Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 7 on Accountability and Oversight

For me?

Yes.

That activates everybody's mics?

Good afternoon and welcome to the Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Accountability and Oversight. This is the second of five hearings we're planning to hold before the May Revision.

Today's hearing will focus on the state's efforts to address and reduce homelessness, specifically examining the accountability measures within the Homeless Housing Assistance and Prevention Grant, also known as HHAP, and the Encampment Resolution Grant Program. I'm eager to get to the member comments and questions as soon as possible.

Therefore, I'm going to make a quick remark and then ask the Chair and Vice Chairs of the Budget Committee if they're here, see if they have any comments, and then quickly transition to the panel. I ask that members of the committee wait until after the panel presentation to ask their questions.

Since 2018, California has invested over $20 billion to tackle our housing and homelessness crisis. The vast majority of that funding, $15 billion, has been invested in increasing housing opportunities in California. The remaining $5 billion has been dedicated to support local agencies and tribal governments in their efforts to prevent and end homelessness in their communities.

Last year, the State Auditor released a report evaluating the effectiveness of homelessness funding programs such as HHAP and the Encampment Resolution Grant in reducing homelessness. Following the report's release, this committee held an oversight hearing to further assess these programs and their impact.

Both the report and the hearing highlighted the need for more consistent data collection and stronger accountability measures. In response to those concerns, the Legislature enacted additional reporting requirements to ensure public funds are used efficiently and effectively to reduce homelessness.

To help consolidate and present the data provided by local governments, the Department of Housing and Community Development has now developed online dashboards to track each jurisdiction's progress toward their homelessness goals. Last month, the Governor also launched a new website, accountability.ca.gov. The portal provides a county-by-county view on the use of state funds.

During today's presentation, the committee will have the opportunity to review and understand the data highlighted on these websites. We'll explore whether these platforms provide enough transparency on how funds are spent at the local level and whether they offer appropriate insights into the jurisdiction's progress in reducing homelessness.

We'll also hear from local governments who are working on the front lines of addressing homelessness. They can provide their perspective on whether the data accurately reflects the full scope of the issue. Finally, we'll discuss the need for additional accountability measures, explore what these might look like, and consider how to balance the need for detailed information with the urgency of addressing homelessness in our communities. Before we begin, can I please have the secretary call the roll?

[Roll Call].

And I see we have Ms. Kirkeby. Would you like to start?

I'd love to. Thank you. Thank you for all having me here today.

We can have the other panelists come on up too, at the same time, if you would.

How's this? Is it a little better?

I think you're good.

Great. Well, thank you, Committee. As the Chair mentioned, we were here a little less than a year ago, talking about the transition of this program to HCD, and it's really a pleasure to be here today to talk about what we've done during that time on the Homeless Housing Assistance and Prevention Program as well as the Encampment Resolution Program, and it's my hope that all of you leave today empowered to use the numerous transparency and accountability tools we have.

You know, good data helps us make good policy and hopefully that this gives you some insight into how these funds are working and then I give you a sense of where we're going from here and where we we hope to go with our grantees of these programs. So to get started, the HHAP Program or the HHAP Program goes to large cities, those with a population over 300,000, to counties and Continuums of Care to form regions and apply jointly for HAPP funds. This is a fair amount of money and the task at hand is large.

We are asking each of these regions to develop a regional action plan and a memorandum of understanding to work together to improve their homelessness outcomes. They need to demonstrate to us how their HHAP funds will directly impact homelessness metrics.

They need to strategically pair those HHAP funds with other local, state, and federal funds, funds such as Homekey, Prop 1, and other HCD funds. In this fiscal year, the HHAP Program has a billion dollars overall in the HHAP umbrella; $760 million of that is in the HHAP 6 NOFA.

There's also roughly 30 million that goes directly to tribal communities and then there is HHAP Homekey money, which goes out through our Homekey Plus Program, another piece of the homelessness continuum that's housed at HCD, and that has a non-veterans Homekey Plus component and a tribal Homekey Plus component.

So it's really, I think, valuable to talk about some of the evolutions the program has gone through. In this last version, we codified the Housing and Homelessness Accountability results and partnership unit. That is multifaceted that allows us to monitor HHAP grantees' expenditures and track outcomes to support underperforming grantees with corrective action plans to enforce compliance to ensure effective fund uses.

