they leave incarceration.

3) Adult Reentry Grant Program. In 2018, SB 840 (Committee on Budget), Chapter 29 funded the creation of a program at BSCC to provide competitive grant funds to community-based organizations to support people who were formerly incarcerated in prison through rental subsidies, rehabilitation of existing housing, and the warm hand-off of people transitioning from prison to communities. This funding became known as the ARG program and currently receives $37 million in funding each year. The program provides only short-term rental assistance of six months to a year. Publicly available data on ARG shows just 27.1% of individuals who completed a program supported by the second round of ARG’s warm handoff grants were placed in housing. In November 2024, BSCC made $108 million available to community organizations to be divided evenly between the Warm Handoff and the Reentry Services and Rental Assistance (Housing).

4) HCD. HCD administers many of the state’s affordable housing and homelessness programs. In 2024, the Homeless Housing, Assistance, and Prevention Program (HHAPP) and the Encampment Resolution Program (ERP) were moved from the Interagency Council on Homelessness (Cal-ICH) to HCD. HHAPP requires applicants – cities with populations over 300,000, CoCs, and counties – to report monthly on the use of funds and to develop a regional plan demonstrating how funds will be used in a coordinated manner to address homelessness. HCD also administered COVID rental assistance, the California Emergency Services Grant (ESG) program, and Housing for a Healthy California – all programs that provided rental assistance to individuals at risk of or experiencing homelessness.

The Governor has proposed to reorganize the Business, Consumer Services, and Housing Agency (BCSH) by pulling programs that fund housing and homelessness out of BCSH and move them into a new Housing and Homelessness Agency. According to a description in the Governor’s January budget: the new agency will:

“create a more integrated and effective administrative framework for addressing the state’s housing and homelessness challenges. This new agency will strengthen California’s ability to plan, produce, and preserve housing while enhancing the state’s homelessness response now and over the long term by aligning housing initiatives with complementary policy areas—such as transportation, health, climate, energy, and community planning. As a result, the agency will foster greater coordination and strategic alignment across state government.”

This bill would align with the overall goal of moving homelessness programs under HCD.

5) Double-referral. This bill was also referred to the Committee on Public Safety.

Prior/Related Legislation

AB 722 (Avila Farias, 2025) – would have established the Reentry Housing and Workforce Development Program. This bill was held on the Assembly Appropriations Committee suspense file.

SB 240 (Ochoa Bogh, Chapter 775, Statutes of 2023) – authorizes a local agency or nonprofit affordable housing sponsor to be considered as a potential priority buyer of surplus state real property upon demonstration that the property is to be used by the agency or sponsor for housing for formerly incarcerated individuals.

AB 89 (Ting, Chapter 7, Statutes of 2020) – appropriated $37 million to the Adult Re-entry Program to be divided evenly between rental assistance and warm handoff services.

SB 840 (Committee on Budget, Chapter 29, Statutes of 2018) – established the ARG Program.

FISCAL EFFECT: Appropriation: Fiscal Com.: Local:

POSITIONS: (Communicated to the committee before 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, June 18, 2025.)

SUPPORT:

Abode Services
All of US or None (HQ)
Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment
Brilliant Corners
California Housing Partnership
California Innocence Coalition
Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice
Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH)
County Behavioral Health Directors Association, (CBHDA)
Courage California
Drug Policy Alliance
Eah Housing
East Bay Housing Organizations
Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
Fair Chance Project
Housing Action Coalition
Housing California
Housing Is a Human Right - Orange County
Initiate Justice
Initiate Justice Action
Justice in Aging
Justice2jobs Coalition
LA Defensa
Legal Services for Prisoners With Children
Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority
National Alliance to End Homelessness
Orange County Equality Coalition
Path (People Assisting the Homeless)
Rubicon Programs
San Francisco Public Defender
Smart Justice California, a Project of Tides Advocacy
Steinberg Institute
The Bride's Chamber
The W. Haywood Burns Institute
Third Sector Capital Partners
Transitions Clinic Network
Vera California
Western Center on Law and Poverty

OPPOSITION:

None received.

-- END --

ASSEMBLY THIRD READING

ATR Bill Id:AB 1229

Author:(Schultz and Quirk-Silva)

As Introduced Ver:February 21, 2025

Majority vote

SUMMARY

Moves the Adult Reentry Grant (ARG) Program from the Board of State and Community Corrections (BSCC) to the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) to administer and makes specified changes to the program.

Major Provisions

1. Requires HCD, on or before December 1, 2026, to modify ARG to provide grants to up to six regional administrators responsible for funding permanent affordable housing and services for people who were formerly incarcerated in state prison and are experiencing homelessness or are at risk of homelessness.
2. Requires regional administrator applicants to demonstrate all of the following:
3. At least three years of experience administering a rental subsidy program, master leasing to tenants with a history of homelessness, or subcontracting to administer rental subsidies in permanent housing that follows evidence-based practices;
4. A relationship with a public housing authority to connect people to federal vouchers as they turn over;
5. Experience working with a homelessness continuum of care (CoC) and, if the regional administrator is different from the CoC in the region, a coordinated entry system administrator;
6. A relationship with at least one managed care plan or at least two community supports providers, or a direct contract with a managed care plan as a provider;
7. A viable plan to administer or contract with subrecipients to administer rental subsidies for permanent housing to connect participants to permanent housing as quickly as possible;
8. A viable plan to connect participants, as needed and eligible, to community supports, Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative in-reach services, and behavioral health treatment and services for so long as medically necessary; and
9. A viable plan to meet reporting requirements, as required by this bill.
10. Requires HCD to establish guidelines for administering the program, as specified.
11. Requires HCD to work collaboratively with the State Department of Health Care Services and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to establish a process for referrals of people eligible to participate in the program through the Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative, parole or probation agents, or other avenues of referrals.
12. Requires BSCC to continue to oversee and administer existing grants that have not yet expired, using resources allocated to the board, including funds allocated by Budget Act of 2025.
13. Establishes criteria for a person eligible to participate in ARG:
14. The individual voluntarily chooses to participate; and
15. A person has either:
16. Been assigned a date of release from prison within 30 to 180 days and is likely to become homeless upon release; or
17. The person is currently experiencing homelessness as a person on parole or post release community supervision and has an experience of prison incarceration within the last five years.
18. Specifies eligible uses of funds, including but not limited to rental subsides, operating subsides, incentives to landlords, services assisting participants in transitioning from prison to the community, and evidence-based supported employment services.
19. Requires HCD to design an evaluation form and hire an independent evaluator to assess outcomes from the program on or before July 1, 2030, and submit the evaluation to the chairs of the Joint Legislative Budget Committee, the Senate Committee on Budget and Fiscal Review, the Assembly Committee on Budget, the Senate and Assembly Committees on Public Safety, the Senate Committee on Housing, and the Assembly Committee on Housing and Community Development.
20. Requires CDCR to establish a process for engaging an individual scheduled for discharge, within at least 210 days of the scheduled release date, for the purpose of assessing the individual's risk of homelessness upon discharge. The process shall include the following questions:
21. Do you have a plan for where you will live when you get out?
22. If you have a plan, where do you plan to sleep after returning to your community?
23. Where were you living when you were arrested, prior to your conviction?
24. Have you ever slept in a place not meant to be a place to live long-term, such as a shelter, transitional housing, a bus or train station, on the streets, or a motel or hotel?
25. Prohibits CDCR from using any of the answers provided to lengthen an individual's term or to otherwise punish or discipline the individual.

COMMENTS

Homelessness: There are approximately 185,000 people experiencing homelessness on any given night in California. Many of the 40,000 Californians released from prison every year fall into homelessness. As of February 2025, 15% of people on parole were unhoused, nearly all unsheltered. People on parole are seven times more likely to recidivate when homeless than when housed. African Americans are almost seven times more likely to be homeless than the general population in California, driven by systemic racism that includes disproportionate incarceration, and discharges from prisons and jails into homelessness. Research shows that connecting incarcerated individuals to housing resources prior to release is critical to preventing homelessness upon reentry, yet the vast majority of people released from prison receive no assistance identifying or applying for housing. According to the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative's comprehensive California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness of people experiencing homelessness in California, 83% of study participants who were incarcerated in state prison received no housing services upon discharge.

Adult Reentry Grant Program: In 2018, SB 840 (Committee on Budget), Chapter 29 funded the creation of a program at BSCC to provide competitive grant funds to community-based organizations to support people who were formerly incarcerated in prison through rental subsidies, rehabilitation of existing housing, and the warm hand-off of people transitioning from prison to communities. This funding became known as the ARG program and currently receives $37 million in annual funding each year. The program provides only short-term rental assistance of six months to a year. Publicly available data on ARG shows just 27.1% of individuals who completed a program supported by the second round of ARG's warm handoff grants were placed in housing. In November of 2024, BSCC made $108 million available to community organizations to be divided evenly between Warm Handoff/Reentry Services and Rental Assistance (Housing).

This bill would move ARG from BSCC to HCD and make changes to how the program is administered to better ensure participants maintain permanent housing.

