Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Subcommittee No. 4 on State Administration and General Government

Obviously, there's going to be substantial focus on the Administration application of program prior and future potential allocations with respect to homelessness and those that are unhoused and unsheltered. I think it's an understatement.

To reiterate, everyone is well aware of the difficult circumstances the state faces in this budget cycle and really the responsibility that the subcommittees have and the budget the Legislature has in oversight in a very large government with very large pressing issues, to have a logical understanding of the application of these programs and to think about ways, particularly with respect to value and impact and timing, strategically rank and understand these programs in a way that can help us make informed decisions.

And so to that end, I certainly appreciate everybody's participation. Looking forward to hearing some of our distinguished witnesses and panelists at the end of the hearing. I also want to point out that the state has in the last few cycles made historic and unprecedented investments aimed at trying to mitigate and to facilitate the work that folks do on the ground in local communities to deal with this issue, which is pressing and multidimensional.

That said, I'm also made aware through media that the Governor has indicated it's going to add additional accountability unit capabilities within the Department that I look forward to hearing more about and understanding and of course, is most appropriate. So with that said, let's go ahead and establish a quorum, if the consultant can call the roll for purposes of establishing a quorum.

[Roll Call]

Thank you, sir. All right, let's first then go to Vice Chair Niello. Do you have any opening comments followed by Senator Smallwood-Cuevas

We have a. Problem and need to try to get to the bottom of it.

Senator Smallwood-Cuevas

By my colleagues in my district, we have disproportionate homelessness that, despite so many efforts, continues to grow. It's a multi pronged problem. It's a multi pronged issue. Investing in homelessness programs is one strategy, but it's also thinking about how we're investing our state dollars to address the compounded poverty that exists in far too many communities. So I look forward to this short what I see is short term solutions as we work together in this budget sub for some of the longer term solutions.

Thank you, Senator. It will take us to our first issue and our first witness, which is Doctor Ryan Finnegan, Associate Research Director at the Tech Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley. Issue one is the current status of homelessness in California. Recent data and trends. And Doctor, welcome. Thank you for your participation. I think you've been, we're looking at 56 minutes or so, generally for QT, and then followed by some iterative conversation. I hope so. Please proceed when ready.

Absolutely. Thank you very much. And thanks for the opportunity to speak with you today. My name's Ryan Finnegan from the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley. For the last few years, we've been conducting research on homelessness programs and policy across California, using administrative data, interviews and ride alongs and visits with with practitioners, and interviews and visits with people experiencing homelessness and living in housing for people exiting homelessness.

So I'll just share a few of the findings from that body of research over the last few years. The first is that the federal data show that homelessness has indeed continued to rise in California. The last count of homelessness, conducted in early 2023 with published data, showed that about 181,000 people experienced homelessness on a given night across the state, most of whom were unsheltered, meaning they were living in vehicles, tents, or other places not meant for human habitation.

That's up by about 63,000 people from a decade prior. One of the key explanatory factors for why California's rate of homelessness relative to population is so much higher than in other places is our enduring shortage of affordable housing. So when we compare the rate of homelessness to population, California has the fourth highest rate out of the 50 states, and it also has the second largest gap in the number of housing units that are affordable for households with extremely Low incomes.

And so when we look across states, in states like West Virginia, which grapples with severe substance use challenges, entrenched poverty, housing is more affordable, and their homelessness is vastly lower as a result. Second, homelessness is a very racially disparate experience in the State of California. So this is a chart that shows you the rate of homelessness for each racial and ethnic group relative to population, compared to the rate of homelessness for the state overall.

And so what we're seeing here is that homelessness for black Californians is about 350% higher than the rate for the state overall. It's also much higher for native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders and indigenous people. These disparities result from systemic inequalities, both intergenerationally and differential exposure to labor market opportunities, housing market opportunities, and exposure to the criminal justice system. These disparities also intersect with other factors.

So, for example, Latinx people experience homelessness as part of a family much more commonly than people from other racial and ethnic groups, which has implications for the kinds of programs that are needed to serve them. Third, there is a clear and rising need for robust services that are tailored to people's individual circumstances.

So this chart shows that in early 2023, counts of homelessness found about 71,000 people on a given night met the criteria for chronic homelessness, which is experiencing homelessness for at least a cumulative year in the previous three, alongside the presence of a disabling condition, which includes physical disabilities, mental health challenges, and substance use issues. So this rate has increased more rapidly than the rate of homelessness overall.

But we've also found in our research that there are many interventions that have been effective at helping people experiencing chronic homelessness exit homelessness and stay housed. We've also found that services are most effective when they are tailored to the distinct circumstances that people are in. For example, families and veterans have exited homelessness programs across the state to permanent housing at much higher rates than people from other groups.

And that's in part because there are programs and resources that are dedicated to these populations, and those resources are, are proving effective. So in the time since 2010, veteran homelessness in California has dropped by 40%. And that's thanks to working in concert between federal, state and local resources together. And this is a group for whom rates of chronic homelessness and severe mental health and substance use issues can be relatively high, showing that progress is possible when resources exist.

Fourth, we have found that the reach of the homelessness system has grown substantially and continues to grow with time, thanks to investments from all levels of government, including the state. So this chart shows that there has been a sustained growth in the number of permanent supportive housing units available across the state, reaching about 75,000 units in 2023.

Permanent supportive housing has been shown to be very effective at helping people experiencing chronic patterns of homelessness, exit homelessness, and stay housed at high rates over time, and that sustained growth and permanent supportive housing is in many ways supported by essential state investments that are, or resources that are directed by the state. That includes the Low income housing tax credit, no place like home and home key, and the Veterans homelessness and Housing Prevention program.

The chart also shows that there has been a a relatively rapid increase in the supply of interim housing, also called shelter or transitional housing, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic after years of decline. That rapid increase was thanks to Project Roomkey, which very rapidly created about 15,000 new units through underused hotels and motels. Roomkey was a proven success in terms of saving lives and helping thousands of people permanently exit homelessness.

And in the years since then, state, local, and federal resources have allowed local communities to sustain this expansion of interim housing. So in 2023, there remained about 75,000 interim housing units available across the state, despite the fact that Project Roomke had largely wound down by that time.

And then I'll add in addition to interim and permanent housing, the state's administrative data show that the number of people people served by all forms of service programs, including things like street outreach and new types of homelessness prevention programs, has increased with time. In the calendar year 2022, there were about 312,000 people that had been served by homelessness programs across the state. This only includes programs that report to the state's administrative data system, which is not all programs, but it is most.

And in 2023, through the first three quarters, 300,000 people have been served by homelessness programs. Our interviews and surveys with hundreds of practitioners across the state found that homelessness funding has been most useful when it can be used flexibly and when it can be counted on to sustain programs beyond the short term. So, for example, the homelessness Housing Assistance and Prevention program, or HAPP, has been an integral component of many of the programs that are reaching people in the state's administrative data.

HAPP is important not just for funding programs that federal resources often don't, things like safe parking programs and many of the state's new tiny house sites. But they're also been crucial for filling in the gaps left by federal and local programs. So even when HAPP does not wholly Fund a program, there are many initiatives that cannot exist without that crucial funding.

Practitioners have also said that this type of funding needs to be secure past the short term so that they can commit to new programs or expanding their existing ones, including the recruitment and development of a skilled and stable workforce for meeting the needs of people participating in these programs. Practitioners are reluctant to establish a new program despite pressing needs, when they worry that participants will be dropped if the program runs out of funding.

Finally, I'll note that the state's capacity for measuring homelessness programs and evaluating what works has rapidly expanded in recent years. The Interagency Council's homelessness data integration system, or hdis, is an exceptionally powerful resource. As a researcher who's worked with homelessness data both federally and across many states, the flexibility, the detail, and the ability to connect with other sources is a remarkable tool, one that is rare among many states and certainly outpaces the power of federally collected homelessness data.

And last, in addition to these crucial data, I'll say that our research on the diverse parts of the homelessness system has also taught us the importance of thinking holistically about how homelessness programs can improve people's lives. In interviews and surveys with hundreds of people experiencing homelessness, participants have described many powerful ways that these programs have improved their lives beyond the statistics that are commonly reported in evaluative reports.

So in the absence of permanent housing opportunities, which are often outside of service provider and program operators control, participants have said that homelessness programs provide things like food and emergency healthcare that are often life savings, saving as well as important, but harder to measure, things like feelings of community and dignity. And so I encourage thinking broadly about the effectiveness of our homelessness programs, what we can measure, but also what they can accomplish in ways that are difficult to measure.

I'll stop there, and I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have.

Thank you very much, Doctor, for your work and for your participation this morning. First, maybe for the benefit of some observers, just some of the basics. Obviously, the numbers that indicate an ongoing rate increase overall within the population data set, right? What degree of correlation exists just between that and the overall population data set? To begin with, it's a very big state.

Secondly, the definition that we look at in terms of looking at chronic homelessness, as I see from your presentation notes, there's at least one year in the previous three in addition to a disabling condition. Can you expand a little bit so that folks understand what exact characteristics the population sample that we're focusing on? These folks are largely unemployed, what percentage of them are working poor that fall into unsheltered homelessness, even with families?

Can you kind of parse that out for us in terms of what we're trying to talking about in the data set? Disabling condition, what do, does that mean? What percentage? I'm guessing it's small, or people who actually are at least partially employed that still end up unsheltered or in homelessness. Tell us a little bit about more how you put parameters around the data set, and how is that relevant.

Absolutely. So in terms of the correlation between states and rates of homelessness in population, it's not exceptionally high. Some of the states with the highest rates of population are states or highest rates of homelessness or states with relatively Low populations. For example, Vermont has one of the highest rates of the country, much higher than California. That's due to a recent growth of homelessness in Vermont. So it doesn't take as much to move the needle in Vermont as it does in California.

And then, particularly when you look at housing relative to population, or housing costs relative to population, that's where a lot of the action is. So in large states like California and New York, they have high homelessness rates. But that's more of a function of the housing costs, which are connected to population than it is connected to population alone.

Within the State of California, some of the highest rates of homelessness are in relatively rural counties like Mendocino county and Humboldt County, which has the highest rate in the state. In terms of rates of chronic homelessness, this is a definition that's established by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. It is measured by service providers at the intake of a program or via a survey for the point in time count for people who are living outside of the shelter system.

Employment rates are relatively Low for people experiencing chronic patterns of homelessness. So this is typically people who have been on the street for at least a year, but it's often 35 more. But it can include people who experience repeated spells of poverty in a short, or, I'm sorry, homelessness within a short time.

So it could be somebody that's cycling in and out of like an aunt or sister's house over the course of three years, where it adds up to more than a year not being housed. Access to employment is Low.

There are many services that are dedicated to people experiencing chronic patterns of homelessness, and folks that meet these criteria are typically, typically prioritized for things like permanent housing placements, through things like HUD programs and local coordinated entry systems that put people into a queue for housing assistance, including placements and permanent supportive housing. So as a result, most folks that enter permanent supportive housing in California these days meet the criteria for chronic patterns of homelessness.

They're also often older adults who have had just more years of being alive to meet those criteria. One of the critiques in the research and practitioner communities of these definitions are that youth experiencing homelessness often don't meet the criteria simply because they haven't been alive long enough to experience homelessness in a chronic pattern and therefore have been deprioritized by some of these systems.

So there are different ways that systems try to account for the fact that not everybody is at equal risk for meeting these, but that might not correlate to what their exact needs are. Thank you.

And so I think it suggests anyway that if, with respect to the relativity of the rate of homelessness vis a vis population in any given geographic area or political subdivision rate, that we have to conclude that there are other extraneous factors that may be at play, that have a higher impact. Right, number one.

Number two, what are your thoughts about what conclusions we can draw from the fact that, generally speaking, you see an increase in the rate here in California in spite of a substantial investment in program by the state? We often hear that as a critique. My own view, and I don't want to prejudice your response, is that that's, those conclusions are yet incomplete but legitimate questions. Can you inform us a little bit about what conclusions you draw from that, from that trend?

Yeah, absolutely. I spend a lot of time thinking about that, actually. So I think of it in two ways. I think first is that the evidence of the impact is much more discernible when we look at the program outcomes for numbers of people served and the numbers of people placed into permanent housing. So while the percentage of people moving into permanent housing might appear unimpressive on its face from many shelter programs, that's largely a function of how the supply of housing has lagged behind.

It takes much longer to invest in housing development than it does to invest in a shelter program in many cases. And so shelter programs are often providing life saving access to services and safety for people. And then the rate of exit to permanent housing has slowly increased as our supply of permanent housing is also increasing. So we do see people moving to permanent housing. We see thousands every year. And that is, I think, the evidence of the state's investments.

The other way that I think about where do we look for impact is that it's like we've been on a tanker that's going in the same direction for decades. And so pushing a tanker takes more than just one single push. It takes a sustained push. And so all of our investments that we are often looking at for accountability now are some of the things that are expanding shelter systems, that are expanding access to outreach or supportive services.

But we also need to think about the upstream prevention efforts. We need to think about the access, the safety net, the living wages, the access to affordable housing. Those are longer term efforts where the state's investments will take more time to become visible. So there are particular metrics that show progress from the recent state investments, and then there are other bigger picture metrics that simply take a longer and more sustained effort to become visible.

Thank you. I'll bring it to the Subcommitee Members or other questions. Senator Niello.

Excuse me, a few questions. One that struck me, as you were speaking frequently to data, an audit recently came out where they were hampered because of insufficient data. So that's in somewhat contrast to the evidence that you've presented. What's the difference?

Yeah, great question. So I think part of the challenge with the analysis and the audit is that many outcomes for people passing through homelessness programs, particularly street outreach and interim housing programs, remain unknown. This happens when somebody does not return to a shelter program after staying there for a night, or street outreach team is not able to locate somebody again after having a period of contact with them, time where they've been entered of, into the data.

And so that is often interpreted as evidence of Low data quality. I don't necessarily dispute that we want that to improve. I think we certainly do. But I think the ability to sustain contact with somebody is also an indicator of effective services. And so I think there's maybe a difference in interpretation of what do we think think is a signal of data quality.

I think the other thing that is different, potentially, in how one might read the data, is that the coverage of the programs that are included in data like hdis for the state, is much broader than similar systems in other states.

Very few states have a synthesized collection of homelessness program data, and often that data includes a very narrow set of shelter and housing programs, and they don't include the same types of service programs and increasingly, social service programs like the CalWORKS homelessness assistance programs that are now included in hdis. So I think the net is wider, and there are different ways to interpret what is the meaning of data quality.

And then my last thought on thinking about the, what the data can and can't tell us is that part of the challenge for establishing like a cost per outcome is due to the fact that there is a complex braiding of different sources of homelessness funding into any one given program.

So, for a shelter program that relies on Hap county General funds and federal funds from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, it can be difficult to assign a price per outcome because those funds are simply blended together. And so what is the contribution of HAPP to a given housing placement from that shelter program is difficult to assign in an extremely specific way just because of the nature of the complexity of the financing.

Okay, a couple of other questions. Notice, in the sort of demographic and ethnic distribution, when you talk about the black or African American politician or accusing population, you add African. Do you mean by that current or recent generation immigrants from Africa in this or the last century?

Yeah. So these are the category labels that were assigned by the Department of Housing and Urban Development when they collected the data. So they do include, for example, first generation African immigrants into these statistics or into this category in California. That's a very small population, but it is much more relevant in places like.

Washington, DC, is that population have a very high incidence of homelessness, similar to Native African Americans or blacks.

I believe that the rates are lower, as they are for many immigrant groups, but I don't know off the top of my head, the specifics.