And it also pairs with some of the work that you all might be familiar with through our Housing Accountability Unit, ensuring that the housing laws and homelessness laws passed by the Legislature are actually enforced. This latest round of HHAP is also strengthened by stronger conditions for the initial disbursement of funds.

So to get that first half of the fund, this round of HHAP funds, the awardees need to show that they've been fiscally responsible with their earlier rounds of HHAP, so they need to fully obligate their rounds 1 through 3 funds, they need to have expended all their HHAP Round 1 funds, they need to have expended at least half and obligated--that's really a funky term for just be under contract, have a concrete plan for the funding with 75% of the initial disbursement from their HAPP Round 4 funding.

And then this is a fairly important change, and I think speaks to the data transparency this committee is interested in; they need to be in good standing on all reporting requirements, including their HMIS reporting for prior rounds of HHAP. So I'll get into more detail on that later, but that's a way that we get specific client data that rolls up from the Continuum of Care level into the state's HDIS system.

Another part of the evolutions of the the round this time are that the grantees do have, as in prior, prior rounds, have obligation expenditure criteria to get that second disbursement, but they also now have to have a compliant housing element if a grantee is a city or a county.

And then there is a mid-award update and a corrective action plan. If that mid-award update is not looking good, you know, this is really an opportunity for us to intervene before we give that second half of the funding to make sure that the commitments that were made, that the regional MOUs are being upheld, that the progress is going in the right direction, and to work with grantees to adjust funding plans toward more impactful measures if things aren't looking good, and we can do that through a corrective action plan.

Another important evolution from this round is in recognition of the addressing unsheltered homelessness. Regions need to have an encampment response plan. They need to identify the number of encampments within their region, specific timely plans to address those encampments.

The California Interagency Council on Homelessness put out guidance on addressing encampments with humane practices and noticing and an emphasis on safety, and so we're also asking the regents to confirm that they have a policy that's compliant with that guidance or at least practices compliant with that guidance. And if not, they will need to update their policies.

Something many of the committee members today are aware of is that homelessness is a housing issue. When we don't have a sufficient supply of affordable housing, we see homelessness go up. It's those--it's not having enough buffer to weather those economic shocks that every household experiences are put us into cycles of homelessness and we see homelessness rise.

I also talk about this a lot, that that lack of affordable housing supply also hurts our ability to have stronger homeownership rates in California. That buffer is really important for two of our major housing concerns. And this is a significant amount of funding going to cities and counties, and part of what's recognized in this iteration of this funding is that we expect our grantees to be doing what they can on their side of the table with the housing piece of that challenge.

So making sure that they have compliant housing elements and annual progress reports and if they don't, that they have a concrete timeline to come into compliance, that they understand the pro-housing policies that lead to additional housing supply and are working toward pro-housing designations, that they have no active housing law violations or that they have a timeline to correct those violations, and that they're putting forward public land that can be turned into affordable housing.

Another key evolution this round is sustainability and the focus on bringing other resources beyond HHAP to the table. So regions now have to have a plan to identify the interim housing in their community and if they are looking to use non-housing uses with their HHAP funds, things that are not housing solutions, or to create new interim shelters as part of their plan outside of homeless youth shelters, then they need to have a plan to sustain all the existing and planned permanent housing within the region through the grant term.

If they identify that a gap exists, they need to show how they're going to be dedicating funds to sustain those investments, bringing local and regional housing funding to the table, MHSA funding, BHSA funding, just to name a few. But obviously there is a whole continuum of funding that contributes to the homelessness that comes from health, everything from reentry programs, as well as many of the programs that California runs through DHCS and through things outside of HCD's purview as well.

And so this is really recognizing that there are significant resources on the table and we need to leverage additional resources in an ongoing way to bring greater attention to solving homelessness and preventing homelessness. This round also added two stakeholder engagement categories.

Federally recognized tribes need to be part of the process for developing these homelessness regional action plans and developers of permanent affordable housing also need to be consulted in developing these plans, really making sure that we're touching base with those folks that are out there building permanent supportive housing in our communities and that the regions receiving these funds understand what are the missing pieces that are needed to help make that housing come to fruition in an expeditious and cost-efficient manner in a way that serves the greatest number of people.