HCD: HCD administers many of the state's affordable housing and homelessness programs. In 2024, the Homeless Housing, Assistance, and Prevention Program (HHAP) and the Encampment Resolution Program (ERP) were moved from the Interagency Council on Homelessness (Cal-ICH) to HCD. HHAP requires applicants – cities with populations over 300,000 people, CoCs, and counties – report monthly on the use of funds and to develop a regional plan demonstrating how funds will be used in a coordinated manner to address homelessness. HCD also administered COVID rental assistance, the California Emergency Services Grant (ESG) program, and Housing for a Healthy California – all programs that provided rental assistance to individuals at risk of or experiencing homelessness.

The Governor has proposed to reorganize the Business, Consumer Services, and Housing Agency (BCSH) by pulling programs that fund housing and homelessness out of BCSH and move them into a new Housing and Homelessness Agency. According to a description in the Governor's January budget: the new agency will "create a more integrated and effective administrative framework for addressing the state's housing and homelessness challenges. This new agency will strengthen California's ability to plan, produce, and preserve housing while enhancing the state's homelessness response now and over the long term by aligning housing initiatives with complementary policy areas—such as transportation, health, climate, energy, and community planning. As a result, the agency will foster greater coordination and strategic alignment across state government." This bill would align with the overall goal of moving homelessness programs under HCD.

Exits from Prisons/Jails to Homelessness: According to the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative's comprehensive California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness, of those participants who were interviewed, 19% entered homelessness from an institutional setting, such as prolonged jail and prison stays. A larger proportion of participants had institutional stays in the six months prior to homelessness than entered directly from those institutions, suggesting that some who became homeless had short housing stays between their institutional stay and homelessness. In the six months prior to homelessness, 20% of participants spent time in jail, 9% spent time on probation, 10% were released from prison, and 4% served parole. In survey data, participants who had been incarcerated reported receiving minimal support upon exiting prisons or jails. Few reported having received services prior to having exited. This bill would require CDCR to establish a process for engaging an individual scheduled for discharge, within at least 210 days of the scheduled release date, for the purpose of assessing the individual's risk of homelessness upon discharge. The process must include basic questions about where an individual's plan to live after they leave incarceration.

According to the Author

"People on parole in California are 17 times more likely to experience homelessness than Californians overall, and individuals who have been incarcerated and are experiencing homelessness are seven times more likely to be re-arrested than those who are housed. Successful programs across the country have demonstrated that people with incarceration histories can become stably housed and avoid reoffending when they have access to longer term rental subsidies and the services they need to build a solid foundation for their lives. These successes rely on implementation of evidence-based practices administered by housing agencies.

Building on learnings from those programs, AB 1229 restructures the Adult Reentry Grant Program to become a more targeted program that provides longer term rental subsidies to individuals who need assistance the most and promotes alignment with state healthcare and behavioral health programs that prioritize the justice-involved reentry population, like the CalAIM Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative, CalAIM Enhanced Care Management, CalAIM Community Supports, BH-CONNECT, and the Behavioral Health Services Act. Thus, AB 1229 will use existing ARG funds more effectively, while also leveraging other programs the state is already funding, to reduce people's risk of reoffending."

Arguments in Support

According to the sponsors of this bill, Housing California and Corporation for Supportive Housing, "AB 1229 would allow roughly 1,200 individuals – about one-third of Californians currently on parole experiencing homelessness – to exit to housing and health stability and reduce their risk of recidivating by utilizing existing ongoing funding. Restructuring ARG would enable the state to take a significant step in solving homelessness among people on parole without the need for a new program or new funding.

Arguments in Opposition

None on file.

FISCAL COMMENTS

According to the Assembly Committee on Appropriations,

1. HCD estimates General Fund (GF) costs of $1.48 million in the first year and $984,000 in the second year and annually thereafter, for five staff positions to facilitate the transfer of the program, expand the department's group of stakeholders, build new relationships and partnerships and expand knowledge of the target population, among other tasks. This estimate assumes the program requirements are limited to providing grants to up to a maximum of six regional administrators.

The ARG program receives $37 million in ongoing funding through the state budget and allows for 5% of funds to be used for administration of the program. This percentage is reduced to 3% in this bill because regional administrators will assume some of the work. The 3% administrative allowance of approximately $1 million is sufficient to cover HCD's estimated staffing needs. Because budget funding has already allocated to BSCC for the current year, the author has submitted a one-time budget request of $950,000 to cover HCD's costs during the transition and restructuring of the program.

1. HCD estimates one-time GF costs of $500,000 in contracting costs to hire the independent evaluator to assess outcomes for the program, as required by the bill. HCD indicates the amount requested is based on similar contracts the department has executed with external partners to evaluate program outcomes, statistical analysis, and prepare legislative reports. 
2. CDCR anticipates minor and absorbable costs as a result of this bill. CDCR indicates the department currently conducts a Release Program Study for all individuals within 210 days of their scheduled release, which includes an assessment aligned with the requirements outlined in this bill. CDCR anticipate some costs may arise depending on how the process is formalized, but expects these costs to be minor if the existing Release Program Study process is deemed sufficient to meet this bill's requirements.
3. DHCS will likely incur costs to collaborate with HCD and CDCR to establish a process for referrals of people eligible to participate in the program. These costs are of an unknown, but likely minor, amount.

VOTES

ASM HOUSING AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT: 8-0-3

YES: Haney, Ávila Farías, Caloza, Kalra, Lee, Quirk-Silva, Wicks, Wilson

ABS, ABST OR NV: Patterson, Gallagher, Ta

ASM PUBLIC SAFETY: 8-0-1

YES: Schultz, Alanis, Mark González, Haney, Harabedian, Nguyen, Ramos, Sharp-Collins

ABS, ABST OR NV: Lackey

ASM APPROPRIATIONS: 11-2-2

YES: Wicks, Arambula, Calderon, Caloza, Elhawary, Fong, Mark González, Hart, Pacheco, Pellerin, Solache

NO: Dixon, Tangipa

ABS, ABST OR NV: Sanchez, Ta

UPDATED

VERSION: February 21, 2025

CONSULTANT: Lisa Engel / H. & C.D. / (916) 319-2085 FN: 0000610

Date of Hearing: May 14, 2025

ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS

Buffy Wicks, Chair

ABPCA Bill Id:AB 1229

Author:(Schultz) – As Introduced Ver:February 21, 2025

Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program: No Reimbursable: No

SUMMARY:

This bill transfers the administration of the Adult Reentry Grant (ARG) Program from the Board of State and Community Corrections (BSCC) to the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) and makes specified changes to the program.

Specifically, this bill:

1. Beginning July 1, 2026, and upon appropriation of funds, requires HCD to begin administering the ARG program.
2. Requires HCD, by December 1, 2026, to modify the ARG program to provide five-year renewable grants to up to six regional administrators responsible for funding permanent affordable housing and services for people who were formerly incarcerated in state prison and are experiencing homelessness or are at risk of homelessness.
3. Requires regional administrator applicants to demonstrate specified experience, working relationships and viable plans.
4. Requires HCD to establish guidelines for administering the program, as specified.
5. Requires HCD to work collaboratively with the State Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to establish a process for referrals of people eligible to participate in the program through the Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative, parole or probation agents, or other avenues of referrals.
6. Establishes criteria to be eligible to participate in the program, including the individual voluntarily chooses to participate and is either within 30 to 180 days of release and likely to become homeless, or is experiencing homelessness as a person on parole, as specified.
7. Specifies eligible uses of funds, including at least 70% of the funds be used for rental subsides, operating subsides, landlord incentives, and reasonable fees of regional administrators. Housing funded by the program must comply with the Housing First model.
8. Requires HCD to assess outcomes from the program by July 1, 2030, and submit the evaluation to specified committees of the Legislature.
9. Requires CDCR to establish a process for engaging an individual scheduled for discharge within at least 210 days of the scheduled release to assess the individual’s risk of homelessness upon discharge.
10. Requires BSCC to continue to administer existing grants that have not yet expired, using resources allocated to the board, including funds allocated by the Budget Act of 2025.

FISCAL EFFECT:

1. HCD estimates General Fund (GF) costs of $1.48 million in the first year and $984,000 in the second year and annually thereafter, for five staff positions to facilitate the transfer of the program, expand the department’s group of stakeholders, build new relationships and partnerships and expand knowledge of the target population, among other tasks. This estimate assumes the program requirements are limited to providing grants to up to a maximum of six regional administrators.

The ARG program receives $37 million in ongoing funding through the state budget and allows for 5% of funds to be used for administration of the program. This percentage is reduced to 3% in this bill because regional administrators will assume some of the work. The 3% administrative allowance of approximately $1 million is sufficient to cover HCD’s estimated staffing needs. Because budget funding has already allocated to BSCC for the current year, the author has submitted a one-time budget request of $950,000 to cover HCD’s costs during the transition and restructuring of the program.

1. HCD estimates one-time GF costs of $500,000 in contracting costs to hire the independent evaluator to assess outcomes for the program, as required by the bill. HCD indicates the amount requested is based on similar contracts the department has executed with external partners to evaluate program outcomes, statistical analysis, and prepare legislative reports. 
2. CDCR anticipates minor and absorbable costs as a result of this bill. CDCR indicates the department currently conducts a Release Program Study for all individuals within 210 days of their scheduled release, which includes an assessment aligned with the requirements outlined in this bill. CDCR anticipate some costs may arise depending on how the process is formalized, but expects these costs to be minor if the existing Release Program Study process is deemed sufficient to meet this bill’s requirements.
3. DHCS will likely incur costs to collaborate with HCD and CDCR to establish a process for referrals of people eligible to participate in the program. These costs are of an unknown, but likely minor, amount.