Okay. I just thought it was interesting that you delineated that. Now, with regard to the graph of the homelessness numbers on page two, and you speak to the cost of housing, and certainly California is a very high cost state. It's a high housing cost state, but that's not new. And yet in somewhere around before 2018, looks like 2015 or 16 or so, the numbers exploded from then on. That can't be just because of affordable housing, because we've had that problem. All right, long.

How do you explain that phenomenon?

Yeah, so the research has shown that it's often a confluence of many factors, some of which have been slow brewing. So some of them are the way that the high housing costs have intersected with other things, like declining living wages in some places, or for some segments of the labor market specifically. In some cases, it's been due to the population growth that has added to high housing costs or has accelerated upward trajectories of housing costs.

In some cases, it is intersections with things like mental health issues or substance use challenges. So those might not be the primary driver of the state's homelessness rates, but then they intersect in complex ways with high housing costs. So, for example, if living wages for service workers aren't keeping pace with housing costs, housing costs increase and people are grappling with underlying challenges, like mental health challenges.

It creates precarity for that person, where cumulatively, it winds up tipping them over into the edge, where perhaps there weren't quite as many pressures, or the collection of pressures wasn't as great before. The other thing is that when people enter homelessness, research has shown, like research from the Benioff Institute at New UCSF has shown that it often follows York, a relatively long trajectory for many people.

In some cases, there is a single precipitating event, things like a health crisis or a job loss, that can lurch somebody into homelessness immediately. But often it's things like a job loss followed by a health issue, followed by a dispute with a family Member, or marital dissolution, followed by an eviction. So there can be a long string of events where there is an underlying housing insecurity that precedes the rise in homelessness.

And then, as the factors that weigh on people accumulate, it can take off rather rapidly, and I think that aggregates upward into what the trend looks like for a state. So I think that you're right. High housing costs are certainly preceding the rise in homelessness that we've had. But I think there's been a complex storm of issues that have intersected with housing costs to create the growth that we've seen.

You paint a picture of incredible complexity relative to causations that almost makes the problem insoluble. That's not my conclusion. It's just kind of a comment. But I would add that there is a coincidence of a particular state policy here where I would agree that coincidence is not necessarily causation. But added to that plethora of factors, the point at which the numbers exploded was also the time that the state officially, through legislation, adopted housing first as our guiding policy. Do you see any correlation there?

I don't believe so. So I think that we adopted housing first in response to the growing evidence base for the effectiveness of the program, particularly for people experiencing chronic patterns of homelessness. I think that what we have seen since then is actually most of the folks who are experiencing homelessness at a given point in time are experiencing you homelessness for the first time. And so they're experiencing homelessness not because our homelessness programs aren't helping them move out of homelessness.

They're entering homelessness because they've run into a variety of issues that have disrupted their ability to hold on to housing, the most fundamental of which is simply the fact that housing is very expensive and that their jobs often cannot cover the costs of housing, and then, and any other kinds of challenges that they're running into. It's very easy to be tipped over the edge when you're hanging on so narrowly. And then I think that the adoption of housing first is a guiding principle.

It's an approach to homelessness programs that provides housing as the cornerstone for stable access to ongoing supportive services for mental health, substance use, treatment, etcetera. And that's in response to research showing that what was typically called the staircase model prior to housing first, where people complete a series of treatment programs in order to demonstrate readiness for housing, often failed, in part because compulsory treatment has not a strong evidence base for being effective.

And the other reason is that it's simply difficult to participate in treatment programs in the absence of a state stable foundation of housing. So I think that is a coincidence, and I don't think that there's a causal relationship there.

That's interesting, because you talk about such a huge array of potential causes. And yet we have one policy that absolutely correlates with the beginning of the explosion of the numbers. And you deny that that could be. Could be any particular influence on the explosion of the numbers? I'm not looking to an answer for that. It's an observation on my part. It doesn't seem reasonable to at least consider that perhaps that might be the case.

Now, you also mentioned that the number of homeless veterans has decreased dramatically, and the implication was that it was treating their circumstances. So what were the circumstances that were treated with regard to veterans that distinguishes that from other groups?

I would say that there's three factors. The first is that there's been sustained investment in producing more supportive housing units that are specifically dedicated to veterans through programs like the Veterans Housing and Homelessness Assistance program. There have also been integrated services and housing programs across levels of government. And so that includes Healthcare, social service supports, collaboration between the Veterans Administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and local and state homelessness practitioners and policies.

And the third has been sustained resources for housing subsidies through things like the HUD Vash program, the Housing and Urban Development, and Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing program, which dedicated a stream of housing vouchers to provide ongoing rental assistance specifically dedicated to veterans. And I think that's the confluence of factors that have allowed veterans to exit homelessness and remain housed stably.

Thank you. Specifically, with regard to treating people with their special circumstances, and particularly my point with regard to housing first. Before, and my comment isn't to dispute the application of housing first, it's to dispute the exclusive application of housing first. And by way of example, in terms of. Of offering treatment or assistance based upon circumstances, there is an option called recovery housing, which is the option for somebody who wants to get off drugs, and they need to be an environment where they aren't exposed to drugs.

In other words, they need a drug free housing environment. That option. Excuse me, I've got. I have a frog this morning. I'll try to get rid of it. But that. That option is not eligible for state funding because of the exclusive application of housing first. And these are people that have unique circumstances. They want help. It has to be in a certain environment.

It's very difficult to get off drugs when you are in an environment where the person next to you is using drugs, and it's just not eligible for state funding. And that's somewhat. I find that somewhat frustrating. But now, my last question. You're talking about housing. Permanent supportive house. Shelter. Permanent supportive housing, and housing that is a continuum of progression toward self sufficiency and I.

We don't see any data or attempt at data or display of data as to how successful we have been in moving a person who is homeless, chronically or otherwise, to a point not just of housing, but of a point of self sufficiency. Could you address that?

Yeah. So I think what this chart is showing is the kinds of programs that are drawing on ongoing state investments. There are many other programs that do not rely on ongoing state investments, necessarily. So one of the more successful programs that's often been used for families and people who are not experiencing chronic patterns of homelessness is rapid rehousing or time limited subsidies. These have often drawn on HUD resources or federal resources. And then many local communities have been establishing their own time limited subsidy programs.

So they are as large and as some of our biggest housing programs. They move many thousands of people out of homelessness very quickly. The model is meant to provide housing assistance in terms of searching for housing, working with landlords, paying for a security deposit, and then somewhere between six months and two years of rent, depending on the program and the person's circumstances as their incomes rise to meet the rent in the unit that they've gotten with that time limited subsidy.

There's a lot of evidence that that kind of program has been very effective and very, very effective in terms of helping families enter housing. And then they've also been very cost effective because they're a time limited investment rather than an enduring permanent subsidy. Those programs have tended to work best for families and for people who have not experienced chronic patterns of homelessness or who do not require a high level of supportive services.

And then one of the most common outcomes, particularly for families, when they exit a homelessness program, is to simply move into housing that they're renting on their own without a subsidy at all. And so that is very common, both for individuals but mainly for families. And then another common outcome is moving in with friends and family on a temporary or permanent basis and then moving into one's own housing. Ongoing.

The last thing I'll say is we don't have great data on it, but there are many moving on programs across the state. These are programs that are meant to help folks transition from permanent supportive housing to permanent housing that is living more independently without the same high level of services, and that could be with some form of ongoing housing subsidy, or it could be moving into housing that one pays for through one's own income. So the range of outcomes is quite diverse.

Permanent support of housing is the most effective for the rising number of people with chronic patterns of homelessness. But outcomes for people without chronic patterns of homelessness are diverse. There have also been many successes for people with chronic patterns of homelessness through things like time limited subsidies, paired with a caseworker that visits maybe a couple times a week, something like that. So the range of outcomes is quite diverse, much more so than is reflected in that slide.

I would just suggest that any attempt to assess the success of our homelessness programs has got to have some component of measuring how successful we are to moving people truly successfully out of homelessness. I get what you, basically what you said was that we are assessing the continuum, if you will, of assistance to people that are homeless. And so those are the relevant data points. And once they do become self sufficient, they're sort of not part of the system. So we're not measuring that specifically.

But I would just success, I would just suggest that that has got to be the ultimate assessment. And if we don't really know how many people we are successfully getting to self sufficiency, then we really don't know the true effectiveness. To measure the data with regard to shelter, supportive housing, and permanent housing without adding that component of self sufficiency, is not measuring truly the success of the programs.

I suggest that as an academic who's tracking this stuff, you might disagree with that, but I respectfully suggest that as part of the universe of assessment, the perhaps the most important aspect of the universe of assessment, and I'll just note.

That the state data do include those kinds of outcomes, and it was included in the statewide assessment that was conducted recently.

Smallwood-Cuevas

Thank you, Mister chair, and thank you so much for this really in depth with data analysis and presentation. I appreciated the questions and the conversations. And I have one that struck me is the veterans data, and it speaks somewhat to what Senator Niello was getting at with the success of these programs and how those programs are tracked and monitored.

I'm curious, is there, and I understand you're saying that the state has a very broad sort of methodology that it's using, looking at all of the complexity of homelessness, and so therefore our outcomes are identified differently. But I'm curious, is there, in your experience, does that infrastructure, the federal state, and looking narrowly at veterans, is there something to learn about how that data is tracked and what is measured? Or is it just the size and sort of narrowness of the scope? Yeah, I'm just curious.

Yeah, that's a good question. And I think there are certainly much to be learned from the degree of coordination that exists in the veterans programs in ways that other programs could. Could implement as well. In terms of the data and the tracking.

One of the difficulties for the data tracking is that it works well for the veterans programs, in part because the veterans programs are largely self contained, in the sense that there's perhaps a single source of funding for that one program, and that differs from many of the other homelessness programs for non veterans, where there are different funding sources that have different reporting requirements and systems.

And so I think that integration for the veterans programs is part of what allows its data tracking to be relatively high the other. So I think their data are good.

But then, from the perspective of the state and our analysis of the state's data, it is only partially integrated with the state data, and that partly depends on the providers, the individual providers of the veteran programs, because HUD maintains a parallel data system for its veteran programs, as does the VA, relative to the mainstream homelessness programs, they overlap in many cases, but not in all. So we don't always see the same data points in the veteran data that we do in the statewide data.

And so that makes it sometimes difficult to understand, if we're getting differing data points, what the source of the difference might be.

Yeah, I just think, are there lessons to be learned from being able to look at something that has a little more consolidated, where you can get your arms around it and sort of see what are the lessons learned that could be extracted from there and applied to the way we're tracking? And, I mean, to be able to report a 40% decrease in homelessness is a very concrete data set in terms of, like, measurement of success. And so I'm just curious how that moved forward.

So my other question, and it goes back to the chair's question about the sort of demographics, within the demographics of homelessness, what is the working homelessness data, if you're working in terms of people or families that have full time workers that are also finding themselves in the cycle of homelessness, temporary housing, shelter system. Just curious, is there a sense of, like, where workers are? And I say this as we know.

I mean, I tell the story about South La often, in that it was once a booming industrial town, and all of those little bungalows, like, grew up in terms of home ownership around the industrial good jobs, unionized jobs that existed within south central, second behind Detroit, in manufacturing cars, for example.

And then you fast forward, and when you look at that slide that has the timeline, sort of the fallout of that shift from industrial to service, the Low wages and benefits, we see this spike in the unhoused and the insecurity of housing.

So I'm wondering how many workers, full time workers, who maybe don't have the mental health issues, maybe don't have the substance abuse disorder issues, but simply are struggling through the economy of their jobs, not paying enough to cover housing, what does that number look like in the state?

It's an excellent question, and I don't know the number. Our research suggests that it is relatively high. Part of the reason it is hard to know what the number is is that the point and count time data, they track people who are experiencing homelessness on a given night and visibly so, either in a shelter or outside. And it's extremely difficult, especially where somebody's living in a garage or doubled up or in a vehicle. That's very easy to miss.

The other main source of data are the homelessness program data. Often people who are experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity are not necessarily interacting yet with the same homelessness programs that report these kinds of data. So things like shelter programs or street outreach programs. And so we often miss a lot of the folks who aren't yet reaching out for the homelessness services, but they might be receiving.

Other safety net programs like Calfresh, Medi Cal, are working and maybe cycling in and out of homelessness in a less enduring way. But I will say among homelessness programs that serve people in the situations like that, like families who are working, somewhat insecure, rapid rehousing or time limited subsidy programs serve folks in that group. Like those are the majority of folks that those programs serve.

Another type of program that serves them often are safe parking sites where somebody who might be staying in a vehicle, often for a very short time, just needs a place to park and perhaps access sanitation services or any kind of case management or job search assistance. But often those are folks that are already working and in the situation that you described who just need a place to park for a week or two while they're between housing situations. So our research suggests it is very common.

It is a very large number of people. When you look at how many people for whom do they ever experience something like that? But because it often happens so rapidly and people cycle in and out of it at any given point in time, like at any given night, that might not be. Most people appreciate that.

And it also goes back to this, the need to sort of be forecasted and being on top of those different programs and ways to think about how we see those individuals and those families and begin to recognize that that is sort of the hidden pipeline into our overall homelessness numbers and the reason why we see these dramatic increases. My other question goes to page slide number three, and I want to talk a little bit about the extraordinary over representation of black, African American and API communities.

I see the percentage, these increases. I'm curious, what are the population numbers and what, what is the disparity here? So when we talk about in the state black and African Americans, and we talk about API, what percentage are they of the state population overall and what does this dramatic increase mean? I say that to say, you know, in my county, black communities are about 7% of La County. When you look at the count, the homelessness count, right. We're looking at 40%.

And I think sometimes of homelessness are black. Right. Of the homeless are black. And so my question is, when we see those kind of disparities, what is that doing to such a small community? 40% of a community that is 60%.

Right.

It's like, okay, but when a community is just 7% and they have a 40% homelessness rate, can you talk a little bit about what does that indicate about what is happening in that community? And in your look at services and funding, do we have sort of community specific, culturally competent tools that are sort of getting at that genocidal? I would say in some instances, percentages.

Yeah. Yeah. So I think the percentages that you noted are very similar to those statewide. So, for example, across the State of California, approximately 67% of the state's population is black, and approximately 30, some percent of people counted experiencing homelessness as black, the similar percentage among people in the program data. So roughly 37% identified as black in homelessness programs. It is also higher for families. So black families experience homelessness more commonly than people and families from other groups.

And I think that there's a few things in response to your question. I think one is that in terms of the data, part of what we're seeing with the, the split between families relative to single adults is that there's a broader kind of systemic insecurity for communities of color that make it easier for people from families to get pushed into homelessness relative to non Hispanic white families, for example.

So those families might have more additional supports to draw on, including their own family Members savings, and so other things that make family homelessness less common. Whereas for folks from, like white, non Hispanic communities, single adults that enter homelessness more often, it's often after a longer string of factors that push them into homelessness. Whereas for people coming from communities of color, it maybe doesn't take as many pushes or nudges to get pushed into homelessness.

The other thing with the disproportionate rates is that it not only means that there are more people from the community that are experiencing homelessness, but that more people in the community are connected to people who are experiencing homelessness. And so that means that the impact, like the secondary impact, like one might think of it as, radiates much more thoroughly through a community when the rate is so disproportionate.

But it also means that when there are forms of mutual assistance and aid, that there is a much higher need coming from a smaller pool of people able to provide that assistance. And so that's one of the other reasons that there's this disproportionate rate, is the way that community resources are affected. And then the last thing I'll say about the need for the culturally competent services.

I think that is, in part, what many of the state programs have been pushing local programs to local service providers and practitioners to work toward. As an example, the HAPP program, as part of its application process, has been requiring racial equity plans and assessments where local continuums of care, the homelessness planning organizations have been assessing their data for racial equity in terms of who experiences homelessness, who enters programs and what are their outcomes, and then identifying action steps to take in order to remedy those.