So I know we are short on time, but I do want to get a chance to show you a few of the available tools that have come to pass since we've added the program to HCD's portfolio. So this is our HHAP website. Under Reporting and Compliance, you have an understanding of all the accountability provisions and dates associated with the program. You also, under Grantee Outcomes, have access to this. This is the HDIS--oops, apologies--this is the HDIS dashboard for all HHAP recipients.

And this is actually a fairly underreporting of the amount of people served because we are still working to get some of our HHAP grantees to be reporting correctly into the HMIS system. But you are able--we are working with the grantees to bring them into greater compliance.

We have a dashboard showing where there are errors in entering this data and we're working directly with grantees to get them into compliance, which will lead to more complete data, but even with what you see here, we're able to see not only large amounts about who's being served, but also what that service utilization looks like, which kinds of populations are being served, prior living situations and exit destinations, what is happening to clients that are served after they receive HHAP services.

We also have the HHAP Fiscal Dashboard where you can check on any grantee. Fresno is here today and so I thought I would--you're in good standing--so I thought you wouldn't be embarrassed to show that you have obligated nearly all of your HHAP 1 through 5 funding and this shows where the expenditure is at.

You can also see what kinds of categories that funding has been going into. You know, not all of our grantees are in the same place, which I think is something the committee might want to talk about today, but this gives you a picture of, of where each grantee is at on their journey and where the program is at overall in terms of its awarding, funding obligated, and funding expended. And this is one of numerous tools that we make available.

You know, a lot of the questions we get are about what are we getting for this, what are we, where is this money going? What--is it having an impact? And so we also make available, with help from our data friends at Cal ICH, the system performance measures, so looking at how each region is performing across numerous homelessness metrics and then what the grantees are actually creating in terms of their outcomes.

Ms. Kirkeby, could you make that a little bigger so we can see when--

Yes, absolutely. So, here. And would you like to look at the dashboard specifically?

Yeah, please. I think, you know, members want to see these tools and folks who are watching on TV.

So this is, this is one specific grantee, the City of Fresno, but you can, you can also see all grantees. This is the full HHAP 1 through 5 funding that has been awarded and then its status in terms of what is yet to be obligated, what has been obligated, what has been expended.

And it also gives you the categories where that funding has been invested, with operating, operating subsidies for housing being the highest, the highest piece of the puzzle at this point, which is a good thing from the evidence that says that we're doing the right kind of investment.

We also see big investments in interim sheltering, new navigation centers, rapid rehousing, street outreach, prevention, and admin cost. And this is something that's available on our website to look at any grantee, any round at any time. And similarly, just the other one; this is the HTIS dashboard, and this gives you the sense of what that money is actually doing out in the communities and what the impact of that funding is.

And I know it takes a little longer to load, but--so all of those are available. So I think--oh, sorry--I think I will just quickly touch on the Encampment Resolution Funding. This is, to date, $1 billion in funding that is very housing-focused. It needs to be actionable, person-centered, local proposals that provide stable housing to address the immediate health and safety needs of individuals residing in specific encampments.

To date, the Encampment Resolution Funding Program is projected to transition more than 23,000 people into interim solutions with a pathway to permanent housing or directly into permanent housing, and the proposals must resolve critical encampment concerns such as health and safety.

We have awarded all but the hundred millions that is slated for next year, next fiscal year at this point, and similarly to the HHAP Program, we have the Encampment Resolution Fund website also has all of the deadlines and responsibilities of the grantees on our reporting and compliance tab, as well as a fiscal dashboard.

City of San Diego is here today, so I selected them, and they also, you know, no shame. They have two Encampment Resolution Fund Grants for East Village and the I-15 corridor, and they're fairly, have made fairly strong progress on their obligations, on their fiscal obligations.

But you know, as we've been saying, the speed that you spend money is not the whole puzzle. It's also what you're doing with the funding. We also make available on our website the quarterly reports from all of our Encampment Resolution Grant Fund grantees that show where they are at in terms of their status of resolving their encampments.

And so by resolving, we mean that people no longer reside at the site, that they have been fully moved into shelter, interim, or perm housing or connected to housing and no longer reside at the site, and the site has been restored to its full public use.