COMMENTS:

1. Purpose. According to the author:

Successful programs across the country have demonstrated that people with incarceration histories can become stably housed and avoid reoffending when they have access to longer term rental subsidies and the services they need to build a solid foundation for their lives.

Building on learnings from those programs, [this bill] restructures the ARG Program to become a more targeted program that provides longer term rental subsidies to individuals who need assistance the most and promotes alignment with state healthcare and behavioral health programs that prioritize the justice-involved reentry population. Thus, [this bill] will use existing ARG funds more effectively, while also leveraging other programs the state is already funding, to reduce people’s risk of reoffending.

1. Background. Many of the 40,000 Californians released from prison every year fall into homelessness. As of February 2025, 15% of people on parole were unhoused, nearly all unsheltered. Studies show that formerly incarcerated individuals are roughly 10 times more likely to experience homeless relative to the general population. People on parole are seven times more likely to recidivate when homeless than when housed.

The ARG program. The Budget Act of 2018 appropriated $50 million to the BSCC for a grant program to award competitive grants to community-based organizations to support people formerly incarcerated in state prison, and required specified amounts of those funds be used for, among other things, rental assistance, rehabilitation of existing property or buildings, and to support the warm hand-off and reentry of offenders transitioning from prison to communities. This funding became known as the ARG program, which receives a budget allocation of $37 million in annual funding each year.

With the goal of improving outcomes for program participants, this bill restructures the existing ARG program by (a) moving the program from the BCSS to HCD to take advantage of HCD’s expertise regarding rental assistance, (b) increasing the share of grant funds focused on housing assistance to 70%, (c) focusing the program on individuals who are most at risk of or who are experiencing homelessness, and (d) using knowledgeable and experienced “regional administrators” to subcontract with community-based organizations to offer specified services.

Advocates assert restructuring the ARG program will enable the state to take a significant step in solving homelessness among formerly incarcerated people without the need for new funding. Advocates further assert this bill will result in cost-savings for the state by decreasing the number of rearrests which will help the state avoid costs associated with incarcerating these individuals.

Exits from Prison to Homelessness. According to the comprehensive California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness, 83% of study participants who were incarcerated in state prison received no housing services upon discharge. Of those participants who were interviewed, 19% entered homelessness from an institutional setting, such as prolonged jail and prison stays. Research shows that connecting incarcerated individuals to housing resources prior to release is critical to preventing homelessness upon reentry.

This bill requires CDCR to establish a process for engaging an individual scheduled for discharge, within at least 210 days of the scheduled release date, to assess the individual’s risk of homelessness upon discharge.

1. Related Legislation. AB 722 (Avila Farias), of this legislative session, establishes the Reentry Housing and Workforce Development Program within HCD. AB 722 is pending in this committee.

Analysis Prepared by: Jennifer Swenson / APPR. / (916) 319-2081

Date of Hearing: April 22, 2025

Counsel: Dustin Weber

ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON

Nick Schultz, Chair

ABPCA Bill Id:

Author:() – As Ver:

SUMMARY:

Transfers administration of the Adult Reentry Grant Program (ARG) to the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), in addition to requiring HCD to modify the grant program to provide 5-year renewable grants to up to 6 regional administrators responsible for funding permanent affordable housing and services for people who were formerly incarcerated in state prison and are experiencing homelessness or are at risk of homelessness. Specifically, this bill:

1. Requires that, on or before December 1, 2026, HCD shall do all of the following:
   1. Modify the ARG program to provide grants to up to six regional administrators responsible for funding permanent affordable housing and services for people who were formerly incarcerated in state prison and are experiencing homelessness or are at risk of homelessness.
   2. Issue proposed guidelines establishing the grant program, or a draft notice of funding availability for stakeholder feedback, to select regional administrators for five-year renewable grants. Guidelines or the notice of funding availability shall require regional administrator applicants to demonstrate all of the following:
      1. At least three years of experience administering a rental subsidy program, master leasing to sublet to tenants with a history of homelessness, or subcontracting to administer rental subsidies in permanent housing that follows evidence-based practices. The experience shall include recruiting landlords or partnerships with affordable housing property managers to accept subsidies, and administration and oversight of vouchers or other forms of rental subsidies.
      2. Experience administering requests for proposals or a similar competitive process for selecting subrecipients meeting the criteria of the program.
      3. A relationship with a public housing authority to connect people to federal vouchers as they turn over.
      4. Experience working with a homeless continuum of care and, if the regional administrator is different from the continuum of care in the region, a coordinated entry system administrator.
      5. A relationship with at least one managed care plan or at least two community supports providers, or a direct contract with a managed care plan as a provider.
      6. A viable plan to administer or contract with subrecipients to administer rental subsidies for permanent housing to connect participants to permanent housing as quickly as possible.
      7. A viable plan to connect participants, as needed and eligible, to community supports, Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative in-reach services, and behavioral health treatment and services for so long as medically necessary.
      8. A viable plan to meet reporting requirements.
   3. Establish criteria to score applicants applying for grant funds competitively. Scoring criteria shall include, but not be limited to, the following:
      1. Need in the region, which includes consideration of the number of individuals experiencing homelessness among people on parole, to the extent data are available.
      2. The viability of plans and extent of experience.
      3. The extent of coordination and collaboration between the applicant, the continuum of care covering the geographic area, and homeless service providers with a history of serving people reentering communities from incarceration, using the Housing First model.
      4. The applicant’s proposed use of funds, the extent to which the proposed use will lead to overall reductions in homelessness and recidivism based on evidence, and the extent of the applicant’s commitment and past fidelity to Housing First.
      5. The applicant’s documented partnerships with affordable and supportive housing providers in the jurisdiction.
      6. The applicant’s demonstrated commitment to address the needs of people experiencing homelessness and recent incarceration through existing programs or programs planned to be implemented within 12 months.
      7. For county applicants overseeing housing authorities, the extent to which an applicant demonstrates housing authorities have eliminated or plan to eliminate restrictions on people with arrests or criminal convictions to access publicly funded housing subsidies, notwithstanding restrictions mandated by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development or federal law.
   4. Work collaboratively with the State Department of Health Care Services and the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to establish a process for referrals of people eligible to participate in the program through the Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative, parole or probation agents, or other avenues of referrals.
2. States that the Board of State and Community Corrections (BSCC) shall continue to oversee and administer existing grants that have not yet expired, using resources allocated to the board, including funds allocated by Budget Act of 2025.
3. Provides that a person is eligible for participation in this program if both of the following are applicable:
   1. The individual voluntarily chooses to participate.
   2. Either of the following applies:
      1. The individual has been assigned a date of release from prison within 30 to 180 days and is likely to become homeless upon release.
      2. The person is currently experiencing homelessness as a person on parole or postrelease community supervision and has experienced prison incarceration within the last five years.
4. States that a participant may remain eligible and continue to receive housing and services funded under the program after discharge from parole or postrelease community supervision if the participant continues to need assistance from the program.
5. Provides that program funds shall be used for the following eligible activities:
   1. Up to 3 percent of program funds may be used for the department’s administration of the program.
   2. At least 70 percent of the funds shall be used for one or more of the following, so long as the housing funded under the program complies with the Housing First model:
      1. Rental subsidies in an amount the applicant identifies, but no more than the maximum amount of rent a public housing authority may pay for the community in which the applicant is providing rental assistance.
      2. Operating subsidies in new and existing affordable or supportive housing units, in an amount the applicant identifies, but no more than the maximum amount of fair market rent a housing authority may pay, for the community in which the project is located.
      3. Incentives to landlords to accept rental subsidies and house-eligible participants, including, but not limited to, security deposits and holding fees.
      4. Reasonable administrative fees of regional administrators and subrecipients.
   3. At least 10% of the funds shall be used for voluntary multidisciplinary services, to include the following:
      1. Services assisting participants in transitioning from prison to the community, including linkage to Justice Involved Reentry Program in-reach providers, assisting with locating permanent housing with property managers and landlords willing to accept rental or operating subsidies for program participants, linkage to community supports providers and other existing programs funding services upon discharge, if the services allow the participant to successfully reenter their community, offer participants access to permanent affordable housing, and promote housing stability.
      2. Direct provision of housing transition navigation services, housing deposits, and housing tenancy and sustaining services for participant’s ineligible for or not yet determined to be eligible for existing programs.
      3. Services coordinating with and connecting participants to the coordinated entry system functioning in the geography to which the participant is returning, coordinating with and linking people to the Medi-Cal Enhanced Care Management benefit and health care providers that participants need to stabilize in housing, and assisting participants in obtaining any available local, state, or federal rental subsidies available.
      4. Evidence-based supported employment services, including individual placement and support services that allow participants who are able and want to work to find and maintain stable employment. Supported employment services shall include all of the following:
         1. Assistance with completing employment applications.
         2. Identifying potential workplace accommodations that may be required.
         3. Assistance with addressing workplace situations and conflicts.
         4. Assistance with transportation needs.
         5. Coordinating vocational training.
         6. Assistance with developing skills to maintain stable employment.
         7. Care coordination and advocacy with health care professionals to support care planning and referrals to other needed services.
      5. Services assisting people learn financial literacy and management, as well as managing and building savings, including a process to assist participants in saving a consistent portion of their income from employment.
   4. As needed, up to 10 percent of funds for operating support for interim interventions while participants wait for referral to permanent housing, so long as the interim setting complies with the requirements of Low-Barrier Navigation Centers, as defined.
6. States that service providers shall offer voluntary services, in conjunction with housing, to obtain and maintain health and housing stability while participants are on parole and after discharge from parole, so long as the participant needs the services.
7. Requires all services be offered to participants in their home or be made as easily accessible to participants in the community as possible. Services shall promote housing and health stability, including, but not limited to, assertive community treatment, intensive case management, or other evidence-based models of service provision, as well as engagement to encourage participation in services and Medi-Cal-funded mental health treatment, substance use disorder treatment, and other health treatment, as medically necessary.
8. States that the regional administrator or subrecipient provider, upon the service provider’s receipt of referral and, in collaboration with the parole agent or postrelease community supervision probation officer, if assigned to supervision, shall, when possible, do all of the following:
   1. Seek all prerelease assessments and discharge plans.
   2. Draft a plan for the participant’s transition into permanent housing in collaboration with the participant.
   3. Engage the participant to actively participate in services upon release on a voluntary basis.
   4. Assist the participant in obtaining identification and other documentation the participant may need to access housing and services.
   5. Assist the participant in applying for any benefits for which the participant is eligible.
9. States that the regional administrator and all subrecipients shall work to promote housing stability, using the core components of Housing First and the Housing First model.
10. Provides that a regional administrator awarded a contract shall provide or subcontract with community-based organizations (CBOs) to provide reentry services, housing, community supports, and supported employment that participants need and want by doing the following:
    1. Coordinating with managed care plans and partnering with managed care contracted providers to offer participants in-reach services through the Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative, community supports to which the participants are entitled, and the Medi-Cal Enhanced Care Management benefit.
    2. Partnering with county behavioral health and health agencies to offer participants services and treatment participants need and want.
    3. Partnering with county workforce investment boards.
    4. Partnering with the region’s homeless continuums of care and coordinated entry systems to coordinate referrals to housing for participants or potentially eligible participants.
    5. Partnering with affordable and supportive housing developers to offer ongoing operating subsidies in available housing units for participants.
    6. Coordinating with public housing authorities to connect participants to any federal housing subsidies available.
    7. Providing administrative assistance to subcontracted CBOs in complying with the reporting and other administrative requirements of the department.
    8. Working to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in eligible participants receiving housing and services.
    9. Developing career pathways for participants, removing structural barriers to employment and promoting equitable access to leadership positions.
11. Requires any subcontracted providers to demonstrate requisite experience.
12. States that in subcontracting with CBOs, HCD and regional administrators shall work to reduce barriers to subcontracting and simplify the contracting process, and to reduce barriers and delays in participants receiving services and housing.
13. Provides that in selecting subcontracted entities, regional administrators shall select providers that have or will have, by the time of contract start date, the following:
    1. Removed barriers to hiring people with lived experience of incarceration.
    2. Employed people with lived experience of incarceration and former homelessness.
    3. If the subcontracted entity is a CBOs, at least one individual with lived experience of incarceration and homelessness on the board of directors.
14. Provides that regional administrators or their subcontracted CBOs shall identify and locate housing opportunities for participants prior to release from prison or as quickly upon release from prison as possible, or as quickly as possible when participants are identified during parole or postrelease community supervision.
15. Establishes that housing identified shall satisfy all of the following:
    1. Tenants have rights and responsibilities of tenancy and are required to sign a lease with a landlord or property manager that complies with the core components of Housing First.
    2. The housing is located in an apartment building, townhouse, or single-family home, including rent-subsidized apartments leased in the open market or set aside within privately owned buildings, or affordable or supportive housing receiving a publicly funded subsidy.
    3. The housing is not subject to community care licensing requirements and is exempt from licensing.
    4. Upon referral to housing, participants are allowed to choose whether to share a single housing unit with nonrelatives or to live alone.
16. States that shared housing shall meet the following requirements:
    1. Participants shall be allowed to choose shared housing over living alone and to choose the people with whom they share housing.
    2. Participants shall have their own private bedroom with a lockable door.
    3. Every participant shall have their lease.
    4. Housing units shall include bathrooms no more than four participants must share.
    5. Housing units shall include kitchens on the same floor as the participant, unless living in a single family home.
    6. The regional administrator or subcontractor shall ensure participants sharing housing receive services to assist in overcoming conflicts.
17. States that HCD shall distribute funds by executing contracts with awarded regional administrators that shall be for a term of five years, subject to automatic renewal, provided the regional administrator complies with defined requirements. Awards shall be offered to grantees prior to provision of rental assistance and services.
18. Requires a regional administrator submit to the department an annual report on a form issued by the department, pertaining to the recipient’s program, provider selection process, contract expenditures, and progress toward meeting state goals. Regional administrators shall report the following data, which shall be disaggregated by race, gender, and gender identity:
    1. The number of participants served.
    2. The types of services provided to program participants.
    3. The number of participants currently living in permanent housing, either in housing receiving or not receiving a program subsidy.
    4. The average length of participation in the program.
    5. Fidelity to Housing First among all providers.