So one prominent example that many have been following is the community. Sorry, the specific name, I'm forgetting it, but the lived experience of black people experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles, particularly addressing things like disparate rates of exiting permanent supportive housing. So taking very thorough assessments of particular programs and outcomes, and then identifying the resources and program changes that are needed to address them.

Would you say the HAPP program? Because that's the one program that I know that does have some direct correlation to these dramatic disproportionality representation in terms of black folks in homelessness and API communities. Is Hap the only real Fund that provides those resources, that is actually looking and using a racial equity lens and the racial disparity lens to target these sort of acute statistics and outcomes.

So I think this, there are various programs that call for attention to equity and an application of an equity lens in different ways. So some of the federal programs, through some of the affirmatively furthering fair housing requirements, require an equity statement or an equity plan, including community input and recommendations for how to apply the funds or implement the programs. I think one of the other benefits for the way that HAPP does it is because HAPP is blended with so many other programs.

There's a sense in which the equity efforts through HAPP spill over into the way that other funds are applied. So, as an example, if a shelter program is run using both HAPP funds and a county General Fund, then the application of the HAPP funds is meant to follow that equity plan, which means that that application of county General funds that corresponds to it is also in alignment with that plan.

I've heard from many providers in my district about HAPP and how those are the very few resources that really do travel with homelessness funding to address some of these racial inequities and disparities. So thank you for that, for that explanation. The other question I had to do with, with this question that you talked, you mentioned Project Roomkey and COVID, and how we've seen some great sort of. Some growth in the ways in which those dollars are serving folks.

And it made me think about a conversation I had with a fellow Member and their, there's another study and audit coming out that is, you know, again, I think, missing the mark in terms of the complexity of homelessness, where all of the state funding is sort of being calculated to show that, you know, we've spent about $2 million per homeless person. And given that we shouldn't see homelessness, I just wonder, what would you, how would you respond to that kind of an analysis?

Because I think what you've laid out here is, one, the broadness of what we have to really investigate and then try to quantify and qualify the difference and change that these dollars are making on the ground and how difficult that is. So I wonder if someone says, hey, we've spent all this money and we've given $2 million for every homeless person at this point, how would you respond to that, as someone that's studying these numbers and have been tracking some of these trends for some time?

Yeah, I think it's a challenging thing for folks to try to connect those different dots, because there are so many dots, and so any given number is often embedded within a broader range of processes that produced it.

I think in terms of tracking, like, dollars spent per person, part of what is difficult to observe or to know is what would be the difference between running a program that meets somebody's needs that are often very specialized and require, like, skilled support relative to some alternative that that person didn't participate in. So it can often be hard to know, was this money going to be more effective in a different way than the outcome that we saw here?

And I think that the other thing that's challenging in terms of, like, a number per person is that it's often a systemic or collective challenge that requires collective responses. So, for example, a number of dollars per person participating in a program like Homekey, or a number of people housed through home key. There are many things that home key does above and beyond the individual people that were housed through the program, and it's difficult to quantify the value of those kinds of programs.

As one example for Homekey, in the interim side, there are many people that cycle through the program and then move on to housing on their own. Similarly, people living in the permanent units often move on to their own permanent housing. So the number of people housed at any one time isn't a complete picture. And so the dollars spent on home key per people housed at 1.0 in time doesn't capture everybody that benefited from the program as another benefit.

The way that home key pushed providers and local governments and housing authorities to work together in new ways has spilled over into additional program efficiencies and new kinds of relationships. That's one example. We've heard from many local governments and service providers that through doing a home key project, they were able to work together with their housing authority in new ways that spawned into new programs.

And so if you take the amount of money that was spent on home key as just one example, divided by the number of people served by it, it's not including those additional kinds of benefits. And then the last thing that's missed is what did we not spend per person do because we spent what we did. So what did we not spend on public works, on emergency response services, on emergency room services, and healthcare, versus having a primary care physician?

Those kinds of studies are extremely difficult because it's often hard to know what we did not spend. But in many of the studies that have been conducted on specific, smaller scale interventions, things like permanent supportive housing projects for people that are high utilizers of emergency services, often show that the savings from emergency services vastly offsets, if not exceeds, the costs of the permanent supportive housing.

So I think numbers like we've spent collectively x dollars per person individualizes what is a broader system of things in a way that's hard to capture the full range of outcomes.

Very much for your presentation and for your responses.

Thank you, Senator. Thank you, Doctor Finingan. Appreciate your presentation and participation, and that's been very, very helpful and informative. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. That will take us to issue number two, which is the status and future of homelessness related grant programs administered by the California Interagency Council on Homelessness in the Housing and Community Development Department would like to welcome our witnesses, Meghan Marshall, Executive officer, California Interagency Council on Homelessness, and Sydney Bennett, Director of Research at the Interagency Council. Welcome to both of you. I think we're looking for ballpark 56 out of each of you, or however you want to part, step up, and as you get settled, feel free to proceed when ready.

Thank you, Chair Padilla, and thank you, Doctor Finnegan, in partnership of Terner center and all of our academic partners who are a crucial component to the work of the Interagency Council on Homelessness. We are a relatively small, relatively unknown entity under the business Consumer Services Housing Agency and so truly rely and could not produce the things that we do without our academic colleagues. So very much appreciate that presentation.

Again, my name is Megan Marshall, and I have the honor of serving as the Executive officer for the California Interagency Council on Homelessness, which I'll now refer to as Calico. Prior to my March 2023 appointment, I served nearly 20 years in local government, including in the counties of Sacramento, Yuba, and Placer, all of whom have been recipients of at least one of the programs that Cal IcH administers, all of which you'll hear about today.

Before we continue our presentation slides, though, I'd like to just thank this body for the opportunity to present. I believe it'll underscore for those in this room Cal ICH's official response to the April 9 release of the California State Auditor's report. So very much appreciate this opportunity. As this body read in Cal ICH's audit response, we had efforts underway in advance of that audit, in fact, in advance of the request of the audit to address the areas that aligned actually with CSA's recommendations.

So with that, I will now move us to slide two, or ask my Director of data and research to move us to slide two. Thank you, and I apologize for the font. This is incredibly small. So HAPP has undergone many changes since it was authorized and statute in 2019, and in fact is now on its fifth round. Arguably, it is the state's most flexible source of funding to address homelessness.

HAPP is allocated to big cities, counties, and continuums of care, also referred to as cocs, based on a formula driven by the point in time counts. It's very important to note that jurisdictions were responsible for determining which eligible use categories were in need for their respective communities. This was not something that Cal IcH dictated to jurisdictions to any of the eligible applicants. Their HAPP plans are reflective these of their community needs. So, to put it more simply, each HAPP plan is unique to that community's needs.

Also important to note is that HAPP, while it's considered one time funding, are multi year initiatives. As are indicated there on the slide, HaP one was awarded to jurisdictions in 2020 with a sunset date of 2025. I won't give you all of the dates for the respective rounds, but take us down to half five, which will be administered by our sister Department of Housing and Community Development in this next fiscal year. That program will sunset in 2028.

Tribal HHAP. If I can give a quick comparison between HHAP and tribal. HHAP is also flexible. It is available to any federally recognized tribe in California and tribal technical assistance provider. I'm sure this body is aware there's 109 federally recognized tribes in the State of California. Unlike HHAP, Tribal HHAP is a competitive based application. And so that was made available through set asides in HAPP round beginning first and HHAP round three. And that's a $20 million set aside for tribes to competitively apply for those funds.

They are not like cities, counties and continuums of care in the way that they are not required to enter in their program data into hmis. And we can certainly discuss that a bit later in the presentation. Again, these are multi year awards. The most recent round of tribal Hap will become available, will announce awards later, I believe, in the month of May, and that will expire in 2028.

I consistently reference the multi year awards to say that it's very challenging to, number one, collect data for programs that are in progress and to evaluate their effectiveness. So just would like to call that out. And Sydney, if you can, take me to slide three. Thank you. So HaP, again is non competitive. Those are based on formulas driven by the point in time count. Cal ICH currently administers two projects that are competitive and we refer to them as demonstration projects.

The first is the encampment resolution Fund, also known as ERF. Unlike HAPP, ERF is available to cities of any size, which I will say is incredibly unique for state investments. We've seen unprecedented applications and awards made for cities who traditionally are not eligible for state funding to address local encampment needs within their communities. Again, awards are made based on competitive applications. It's incredibly broad in terms of eligible use categories, again, driven by the awarded jurisdiction.

So Cal ICH has not dictated to these grantees how they will address their local needs. The eligible use categories are there as guidance. The local jurisdictions who are awarded have the ability to say, this is our local need, which we Know City of Oroville is going to be very different, for example, from the City of Los Angeles, and how they address those needs are unique to those communities. These are also multi year projects.

Again, I won't belabor the point, but we'll say it's incredibly challenging to collect data for projects that are in progress and to evaluate them until they've completed their lifecycle. We are currently. I'll take us to the very last bullet point on ERF. We are in ERF three r. I believe we're hoping to announce awards today. Very excited for that. Those projects will go funded through 2027, and that takes me to our Family Homelessness Challenge grant program, also known as FHC.

Again, very flexible funding made available to cities of any size, counties and continuums of care based on a competitive application. Eligible use categories are incredibly flexible as well, but meant to address family homelessness within a specific community. These are also multi year awards. The unique thing here is that to be eligible for FHC two, you must have been an awardee in FHC one, but FHC two is still a competitive application based on your outcomes from your FHC one programming.

And so with that, before I turn it over to our Calh Director of data and research, Cindy Bennett, I just want to take an opportunity to acknowledge the tremendous work that our data and research division has done. It is a very new division in Cal ICH, respectively. Putting in perspective that CALC was created in 2016, the Division of Data and Research only began in 2021, and it was not until this fiscal year this division was fully staffed.

So these are folks who are responsible for the entirety of data and research analysis for the state's investments in housing and homelessness. So I think a testament to not just Sydney's leadership as our Director of data and research, but certainly to the commitment of Cal ICH to continue to improve upon and ensure that we have robust and accurate data to help drive communities towards solving homelessness. So with that, I'll turn it over to Sydney Bennet.

Thank you, chair Padilla, and the Committee for the Opportunity to present today. I'm going to run through the slides pretty quickly for the sake of time, and then I'm happy to come back to anything and provide more information if you all have questions. So, as Megan mentioned, the homeless data integration system, or HDIS, was only first launched midway through 2021, creating the most comprehensive data system available on the provision of homelessness services in California and the associated outcomes.

HGS is the only data management system of its kind nationally, and the data is so much more detailed than what's collected at the federal level. ACS is a compilation of data collected by the 44 local homelessness response systems, or continuums of care, and that data then gets aggregated at the state level. Cal ICH is responsible for validating and processing that data, and we conduct that process quarterly to ensure we have up to date information that's entered by the service providers across the the state.

At the highest level, the data in HGIs includes data on the projects serving people experiencing homelessness. So that can range from the bed capacity. If we're talking about a housing or shelter project, the location, the types of services provided statewide. And then we also have detailed demographic data on the people accessing services in a community. So that includes race and ethnicity, gender, disability status, age, and so forth.

And we do have that data at the client level, which means when we're talking about racial equity analysis, we can get really detailed. So we could look just at youth, and then we could disaggregate that by race and gender and so forth. And then we also have data about each enrollment in a housing and service program. So we could see if a client or a family is moving from shelter into permanent housing. We could see a year later if someone's returning to the homelessness response system.

So we just have this huge inventory of data to start looking at the program outcomes. We've been discussing HMIS systems, which is what gets aggregated in hdis has traditionally only been a federal system. So prior to California really investing in our data infrastructure and in hdis, we only had data on programs that were funded by HUD and their federal partners.

HAPP is actually the first California program to require data entry into hmis, and therefore hdis, and we've now expanded that to a whole host of state programs, which I'll be talking about in a minute. And then I also included some of the providers who are not required to enter data into hmis. So this has come up a few times earlier in the presentation, but those providers who are not receiving government funding often would not be included in our data.

And then there are a couple other exceptions as well. Data quality is obviously of the utmost importance to Cal ICH, and it's really a shared role in assuring data quality across our local partners at the continuums of care and then the stateside. So the continuums of care are responsible for local data quality in their CoC. This is a HUD requirement. They have local data quality management plans.

They are the ones closest to the service providers and really know that data, and so they're responsible for ensuring the data they submit to Cal ICH is accurate. Of course. We also then check that data on our end and also strive to provide technical assistance to our continuums of care. We have a huge range in data capacity across the state, as you can imagine, working with small, rural continuums of care all the way through the four cocs that make up La County.

And so Cali CH supports their work and is expanding our technical assistance provision there. But we also, just, when we take in the data, we look at if there's any outliers in the data. We make sure the data complete in the correct format and that we can have accurate data to report on. And then if we do find any errors, that's when we'll reach out to a continuum of care and request that data be corrected.

And we find that our cocs very quickly make any data corrections, and we can incorporate that into our next set of data. HGS data is a powerful tool to be used to prevent and end homelessness in California, and I'll provide a couple examples of how our work is already doing this. But we think of hdis as a tool for measuring our progress towards preventing and ending homelessness. So that includes the work of our state action plan for preventing and ending homelessness.

And then we also use this data, as has come up a few times, but locals use it in their Hap applications as well. We also use the data to analyze disparities in who's accessing homelessness response services, and to track our progress towards closing disparities, not only by race and ethnicity, but by age, gender for different special populations as well.

And then we're also starting to move into having the ability to analyze the effectiveness of state funded homelessness programs, as those are now just starting to be entered into hdis. And so here's an example I wanted to share about how we're looking at state funded homelessness programs. You all may be familiar with Assembly Bill 977, which required, beginning in 2023, for a series of state funded homelessness programs to enter data into hmis.

Cal achieve is the technical assistance provider for the other state departments in this work. And so there are currently 14 state programs that are currently or in the process of entering data into hmis, and those span six different state departments, and they require data entry to be in a consistent format. And we require grantees to use a coding system so we can say this program was funded by the CDSS funding stream. This is a home key project.

This is HAPP, so we can start having that insight into which clients are being served by which state funding sources. This month, Cal IcH has rolled out dashboards to our first set of administering state departments that provides really detailed data on outcomes for their program, as well as the demographics of client served. So I have a screenshot on the side that's just sample data as an example, but you can see that provides data by race and ethnicity, household structure, age and gender.

And I can't make this work in the static format, but if you actually click on one of the bars like age group, it will make all the other graphics show just for that age group. And we have heard just in this first look, the departments have had that this is really so much more detailed than the data they've ever had on their programs before. And we feel like we're just starting to unleash this ability to track outcomes for state funded homelessness programs.

And then the other example I want to share is the California system performance measures. They're listed up on the slides, and I won't go through each one for the sake of time, but these are metrics that Cal ICH has developed. Really understand if our homelessness response systems are working as a whole. So we know that we talked about how there's graded funding, there's different state departments funding this work, federal, local funding sources. And the system performance measures really strive to look at.

Are those all working together to better serve people experiencing homelessness? So not for just a single program at a time. And so these are kind of the outcomes we, we're focused on. Our Hap grantees look at the California spms by race and ethnicity in their applications to ensure that we're taking actions to close those disparities. But two, I'll just point out is that we are, of course, tracking exits to permanent housing.

We know homelessness only ends when someone is permanently housed, and then we are also looking at of those who exit to permanent housing if they are returning, returning to the homelessness response system. So, of course, it's really important that our housing placements are sustainable. And so that's one way with hcs that we are able to look at if someone's moving towards self sufficiency or if they've sustained that housing, whether it's subsidized or unsubsidized.