Partially resolved means that all the encampment residents have been addressed, but the site is not quite back to its full public use yet, and then all grantees that register as not resolved or other in their quarterly reports provide us a narrative description of where they're at in, in addressing their encampments and helping the people that reside in those encampments. And so that's all fully publicly available data on our website that anyone can look into at any time.

And I think there are even more resources than that, but I think that that gives you the best picture of where we're at to date on collecting data from our grantees, making that transparent, and probably the part I'll add is just where we're going from here. Having all that data available, it's up on our website in less than 30 days every time we receive it from grantees. The HHAP reporting happens monthly. The Encampment Resolution Fund data happens quarterly.

That is allowing us to move into our next phase of accountability with our grantees, which is really about regional convenings and working, providing targeted technical assistance so that when we see grantees that are knocking it out of the park on one of these aspects that we can talk to them about what are they doing, what are they spending money on that's causing this great impact, we can look behind the scenes.

When we see grantees that are struggling, our assumption is never that anyone doesn't want to be solving homelessness. We think everybody wants to be doing that.

So our assumption is, let's go work with the grantees, let's dig in, figure out how we can create peer-to-peer relationships with other grantees that might be having, either getting being more successful on speed and deployment of funding or being more successful on outcomes and begin to give them direct resources that are going to lead them to more successful, more successful outcomes with their grants. So this is not a grant that ends at an award. This is a grant that, partnership that continues long past us delivering dollars.

Well, thank you so much. I know members have lots of questions for you, but we're going to go on with the other panelists and then come back, and really appreciate all the hard work that you've done in the last year to put this together with the team to have this kind of level of transparency with the funding. It's very impressive.

Thank you very much.

Next we have--we're very pleased to have Mayor Todd Gloria from the City of San Diego. I think he's on virtually, and folks who are doing that will magically make him appear. There you are, Mayor Gloria. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon to you and members of the committee. I appreciate the chance to come testify virtually with you all today. As was mentioned, my name is Todd Gloria, City Mayor of San Diego, former member of the Assembly. Good to see a couple names I recognize.

Can we--just one second, Mayor Gloria. Can we turn the volume up a little bit?

That's it. That's as loud as we can get. Okay. Sorry. Please.

Sure. No problem. I'm not here just as the Mayor of San Diego, but also as a member of the California Big City Mayors Coalition. Members of the Legislature likely know this is the 13 largest cities in California. We're a bipartisan group representing the entirety of the state and directly representing more than 11 million Californians.

The Big City Mayors are absolutely united in identifying homelessness as our number one priority, which is why we worked so hard with the Legislature to create the HHAP Program many years ago.

Thanks to HHAP, between January 2023 and June 2024, our local communities provided more than 225,000 Californians with access to housing, shelter, or other supportive services, resulting in more than 50,000 of them exiting homelessness for good into permanent housing. Now, I know the focus, Mr. Chairman, of this hearing is about accountability, and I want to say clearly and unequivocally that California's mayor's welcome increased transparency when it comes to efficiently and effectively spending taxpayer money.

The public is right to demand results and accountability from homelessness and the funding allocated to them. In cities like San Diego, your sense of urgency, we're committed to resolve all accountability. If I may, I'd just focus on San Diego for just a moment. I'm proud to say that my city will fully expend HHAP Rounds 1 through 4 by the end of fiscal year 25 and that we'll have Rounds 5 spent down in fiscal year 26.

Now, over the past four years, HHAP dollars have helped more than 13,000 people in a city shelter system, provided more than 3,200 people living in their cars in parking lots, helped 132 housing beds, provided outreach to 15,000 people entering the housing shelters, and more than 1,900 people through our Family Reunification Program.

Nearly 47 San Diegans have exited programs, deposited housing income. Downtown San Diego sends out funds to reduce the number of pet encampment by more than 12%. We've more than doubled the number of shelter options in our city by a combination of shelters, safe parking, and our innovative Safe Sleeping Program, all of which are made possible because of HHAP.

We know at the end of the day, housing is what ends homelessness. I want to share with the committee, Mr. Chairman, that San Diego is proud to lead when it comes as a national model on housing permit reform. Since 2005, my city has historically permitted less than 5,000 new homes per year.