    6. Other outcomes for participants, including the number of participants who ceased to participate in the program and reasons why, the number who returned to state prison or were incarcerated in county jails, the number of arrests among participants, the number of days in jail and prison among participants, and health outcomes or change in health status, to the extent data are available.
    7. Through participant surveys, satisfaction with the program or changes to participants’ rating of their health, income, employment, and housing status.
19. States that within one year of program implementation, HCD shall design an evaluation and hire an independent evaluator to assess outcomes from the program, which shall include, but not be limited to, all of the following, disaggregated by race, gender, and gender identity:
    1. The total number of participants served and the type of interventions provided.
    2. The housing status of participants at 12, 24, and 36 months after entering the program, to the extent this data are available, including the number of participants who remained in permanent housing.
    3. Recidivism among participants, including the number of arrests, days incarcerated, and incarceration in jail or prison.
    4. Other outcomes evaluators are able to access through available data.
20. States that as part of the annual report, a regional administrator shall report to HCD on the expenditures and activities of any subrecipients for each year of the term of the contract with the department until all funds awarded to a subrecipient have been expended.
21. Provides that HCD may monitor the expenditures and activities of the recipient, as HCD deems necessary, to ensure compliance with program requirements.
22. States that HCD may, as it deems appropriate or necessary, request the repayment of funds from a regional administrator or pursue any other remedies available to it by law for failure to comply with program requirements.
23. Establishes that, on or before July 1, 2030, HCD shall submit the evaluation prepared to the chairs of the Joint Legislative Budget Committee, the Senate Committee on Budget and Fiscal Review, the Assembly Committee on Budget, the Senate and Assembly Committees on Public Safety, the Senate Committee on Housing, and the Assembly Committee on Housing and Community Development.
24. States that HCD shall establish a process for engaging an individual scheduled for discharge, within at least 210 days of the scheduled release date, for the purpose of assessing the individual’s risk of homelessness upon discharge. The process shall include the following questions:
    1. Do you have a plan for where you will live when you get out?
    2. If you have a plan, where do you plan to sleep after returning to your community?
    3. Where were you living when you were arrested, prior to your conviction?
    4. Have you ever slept in a place not meant to be a place to live long-term, such as a shelter, transitional housing, a bus or train station, on the streets, or a motel or hotel?
25. Provides that HCD shall not use any of the answers provided to lengthen an individual’s term or to otherwise punish or discipline the individual.
26. Defines “Adult Reentry Grant Program” as the program created by funding allocated to the Board of State and Community Corrections (BSCC) and all subsequent allocations of funding thereafter to this program, including ongoing appropriations.
27. States “chronic homelessness” means people being discharged from an institution who were chronically homeless before entering an institution, regardless of the length of institutional stay, and chronic homelessness additionally means:
    1. A “homeless individual with a disability,” as defined, who:
       1. Lives in a place not meant for human habitation, a safe haven, or in an emergency shelter; and
       2. Has been homeless and living continuously for at least 12 months or on at least 4 separate occasions in the last 3 years, as long as the combined occasions equal at least 12 months and each break in homelessness separating the occasions included at least 7 consecutive nights of not living, as defined. Stays in institutional care facilities for fewer than 90 days will not constitute as a break in homelessness, but rather such stays are included in the 12-month total, as long as the individual was living or residing in a place not meant for human habitation, a safe haven, or an emergency shelter immediately before entering the institutional care facility;
    2. An individual who has been residing in an institutional care facility, including a jail, substance abuse or mental health treatment facility, hospital, or other similar facility, for fewer than 90 days and met all defined criteria, before entering that facility; or
    3. A family with an adult head of household (or if there is no adult in the family, a minor head of household) who meets all defined criteria, including a family whose composition has fluctuated while the head of household has been homeless.
28. Provides that “community supports” means substitute services or settings to those required under the California Medicaid State Plan that Contractor may select and offer to their Members when the substitute service or setting is and are medically appropriate and more cost-effective that the service or setting listed in the California Medicaid State Plan Community supports especially relevant to this program include the following:
    1. Housing transition navigation services for services helping an individual access permanent housing.
    2. Housing deposits.
    3. Housing tenancy and sustaining services after a participant moves into permanent housing.
29. Establishes that community supports also includes any other community supports a participant is eligible to receive in the county in which the participant is reentering or living.
30. States that “continuum of care” means the group organized to carry out responsibilities and that is composed of representatives of organizations, including nonprofit homeless providers, victim service providers, faith-based organizations, governments, businesses, advocates, public housing agencies, school districts, social service providers, mental health agencies, hospitals, universities, affordable housing developers, law enforcement, organizations that serve homeless and formerly homeless veterans, and homeless and formerly homeless persons to the extent these groups are represented within the geographic area and are available to participate.
31. Provides that “county” includes a city and county or a city that is working with one or more counties to apply for grant funds.
32. Establishes that “fair market rent” means the rent, including the cost of utilities, other than the telephone, as established by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, for units of varying sizes, as determined by the number of bedrooms, that is paid in the market area to rent privately owned, existing, decent, safe, and sanitary rental housing of a modest nature with suitable amenities.
33. Defines “homelessness” to mean a person who is being released from prison who was homeless before their incarceration and who does not have an identified residence upon release, regardless of their length of stay in prison, and homelessness is defined as:
    1. An individual or family who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence, meaning:
       1. An individual or family with a primary nighttime residence that is a public or private place not designed for or ordinarily used as a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings, including a car, park, abandoned building, bus or train station, airport, or camping ground;
       2. An individual or family living in a supervised publicly or privately operated shelter designated to provide temporary living arrangements (including congregate shelters, transitional housing, and hotels and motels paid for by charitable organizations or by federal, state, or local government programs for low-income individuals); or
       3. An individual who is exiting an institution where he or she resided for 90 days or less and who resided in an emergency shelter or place not meant for human habitation immediately before entering that institution;
    2. An individual or family who will imminently lose their primary nighttime residence, provided that:
       1. The primary nighttime residence will be lost within 14 days of the date of application for homeless assistance;
       2. No subsequent residence has been identified; and
       3. The individual or family lacks the resources or support networks, e.g., family, friends, faith-based or other social networks needed to obtain other permanent housing;
    3. Unaccompanied youth under 25 years of age, or families with children and youth, who do not otherwise qualify as homeless under this definition, but who:
       1. Are defined as homeless under other specified federal law;
       2. Have not had a lease, ownership interest, or occupancy agreement in permanent housing at any time during the 60 days immediately preceding the date of application for homeless assistance;
       3. Have experienced persistent instability as measured by two moves or more during the 60-day period immediately preceding applying for homeless assistance; and
       4. Can be expected to continue in such status for an extended period of time because of chronic disabilities, chronic physical health or mental health conditions, substance addiction, histories of domestic violence or childhood abuse (including neglect), the presence of a child or youth with a disability, or two or more barriers to employment, which include the lack of a high school degree or General Education Development (GED), illiteracy, low English proficiency, a history of incarceration or detention for criminal activity, and a history of unstable employment; or
    4. Any individual or family who:
       1. Is fleeing, or is attempting to flee, domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, stalking, or other dangerous or life-threatening conditions that relate to violence against the individual or a family member, including a child, that has either taken place within the individual's or family's primary nighttime residence or has made the individual or family afraid to return to their primary nighttime residence;
       2. Has no other residence; and
       3. Lacks the resources or support networks, e.g., family, friends, faith-based or other social networks, to obtain other permanent housing.
34. Defines “Housing First” to mean the evidence-based model that uses housing as a tool, rather than a reward, for recovery and that centers on providing or connecting homeless people to permanent housing as quickly as possible.
    1. “Housing First” includes time-limited rental or services assistance, so long as the housing and service provider assists the recipient in accessing permanent housing and in securing longer term rental assistance, income assistance, or employment.
       1. For time-limited, supportive services programs serving homeless youth, programs should use a positive youth development model and be culturally competent to serve unaccompanied youth under 25 years of age. In the event of an eviction, programs shall make every effort, which shall be documented, to link tenants to other stable, safe, decent housing options.
35. States that “interim interventions” means housing that does not qualify as permanent housing as defined, including, but not limited to, transitional housing, emergency shelters, motel vouchers, tiny homes, or navigation centers, as defined under other federal, state, or local programs, offering services or partnerships with homeless services to connect individuals and families to housing transition navigation services and permanent housing.
36. Provides that “Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative” means the partnership between the Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) with state agencies, counties, providers, and CBOs to establish a coordinated community reentry process that will assist people leaving incarceration in connecting to the physical and behavioral health services they need prior to release and reentering their communities.
37. Defines “likely to become homeless upon release” to mean the individual has a history of experiencing homelessness and the individual satisfies either of the following:
    1. The individual has not identified a fixed, regular, and adequate residence to occupy upon release.
    2. The individual’s only identified nighttime residence for release includes a supervised publicly or privately operated shelter designed to provide temporary living accommodations, or a public or private place not designed for, or not ordinarily used as, a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings.
38. Provides that “permanent housing” means a structure or set of structures with subsidized or unsubsidized rental housing units subject to applicable landlord-tenant law, without a limit on the length of stay and without a requirement to participate in supportive services as a condition of access to, or continued occupancy of, the housing. Permanent housing includes supportive housing.
39. Establishes that “permanent supportive housing” and “supportive housing” mean permanent housing without a limit on the length of stay that is linked to onsite and offsite housing tenancy sustaining services that are easily accessible to tenants and assist participants in retaining the housing, improving the participant’s health status, and maximizing the participant’s ability to live and, when possible, work in the community. Permanent supportive housing includes associated facilities if used to provide services to tenants.
40. Defines “provider” to mean a CBO that qualifies as an exempt organization, as defined, and that contracts with a participating regional administrator, for the purpose of providing services to participants experiencing or at risk of homelessness, with demonstrated fidelity to the Housing First model.
41. Provides that “regional administrator” means an entity coordinating existing funding sources, including funding under the program, the Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative, community supports, and Medi-Cal Enhanced Care Management, to offer housing subsidies and services following evidence-based models to eligible participants. A regional administrator may be a county agency, community-based organization that is a nonprofit, a homeless continuum of care, a flexible housing subsidy pool administrator, or other entity the department identifies.
42. States that “rental subsidies” means a subsidy provided to a permanent housing provider, including a developer that has received government subsidies to build affordable or supportive housing or private market landlord, to assist a tenant to pay the difference between 30 percent of the tenant’s income and fair market rent or reasonable market rent as determined by the grant recipient and approved by the department.
43. Defines “subrecipient” to mean a community-based organization that is a private nonprofit provider or public housing authority that the regional administrator determines is qualified to undertake the eligible activities for which the recipient seeks funds under the program, and that enters into a contract with the recipient to undertake those eligible activities in accordance with the requirements of the program.
44. States that “voluntary services” means services offered in conjunction with housing that are not contingent on participation in services, from which tenants are not evicted based on failure to participate in services, where the service provider engages the tenant to encourage the tenant to voluntarily participate in services using evidence-based engagement models, and services are flexible and tenant centered.
45. Makes legislative findings and declarations.