And I've included data for the last two fiscal years as well in the slides for you to take a look at. And then we do have that data broken out by continuum of care and for various subpopulations as well. And then I'll end talking about the future and what's next for HGIs and some of the work we have in progress.

We continue to work on improving the data quality in the local HMIS systems because we know HGIs data hinges on having high quality data collected at the local level. So that includes everything from training to. We're actually building out a more automated tool to check data as it comes in. And then we are also supporting our locals with analyzing their performance data. Not every locality in consumer of care has a huge data team, right? Especially the smaller ones.

So we're really trying to make taking data and using it to drive outcomes as easy as possible for our local partners. We are also very focused on resources for our state partners. So we are working on ensuring there's compliance with AB 977, that we really are collecting this statewide data across all of our grantees. We are also helping our state partners analyze outcomes through the dashboards I've shown.

And then we are also very excitingly piloting interagency data sharing with our partners at the Health and Human Services Agency. And we hope that through data sharing with our state partners, we're able to get that broader picture of inflow into the homelessness response system and outcomes after we only see at Calich that period where someone is either experiencing or at imminent risk of homelessness and accessing services. But there are other state entities that have other, you know, pieces of the picture under their purview.

And so we'll be working to start aggregating and linking that data. And then we're also working on implementing two Senate bills, 914 and 918, which will really dig into the data and outcomes for specific populations, unaccompanied youth, unaccompanied women and survivors of domestic violence and so similar. And building on the performance measures we already have, we're really thinking about what outcomes and metrics are appropriate for those populations and how their needs differ from the other populations we serve.

So that's just a snapshot of where we're heading on the data side in the next few years. But the system is very new and so a lot of work ahead.

Thank you for that, Director, and I appreciate the comprehensive sketch and obviously extremely valued. Just bring it back. A couple of questions that kind of focus on both impact and efficacy on the administrative side and with an eye towards the budget constraints situation we're in, both towards how do we make the expenditures more impactful over a longer period of time in light of revenue constraints and also thinking about better.

So particularly on the administrative and on ERF and on family homelessness challenge applications have we, you know, that is, you know, all types of varied applicants qualify or have the opportunity to apply for funding.

And often I see, based on cities and counties and some elements of the continuum of care, that there is obviously an opportunity for overlap, I know, to sort of bring it back to experiences in regional government and local government with community development block grant funding, because it tells you how old I am.

Where on the application side, we came up with administrative regulations that tried to reduce duplicity, tried to reduce redundancy, where you could have a city both apply as a city and as part of a county package, and also as an element of continuum of care. And you had three different pots focusing for the same programs and overlapping, and then that has a negative impact on potentially the utility of those funds and the reach of those funds.

In ways, have we looked at ways to look on the administrative end policies with regard to applications that are specifically designed to prevent duplicity and redundancy and overlap with an eye towards maximizing existing funds? Can you speak to that first?

Sure. So I will say first that ERF, again, the legislative intent was that it is available to jurisdictions, cities of any size, counties and cocs. Unlike HAPP, which is very prescriptive in terms of who is eligible, there are portions of the application that are weighted to encourage, in the final scoring of an ERF application that are weighted to encourage collaboration, jurisdictionally speaking, for projects that, of course are on the state right of way.

There is a requirement that they submit a letter of support from Caltrans, but there is no legislative statutory requirement for applicants to coordinate amongst themselves, although there are encouragements in the scoring process.

I'm wondering if out loud, if in fact that a legislative prescription is in fact required, or whether there's latitude in implementing, to encourage and or require or give priority to collaboratives that submit collectively as co applicants in a way that maximizes the impact of this funding. I'm just thinking that. But I mean, obviously, when we're looking at a number of different solutions, right. Thinking about those things that way, I think is important. Secondarily, I'm sure probably everyone's aware that. At least I'm aware through media.

As I said, governor's office announced today that we're going to do some accountability unit expansion in the Department. I know there's a transition with respect to these programs that's happening, but, you know, I'd love to know some thoughts about how, what that might look like, certainly in the data conversation.

And then secondly, one of the key obligations of the budget committees in each house, and certainly this sub, is to be looking at ways to address the constrained scenario that we're in, and they're, by the very nature of how particularly Hap rounds are administered, there's a lot of funding yet to be flowing and will be flowing even through this cycle.

And so, you know, hypothetically, and I want to emphasize that, but with respect to round six, for example, if we were to push that out a calendar year or delay that round in terms of timing of expenditure, when that might be actually allocated there would still be funding flowing from earlier rounds that would still be being implemented.

I'd love to know some thoughts about what programmatic impact that may or may not have as one particular opportunity to look at, look at lessening that impact in the short term. So those two things with respect to the Go's proposal on accountability unit, and then looking at the conversation we're going to need to have around round six and the very nature of how those funds are administered.

Sure. I'll start first with the accountability unit, as that does not. It's not something that exists or will exist within Cal Ich. And so I believe we have the next agenda item. Our sister Department of Housing and Community Development will be joining me up. I'm sure they'd be happy to offer their thoughts on that question.

But they will be up here. We will ask them.

So we refer to ourselves as Marshall and Kirkby. They are the two megans, not to be confused with one another, but within Calic and HCV. So not to dodge the question at all, chair, just to say that that's not something that exists, exist within Cal ICH. However, Cal ICH will continue to support HCD as it does all of our Council Member departments and agencies with data. We're statutorily obligated to do so.

And so, however, the accountability unit is developed and whatever data they are in need of to ensure success of these programs as they transition, Cal ICH will support in those efforts.

And I appreciate it. You understand the question was, in light of the fact that you've been administering the program and they transferred, and you might have an informed opinion about that accountability expansion would look like, regardless of the fact that you're not going to be directly responsible after the transfer. To clarify, there's no confusion about the role.

I appreciate that.

So anyway, with that, I will ask my other colleagues if they have a set of questions. Senator Smallwood-Cuevas

Thank you so much for the presentation. I really appreciate the scale of the work that you have to do on a daily basis. One, I wanted to just check on this action plan. What's the status of it as you look at implementing the audit recommendations? And then I have a couple more questions.

Yeah, I will say we're very happy to have a new secretary, Tameka Moss, join BC as well as co chair of Cal ICH. She's not new to Cal ICH's council work. She was a prior Member as well, and so we're very happy to have her leadership. We had our last council meeting on March 27, where the majority of the three hour meeting was centered around the overhaul and reimagining of the statewide action plan.

To date, the statewide action plan to prevent and end homelessness has consisted of a readout of sorts of its Council Member departments and agencies. Current investments in homelessness has not been so much a forward thinking tool or tool to measure Calich's progress against its 19 initial statutory obligations. I will say again, though, work was underway to begin that reimagining of the action plan in advance of the audit.

And so from now until January, which is when we're hoping to adopt a new action plan which will, again, this will be the first time. This is not an annual action plan, which from an evaluation standpoint is very challenging. And so this will be a three year action plan with a variety of new elements, including our measurement against our ability to meet our 19 statutory obligations.

So we have Sydney Brother Division, I guess in this case is overseen by Cody Zieger, who is our Director of statewide policy. His team is holistically dedicated to the work of the council, which is driven by the statewide action plan. And so we have a very robust team there that is focusing holistically again on that endeavor.

That update, and my office would love to stay in touch around the outcomes and the phases that are going to be laid out in that work. You mentioned the program, .

Senator I apologize. She'll just suspend for 1 second to the sergeants. If we could ask our folks in the hall to realize their voices are carrying into the hearing rooms. And I'm not super old, but I'm old enough to where I'm struggling a little bit. My apologies, Senator. Smallwood. We quavered, but if we could just get a message out to the folks in the hall, tone it down a little bit as I'm like halfway across.

The table trying to listen to questions. I appreciate that.

Thank you for that, Mister chair. And I'll try to speak a little louder. You talked about the programs that you're looking at for domestic violence survivors and trying to figure out ways to look at some of the disparities of that population within the overall homelessness, which I think is phenomenal. I don't know. I'm sure you were here during the previous presentation where we just looked at the rate of homelessness in black communities and the exponential sort of growth of the problem in that community.

Thank you.

Are there funding dollars that are dedicated in a. And I'm trying to think in a proportional way that focuses on sort of the disparities within the disparity. And the reason I ask that is because I think about. We talked about this dip in veteran homelessness of 40%, which is great. Right. But you have one community that represents 30% of homelessness. And to me, if you could figure out what's happening in that community, you take a crisis to sort of another level. Right.

It becomes a severe problem, but maybe not crisis level, but yet I'm not sure, you know, how do you determine what are the specialty programs that are dedicated to these kinds of disparities, like victims of or survivors of domestic violence, like black communities? And is there some dedicated investments that you're seeing being earmarked, particularly for the black community, because it is so overrepresented in both local and the state numbers?

Sure. So I will say for Cal ICH's current investments and HHAP ERf and family homelessness challenge, there's not a special carve out for, for race or ethnic categories. However, again, local communities are not just encouraged but required to develop their local planning and submission for their intentions to utilize these dollars based on their local need.

And so there are communities of example that call out exactly the disparities that were discussed in the earlier presentation, utilizes those plans as examples to communities where we are aware of disparities based on data, but perhaps it's not reflected in the HHAP plan.

And, you know, we have these laws that now make targeted diversity programs illegal. Right. But, you know, I was just wondering, in terms of the numbers, once a community tips into a disparity that is so dramatic, 364% higher than others, like, where are there triggers for. Okay, we need to sort of arrest this disparity that is growing, but it sounds like there isn't anything that's in place now, correct?

I'm not aware. As it relates to housing and homelessness investments from the state, I'm not aware of a trigger that exists. Thank you very much. Wanted to clarify that.

Before I go to Senator Niello. I just wanted to come back because there was a second part to my earlier question with respect to round six, and I want to give you an opportunity to respond to that. zero, I'm sorry, Senator. We'll come back to you if you could.

If you wouldn't mind repeating the second part of your question.

We were talking about how the a HAPP funding is actually administered and how it flows out. And, you know, there's going to be a conversation around the next round or not, and what that impact looks like, what the demand side would look like.

And one of the conversations that may take place is whether we would look at around six, but we would delay that in terms of any approved expenditure plan for a 12 month period or third year cycle, because there would still be earlier round funding still being implemented or drawn down. And, you know, the situation the Legislature finds itself in is extremely constrained scenario. Right. And so I wanted to get your reaction to that potential concept.

If there's impacts, potentially programmatically, that, you know, we're not, we might not think about or not see or if it's something that merits some further conversation, given the fact of that, how these funds are currently administered.

Sure. So I'll start first by saying that we do have a number of jurisdictions. In fact, there's only been four jurisdictions for Hap round four who've been eligible for the second half of their disbursement. And so while these dollars are allocated to those jurisdictions, they must show proof of meeting progress towards their uniquely identified goals for their respective communities, and they must have met their expenditure requirement for the first half of that disbursement.

And so out of all of our contractors, we only have four who are eligible for the second half of Hap round four. This is not inclusive of what will go out for HaP five. I do know that we have some folks from cities, I believe, a county organization, certainly a tribal organization, who will be speaking later in the agenda. I would encourage them to offer their thoughts on the potential impacts for their respective jurisdictions. For haps six.

I'll turn it to Senator Niello for his questions. I'm going to come back to Senator Smallwood Cuevas. She had additional questions. Senator Niello.

The Auditor's report spoke to a problem with the availability of data. You spent a great deal of time in your report talking about the reporting of an accumulation of data. There seems to be something of a disconnect there.

Yeah, I will say the Auditor's report was very specific to the Hap rounds 1 and 2, which much of those allocations and program reports predated hdis. And so we provided that context, I will say, in our official audit response, but it would attribute that to the disconnect.

As you point out, I haven't seen your official audit response.

It seems many folks have not, Senator Niello. So, yeah, it is publicly available. It is attached to the Auditor's report, but I am certainly happy to provide that to this body.

I think it would be wise of you to distribute that specifically to each Legislature legislative office, as the original audit was.

I would agree. Thank you for that recommendation. I appreciate it.

On the chart that talks to the spms 2122-2223 in terms of the numbers, the people experiencing homelessness for the first time, and then the number of people exiting homelessness. Homelessness to permanent housing. First of all, would the exiting to permanent housing, do you define that as successfully exiting homelessness and becoming self sufficient, even if there's some subsidy to the housing?

I'll turn it over to Sydney to answer that.

So for the exits to permanent housing, that can include an exit, that's either within the homelessness response system. So let's say someone's experiencing chronic homelessness, has a disability, they may exit to a housing project that provides kind of that additional level of support, and now they're permanently housed. And by our and HUD's definitions, no longer experiencing homelessness. That also includes many exits that are entirely outside of the homelessness response system. So someone moving into their own rental unit, someone moving in with friends and family.

So it's kind of the whole range of outcomes as long as someone is permanently housed. So that wouldn't include kind of interim housing or shelter. It needs to be somewhere where that client could stay indefinitely and is no longer experiencing homelessness. In terms of the people experiencing homelessness for the first time, we touched on this, but our data is all on people who are actually accessing services while experiencing homelessness.

So you'll see an increase in the number of people accessing services while experiencing homelessness as well as for the first time. And we believe this to be due to the state's investments in expanding our homelessness response system. So we believe many of the people here were already experiencing homelessness, but had no ability to access services. And so we do, what we do see in the data is an increase in the number of projects and the number of people being served.

And those two numbers are kind of moving together. So we can't say definitively whether from our data, whether more people are homeless for the first time, just that they are, you know, accessing services and hadn't been accessing services before.

Do you, with regard to those people experiencing homelessness for the first time, that does not end include people who were in that second, next number, the exiting permanent housing that might have fallen back into homelessness again.

So the number of people experiencing homelessness for the first time includes people who have not accessed services in the prior 24 months. And that's a HUD definition of first time homelessness. If someone, let's say, experienced homelessness as a child and now they're an adult and they've returned to the homelessness system, then they could be counted as experiencing homelessness as the first time, for the first time, even though it's not actually their first time experiencing homelessness.

And to get that kind of longer term picture, we would need additional data sources or many more years of HDIS data as our system grows in the decades to come. So that's something certainly we should be able to look at more longitudinally as we accumulate more data.

And if I can just add to that, Senator, an example of data that we currently don't have access to is child welfare data and our social services data. Right? So using Sydney's example, if you are now an adult, but you were in fact a child who was a part of a family that received CalWORKS that included subsidies relating to homeless services that would not be known to HDIs unless the adult claimed it and had that recollection from their childhood.

HDIS does not have that connectivity currently within those respective systems. To immediately identify that person as someone who has previously intersected with other systems who are supporting persons experiencing homelessness.

And one piece I think I didn't mention in my earlier presentation, since HM HMIS systems are a federally required system, it's HUD who defines the fields and how they're defined in hmIs, not the State of California. So we are, we've come up with creative ways to ensure all of our programs can accurately fit into hmis on the state side.

But, for example, how, which like outcomes are tracked, how different populations are defined, all of that comes from the Federal Government and not from the State of California.

And looking at the absolute numbers, with the people exiting being 60, some thousand, and people experiencing it for the first time, 167,000, that is an increase in numbers of 100,000. And then the following year, looking at it similarly, is an increase in numbers of about 112,000. It's an increasing number. Obviously, it jives with the graph that we see, the explosion of homelessness since 2015 or 16.

Do you have data that actually assesses why people enter homelessness, whether it's because they lost their dwelling, lost a job, lost their dwelling because they had substance abuse issues and or mental health issues and fell into homelessness. Do you, do you have data that tracks any of that?

That data would not be tracked in hdis. But there was a recent large survey, the CASPA report, that did survey many people experiencing homelessness and did ask about causes of homelessness, events that precipitated homelessness. And so that report is a wealth of information on some of the questions that you're asking.