Since my office, through a series--since I took office, through a series of policy reforms and other best management techniques, we have been able to dramatically increase new housing production. In 2023, we permitted nearly 10,000 new homes in my city and in 2024, despite significant economic headwinds, we permitted approximately 85 new--100 new homes.

Again, that's over the less than 5,000 per year that we've been doing historically. But to be clear, HHAP funds are what we're using to get people off the streets, in the shelter, and on our way towards permanent housing, and that's why we welcome this Accountability Committee's focus on today.

I want to share some of my thoughts on how I think the Administration's accountability website can be improved. What we saw released last month I don't believe tells the full story of homelessness in California. Let me expand upon that.

I believe that this website can be a helpful tool to shining a light on each committee's actions in addressing--I'm sorry--each community's actions when it comes to addressing homelessness, housing, and behavioral healthcare. But I believe the data needs to be more granularized to capture what is really taking place in communities across California.

For example, on the website in San Diego, you will see a very high level aggregation of numbers that show an 18.2% increase in homelessness and a 4% reduction in beds. What I've already told you gives you a sense of why that's a little bit out of whack. The City of San Diego's most recent point-in-time count showed a 4% increase in homelessness. Again, that's compared to the 18%, 18.2% that the website says because the website does not tell the story of the 17 other cities in the County of San Diego.

In reality, homelessness increased in the City of Carlsbad by 86% last year, City of Vista by 93%, and the City of San Marcos by a whopping 1,600%. Similarly, the website shares, I think, not the full story when it comes to shelter beds.

It doesn't show that the City of San Diego spends approximately $100 million a year on homeless services, much of which goes to shelters. But meanwhile, other jurisdictions in our county are contributing to the low shelter numbers on that dashboard. The majority of them actually have no shelter beds in their cities, despite having homeless populations in their cities.

We need transparency on these numbers so that people, taxpayers can know exactly what they're reflecting. Again, they don't tell the full story of what's going on in our communities. In addition, regarding behavioral health on the website, the website notes that the County of San Diego has implemented care for and the conservatorship of forms contained in Senate Bill 43, but it doesn't include any numbers or data to show measurable progress.

Yes, they may have embraced or implemented these policies, but by all accounts, they're failing on both account--on both pieces of legislation to get the Legislature's intended results. Simply saying yes is not the implementation of the program. It's something that we can call victory on. More needs to be done to show that the state level reforms are working, and I believe that we should be demanding results on these programs and the Administration is right to demand those results.

Finally, Mr. Chairman, another area of increased accountability that I would like the committee to focus on surrounds the one group that is not at the table today yet receives 30% HHAP funds, and that's the state's Continuum of Care. We need CoCs to be part of the solution.

For example, in San Diego, HHAP Round 5, our CoC is spending $0 on shelter beds while the city is using approximately 3% of its HHAP funding on shelter. Going back to HHAP Round 3, the city expended 97% of our award, County of San Diego 38%, while the CoC has expended 37% of the award.

I hope that we can look at CoCs and see how they're actually helping to build the regional infrastructure needed to clear encampments to get people off the street in the shelter, and this means helping shelter infrastructure get people off the street by giving people places to come.

Now, very last, Mr. Chairman, we can't talk about homelessness accountability without ignoring state agencies' responsibility to take care of encampment when it's a property. Over the past year, the City of San Diego has received on average 300 complaints per month about the proliferation of encampments on state-controlled land, especially on Caltrans by the way.

Legally, cities are not permitted to go onto state property to do outreach or to clear encampment. When the state can't or won't address these encampments, it should give cities the full authority to do this and reimburse us for the cost of performing those tasks.

We can't have an honest conversation about accountability if state agencies are not held accountable for their own property. Because we're going to show the real state of play happening on the ground. Again, Mr. Chairman, we need to show the full story and that means more granular details, more of the dollars that are going out being accounted for on the website, and more state accountability for this work.

So Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to share with the committee my thoughts today on accountability. Again, California's mayors welcome transparency and accountability, we believe that we've been thoughtful stewards of HHAP dollars, and we hope to have more going forward, but we acknowledge that more can be done. Working together, I believe more can be accomplished for the people of the state. Again, thank you for the opportunity to testify before the committee, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you very much, Mayor Gloria. It's great to have you here and thanks for your pointed comments about how we can improve things even more. Next we have Phil Skei with the City of Fresno.