EXISTING LAW:

1. Establishes that HCD shall be administered by an executive officer known as the Director of Housing and Community Development. The director shall be appointed by the Governor, subject to confirmation by the Senate, and shall hold office at the pleasure of the Governor. (Health & Saf. Code, § 50401.)
2. States that agencies and departments administering state programs created on or after July 1, 2017, shall collaborate with the California Interagency Council on Homelessness to adopt guidelines and regulations to incorporate core components of Housing First. (Welf. & Inst. Code (WIC), § 8256, subd. (a).)
3. Provides that agencies and departments administering state programs in existence prior to July 1, 2017, shall collaborate with the council to revise or adopt guidelines and regulations that incorporate the core components of Housing First, if the existing guidelines and regulations do not already incorporate the core components of Housing First. (WIC, § 8256, subd. (b).)
4. Establishes that for the Returning Home Well Program, the Specialized Treatment for Optimized Programming Program, and the Long-Term Offender Reentry Recovery Program, all of which are administered by the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, which fund recovery housing, as defined, for parolees, shall do all of the following:
   1. In coordination with the California Interagency Council on Homelessness, consult with the Legislature, the Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency, the California Health and Human Services Agency, the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, and other stakeholders to identify ways to improve the provision of housing to individuals who receive funding from that agency or department, consistent with the applicable requirements of state law.
   2. Comply with the core components of Housing First, other than defined components.
   3. Ensure that recovery housing programs meet the following requirements:
      1. A recovery housing program participant shall sign an agreement upon entry that outlines the roles and responsibilities of both the participant and the program administrator to ensure individuals are aware of actions that could result in removal from the recovery housing program. Violations of the agreement shall not automatically result in discharge from the recovery housing program.
      2. Efforts to link program participants to alternative housing options, including interim sheltering, permanent housing, or transitional housing, shall be documented. If a recovery housing program participant chooses to stop living in a housing setting with a recovery focus, is discharged from the program, or is removed from housing, the program administrator shall offer assistance in accessing other housing and services options, including options operated with harm-reduction principles, and identifying an alternative housing placement.
      3. The program administrator shall offer program participants who inform the program administrator that they are leaving the program one or more of the following:
         1. Tenant housing navigation services to permanent housing.
         2. Connections to alternative housing providers.
         3. Access to supportive services.
         4. Intake into a locally-coordinated entry system.
         5. Warm handoff to a partner homeless services provider offering housing navigation.
         6. The recovery housing program administrator shall track and report annually, to the program’s state funding source, the housing outcome for each program participant who is discharged, including, but not limited to, the following information:
            1. The number of homeless individuals with a housing need served by the program funds that year, as well as the demographics of the population served.
            2. Outcome data for all individuals served through program funds, including the type of housing that the individuals were connected to, the type of housing the individuals were exited to, the percent of housing exits that were successful, and exit types of unsuccessful housing exits. (WIC, § 8256, subd. (c).)
5. States that BSCC shall make every effort to ensure that exits to homelessness are extremely rare. (WIC, § 8256, subd. (v)(1).)
6. Provides that CDCR shall make efforts to reduce recidivism by offering participation to formerly incarcerated persons in recovery housing programs. Connections to safe and supportive housing is a critical priority for successful community reintegration. (WIC, § 8256, subd. (v)(2).)
7. Establishes that beginning on January 1, 2023, a grantee or entity operating any of the following state homelessness programs, as a condition of receiving state funds, shall enter the required data elements on the individuals and families it serves into its local Homeless Management Information System, as required by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development guidance, unless otherwise exempted by state or federal law. (WIC, § 8256, subd. (d)(1).)
8. Provides that BSCC ARG programs that fund recovery housing subject to this chapter shall apply the requirements prospectively beginning July 1, 2022, through any new contracts or agreements. (WIC, § 8256, subd. (e).)
9. States that HCD may make advance payments to eligible borrowers and grantees under any loan or grant programs for housing established pursuant to this part, if HCD makes all of the following determinations:
   1. The advance payments are necessary to meet the purposes of the housing program.
   2. The advance payments are necessary for the feasibility of the assisted housing.
   3. The use of the advanced funds is adequately regulated by so that the opportunity to accrue interest on the funds is not unnecessarily reduced. (Health & Saf. Code, § 50406.5.)
10. Establishes that HCD is the principal state department responsible for coordinating federal-state relationships in housing and community development. (Health & Saf. Code, § 50407.)
11. States that the Homeless Housing, Assistance, and Prevention program is hereby established for the purpose of providing jurisdictions with one-time grant funds to support regional coordination and expand or develop local capacity to address their immediate homelessness challenges informed by a best-practices framework focused on moving homeless individuals and families into permanent housing and supporting the efforts of those individuals and families to maintain their permanent housing. (Health & Saf. Code, § 50217, subd. (a).)
12. Provides that if the property is transitioned from an emergency shelter or transitional housing to permanent supportive housing, and serves people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness, the loan may also be deferred and forgiven, as if it had remained an emergency shelter or transitional housing. (Health & Saf. Code, § 50801.5, subd. (e)(1)(B).)
13. States that HCD shall determine requirements of the grant contract and shall contract directly with the grant recipient. HCD shall not delegate this function to the designated local boards. (Health & Saf. Code, § 50802.5, subd. (e).)
14. States that the designated local board shall regulate the performance of any grant contract within their region, subject to department oversight and requirements established by HCD. (Health & Saf. Code, § 50802.5, subd. (f).)
15. Establishes that subject to an appropriation in the annual Budget Act, HCD shall allocate funding to county child welfare agencies to help young adults who are 18 to 24 years of age, inclusive, secure and maintain housing, with priority given to young adults formerly in the state’s foster care or probation systems. (Health & Saf. Code, § 50807, subd. (a).)
16. Requires funds available for rental assistance to consist of state rental assistance funds made available by HCD in accordance with this chapter and applicable federal law. (Health & Saf. Code, § 50897.1, subd. (a)(1).)
    
17. Provides that funding for the California Emergency Solutions Grants Program and the Federal Emergency Solutions Grants Program shall be made available upon appropriation to the department for the purpose of addressing the crisis of homelessness in California. (Health & Saf. Code, § 50899.4.)
18. States that special needs housing shall also mean housing intended to meet the housing needs of persons eligible for mental health services funded in whole or in part by the Behavioral Health Services Fund. (Health & Saf. Code, § 51312, subd. (b).)
19. Establishes that on or before January 1 of each year, HCD shall report to the budget committees and public safety committees in both houses of the Legislature on the following information from the previous fiscal year’s grants:
    1. The number of grants provided.
    2. The institutions receiving grants.
    3. A description of each program and level of funding provided, organized by institution.
    4. The start date of each program.
    5. Any feedback from inmates participating in the programs on the value of the programs.
    6. Any feedback from the program providers on their experience with each institution.
    7. The number of participants participating in each program.
    8. The number of participants completing each program.
    9. Waiting lists, if any, for each program. (Pen. Code, § 5027, subd. (c).)

FISCAL EFFECT:

Unknown

COMMENTS:

1. Author's Statement: According to the author, “People on parole in California are 17 times more likely to experience homelessness than Californians overall, and individuals who have been incarcerated and are experiencing homelessness are seven times more likely to be re-arrested than those who are housed. Successful programs across the country have demonstrated that people with incarceration histories can become stably housed and avoid reoffending when they have access to longer term rental subsidies and the services they need to build a solid foundation for their lives. These successes rely on implementation of evidence-based practices administered by housing agencies.

“Building on learnings from those programs, AB 1229 restructures the Adult Reentry Grant Program to become a more targeted program that provides longer term rental subsidies to individuals who need assistance the most and promotes alignment with state healthcare and behavioral health programs that prioritize the justice-involved reentry population, like the CalAIM Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative, CalAIM Enhanced Care Management, CalAIM Community Supports, BH-CONNECT, and the Behavioral Health Services Act. Thus, AB 1229 will use existing ARG funds more effectively, while also leveraging other programs the state is already funding, to reduce people’s risk of reoffending.”

1. Effect of the Bill: In 2018, SB 840 (Committee on Budget) funded the creation of a program at BSCC to provide competitive grant funds to community-based organizations to support people who were formerly incarcerated in prison through rental subsidies, rehabilitation of existing housing, and the warm hand-off of people transitioning from prison to communities.^[1] This became known as the Adult Reentry Grant (ARG) program.

A BSCC evaluation showed recidivism rates were 50% lower for those who received continued supportive services upon reentry and reduced rates of homelessness.^[2] Data on the outcomes from one cohort of service participants (Cohort 2), which ended in February 2025, showed more than 7,500 participants enrolled with a 35% rate of employed improvement and 42.5% improved protective factors.^[3] 31.1% of program participants were placed in housing.^[4]

In November of 2024, BSCC made $108 million available to community organizations to be divided evenly between Warm Handoff/Reentry Services and Rental Assistance.^[5] This bill would shift that divide from 50/50 (Rental Assistance/Warm Handoff Services) to 70/30 in favor of rental assistance. This bill also would move ARG from BSCC to HCD and make changes to how the program is administered, including prerelease planning, to help ensure participants maintain permanent housing. This bill would additionally implement regional administrators to help manage the program’s delivery of services. These changes could accelerate the improvements in housing formerly incarcerated individuals.

1. Incarceration and Homelessness: There were approximately 182,000 people experiencing homelessness on any given day in California in 2023.^[6] Formerly incarcerated individuals are roughly ten times more likely to experience homeless relative to the general population.^[7] People on parole are seven times more likely to recidivate when homeless than when housed.^[8] According to one report, 83% of study participants who were incarcerated in state prison received no housing services upon discharge.^[9]

The same study found 19% entered homelessness from an institutional setting, such as prolonged jail and prison stays.^[10] A larger proportion of participants had institutional stays in the six months prior to homelessness than those who entered directly from institutions, suggesting that some who became homeless had short housing stays between their institutional stay and homelessness.

This bill would require CDCR to establish a process for engaging an individual scheduled for discharge, within at least 210 days of their expected release date, for the purpose of assessing the individual’s risk of homelessness upon discharge. The process would include basic questions about where an individual’s plan to live after they leave incarceration. This process could help program administrators work effectively with soon to be formerly incarcerated individuals prevent reentry slides into homelessness.

1. Duties of HCD: HCD administers many of California’s affordable housing and homelessness programs. HCD administered COVID rental assistance (Health and Safety Code, § 50897.1, subd. (a)(1)), the California Emergency Services Grant (ESG) program (Health and Safety Code, §§ 50899.1-50899.8), and Housing for a Healthy California (Health and Safety Code, §§ 50590-50598) – all programs that provided rental assistance to individuals at risk of or experiencing homelessness. By moving the ARG under the auspices of HCD, as this bill does, the ARG program could benefit from HCD’s experience and expertise in administering rental assistance programs in California.