I remember a few years ago, I read an article in the Sacramento Bee about a point in time count. And the premise of the report was that most homeless people are originally from, in this case, the Sacramento area, and that the cause was not largely mental illness or substance abuse.

And the reason for that is the point in time counters asked them, which I thought was curious, because if you ask a person who is addicted to drugs, if they're addicted to drugs, you're not likely to get an honest answer. And probably similarly for somebody from mental illness. So the data is probably difficult to track anyway, which I think is the reason why largely we attribute it to the availability of affordable housing.

And to the extent that the cause truly is initially people who have drug abuse issues as well as mental illness issues, then we're aiming at the wrong target to a certain extent. So this causation data is really important. And obviously, you indicated you don't have it. You mentioned another report, which is, what was it again?

It's the California statewide study of people experiencing homelessness. It was by UCSF Benioff. It came out, I can't remember if it was earlier in 2024 or towards the end of 2020.

I remember.

I will say our data shows that people are not moving around when accessing services. So that is actually one thing we can track. In hdis, we see over a three year period. It's like over 97% of clients are only served in one continuum of care. And most of those served in multiple continuums of care, they're like very neighboring.

So where we have, you know, two counties that line up, or in La County, we have three cities within the county that have their own CoC. So, you know, service boundaries can be pretty murky, but we definitely don't see folks moving around the state to access homelessness services.

Thank you.

Senator Smallwood Cuevas.

I just had a follow up question about 21, about the databases, because you said health and human services, and I was wondering, why not education in WDA? I feel like in those two agencies, there's a process by which folks come into the, they are surveyed or asked questions about their housing security. And it'd be interesting where particularly students and families who are in our k through 12, and then folks who are accessing workforce development services.

So I'm curious why those agencies are not part of the data integration. And then my second question goes back to our last month, last week's hearing, and earlier, you mentioned about how you're helping local entities with their performance evaluation and sort of looking at the impacts of expenditures. And we had heard from some departments who were overseeing homeless services and investments and were proposing cuts, but couldn't tell us the impacts of those cuts.

So I'm curious if your system and the data that you're collecting, is there a way to sort of to provide, and I don't know, maybe it's a policy fix that needs to happen so that we see what the proposed impacts are of, of proposed cuts that are being put before the Legislature, particularly as it relates to homelessness funding and investment. So those are the two questions.

Thank you, Senator. So I'll start first with your second question. To say that the intended use of the statewide action plans, part of that reimagining is to use the statewide action plan to prevent non homelessness as a policy informant tool. And so hoping to utilize again our data from HDISC, from our collective council work. There are 19 Members on the statewide California Interagency Council on Homelessness.

A little confusing because we have the work of the greater council and then we have calich as an entity that is also doing work on behalf of the state. There is a data system for every single one of those 19 Council Member departments and agencies. Health and human Services was simply highlighted as the first for us to pilot. What would data sharing look like? What would data integration look like?

A part of our council as well are Members from Department of Education, Higher Education, our community college, you know, UCS, CSUs, etcetera. So those systems certainly are an opportunity for intersection. We are simply starting with health and human services for new needs to do immediate program evaluation.

So the action plan you're putting together will have some timelines and benchmarks for sort of when new agencies get integrated in? And then are you also saying that the sort of impact assessments of cuts that are proposed by the states, that there will be as part again, of the action plan, some timeline and benchmarks for when we could look forward to receiving data that better informs us on the impacts of cuts.

So the way that statute is currently written is that Council Member departments and agencies have the opportunity to request data intersection with hdis. They are not required to. Part of our response to the audit, of course, is that we are limited by statute. We cannot require these departments or require their resources to be directed for data integration in this way. But Cal AcH would consider it if those resources were made available.

And again, I will absolutely circulate our formal audit response just so that this body is intimately familiar with what our abilities are and within current guidelines.

So it will be laid out in the.

Action plan as far as the timeline is concerned, current statute limits us so if we stick with current statute, we are not able to say CDE. I'll just use as an example CDE. Unless they request to be integrated and have that data integration, we cannot hold them to a timeline that they did not agree to.

And what about the impact assessments in terms of data that helps us be able to have the evidence to inform cuts?

I can't imagine the action plan will say explicitly, you know, we recommend x, y and z not be cut, but certainly the data for populations of extreme interest, including, you know, those who are overrepresented in unsheltered homelessness, including our black, African American, API and indigenous populations. We will certainly highlight those areas that we have data to, to support. This is an overrepresentation that will absolutely be available.

Well, stay in touch. I will be in touch on the action plan and how we can figure out the impact assessments for that and if policy can be a help to helping to refine that directive. Thank you.

We appreciate that.

Thank you both very much for your participation and presentations.

Thank you.

That will take us next to issues three through six. It will be program related, specific budget proposals, and when we get however we want to get situated, certainly invite DOF to come up and find a comfortable spot.

All right, welcome. Issue three is transition of homeless related grant Administration from the Integrated Council to the Housing Community Department. Welcome. Please proceed when ready.

Mister Chair and Members. My name is Matt Schueller, Deputy Director of Administration with Housing and Community Development. And if it pleases you, I'll go ahead and start the item.

Okay, so what the staff had worked at, at a docked order and that indicated that DOF would present and you would comment. So I don't know if you were in that loop, but we'll go to the DOF on that and we'll come to you for comment, as well as the LAO.

Hi. Kaily Yap with the Department of Finance. So, in accordance with the provisions of Assembly Bill 129, the Housing and Homelessness Trailer Bill for the 2023 Budget act that transfers responsibility for the Administration of homelessness programs from the Interagency Council on Homelessness to the Department of Community and Development, the Governor's Budget proposes to transfer 22 existing positions that support those homelessness programs from Cal ICH to HCD.

In addition to these transferred programs, the Governor's Budget proposes to provide four new positions to HCD to further support their new responsibilities. The Department of Finance is prepared to answer any questions. Thank you.

All right, we'll go to the LAO and then the Department for comment.

Ginni Bella with the Legislative Analyst Office. We've reviewed the proposal and we didn't have any particular concerns with it. One thing we would say is, with the announcement out of the Administration today of increased oversight and accountability for homelessness programs, we agree with the staff recommendation to keep this item open as we learn more about the fuller picture of the vision on that oversight.

Now to the Department.

Well, we certainly see this proposal as the final effectuation of the transfer to HCD, really, the lifting and shifting of the 22 positions that are currently doing the work, and then the slide augmentation, in addition to the statutory changes that are necessary.

All right, any additional comment? Go right ahead.

I think we can get into your questions, but we'll be happy to talk a lot about the transfer. And anything that doesn't come up in your questions, we can add additional details.

Specific to existing program. There's administrative retention and set aside that you have some substantial unexpended funds, as I understand it, and then you have a forward looking into estimate of what's going to be needed on the demand side. Seems kind of low, but I'm just wondering if you could comment on that. And second of all, I would also like to have a better understanding on this item about input and your knowledge about the oversight unit, accountability unit and your input on that.

So feel free to answer.

Great. I'll get started on that. But a lot of the things you'll hear me talk about, I'm trying to find the right mic and maybe I should tell you who I am. So I'm Megan Kirkeby. As Meghan Marshall indicated, that transfer is from one Megan to another. So, you know, it's in safe hands. And I'm our Deputy Director for Housing Policy at the California Department of Housing and Community Development. So we've been working on this transfer for about six months.

And so we've basically been co leading this program during that time, getting ready for that sort of July 1 HCD timeline. But I think to hit on the two things you talked about first, Marshall and myself have talked quite a bit about the unobligated funding from the HAP one through four and the unexpended funding from the HAP one through four.

And I think really you can see a lot of this drive towards accountability in some of the changes that went out in the HAP five NOFA. So really looking at clarity with our grantees that we're seeing those monies be spent on eligible uses before additional tranches of disbursement are given out. And so those were legislative changes.

We're very excited to implement those changes to really increase the level of accountability on the grantees, to make sure that those obligations of funding are happening, that those expenditures of funding are happening.

I think in reference to sort of your question about the accountability announcement today, that leads right into that. A big part of what we've been working on and as Marshall indicated, even pre audit, really thinking about how do we get in the weeds with our grantees and really enhance technical assistance here to say grantee, you have XYZ unobligated funds providing very intense TA on what those eligible uses are, what examples of successful grantees have done in terms of spending.

Those eligible uses really direct technical assistance to work with the grantees and ensure that those funds are spent on eligible uses. So that has been baked into what we've been planning for as part of the transfer. So I think that's a big piece of what you're hearing about from that accountability messaging as really as well, really looking into ensuring that we are receiving clear information from our grantees on where those funds are going and what uses are happening there.

And I think, and I think our hope is to do this in a way that promotes, maintains that flexibility that grantees, this is meant to be a flexible program. But HCD has a history of being able to show flexibility with accountability. Right. We do think you have local knowledge that's important to bring to the table, but it's important that we make sure that you're doing that local flexibility in line with the program, what the program's asking you to do.

So I think you're going to see a lot of enhancement there. The messaging is also about really lifting up the work that's in my division through the housing accountability unit. And we've been saying this for a long time, but housing is the solution to homelessness. These are incredibly linked.

I mean, you heard this from the presenter in the morning, but cost burden, it sounds like a wonky term, but when we start paying too much of our income toward our housing costs each month, we get in that risky situation, right, where that one car breakdown or medical situation away from starting a cycle of homelessness. So when we see cost burdens go up, that that is a big risk factor for us as a state to understand.

We need to intervene, we need to increase that support supply of housing, particularly housing supports that support people who are formerly homeless. So the housing accountability unit, I think this is a shift in our branding, but it's core to who we've always been is a big part of what we steward. There is streamlining provisions of land use law that say supportive and transitional housing need to be streamlined, that by right, that low barrier navigation centers need to be by right.

The support we've done around affirmatively furthering housing as well comes into play there. So those are some of the things I think you're going to see come out of the accountability proposal and are really baked into the transfer. And so Marshall brings expertise to the table through Cal ICH. So we're not going to let go of what are those eligible uses that data tells us have the greatest impact and how do we, how do.

And then we can take HCD's role of greater levels of infrastructure, greater experience with technical assistance and those relationships that we already have through the housing element, which is, you know, those are eight year housing plans, which I think, again, you know, sometimes when we say housing, we don't realize we mean housing and homelessness.

And already every local government is making extreme commitments, doing the hard work to work with HCD, to come up with those eight year plans, and we're holding them accountable to make sure that those are happening.

So the other linkage that happens through this transfer that's so important is making sure that the organization that's making those plans with the locals is also talking to them about how the money is being spent so that we don't have that sort of chance to sort of hide the ball a little bit there. Right? Like, hey, you said you were going to do this. There's this money. This money can help you do that. Are you using that money to do the thing you promised to do?

And really making sure all those checkpoints are happening in a centralized way, I think is going to improve the customer service experience for the grantee as well. So those are the things we're going to be working on. And the HCIS presentation you heard, I think is a big piece of responding to some of the comments that you were talking about. Right.

Like Marshall and I agree, like the audit pointed out some things about data that we don't feel great about, but they were things that we were also not feeling great about before the audit. And so we've been putting in place this research and data team you've heard from, as well as this really concerted effort around.

How do we take these dollars and do the right thing for the California people to have the most impact per dollar spent here and work with grantees as partners to make that happen? So I think that's sort of my best summary so far of the announcement that you heard this morning. But as I said, long time coming.

Yes, agree and thank you. Senator Niello, any questions?

One comment that you made in an absolute fashion was housing is the cause of homelessness. That would imply to me that other issues such as substance abuse or mental illness that may cause people to fall into homelessness are de minimis.

Housing is the solution to homelessness is a term we feel pretty certain about. And I think probably similar comments to the speaker you heard from this morning, that for us, that cost burden and when we interview folks about their cycles of homelessness, the real starts drove from being at that margin in terms of paying too much toward their housing cost and then not being able to make it work.

Senator, if I may, the correction is that the comment was that housing is the solution to homelessness, not the cause of homelessness, which is what I believe.

I'll grant that correction in my depiction of the quote, but my point is still the same. If we have people suffering from homelessness who are severely mentally ill and severely substance dependent, if we get them into housing and they are still severely mentally ill and severely substance dependent, we have not solved homelessness.

So I'll add something and then encourage Marshall to speak as well on this. But I do want to recognize, I think, I think you're not alone in calling out that there are a lot of overlapping issues going on for people that have entered cycles of homelessness.

And so there's been a lot of recognition in the affordable housing that we build and maintain now as a state to really recognize the need for those supportive services as part of helping people get into a different, getting into a different situation. And so, you know, I think it's a place where we're always interested in the more that we can learn about what really ends a cycle of homelessness for someone. We know that first step is housing, but there are supportive services that come with it.

And so many of the housing sources that have been funded in the last few years really recognize the need to pair the right services with the folks that are in the homes that we're providing and making sure that we can support our families and our individuals, that we are housing with the right services that end that cycle. So I don't know if you want to add more to that. Meghan, thank you.

So we say housing first, but not housing only. It is just the opportunity for a person to enter into housing that we know from a data perspective. And we certainly heard from Doctor Finnegan earlier today, we know persons do not get well on the street. That's a fact that we know.

So whether they need placement in a permanent housing unit, an interim sheltering program, to your earlier point as well, Senator, in a treatment program, those are opportunities that the systems should make available to a person who's experiencing homelessness for whatever their mitigating circumstances might be. But just wanted to highlight the way that Cali ICH is moving into the framing of housing first is that it's housing first, but not housing only.

To draw on a point that I made earlier, we also have what is called recovery housing, where people want to recover from their dependence upon drugs and they want to be in a drug free environment. Housing first does not allow for state funding to programs like that. And I just, I think that's a problem.

And the other thing that I think, especially based upon the stated need for available and lower cost housing, the state has got to do a study of what the state does to drive the high cost of housing, and that just doesn't happen. We don't want to admit that some of the things that we impose that we mandate on housing development maybe needs to be modified, particularly in the low affordability area. There's a refusal to even acknowledge the need for that, let alone actually assess it.

Senator, if I may, there are certain allowances within housing first dependent on population. And I'll use our Department of CDCR as the example. If you're a person who's on parole and a condition of your parole is that you maintain sobriety, you must maintain sobriety or risk violating your parole.

And so there are certain allowances within the housing first language that allows for nuances based on population need. Recovery programming being one licensed programming license recovery programming, I should say very specifically, there are a multitude of community based services that are not evidence based, necessarily or have not been recognized as evidence based, who are unlicensed, who are operating sober homes, and they certainly have a place in communities. But housing first allows for those nuances in licensed facilities.

And just on the cost point I think heard there, and you won't get a lot of complaints from us. I think that's something we work on consistently. It's a place of continuous improvement for HCD, and we look at where costs come from and they don't come from one single place. Right. So we're looking at things up front, like innovative building techniques, but we're also looking at time delays. I mean, time delays are a big piece of contributing costs.

And we've really worked, particularly in the supportive housing space, in the affordable home space, to really look at streamlining opportunities that are going to say, okay, does this meet our community's objective standards of the kind of housing we want to see? Then let's not have six different hearings about it. Let's move forward. And those things are shown to have significant impacts on costs in housing that save real dollars and legal fees, frankly, that, you know, could be better spent, better spent on more homes.

And so we could have a long conversation about it. But I think we are trying to look at it as a cost, as a many pronged issue and looking at how do we tackle each phase of that process to make sure we're bringing costs down everywhere we can. But of course, yes, there are a lot of policy goals on every new unit of housing, and that's a good thing.

You know, it means every new unit does a lot of good in the world, but that's a lot of pressure on one party. So we're trying to balance that and make sure that that very good policy goal can get through the process quickly in a way that's cost efficient.