Yes, good afternoon, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to this committee for having me. We appreciate the opportunity to come and testify. To those committee members my back is to, I apologize to all of you. I wanted to share, I think, you know, as it relates to what Ms. Kirkeby shared earlier in terms of impact and what Mayor Gloria just testified to as it relates to a snapshot of what it looks like for a given city to implement and to utilize various dollars that the State of California has provided cities, what that looks like, for the virtue of context, I want to just mention that the City of Fresno has a population of approximately half a million people, which represents half of the population of Fresno County.

Mayor Dyer took office in January of 2021 amidst the Covid pandemic, and an increase in overall homelessness in Fresno by 129%, and immediately began creating opportunities for people to exit homelessness, starting with those who were living on our freeway embankments. Named Project Off-Ramp, Mayor Dyer's first initiative removed 650 people from the freeways.

Eighty percent of those removed accepted services, including shelter. This was the beginning of Fresno's unprecedented investment in shelter. Relying previously solely upon privately funded shelters, the city added an additional 877 publicly-funded beds to our community shelter inventory over the next few years while continuing to operate the only warming and cooling center in Fresno County.

Since 2021, the City of Fresno has provided shelter for 10,000 people, 53% of whom are now in permanent housing, 95% of whom remain housed two years later, and some of the statistics that I'm sharing with you are on a handout that I believe you received.

We reduced homelessness by 5.6% in 2023, when the state was seeing homelessness increase 5.8% and the nation 12%. And though we are awaiting our 2025 point-in-time count results, the city expects to see more decreases in overall homelessness and, in particular, a decrease in unsheltered homelessness we believe will be around 20%.

As a city, we could not have done any of this without the historic investments by the state through the CARES Act, Project Homekey, Encampment Resolution Fund Grant dollars, Permanent Local Housing Allocation, and HHAP to name just a few.

In past years, I want to just share that we, historically, would construct or see developed in our city, 80 permanent affordable housing units annually. Now we will, in the City of Fresno, over the next 12 months have seen 1,500 affordable units come online representing a 1,644% increase under the Dyer Administration.

As this committee knows, increasing housing supply--Ms. Kirkeby spoke to it earlier--at all affordable housing levels is both a homelessness intervention and prevention strategy, and we believe that the reason that we've seen such positive results in Fresno's homelessness response is because of the steps we've taken to become a pro-housing jurisdiction.

And through our certified housing element, we are confident in our ability to continue to plan for and support the development of 11,000 additional units in our west area, 6,000 units in our southeast area, and in Downtown Fresno, we've already made all development ministerial, removed density caps, we are allowing projects to be constructed up to 15 stories tall, and we have already zoned for enough capacity for 75,000 housing units in our downtown compared to the 3,000 residents that are living there currently.

Thanks to the state's commitment of $250 million, 50 million of which has already been awarded, our downtown right now is under construction with water, sewer, and other infrastructure to support these 75,000 new housing units. As you already know, as mentioned earlier, available housing is a major factor in addressing homelessness.

I just, in closing, want to thank all of you on behalf of Mayor Jerry Dyer and our City Manager Georgeanne White for the opportunity to share more about what we are doing in Fresno as a jurisdiction that has seen a decrease in overall homelessness. This is a very important discussion to our city, and in Fresno, we hope we can be a resource as this discussion continues. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much, Mr. Skei. I appreciate the information about the work your city's doing. Next we have Robert Ratner from the County of Santa Cruz.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, members of the committee. I appreciate the opportunity to be here. About 35 years ago, I got interested in why there's so many people in our state without a home and I've been at it since then.

Started as a volunteer in Los Angeles, various programs, Catholic Worker and shelters, and then ended up going to medical and public health school here in California and continued doing some work in the City of Berkeley, worked for a nonprofit community health center, and then worked in county government in Alameda County and behavioral health and now I'm working in the Human Services Department.

So I give you all that background to share that I've seen this issue from multiple lenses, from a volunteer to a nonprofit, to someone who was working with the city, to someone who's been in different county departments, and one thing that I've come to appreciate is how the issue looks different from all those different perspectives, and I left out that I've been involved with three different team of carers during that tenure.