The Governor recently proposed reorganizing the Business, Consumer Services, and Housing Agency (BCSH) by pulling programs that fund housing out of BCSH and moving them into a new Housing and Homelessness Agency.^[11] According to the Governor’s office, the new agency will “create a more integrated and effective administrative framework for addressing the state’s housing and homelessness challenges.”^[12] This bill could align with the Governor’s reorganization plan and trend towards shifting homelessness programs under HCD.

1. The Regional Administrators: This bill would place select regional administrators in the sequence of service delivery and rental assistance. Including another person in the sequence of delivery could result in increased experience and greater efficiency of service delivery, but there is also a possibility that adding an individual to this process could create unintentional bottlenecks and added layers of complexity in the delivery of funds and services.

In one article, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University lamented unnecessary complexity as one of the sources of our bureaucratic challenges.^[13] Adding more people to the oversight of a system sometimes creates undesirable outcomes. One infamous example of this involved joint administration of the flood-protection system in New Orleans being a significant factor in the system’s failure during Hurricane Katrina.^[14] “Because administering programs through inter-governmental cooperation introduces pervasive coordination problems into even rather simple governmental functions, the odds are high that programs involving shared responsibility will suffer from sluggish administration, blame-shifting, and unintended consequences.”^[15] Being mindful of the risks involved with simply adding layers to the delivery of services can be important to maintain the effective administration of government. As James Madison advised, “[i]n framing a government . . . the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”^[16]

Alternatively, the addition of regional administrators could improve efficiencies in the delivery of services by leveraging the administrators’ experience in expertise in how these services operate on the ground. They presumably would have increased exposure and familiarity with the CBOs receiving the funding, which could help smooth the rougher edges of service delivery. Proper and efficient use of the experience the administrators would bring to their positions could also offset issues that may arise due the funding shifts in the bill directing more money towards rental assistance services. As this bill would not create a vast new bureaucratic agency or new network of individuals with unclear or poorly thought out job responsibilities, the risk seems relatively low that in this case the ARG program will experience added complexity leading to incoherence and inefficiencies in the administration of its services.

This bill proposes a relatively modest change in how services are delivered under the ARG program, so the risks of causing bottlenecks and inefficiencies are likely slim relative to the existing system.

1. Argument in Support: According to the California Housing Partnership, “As of November 2024, 15% of people on parole were unhoused, nearly all unsheltered. People formerly incarcerated in prison experiencing homelessness are seven times more likely to recidivate than people who are housed.

“AB 1229 (Schultz) will restructure the existing Adult Reentry Grant program (ARG), which

currently receives ongoing funding to pay for rental assistance and warm hand-off reentry

services to individuals who have exited state prison. Restructuring will implement four key

changes:

• Moving the program from the Board of State and Community Corrections to the

Housing and Community Development department (HCD) to take advantage of HCD’s housing specialists who understand the intricacies of rental assistance, as well as HCD’s reentry program.

• Investing a greater share of grant funds in rental subsidies to ensure a greater share of

participants exit homelessness for good.

• Dedicating program resources to individuals who are at risk of or experiencing

homelessness.

• Similar to other successful programs, holding regional administrators that are

community or regionally-based organizations, counties, or continuums of care

accountable for subcontracting with community-based organizations to offer a holistic approach to coordinate reentry services, Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative services, behavioral health care, and housing support services.

“With these changes, AB 1229 would allow roughly 1,200 individuals – about one-third of

Californians currently on parole experiencing homelessness – to exit to housing and health

stability and reduce their risk of recidivating. Restructuring ARG would enable the state to take a significant step in solving homelessness among formerly incarcerated people without the need for new funding.”

1. Related Legislation:
   1. SB 75 (Smallwood-Cuevas) would require the board to establish a Reentry Pilot Project in the Counties of Alameda, Los Angeles, and San Diego to provide workforce training and transitional support to formerly incarcerated individuals committed to careers in the skilled trades. SB 75 is set to be heard in the Senate Committee on Labor, Public Employment and Retirement.
   2. AB 722 (Avila Farias) would establish the Reentry Housing and Workforce Development Program. AB 722 is set to be heard in the Assembly Housing and Community Development Committee.
      
2. Prior Legislation:
   1. SB 1254 (Becker), Chapter 465, Statutes of 2024, requires partnership with the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and county jails to allow for preenrollment of otherwise eligible applicants for the CalFresh program to ensure that an applicant’s benefits may begin as soon as possible upon reentry of the applicant into the community from the state prison or county jail.
   2. SB 240 (Ochoa Bogh), Chapter 775, Statutes of 2023, authorizes a local agency or nonprofit affordable housing sponsor to be considered as a potential priority buyer of surplus state real property upon demonstration that the property is to be used by the agency or sponsor for housing for formerly incarcerated individuals.
   3. AB 89 (Ting), Chapter 7, Statutes of 2020, appropriated $37 million to the Adult Re-entry Program to be divided evenly between rental assistance and warm handoff services.
   4. SB 840 (Committee on Budget), Chapter 29, Statutes of 2018, established the ARG Program.
      

REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION:

Support

ACLU California Action
Brilliant Corners
California Catholic Conference
California Coalition for Women Prisoners
California Housing Partnership
California Public Defenders Association (CPDA)
Californians United for a Responsible Budget
Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice
Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice (CURYJ)
Corporation for Supportive Housing
Courage California
Disability Rights California
Eah Housing
Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
Essie Justice Group
Felony Murder Elimination Project
Housing California
Initiate Justice
Initiate Justice Action
Justice in Aging
Justice2jobs Coalition
LA Defensa
Legal Services for Prisoner With Children
Local 148 LA County Public Defenders Union
National Alliance to End Homelessness
Path (people Assisting the Homeless)
Policylink
Restoring Hope California
Rubicon Programs
San Francisco Public Defender
Silicon Valley De-bug
Smart Justice California, a Project of Tides Advocacy
Steinberg Institute
The W. Haywood Burns Institute
Third Sector Capital Partners
Transitions Clinic Network
Uncommon Law
Vera Institute of Justice
Viet Voices
Western Center on Law & Poverty, INC.

Opposition

None submitted.

Analysis Prepared by:

1. Adult Reentry Grant, Board of State and Community Corrections <https://bscc.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/SB-840-Adult-Reentry-Grant-Statute.pdf> [as of Apr. 15, 2025]. ↑

2. BSCC Releases Over $108 Million in Grant Funding to Support CBO Reentry Services (Nov. 21, 2024) Board of State and Community Corrections <https://www.bscc.ca.gov/news/bscc-releases-over-108-million-in-grant-funding-to-support-cbo-reentry-services/> [as of Apr. 15, 2025]. ↑

3. ARG WHO Cohort 2 Participants & Outcomes (Apr. 9, 2025) Board of State and Community Corrections <https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/kstevens/viz/ARGWHOCohort2ParticipantsOutcomesDashboard/AboutARGWHOCohort2> [as of Apr. 15, 2025]. ↑

4. Ibid. ↑

5. See supra, at note 3. ↑

6. Fact Sheet: Homelessness in California (Jan. 2024) <https://shou.senate.ca.gov/sites/shou.senate.ca.gov/files/Homelessness%20in%20CA%202023%20Numbers%20-%201.2024.pdf> [as of Apr. 15, 2025]. ↑

7. See, supra, at note 3. ↑

8. Wang, Jailing the Homeless: New Data Shed Light on Unhoused People in Local Jails (Feb. 11, 2025) Prison Policy Initiative <https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2025/02/11/jail_unhoused_bookings/> [as of Apr. 15, 2025]. ↑

9. Toward a New Understanding: The California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness (June 2023) Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative <https://homelessness.ucsf.edu/sites/default/files/2023-06/CASPEH_Report_62023.pdf> [as of Apr. 15, 2025]. ↑

10. Ibid. ↑

11. Government Reorganization Plan (2025) <https://lhc.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/GRP2025Proposal.pdf> [as of Apr. 15, 2025]. ↑

12. Luna, 4 Takeaways from Newsom’s Budget Proposal (Jan. 11, 2025) Los Angeles Times <https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-01-11/4-takeaways-from-newsoms-spending-plan-california> [as of Apr. 15, 2025]. ↑

13. Teles, Kludgeocracy in America (2013) National Affairs <https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/kludgeocracy-in-america> [as of Apr. 15, 2025]. ↑

14. Ibid. ↑

15. Ibid. ↑

16. Madison, The Federalist No. 51 (Feb. 6, 1788) National Archives <https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-04-02-0199> [as of Apr. 15, 2025]. ↑

Date of Hearing: March 26, 2025

ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON HOUSING AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

Matt Haney, Chair

ABPCA Bill Id:AB 1229 (

Author:Schultz) – As Introduced Ver:February 21, 2025

SUBJECT: Adult Reentry Grant Program

SUMMARY: Moves the Adult Reentry Grant (ARG) Program from the Board of State and Community Corrections (BSCC) to the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) to administer and makes specified changes to the program. Specifically, this bill:

1. Requires HCD, on or before December 1, 2026, to modify ARG to provide grants to up to six regional administrators responsible for funding permanent affordable housing and services for people who were formerly incarcerated in state prison and are experiencing homelessness or are at risk of homelessness.
2. Requires regional administrator applicants to demonstrate all of the following:
3. At least three years of experience administering a rental subsidy program, master leasing to tenants with a history of homelessness, or subcontracting to administer rental subsidies in permanent housing that follows evidence-based practices;
4. A relationship with a public housing authority to connect people to federal vouchers as they turn over;
5. Experience working with a homelessness continuum of care (CoC) and, if the regional administrator is different from the CoC in the region, a coordinated entry system administrator;
6. A relationship with at least one managed care plan or at least two community supports providers, or a direct contract with a managed care plan as a provider;
7. A viable plan to administer or contract with subrecipients to administer rental subsidies for permanent housing to connect participants to permanent housing as quickly as possible;
8. A viable plan to connect participants, as needed and eligible, to community supports, Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative in-reach services, and behavioral health treatment and services for so long as medically necessary; and
9. A viable plan to meet reporting requirements, as required by this bill.
10. Requires HCD to establish guidelines for administering the program, as specified.
11. Requires HCD to work collaboratively with the State Department of Health Care Services and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to establish a process for referrals of people eligible to participate in the program through the Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative, parole or probation agents, or other avenues of referrals.
12. Requires BSCC to continue to oversee and administer existing grants that have not yet expired, using resources allocated to the board, including funds allocated by Budget Act of 2025.
13. Establishes criteria for a person eligible to participate in ARG:
14. The individual voluntarily chooses to participate; and
15. A person has either:
16. Been assigned a date of release from prison within 30 to 180 days and is likely to become homeless upon release; or
17. The person is currently experiencing homelessness as a person on parole or post release community supervision and has an experience of prison incarceration within the last five years.
18. Specifies eligible uses of funds, including but not limited to rental subsides, operating subsides, incentives to landlords, services assisting participants in transitioning from prison to the community, and evidence-based supported employment services.
19. Requires HCD to design an evaluation form and hire an independent evaluator to assess outcomes from the program on or before July 1, 2030, and submit the evaluation to the chairs of the Joint Legislative Budget Committee, the Senate Committee on Budget and Fiscal Review, the Assembly Committee on Budget, the Senate and Assembly Committees on Public Safety, the Senate Committee on Housing, and the Assembly Committee on Housing and Community Development.
20. Requires CDCR to establish a process for engaging an individual scheduled for discharge, within at least 210 days of the scheduled release date, for the purpose of assessing the individual’s risk of homelessness upon discharge. The process shall include the following questions:
21. Do you have a plan for where you will live when you get out?
22. If you have a plan, where do you plan to sleep after returning to your community?
23. Where were you living when you were arrested, prior to your conviction?
24. Have you ever slept in a place not meant to be a place to live long-term, such as a shelter, transitional housing, a bus or train station, on the streets, or a motel or hotel?
25. Prohibits CDCR from using any of the answers provided to lengthen an individual’s term or to otherwise punish or discipline the individual.

EXISTING LAW: Created and continuously funded the ARG program at BSCC to provide competitive grant funds to community-based organizations to support people who were formerly incarcerated in prison avoid falling into homelessness through rental subsidies, rehabilitation of existing housing, and the warm hand-off of people transitioning from prison to communities. [SB 840 (Committee on Budget), Chapter 29, Statutes of 2018]

FISCAL EFFECT: Unknown.

COMMENTS:

Author’s Statement: According to the author, “People on parole in California are 17 times more likely to experience homelessness than Californians overall, and individuals who have been incarcerated and are experiencing homelessness are seven times more likely to be re-arrested than those who are housed. Successful programs across the country have demonstrated that people with incarceration histories can become stably housed and avoid reoffending when they have access to longer term rental subsidies and the services they need to build a solid foundation for their lives. These successes rely on implementation of evidence-based practices administered by housing agencies.

Building on learnings from those programs, AB 1229 restructures the Adult Reentry Grant Program to become a more targeted program that provides longer term rental subsidies to individuals who need assistance the most and promotes alignment with state healthcare and behavioral health programs that prioritize the justice-involved reentry population, like the CalAIM Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative, CalAIM Enhanced Care Management, CalAIM Community Supports, BH-CONNECT, and the Behavioral Health Services Act. Thus, AB 1229 will use existing ARG funds more effectively, while also leveraging other programs the state is already funding, to reduce people’s risk of reoffending.”

Homelessness: There are approximately 185,000 people experiencing homelessness on any given night in California. Many of the 40,000 Californians released from prison every year fall into homelessness. As of February 2025, 15% of people on parole were unhoused, nearly all unsheltered. People on parole are seven times more likely to recidivate when homeless than when housed. African Americans are almost seven times more likely to be homeless than the general population in California, driven by systemic racism that includes disproportionate incarceration, and discharges from prisons and jails into homelessness. Research shows that connecting incarcerated individuals to housing resources prior to release is critical to preventing homelessness upon reentry, yet the vast majority of people released from prison receive no assistance identifying or applying for housing. According to the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative’s comprehensive California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness of people experiencing homelessness in California, 83% of study participants who were incarcerated in state prison received no housing services upon discharge.

Adult Reentry Grant Program: In 2018, SB 840 (Committee on Budget), Chapter 29 funded the creation of a program at BSCC to provide competitive grant funds to community-based organizations to support people who were formerly incarcerated in prison through rental subsidies, rehabilitation of existing housing, and the warm hand-off of people transitioning from prison to communities. This funding became known as the ARG program and currently receives $37 million in annual funding each year. The program provides only short-term rental assistance of six months to a year. Publicly available data on ARG shows just 27.1% of individuals who completed a program supported by the second round of ARG’s warm handoff grants were placed in housing. In November of 2024, BSCC made $108 million available to community organizations to be divided evenly between Warm Handoff/Reentry Services and Rental Assistance (Housing).

This bill would move ARG from BSCC to HCD and make changes to how the program is administered to better ensure participants maintain permanent housing.

HCD: HCD administers many of the state’s affordable housing and homelessness programs. In 2024, the Homeless Housing, Assistance, and Prevention Program (HHAP) and the Encampment Resolution Program (ERP) were moved from the Interagency Council on Homelessness (Cal-ICH) to HCD. HHAP requires applicants – cities with populations over 300,000 people, CoCs, and counties – report monthly on the use of funds and to develop a regional plan demonstrating how funds will be used in a coordinated manner to address homelessness. HCD also administered COVID rental assistance, the California Emergency Services Grant (ESG) program, and Housing for a Healthy California – all programs that provided rental assistance to individuals at risk of or experiencing homelessness.

The Governor has proposed to reorganize the Business, Consumer Services, and Housing Agency (BCSH) by pulling programs that fund housing and homelessness out of BCSH and move them into a new Housing and Homelessness Agency. According to a description in the Governor’s January budget: the new agency will “create a more integrated and effective administrative framework for addressing the state’s housing and homelessness challenges. This new agency will strengthen California’s ability to plan, produce, and preserve housing while enhancing the state’s homelessness response now and over the long term by aligning housing initiatives with complementary policy areas—such as transportation, health, climate, energy, and community planning. As a result, the agency will foster greater coordination and strategic alignment across state government.” This bill would align with the overall goal of moving homelessness programs under HCD.

Exits from Prisons/Jails to Homelessness: According to the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative’s comprehensive California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness, of those participants who were interviewed, 19% entered homelessness from an institutional setting, such as prolonged jail and prison stays. A larger proportion of participants had institutional stays in the six months prior to homelessness than entered directly from those institutions, suggesting that some who became homeless had short housing stays between their institutional stay and homelessness. In the six months prior to homelessness, 20% of participants spent time in jail, 9% spent time on probation, 10% were released from prison, and 4% served parole. In survey data, participants who had been incarcerated reported receiving minimal support upon exiting prisons or jails. Few reported having received services prior to having exited. This bill would require CDCR to establish a process for engaging an individual scheduled for discharge, within at least 210 days of the scheduled release date, for the purpose of assessing the individual’s risk of homelessness upon discharge. The process must include basic questions about where an individual’s plan to live after they leave incarceration.

Arguments in Support: According to the sponsors of this bill, Housing California and Corporation for Supportive Housing, “AB 1229 would allow roughly 1,200 individuals – about one-third of Californians currently on parole experiencing homelessness – to exit to housing and health stability and reduce their risk of recidivating by utilizing existing ongoing funding. Restructuring ARG would enable the state to take a significant step in solving homelessness among people on parole without the need for a new program or new funding.

Arguments in Opposition: None on file.

Double-referred: This bill was also referred to the Assembly Committee on Public Safety where it will be heard should it pass out of this committee.

REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION:

Support

Housing California (Co-Sponsor)
Corporation for Supportive Housing (Co-Sponsor)

ACLU California Action

Brilliant Corners

Californians United for a Responsible Budget

Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice

Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice (CURYJ)

Courage California

Disability Rights California

Ella Baker Center for Human Rights

Felony Murder Elimination Project

Initiate Justice

Initiate Justice Action

Justice in Aging

Justice2jobs Coalition

LA Defensa

Legal Services for Prisoner with Children

National Alliance to End Homelessness

PATH Restoring Hope California

Restoring Hope California

Rubicon Programs

Smart Justice California, a Project of Tides Advocacy

Steinberg Institute

Third Sector Capital Partners

UnCommon Law

Viet Voices

Western Center on Law & Poverty

Opposition

None on file.

Analysis Prepared by: Lisa Engel / H. & C.D. / (916) 319-2085