As long as we look at all aspects of housing, building cost that is affected by a government imposed mandate, all of them. And excuse the absurdity of my comment, but it illustrates the absurdity of the nuance. If a person is substance dependent and they want to get in a drug free environment. To be free of that, they've got to go to prison first. Excuse me? I said it. I was going to make an absurd statement to illustrate the absurdity of the exception.

I don't see a difference between a parole mandated freedom from substance as an exception to housing first versus someone who truly wants to get off drugs and needs to be in a drug free environment. I understand the arguments sometimes of the licensure of facilities like that, and that does exist, and to the extent that if sufficient, it could be fixed. But to allow that privilege, if you will, only for somebody who is on parole, out of prison, just seems overly restrictive to me.

And I apologize, Senator. I think that was just perhaps a bad example on my end. Certainly there are others.

Good example, but it.

Perhaps, but for the.

It illustrates the stiffness.

Sure. I will say again, our colleagues who is, again, a Council Member of the Greater Council work is Department of Healthcare Services, who provides tremendous amounts of funding to substance treatment programs, to other license care facilities, who we work very closely with to where individuals who are desirous of treatment, who would like treatment today and not 16 weeks from now.

That Department is working very closely with local governments to ensure that those services not only exist, but are staffed appropriately and are available in the way that we see data supporting great outcomes for.

Thank you, Senator. Thanks, the panelists. That item be held? We'll move to issue four, which is delays and supplemental to round five. We'll ask DOF to hit it off.

The Governor's Budget maintains $1.1 billion General Fund for round five of the homeless housing Assistance and prevention program, or HAPP. However, to maintain a balanced General Fund, the Governor's Budget does propose to defer $260 million in HAPP round five funding from 2023-24 to 2025-26. The Department of Finance is prepared to answer any questions. Thank you.

Thank you. LAO.

We don't have any concerns with the delay of the 260 million. It's our understanding that that's likely the timeline by which that money would be accessed anyway. And so it's really sort of an alignment with that. So we didn't have any concerns to raise.

All right, back to the Department. Comment?

No additional comments.

I'm sorry? No additional comments.

Yeah, it was partially addressed at LAO, but disbursement timeline. Do you want to unpack that and sort of explain that for folks who aren't experts in HHAP Administration and understanding what that actually means in terms of any programmatic impact that we can see in the near term?

Absolutely. So this is, again, part of that sort of blended era we're in of Cal ICH and HCD working together. I don't remember the month that went out, but the HAPP five NOFA was something we got to inform but put out by Calich. The HAPP 5 applications closed on March 27. So we're now in that period of reviewing those applications. But it's kind of important to understand that given that these are a block grant, that's about working with the grantees to approve those applications.

So that's not just like we're going to approve deny. It's about, you know, addressing any issues that are found and kind of working with the grantees. So the goal is to, to get everyone across the threshold on that as we work together. But we will be making the final awards for that. The goal is to do that after the transition to HCD, and then the funding and the standard agreements would also come out under HCD.

There are a few awards that are going to come out under Cal ICH this month and the next, but those, because we are less than 90 days out from sort of July 1 transition, we'll be working in the background to make sure that the standard agreements that get created for those to go along with those awards and the disbursements will come from HCD. So maybe a little too much detail there, but that's what we're thinking about.

And this is all posted on our NOFA calendar as well on the HCD website to kind of lay out when the timing of these things has happened.

And that's helpful, and I appreciate that. Any other questions? All right, that item will be held. We'll move to issue five, which is reversion of the HAPP administrative savings. Ask DOF.

Ask the of the Governor's Budget proposes to revert $100.6 million General Fund in administrative set asides for various rounds of HAPP and for the family homelessness challenge grants as General Fund savings. Because these funds are not required by the administering departments, the Department of Finance is happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. LAO.

We have no concerns with the reversion of the 100 million.

Members. Questions? Just a thought. I'm not administering program here, but it's a bigger number programmatically relative to program. Right, not to the budget. But we're trying to find a way to be strategic in deciding where we're going to constrain in this cycle, maybe that has other uses, programmatic or otherwise. I don't know if there are constraints on that statutorily, but we can apply $100 million into program rather than saying, look what we did in the Delta here, if in fact that's relevant.

But maybe that's part of a future conversation recommendation there is to hold that item open. It'll be held. Takes us to issue six, which is round six, DOF wanna address, and then we'll come.

Chris Hill, Department of Finance as you know, the Governor's Budget does not propose funding for around six of HAPP in 2025-26. However, the Governor's Budget does signal the administration's willingness to work with the administrator, work with the Legislature on possible ways to find some, some means to perhaps fund around six, depending primarily on revenue availability, which, as we all know, is rather tight situation right now.

But I think we'll have a better idea as to where we are in terms of revenue availability after the May revision, when we have our updated revenue estimates.

All right. LAO?

Nothing to add.

Comment from Department?

No comment.

I think I referenced this in my opening comments. I referenced it and some of the conversation earlier, maybe revisiting that, I think more comprehensively. Any questions from the? All right, we'll hold that item, and thank you all. I will take a moment to go to issue seven, which is to get some input and testimony from some distinguished panelists with respect to the perspective of program recipients.

And we will do so with folks from large cities, the county continuum of care and tribes. So come on up. Slash mayor slash. How are you, sir?

Hello, Senator.

Good to see you.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, we do have joining us today the honorable Darrell Steinberg, Mayor of the City of Sacramento. It is good to see you back again, sir. From the county, we have pictures right up here. There's plenty of pictures right up here, too. He's played many roles. Pretty good picture, too, right up here.

Younger then.

From the county, Graham Knaus, CEO, California State Association of Counties. Tamera Kohler, CEO, Regional Task Force on Homelessness, and Annalee Trujillo, Director, Pala Band of Mission Indians in the Pala Housing Resource Center. I think I want to start with just an acknowledgement and thank Ms. Trujillo for coming to speak on the tribal perspective, her leadership at the Pala Tribal Housing Resource Center and its representative Pala Band of Mission Indians who are Tribal HHAP 1 and Tribal HHAP 2 awardees.

The Pala Band of Mission Indians is a sovereign tribal nation within the State of California located in Southern California. By Executive order in 2019, Governor Newsom acknowledged the state's role in the violence, exploitation, dispossession, and the attempted destruction of tribal communities. And he affirmed a commitment to pursuing policies that embrace tribes' unique status and issues and priorities. I think you'll hear the success of Tribal HHAP thus far can be attributed to extensive government to government consultation and collaboration with the tribes.

It's our intent and desire to further that consultation and collaboration here today. I think we have some agreement about where we're going to target timelines for each distinguished panelist. We will go write down the notice in order, and I'd like to ask Mayor Steinberg to present when ready. Welcome, sir.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee. I speak today not only on my behalf, but on behalf of the Big City Mayors, which is an organization of mayors from the 13 most populated cities in the State of California. I want to begin by saying something which I think is obvious, but maybe doesn't get said enough, not as any excuse or deflection, but cities, with rare exceptions, San Francisco being one of them, cities are not homeless service agencies.

We're not health and human service agencies. We are municipal corporations that are largely responsible for providing basic and direct services to our constituents. And yet, for also obvious reasons, the growth in homelessness, the increase in homelessness over the last half dozen or more years, the cities, especially in the large cities, and mayors have decided that we have to get directly involved.

Not because we don't have good counties or good colleagues on the county side, but we cannot just wait for the decisions of other governmental bodies to help determine how quickly we get people off the streets. And thus was born the origin of what was then HEAP and has since become HHAP. We are now seeking our 6th allocation, our 6th allocation, and the first, I believe, direct allocation of funding from the state to cities for this kind of health and human services function.

Now, also stated obviously, the problem of homelessness has not been solved. And yet there are depends which side of the looking glass one wants to look through. If we're looking at the net increase, California still obviously has a significant problem, as do our major cities. The fact of the matter is, in Los Angeles, each day, 207 people are housed and 227 people enter homelessness. In San Diego, it's 10 to 13. In Bakersfield, it's nine to seven. That's actually a little better percentage. In San Jose, it's one to four.

And in Sacramento, like in San Diego, 10 people exit homelessness, 13 people enter. So what have we done with the billions of dollars that the state, the Legislature, and the Governor have provided through HHAPs one through four? We have significantly increased bed capacity, 15,722 additional beds. Now, the problem would be much worse, not just arguably, but obviously, if the state had not stepped up in the way you have. And we're grateful for it.

In partnership with the cities and the counties to enable us to fund thousands of additional beds, we served almost 150,000 people. And yes, we've had over 40,000 people. As we accumulate our data from the big 13 cities, over 40,000 people with positive exits, either reuniting with family or entering into a different part of the continuum of care, permanent housing or permanent supportive housing. So we believe that we have done everything asked of us, and we are also not afraid of accountability.

We are committed to our regional housing plans that were required by the Legislature statewide to reduce unsheltered homelessness by at least, and as a floor, not a ceiling, at least 16% by 2025. And to increase our exits from temporary shelter to permanent housing by at least 16%. And so while we know that the state has a serious budget deficit, and certainly Senator Niello and I are no stranger to budget deficits. Was a great, great colleague during my time as pro tem.

The fact of the matter is, this is an absolute necessary investment. Another billion dollars plus the ask to release this 300 plus million dollars of so called bonus funding that was provided but has not yet been allocated between HHAP rounds 3 and 4, between 21-22 and 22-23, $360 million. Without this, the bottom drops out. And of course, you're going to hear a lot of sad stories in a budget deficit year. I understand it, but we are literally funding.

When I started as Mayor of Sacramento, we were funding and operating less than 100 beds a night. We're now up to 1350 a night and growing. And a significant portion of that from the city side is funded by what was then HEAP and now HHAP. And we're including our General Fund, which is really not what cities, again, traditionally have done, but that's what we have to do.

So without this additional funding for the big cities of California, the bottom will drop out, and the state's most severe crisis will only get worse. We all want to turn that corner where our numbers of exits are larger than the people entering. And that's a larger discussion and something that I'm happy to talk about in the question and answer.

And finally, I just want to say because I heard the prior testimony and listened to Senator Niello's questions. You know, for myself, been involved in this issue for a long time. And I agree that housing first has some issues. But the problem in my view is that it is not either or. It's not housing and or mental health and substance abuse. For many people it's all the above.

People can't succeed in housing who have severe underlying conditions unless they get the help they need voluntarily first or involuntarily as necessary. And we can't provide mental health treatment to people living under the freeway. And so I just hope, you know, it's not a partisan issue, but maybe the vernacular needs to change. Maybe housing first itself is a bad term because it speaks to housing, but it doesn't actually say treatment. But to me it's always been the combination for the people, for the people who need it. Thank you very much.

Appreciate you very much, Mr. Mayor. And a couple things I might direct your way. One of the virtues of the program more broadly is of flexibility. Local governments, because we deal with acute scenarios most of the time, and I also work many years in local and regional government, is to try to get sheltering, immediate interventions, temporary shelters. As we had some critique in the audit addressing, certainly round one, I said earlier in the hearing, I think that's sort of incomplete in terms of some of the critique there just because of the nature of the program.

But should we be focusing, how can we partner or should we be focusing more on permanent housing, ultimately? Is the local government approach still priority one is immediate intervention? What are your experiences and thoughts about that tension? Because the virtue is the flexibility in the program.

Obviously both. The flexibility is very, very important because what our constituents are rightfully demanding is that our streets be safer and cleaner as well. We have to respond to that. That's real. And it's undignified for human beings to be living in on the streets, in the cold and in the heat and with all of the risks of assault and everything else that goes with it. And so, you know, it's Maslow's hierarchy. The first order is to bring people indoors and inside.

And yes, then we must be committed to funding creatively the continuum that allows people to go into permanent housing. Now let's say another thing that is, wasn't on my talking points here, but I think we need to do much better with elevating the cause of manufactured housing. Because as long as it's temporary or permanent, and that's the frame, then we're always going to be having the feast or famine, and you make the choice question. But this is the state of the Silicon Valley.

There are so many of these products that are really interesting and some of them really good. And yet with our arcane system of financing affordable housing and permanent supportive housing, we haven't figured out why this hasn't gone to any kind of scale when it's less expensive and it is faster to build and would enable us to put people into housing. The useful life of some of these new housing types are not 30 years. How about 10? Bring somebody in for 10. And then you're starting to talk about a bridge to something more permanent.

I appreciate it. Questions for the Mayor? Mr. Niello, Senator?

I think I'll wait on my question and comment until I hear from all three.

Thank you, sir. All right, Mr. Knaus, welcome.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Chairman Padilla, Members of the Committee. Really appreciate the opportunity to join you today. I'm Graham Knaus. I'm the CEO of the California State Association of Counties, which of course represents every Californian and every, in terms of all 58 counties of the state. I'm really pleased to be able to talk to you about homelessness, which we see as the humanitarian crisis of our time and one in which there is a call for us to do even more than what we've done thus far.

I want to start by making clear that, from our perspective, every level of government and nonprofit, faith based entity, and others that are working on homelessness are doing it with great intent and with full energy to solve this issue. We don't have any question of that. That doesn't solve it on its own. And I'm going to share some perspective that is specific and broad coming from what we've seen. And then I'll have three very specific recommendations.

First, I want to talk about a couple of highlights relative to things that have been working. First, in Los Angeles County, they've been using their HHAP funding to increase housing, particularly their supportive housing portfolio, which they've increased 15% for interim housing placements in the past two years, and 18% as it relates to permanent supportive housing. That's fantastic. The need for that is much greater, as highlighted by the numbers in terms of the growth of homelessness that continues to occur there and in other parts of the state.

But that is a direct result of the investments from the HHAP program. Second, in San Diego, they've been using HHAP funds for their Community Care Coordination Straight to Home Program. And that is about individuals that are either they're finishing their time incarcerated or they've been recently released. And those individuals who are at great risk of homelessness due to medical issues, behavioral health issues, or others. And in the case of San Diego, this specific program.

Of the nearly hundred folks that have touched this program, 98% were housed recently following being back in their communities. That's what we should be funding, those things and many other like it. Broadly, of course, HHAP has been a critical fund source for all local governments and entities that have received the funds. And yet, things would be far worse were it not for the investments that have been made over the past few years.

And I agree with the Mayor that the key ingredient of this is about flexibility. What is needed to solve homelessness is different from community to community. And so what works in Merced County is different than what works in Los Angeles County is different than Alpine County, than Humboldt County, than Alameda County. And having the flexibility of HHAP allows that to be real and effectuated appropriately in communities.

I think what recent investments have really done in terms of HHAP is that, for the first time ever, they've allowed us to move from a model where all levels of government, state, counties and cities simply pointed fingers at each other. That's what we did. That's what we all did. We all need to own that. And there was no money on the table.

With investment comes both progress and awareness of the things that are working and the things that are not working, and identification of gaps in data, in outcomes, in terms of what we need to overall solve. And I think we believe that this is exactly where California has historically stepped in.

The door has been open for this state to do what it has always done on significant issues, lead the country. And there is more work, better work being done in California right now on homelessness than I believe is the case in any other state in the country. But there's much more that we need to do, and we can do because of who we are as, as an entity. Last year, CSAC developed the AT HOME Plan, which was a comprehensive system to address homelessness.

Clear responsibilities for the state, for counties, and cities founded in accountability. And that was, that remains an attempt to make some progress in this direction. Last year's homelessness trailer bill, AB 129, that was discussed earlier has a number of elements of it that come out of or consistent with what was proposed in the accountability of AT HOME.