And one of the things that I've noticed in the topic of accountability is fundamentally we got to get these different groups to align on an understanding of why we have homelessness and what are the main drivers and bring communities together rather than the finger pointing that can come up when we go down an accountability route.

My training's in medicine, and one of the things that I learned from some of my mentors is that especially during my training, if you make a mistake, it's not just you that made a mistake, it's the system, it's your supervisor, it's the training.

So I am concerned when we talk about accountability, that we may drift into pointing the finger at a particular entity rather than looking at the collective system, how the federal government, the state government, county and cities work together and finding those opportunities to improve and get better results for all.

I, like my colleagues, am very committed to the idea of transparency and accountability, and I also think we need to look at it from an appreciative inquiry approach, appreciate when things are going well and bring those forward and frame that for folks around the state. I appreciate your comments, Megan, earlier about highlighting where things are going well in the data and sharing that information with others.

I also wanted to just appreciate those of you who've supported the HHAP budget and ERF and tell you a little bit about how it transformed Santa Cruz County. Santa Cruz County was not a county that cared much about housing and homelessness when I started in 2020.

The initial cash in HEAP funding, I think, raised local elected leaders' concerns about their ability to manage and keep up with expectations to address the issue, and we had a proactive board and county administrator at the time said, if we want to take advantage of these funding opportunities at the federal, state level, we need to build more of an infrastructure to support bringing different groups together, getting consensus, supplying for funds.

So I like to credit the state funding for giving our local governments a little bit of impetus to become more coordinated, involved. Some highlights of things that have happened: we got an Encampment Resolution Grant in partnership with the City of Santa Cruz.

Some of you may have seen in the news, in England, the Guardian, there's something called the Benchlands. There was over 300 people living in an encampment just outside the county administrative building. We worked together with the city to try to address the needs of those folks and there's no longer an encampment there.

Of that group of people, about 150 have moved into permanent housing. The other thing I wanted to highlight is the state funds helps us draw in more local dollars and federal dollars. As an example, we as a community were able to fully utilize pandemic Emergency Housing Vouchers from the federal government and used HHAP funding for the services to help people experiencing homelessness move into housing. We were one of the top communities, top ten in terms of using those vouchers, and it wouldn't have happened without the state dollars.

And that additional success we had there allowed us to get additional federal funding at the local level. And that's the sort of thing that I think we need to try to replicate and share around the state. In terms of the data that was shared earlier--and I think in your packet, there's some examples from our community-there's a few things that the dashboards that are available now which are wonderful and I want to praise the staff and the consultants who've put the HDIS together.

It is transformational, pulling all that data together at the state level creates opportunities for understanding what's working well and whether there's opportunities for improvement. There's also opportunities to share and look at the data across other systems at the state that I don't think we're fully taking advantage of.

What I wanted to say about the data is that it often hides the fact that we may be successful in getting large numbers of people from the streets into housing, but we're not tracking how many people are losing their housing.

So the graphics that I included in the packet, we started to look at inflow and outflow in our data system. How many new people are coming into homelessness that are touching our providers? How many of them are returning from homelessness within the past two years? And then we're also looking at outflow.

Where are people going and are they being successful in securing that housing long-term? The other suggestion I have for you all is to consider looking at subpopulations. I know there's been a lot of attention around the issue of people experiencing homelessness with behavioral health conditions, but if we don't disaggregate the data and look at the outcomes for that population, these aggregate numbers may belie a fact that we're not doing so well with certain populations.

So in the packet, we decided to break out families and veterans, and not surprising to me, we are making a lot of progress with veterans, and part of the reason that that is the case is there's been a longstanding federal commitment and state commitment to resourcing a full system of care, from outreach to shelter to prevention, rapid rehousing and permanent supportive housing.

And I think to mirror that success and to get the kind of accountability that we think we all want to see, we need to do the same for different populations. We need to invest in all of those different levels. I think the last thing I want to share and want to leave time for questions is the tensions that occur between the cities and counties and CoCs--I heard some of that today--I think revolve around the fact that we actually don't know the best formula, how much to invest in outreach, how much to invest in shelter, how much to invest in these other interventions by population.