And huge thanks to the leadership of the Governor and the Legislature or else we would not have even known what was needed to solve because of the investments and also the progress that was made last year. Very quickly, AT HOME is accountability, clear responsibilities aligned to authority and resources for all levels of government. So that's clear state responsibilities, county responsibilities, city responsibilities. Transparency, and this was touched on earlier.

We have to know what's working and what's not working, and that is about data and ensuring that we have access to it and it is appropriately integrated. Housing, which has been discussed. Siting and operating shelter beds appropriately, transitional housing and permanent supportive housing, which is so critically needed in our communities.

Outreach, that emergency response system, when folks initially fall into homelessness. And we saw, and we can see on the screen right there, the number of individuals that are newly homeless continues to grow, which is a huge issue. Mitigation, which is really the state safety net system that counties operate on your behalf. And there's great partnership there. We need to keep it strong, we need to protect it, notwithstanding where we are overall relative to the budget, and ensure that that remains strong so folks have opportunity there.

And then finally economic opportunity, which is education and employment pathways out of poverty, and also recognizing there are some individuals who are so severely disabled they are not going to become self sufficient, and we need to address that to ensure that they are not homeless. And so I raise these because what we've learned is there is no policy area in this state that does not have clearly articulated responsibilities in statute for all levels of government. I mean, all. Let me flip that.

Every significant policy issue in this state, with the exception of homelessness, has clearly articulated responsibilities aligned to some semblance of funding in statute, child welfare, k-12, transportation, health, whatever it may be. And we believe that there's a critical opportunity right now to do the same related to homelessness to ensure that, when we're at the local level, that we know exactly what the state priorities are, who should be doing what, level of work around homelessness, and if we fail, who you can hold accountable for that.

And counties are in the accountability and the implementation business, and we want to deliver on the state's best priorities around this issue. And so let me go to three specific recommendations. First, and this was mentioned by the Mayor, we need to have ongoing funding. We cannot solve a significant ongoing problem with one time money. There must be ongoing funding in order to accomplish that.

And we believe the billion dollars is necessary to continue for HHAP six in the upcoming budget to underscore that homelessness is the most significant priority that the state must address. And then second, we need to remove what is a success penalty that is in the current allocation. And so in Monterey County, they reduce their point in time count 15% year over year, moving from HHAP three to four. As a direct result of that, they were cut 25%.

And we need to remove that success penalty because some of the investments that they made to be successful are now being eroded because the dollars went away and they lost funding. So we want to address that. That is not an ask for new money, that is an ask for how the dollars are distributed currently.

And then finally, on that same theme, for the smallest counties in this state, much like occurs in many other health and human services programs, we need to have a minimum allocation. For those counties where they don't have the sufficient allocation for scale, that's something that we can solve.

We can solve it fairly easily to ensure that they can stand up a real program to address their also real homelessness issue, hire the right level of staff, have the relationships within their communities and partnerships to be able to move forward. And once again, just huge thanks for the opportunity to join you today and certainly available for any questions that you may want to have.

Thank you, Mr. Knaus. So any questions for this presenter at this point before we move on? All right, we will then move to the CoC perspective. Ms. Kohler, welcome.

Thank you. I'm Tamera Kohler. I'm the CEO of the Regional Task Force on Homelessness in San Diego. Chair, happy to be here. We are the continuum of care, or CoC, lead agency. We are unique as a nonprofit, a strong partnership with both our county, not only our primary City of San Diego, but the 18 jurisdictions and the 18 tribes that are in our region as well.

I am also a part of a steering committee, a coalition of the 44 continuums of care in the State of California. We have put together a coalition called the Cal Cub to be able to really provide informational resources to policymakers. I think many times we need to better understand the homeless response system in a lot of ways and we're committed to do that.

I'm here today representing all of those continuums of care, and I want to talk about our role in addressing homelessness and how HHAP funding has really helped us facilitate this critical work. CoCs designated by HUD were primarily funded by HUD. It wasn't until 2018, with the state's HEAP funding, that we became a partner with the state in this important work. We have three primary roles that are required by HUD. Many of these, you know, data, data collection, data aggregation.

We are responsible for the HMIS or the homeless information system. It's administered on a local level to hold program level information and outcomes. We also, with HHAP funding, now are able to report that up to the state's large aggregate database. That is only possible because of the HHAP funding and the requirement. And so it's important to recognize HHAP funding brings us to this important historic threshold to be able to do that. It also allows us the capacity and capability to do better reporting.

Most of the programs that we have had in HMIS for years has been primarily the HUD funded programs. And so when we talk about what we can't get from data, part of it is because of what is singularly held in one database. We also administered coordinated access or coordinated entry systems. Simply, that is a local approach to accessing homeless housing resources. It needs to be predictable, consistent, transparent, and equitable. Last, and maybe what most people don't know is one of our greatest strengths.

We are planning bodies. That is our primary role designated from HUD. We bring stakeholders together, bringing all of the funding resources. And what is really fantastic about HEAP is it's one of the first funding sources that has required those partners to be at the table, bringing together so many of those important community engagement pieces, also expanding youth services, partnering with government, philanthropic, and managed care plans. This sort of HHAP organization to bring us all together is critical in how we are able to achieve our outcomes.

Also in HHAP, important was lived experience input. It's also addressing equity, intentionally addressing equity in the disparities that we see, and partnering specifically with the tribes, which is critical. Also, it was mentioned how unique HHAP funding is. Not only is it flexible, but it is a multi-year funding source, which also makes it harder to report on. As a continuum of care, our funding is actually allocated over multiple years so that our providers can run those programs they know they'll have funding for staffing.

Many times, for our mayors, it's a one year allocation. They got it their cost of shelter and things are very expensive, and they're burning to that money faster than continuum of care, and that partnership is really critical. So when you look at HHAP needs and HHAP funding, it's flexible, it's unique to local needs, but it's also unique to the three leading organizations that receive that. Large cities, our counties, and continuous. It's important to know that continuous care take a system approach. We look at the entire system.

It's also why and we've had some conversations, but statewide we are seeing historic tax on this system that we have never seen before. The system works, and HHAP funding has helped, but historically, we are seeing more and more people falling into homelessness. As the Mayor said and shared our numbers in San Diego, and we just re ran them. Unfortunately, they're not trending in the right direction. It's now for every 10 that we house, 16 more experiencing homelessness for the first time.

And that's the very first time they're touching the system. That is not taking out those that return. This is literally, in our database that we've had for years, the first time people are experiencing a significant amount of them are aging and they have really complex needs. They are being priced out of the very limited housing stock that they were able to maintain.

Over the last 24 months, as we have tracked this, we have not seen a month where we have housed more people than we have seen in our system. It taxes our ability to meet their needs. It doesn't mean that we're not able to provide services. It means the demand is increasing and continues. It's also important that we understand that HHAP is a critical and essential funding source for CoCs for best practices and innovative projects. There are 13, is it still 13 large cities that get the funding?

There are 44 continuums of care. So the majority of our continuums of care don't have the additional funding from cities who are getting HHAP funding as well. So for some of our continuums of care, this is their primary source. They are not seeing it in their cities and supporting their cities with that funding. It's critical to sustain the services and the successes we saw in the pandemic. It's also important for those really intentional local issues.

Depending on how you're addressing shelter, that may be safe parking, safe sleeping, pallet shelters, being able to work with what your community is willing to support is critical in HHAP funding and not restricting that level of, I think, definitions are really critical as well. It also has increased exits to housing with new programs. For many of our communities, they did not have any outreach when we first got HEAP funding. That was one of the first things we invested in San Diego. Half our population is unsheltered.

We need street outreach, but we also need prevention and diversion resources as well. The critical system capacity that it fills and improve the expansion of our current delivery of systems. HHAP has really funded successful engagement in connecting people to housing. As mentioned, in Sacramento over 600 people were housed. LA has leveraged their funds to house over 10,000 people to permanent housing.

We also have established really intentional ecosystems. And when I mean that with flexible funding, it allows us to do things like housing navigation landlord engagement which our federal funds don't allow us to do to have the flexible funds for maybe three times deposits which is what they're asking for. If someone experiencing homelessness.

As mentioned, the additional increase in shelter beds is life saving. I cannot imagine where we would have been going into a pandemic when that was one of the first resources that we used and to be able to bring people in and safely shelter them was critical. As I speak about the different continuums, Butte County, a community recovering from the wildflowers, sheltered over 1000 people last year. Our rural community communities. HAPP is that only source for their shelter. Places like Lake County Cocs.

Without this funding, their shelter program will close. It also works in our urban communities. As we know, Sacramento has sheltered over 3000 people, Alameda County, 1500 and Los Angeles County sheltering over 12,000 people. But the majority, again of the CoCs do not have those large cities. So it's critical that, that we have that funding to support them. HAPP is also this important glue and gap filling that we haven't had. We've talked about how it's so hard to integrate data.

It's also hard to get a lot of these federal funded programs or county funded programs to fill the gap. I'll give you a clear example, Vash. Vouchers do not cover the security deposit. I can have the services, I can have the housing paid for and no security deposit. And if that individual has to pay three times the rent for a security deposit, that's where the flexibility is so critical. That's why it fills the gaps in a way that we have never seen and is important.

CoCs significantly leverage hap dollars for long term housing like our HUD emergency housing vouchers. All of the funding to support that went to the housing authorities. Continuum of care didn't get any funding. We supported that with how HAPP supports our administrative role, also with the state home key and encampment funds. Most recently, though, the HAPP round five has required a level of coordination and planning that we haven't seen before. And continuous of care have really led in that.

I believe as we get closer to accountability and understanding best practices. HAPP round five is the best planning funding source that we put together on a state level. It's also important as we look at the state audit, these were the first years of HAPP and we were also in a pandemic and we were also using these very flexibly and we were using them over multiple years.

As the state becomes more attuned to HMIS data and HDIs, and we understand what the state is looking for, those multi year funding programs, we can help you put together the right measures. We can do a year report, we can make sure that the providers know what we need for that. It's very hard to back into outcomes if those were not determined and required in the beginning. And so as continuous of care, we are incredibly committed. We are the experts in H mis locally.

We believe in strong data collection and completeness of that. But I will also say when we have a concern about completeness, when half your population is unsheltered, we start with very incomplete data and work towards more complete data as we engage that individual and work them along the continuum of care to housing. So I think we need to be really intentional when we talk about incomplete data, because it's intentional. I'm going to get as much about you as I can.

I don't have to have all of that to get you in the system and start coordinating the efforts. I really appreciate an opportunity to represent our continuums of care and happy to answer any questions. Thank you.

Thank you so very much. I appreciate seeing you all right. To the tribal perspective. You've been very patient. Miss Trujillo welcome.

Thank you. Thank you for having me and I really appreciate the opportunity to be here. And I want to thank you for highlighting a few points that you made, including tribal sovereignty, our government to government relationships, and as well as the Executive order from Governor Newsom that really, you know, out of respect, I really thank you for that. I'm here today to talk about tribal HAPP and how significant it is for our tribal people for this program to continue.

But first, to understand how this program has made an impact for tribes, you need to understand the other programs that have failed us. There is was $130 million in tribal set asides from other state programs that the tribes are only able to access to AB 1010 with that only, I believe it was 445 million of that was actually awarded and out of that only 6 million was actually released to the tribes.

I think there's a little bit more that's been released now, but it was a going back and forth thing because the state programs didn't understand tribal sovereignty, they didn't understand tribal governments, and the programs weren't designed with tribes in mind.

So when tribal HAPP came and the flexibility with that program, it was like a godsend to us because we're like, finally, there's a program that is workable for us, because who knows better than what our people need is our own tribal governments, the people that are there with our people. I've been working in tribal housing for 27 years and with the tribe for 30. So I've grown up on the reservation. I was there when we didn't have metro.

We didn't have housing where we had the basic government housing houses that were called Linda Vista homes. And the state promised housing to our people. Those first houses were, I believe they were military homes that we had to put together. There's one, I believe, one or two still standing. The other homes that were built were hip homes, and that was for the lowest of the low income. So basically, you had to be below poverty, which most tribes were at the time, or probably all of them.

But to understand the disparities that the tribe has and why, I know that some of the questions were, how do people become homeless? Well, we know how the tribes became homeless, and that was by action of the state with removal, with termination, and with relocation of our people, of our first people. So that's how we first became homeless.

And I do want to reiterate, and I want to thank you for your comments as well when you're talking about substance abuse and the gap with housing and how that contributes to homelessness, because tribes have the highest number of homelessness. Tribes have the highest number of MMIP. And if the those of you that don't know what that is, it's missing and murdered indigenous people. And that all connects back to housing. When you don't have safe, adequate housing, what happens?

You know, we have a lot of our people that are. That have addictions. They have, you know, not only mentally, substance abuse is high rates on reservations. We have a lot of drug use. We are close to the border, so there's drugs coming in and out. We have gang members that target our tribal people. You know, just because it's so easy, like, hey, let's go to this reservation and hook up with, you know, shack up there, you know, with. With our tribal people, because it's easy.

We're easy targets, or we were easy targets. So a lot of our disparities come from that. They do come from substance abuse. And until we can tackle that and come up with a solution to also address that issue, because when you're ready for help and you're ready to go in, you cannot wait a week or two. In that week or two, you can have an OD, which we've seen many times, not only on our reservation, but on others as well.

And I know that policy is driven on data. There is hardly any data for tribes. So that's one of the issues that we're having, and we're talking about CoC and I've been asked to be on the board for San Diego. Tribes have never been included with the cocktail, the HMIs system. So that data is truly lacking on a tribal side. When you're talking about, like, okay, do you have this data readily available? Tribes usually have their own data.

So it's an individual tribal, unique to what they, you know, their reservations. But here, with just being here and talking about those issues with housing, I want to talk about how tribal Hab has helped us because it is so flexible and we're able to identify the needs of our people and how to better address those needs than we would, you know, having to apply for home key or anything that's kind of more strict. And, you know, we can't fit everything into this box.

We all have different issues. We all have. We need housing. We need, you know, we need substance abuse housing. We need, you know, mental health assistance. It's across the board for us. And we've never been, or I should say tribes have never been invested in at the state level, even for housing. We've always been excluded. So being included now is so important for us for, you know, not only our housing crisis, our MMIP crisis, our substance abuse crisis, it all interlinks together.

So for me to sit here and relay that message, I feel very honored, because we don't usually have a seat at the table when it comes to discussion. And it's nice now to have a seat at the table. And I do sit on several boards and elevate these issues as well, because historically we haven't been heard and we haven't been included.

And, you know, nobody's really made the effort to come down and look at the reservations or visit, you know, like, if you are in a local jurisdiction and you have a reservation in your backyard, go visit them, because most likely it's an eye opener, you know, and this has been going on since the beginning of time, but for, with home key, there's $1.0 billion, I believe, that was going to be allocated or, you know, for round six, I'm not really sure.

But for tribes, it's 20,000,900, 80 million goes to local cities, you know, jurisdictions but 20 million is nothing for tribes. There's 110 federally recognized tribes who throughout the State of California. And the increase, if we could increase that somehow, bonus funds, we didn't have access to that. And so I was listening, taking notes. So I have notes all over this paper. But for the bonus funds, it's like the tribes weren't privy to that or couldn't apply for it.

And also just, you know, talk about what we did with our tribal hat funds is we were able to house, first of all, our allocation was $300,000, and that's for our tribe. And that was for this latest round. But we were able to house seven of our tribal Members that were homeless. And we have a housing waiting list of 120 tribal Members on there. And growing. We were also able to help with some utility costs, with some dilapidated housing for our seniors.

And then we also did purchased with the first round, which we got $600,000, a manufactured unit that we could have for temporary permanent housing for families that are in need. Now, the problem with that is now our utility company has taken over a year to give us utilities for that unit. And these are issues that we face, you know, every day as how we're going to house our people. We also created a youth program.

Program because it's very important to us, you know, with our youth, is to make sure that they're being invested in by us so then they can invest in themselves. So that youth program, I think we have about 50 youth that are signed up for it, is for community. And sometimes we get 15 youth, sometimes we get 10. It just depends. But we wanted to have a facility open so they can come if they didn't have anywhere to go. And we offer all kinds of services.

Mental health or resources for mental health, resources for substance abuse, anything that they would like to have, because it's supposed to be for youth, by youth. So they kind of design it.

We did offer cooking classes, so a chef came in and showed them how to cook so they can be self sufficient and if they have to cook for their elderly, because for tribes, it's a cultural thing, you know, it's like the kids are cooking for their elders, they're cooking for their grandparents, and they're helping in that type of way. And we're all close family, you know, basically for every tribe, it's like that.

So when I'm up here, speaking for Pala and the Pala Housing Resource Center, I'm also speaking for a lot of the other tribes that we work with. And tribes usually typically come to us for support. They go to Northern Circle for support and just for any type of assistance. So tribal HAPP, I hope hope gets funded, and I really do hope that there's more money that's allocated there for tribes because this is not a failed program. This is a successful program for tribes. The only thing that I would say is there's not enough money.

I appreciate it. And we'll go to Senator Niello I know was reserving questions for the panel as a whole. So, Senator Niello, you're on.

I have more comments than questions, but I welcome reaction to it. First of all, the last point about ongoing funding. We have a horrible budget deficit and in my opinion, probably getting worse, but nonetheless, a budget is a statement of priorities. And this issue does have to have priorities, and we just have to find out what other things don't quite have that priority from which funds can come. But that's going to be the challenge of the Legislature.

And I've been somewhat critical of what I've viewed as insufficient action so far, far, because the less that we do to the current budget year, the more we're going to have to do to the next budget year. And Mayor Steinberg made reference to when he and I and others at the time were in the soup in 2009, it was more severe. But we settled that budget in February of 2009, just changing the current year's budget. But we actually adopted the 910 budget in February.

So February 20, by the way.

Thank you. A memorable day. And so the urgency is important and priority setting is important. We touched a little bit on housing first, and Mayor Steinberg said housing first does not mean housing only. I want to stress, I'm not opposed to housing first, but what I am opposed to is housing first only. And I think that limits flexibility, as I was talking before about recovery housing not being eligible for government funding because it requires sobriety.

And there's another program right here in Sacramento that is tremendously successful, that does not receive, cannot receive public funding for its core program, and that is St. John's program for real change. And I think that's a shame, but it is because it is not just housing first, it's only housing first. And I just think that's short sighted. We were also talking earlier about the cost of housing.

One thing I wanted to point out before this hearing ends is an article that was in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago about a developer in Southern California who built on its own without government involvement, an apartment complex where the end cost was about $250,000 per unit. Think about that. How much do we spend on affordable housing projects that are government controlled? Five, $600,000 a unit. So the cost of housing is a problem.

And to a certain extent, it's like that old Pogo saying, we have met the enemy, and it is us. Perhaps an overstatement, but we need to take a harder look at that. Mister Knaus, he and I have talked about this quite a bit. I'm an old county guy myself. I served on the Board of Supervisors here over 20 years ago. But you mentioned economic opportunity, and you also use that word self sufficiency, that I don't hear enough around here.

And we could potentially draw on the lessons of welfare reform of the mid nineties, which was a tremendously successful program. It's been somewhat watered down since. But I would point out that the success of that program was such that when we had our five year review in Sacramento county, when I was leaving the board, we had reduced homelessness from about 40,000 people down to bouncing between 25 and 30,000 people.

But I asked the question in that review, how many of those 25 or 28,000 people were on welfare when this program began five years ago, and the number was less than 1000? We had the data, and it was tremendously successful. As I said, I think it's been watered down somewhat since. But the challenge we have here is somewhat similar. The driving goal of this has got to be getting people off of homelessness and on their own. And the key to that is economic opportunity.

And you can't take advantage of economic opportunity if you're hooked on drugs or suffering from severe mental illness. So I just want to stress that again, at the risk of being a Member of the Department of Redundancy Department. Now, Mister Knaus also talked about clear responsibility of programs, ongoing funding, removing the success penalty. But, and you've all been, particularly the last two, singing the praises of HAPP. Developed in the last several years, over 30 programs to address homelessness.

Hap is the only one that is flexible funding to local governments, particularly counties and tribal communities. The rest are state mandated programs that are seemingly executed the same in Los Angeles as they are in Modoc County. And I think we should have taken a closer look at that. But it is, many of them are a one size fits all, and there is not clear responsibility as to who is doing what. But Hap does that.

And I think the big mistake that we made as a state, I'll make two mistakes, but one with regard to the state, the other with regard to the Legislature as a state we adopted more of a top down approach to homeless programs. As I said, Hap being the only one that's flexible local funding and the clear responsibility. Responsibility does not exist, and I think that that has had a lot to do with our inability to control the problem, Mayor Steinberg said.

We haven't solved the problem of homelessness. I think we need to. It is complex enough that maybe we never will completely solve it. Did have homelessness existing when I was on the Board of Supervisors 25 years ago, but it was nowhere near the problem that it is today. It's exploded for various reasons, some of which I've articulated.

But if we could clean the slate, it would seem to me the approach should be to provide funding to local governments, counties and the tribal communities, particularly with clear guidelines as to setting goals. That is, the county sets the goals, working with cities, and clear account reporting and accountability. And I do not think we would be in this particular problem.

The other thing is the Legislature, we have authorized all of these things in terms of funding at the request of the Governor or otherwise, and then we did nothing with it. I think particularly with regard to the audit that came out.

I think the Legislature has abdicated its responsibility for seeing that the programs that it funds, even if it's purely at the request of the Governor and not necessarily the creation of the legislation Legislature, that if we authorize these programs and authorize the funding for these programs, that we should somehow be following up on the oversight of it. And we haven't. The Auditor report didn't specifically mention it, but that sure screamed out at me when, when I reviewed it.

So there, there are no questions embedded in there. But I welcome the panelists to react to it in any way that.

I am shocked to hear that from my distinguished colleague. And I'll give the panelists an opportunity, if they choose, to add any comment in response. I will.

I will be very brief. I wanted to speak to the audit for a second because the audit is relevant. There are recommendations in there that are, that have merit, and nearly every single one is already in place. And they're in place because the Legislature, the Governor and local government changed the structure of the HAPP program to ensure that there was greater clarity changed the structure of the HAPP program to ensure that there was greater clarity about what we are trying to accomplish.

We believe we can go even further related to that, but we've done, we collectively have done some really good work over the past couple of years, and particularly in AB 129, because we've learned to a large degree, and there's much more for us to learn and adapt to, no question whatsoever. But I think we're in a much better place because of the work and leadership of folks on this dais and in your larger body and the Governor and local government working together.

And I hope that that would continue and we can build on that to an even greater degree. And we look forward to being part of that conversation.

Mister Knaus, Mister mayor.

Thank you, I agree with Graham that the state and local governments have begun to make strides in aligning resources and responsibilities and beginning to have a long overdue conversation about real outcome based accountability. Now we have a ways to go, and here's the thing. HAPP is one program. It's a vital program, as we have said. But really what it's about is making sure that there is alignment and accountability around counties, cities and cocs, if not merging their money functionally, working together, so that our outcomes are even better.

And I'll tell you the best example, it's Prop one. I disagree a little bit. Respectfully, Senator Nehler, with the idea that HAPP is the only program where there's local flexibility, actually the Mental Health Services act. Prior to Prop one, the counties had complete flexibility in terms of how to spend those dollars. And now we're sort of recalibrating the state local government relationship, I think, in an appropriate way.

The voters said yes, barely, but they did say yes to say that it's incumbent on the state and the counties and the cities and the CoCs to set outcome based measures, not only for Hap, but for Proposition one and for all the other funding sources. In fact, that's what Prop one says.

It's not limited to just MHSA and to actually deliver transparent outcomes that can create the right kind of competition among between counties and cities and provide us with a better snapshot statewide of the progress that we are making. That's the next step of systems reform, in my view. I think we have started with the regional housing, regional homeless plans that cities and counties and CoCs have developed together. But now Prop one is going to compel us, I think, to be much clearer.

And by the way, last thing when I talk about data now, I think sometimes, this is my editorial comment when it comes to outcome based accountability, the old cliche of making the perfect, the enemy, the good. Sometimes we over data this thing too much and then we don't produce anything.

So really what people want to know, I think reductions in days of homelessness for cumulatively within cities and counties, reductions in psychiatric hospitalizations, reductions in the numbers of people housed in shelter and or permanent housing, reductions of days of time in jail or arrest. Criminal justice indicators.

Do four or five of those, put them out there as the statewide framework out of Prop one and all of this work, and then begin measuring our impact with all of these resources towards those things, we'll get a much better sense of how we're doing and we'll force ourselves through that kind of outcome based accountability to do even better.

Thank you very much, Mister Mayor. I think my distinguished panel, I'll just add final thoughts on this. And I think it's important to be reminded that there are some complex dynamics at play when it comes to dealing with those that are unsheltered acutely otherwise permanently, who are long term homeless, which is also, of course, relevant to the question of affordability and lack of access to housing more permanently. Put simply, you can't extricate the two.

A person's mental, emotional and physical well being has a direct correlation to their economic circumstances and vice versa. And the idea that it's one or the other, I think we have to recognize not just increasing prevalence of that dynamic, but the fact that there's another feature that directly addresses both long term housing affordability and access, and also where people end up unsheltered and homeless long term. And that is something we don't like to talk about in this.

And I have been beating the drum about and making people uncomfortable, and I'll continue to do that. And that is the increasing prevalence of working poverty in this state. What the hell do I mean by that? Well, what I mean by that is that more and more people in this workforce, almost a third, rely on low wage or minimum-wage jobs for 100% of their survival. That's different than our grandparents.

It also means that the demands on their labor and services isn't going anywhere unless in California, we're going to outlaw the service economy. And we love our service economy in California, especially for those of us who can afford to participate in California's economy and have any disposable income. So we have more and more of our workforce having to rely on Low wage jobs to survive in California. And guess what?

The demand for their services isn't going anywhere and they have to work more and more hours in order to meet basic needs. That means we have more and more people working 60 hours a week, 70 hours a week, partnering up with people to share an apartment. The economic and social and emotional and psychological pressure that that puts on an individual or a family is hard to describe, but it's a very real factor. zero, by the way, 40 some plus years ago.

And it's been great in some respects. It's been horrible in others. We reengineered our fundamental tracks, tax structure in the state that we undermined local government's ability to even keep up with the demands on infrastructure as the state's population grew. So it was no wonder why with school districts and local governments, we came up with all kinds of really cool, special ways to assess and to Fund infrastructure just to keep up with intrinsic population growth. It's kind of stupid, but we did.

And so we hear a lot about how local government makes it too expensive, expensive to build homes because we have to put development impact fees and special assessment districts and to do all these things, to be able to just pay the basic freight of having a city or having a state. I think we need to grapple with that because there's a lot that goes into making access to housing inaccessible in California.

There's a lot that goes into working poverty and into the dynamic that is permanent and long term homelessness. And the state can be a great partner. And I think part of our responsibility is decide the things we're investing in, how they're working and how they can better work, especially when we have a lot fewer resources and those of us geniuses up here. And together with your expertise, we get to try to figure that out, and I hope that we're worthy of it.

I want to thank our distinguished panel for coming and sharing your input and your thoughts. It's incredibly valuable. I thank you for your time and your patience. Thank you. And now the best part of the hearing, if there's anybody that's got enough patience, we have public comment for folks that have hung around. The Subcommittee welcomes your input and participation very much. We'll give our panelists a minute to gather their stuff and exit.

And then if there are folks who want to address the Subcommitee on or public comment, please go ahead and kind of line up by the mic if there are folks in the hearing room that would like to do that. And we'll begin when I'm ready, but just give me a moment. We'll let the hearing room settle here. Again, the Subcommittee welcomes your participation. We're interested in your testimony and the interesting of time.

Please come forward, state your name for the record and limit your comments to 1 minute. Thank you. And welcome.

Kim Lewis, representing the California Coalition for Youth. And I want to talk about our young people who are too often unseen. And we know that their pathways and trajectories into homelessness are often much different than other populations experiencing homelessness. In Chapin Hall had some research around like 35% of young people they interviewed had lost a parent or caregiver and that led to their homelessness.

40% are overrepresented by being LGBTQ. We need some ongoing dollars because the programs that have been able to be created to support our youth through HAPP have been instrumental and foundational. And we can't go backwards because before that we were only investing $2 million ongoing in our young people experiencing homelessness in our state budget.

And when we talk about priorities and how do we want our young people to exit and be having great lives as we all envision for our children and what we want them to be and know that their experiences are different and outcome measures for them also need to be different and match what we're exiting for them. Because maybe family reunification and going and living with auntie is a successful positive exit from a system and we should recognize that and develop it accordingly. Thank you.

Hi there. I'm Lauren and I'm with Housing California and I'm here today to express the importance of hop and the importance of homeless funding writ large. California communities in the state overall cannot afford these cuts. The cuts are short sighted as we know that rising homelessness will cost the state far more than funding housing and services today.

These cuts will reduce the number of housing placements by thousands annually, driving up the number of people experiencing homelessness and lead to a direct reduction in thousands of shelter beds, increasing the rate of unsheltered homelessness around the state. Given all that, now is not the time to cut funding to housing and homelessness. We urge the Senate to work with the Governor to avoid cuts to these vital programs and maintain level funding for HAPP. Round six. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mister Chair. Dylan Elliott. On behalf of the counties of Madera, Fresno, San Joaquin, and Humboldt, all echoing the same sentiments already said about the importance of the HAPP funding and strong support of continuing. Continuing that. Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Louis Brown Junior. I'm with the Corporation for Supportive Housing. Thank you, Chair, for this hearing. I just want to echo the comments about HAPP and about the need, as Senator Niello said, to prioritize homeless funding in this year's budget. Also want to encourage the Committee, as we heard today, to think about targeted prevention programs.

So, including $25 million, we're asking for rental assistance pilot program for older adults and adults with disabilities we talked about today, older adults are the fastest growing homeless population rental assistance, as is evidenced by the federal program, is a proven solution. So we'd like to encourage the Committee. We know that asking for new funding for any programs in this budget climate is difficult. We want to encourage you to think about that.

Also, we're asking the Committee to think about funding $25 million for a program that would incentivize landlords to take federal vouchers more quickly, which would prevent people from falling into homelessness while they're looking for someone that would take their vouchers. So we think these targeted programs can help save the state money in the long run. Thank you.

Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Jani Choice. I'm talking on behalf of California Coalitions Youth Advisory Board. I hear from these young people that they need more access to programs and housing for them, and they would like to be able to participate in programs with youth like any other young person.

The housing market is very competitive for young people when they don't have rental history, lack credit history, and don't have the kind of savings needed for for a first and last month's rent for deposits. Transitional housing, which is a form of interim housing, works well for youth, yet not worried locals are investing resources. We want to break the cycle of homelessness and believe the best way to break this cycle is by ending youth homelessness.

Youth will move along in the pathway to chronic homelessness if there's no intervention to change the trajectory. The set asides in programs such as HAPP and Homekey have been critical to ensure that communities don't forget this population. We urge the Legislature to provide ongoing HAPP and increase the set aside to 25% because most communities are viewing the set aside as a ceiling rather than the floor. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else wish to address the Subcommitee? I want to thank everyone for your patience, participation and input. Anyone who would like to provide additional input can do so directly to Committee staff or online. Appreciate the patience. A good hearing at this time. The Subcommitee will stand adjourned.