So we're left with where people feel the most urgency, and I think we need to look together at the data to see where are we actually having the most success in getting people from an unsheltered situation or shelter into permanent housing that they can keep, rather than just reducing the shelter numbers. And the other number thing that I want to share with you is the PIT count.

Having been involved with the point-in-time count for longer than I care to admit, I think many of you know it's not the most accurate way to track the number of people experiencing homelessness. There's a lot of variability from one jurisdiction to another, both in terms of how they do the PIT count, how frequently they do the PIT count, whether they do surveys with that, so I have some concerns about so heavily depending on the PIT count for our overarching measure of success, particularly if you're looking across counties.

I think it's a useful tool when you're looking at it within a county, if they're maintaining the same kind of count over time, but the Governor's website makes it--comparing county to county when those methodologies are different--how often people do the count varies--I think we need to look at other measures as well. I'm going to stop talking, open up to questions. Thank you for having me here.

Thank you, Mr. Ratner. Those are great points as well.

Assembly member Wicks has a question.

Thank you. Thank you all for being here today and chair for hosting the conversation. So let me start off by saying I fully support HAPP and I'm advocating for more resources in the budget.

I think it's important our cities and counties are equipped to be able to address issues in a flexible way, depending on the needs of the community. I don't know if this question is maybe best asked of Ms. Kirkeby and other individuals with local experience may follow up if need be. But system wide, do you see a correlation between HAPP investments and a reduction of homelessness?

That's a good question. I will say to my colleague's point from Santa Cruz, you know, we are looking at the PIT count, but we're also looking at a series California system performance measures because we know that that's not the be all, end all.

And absolutely in a region by region level, when we're looking at things like who is being really successful at reducing returns to homelessness, who is being really successful at people exiting homelessness into permanent housing, who, like, at these variety of metrics, we can see associations between the uses of dollars and those, those successes.

And so I would say yes, like right now a lot of people are getting HAPP funding and they're spending it in different ways from each other. And they also have different regional partnerships, right, where they've, they've, they're in a, in a different phase of their coordination between their COC, their county, their city.

There they are trying to figure out that formula in different ways of who should we be putting which solutions towards how much of the puzzle should go to these different solutions.

And so I think a place we want to go with our grantees is like being able to help them look at their individual regions and what's happened, but also look at the broader picture of, hey, we're seeing over here, that these types of investments are showing us reductions in unsheltered homelessness as well as these variety of other factors we know make a difference.

I mean, I think part of the reason I'm asking the question is because, and again, I'm advocating for more resources, but I also think that our constituents want to see a return on that investment. Right? We want to see a reduction in homelessness for a variety of reasons.

And so I think the question is if we're not seeing sort of the ROI that we want, why is that? I have some theories, but I want to hear from you all on what that is. And I don't know if anyone at the local level would want to discuss if you're seeing a reduction of homelessness because of the HAPP resources?

Yeah, sure. Member Wicks, thanks for the question. There's. I want you to hear definitively. The answer for the City of Fresno is yes. We are spending on average $15 million a year on shelter.

We don't receive that amount in HAPP resource, which is to say that we're leveraging our HAPP resource in order to invest in additional shelter capacity in our, as I shared earlier, you know, much to the, you know, with the help of those HAPP dollars, we added 877, you know, publicly funded beds to our community.

And there's absolutely no question that between the beds that we're supporting with HAPP dollars rapid rehousing our outreach efforts, that is, it is supporting the model that we have implemented in our community and is frankly a significant reason that we are seeing the results that we're seeing.

And so those HAPP resources are allowing you to raise additional funds or invest additional funds into shelter beds. And then when folks cycle out of shelter, where do they go?

Yeah, so when you say cycle out, I mean, I'm just so, so a variety of exits, right? So there are exits to permanent housing of all forms. There are exits to programs, there are exits obviously to family Members, you know, and there, and there are some negative exits as well.

I mean 53% of those that are, that we're touching in any way, shape or form are experiencing that permanent housing exit. But that means 47% do end up back on the streets in some form or fashion.

So that's why our ability to continue to provide outreach and we know this, that you know, one stay in shelter for many folks is not enough in order to exit homelessness. And so it's going to take two or three or four times. So our ability to sustain that shelter over time is really critical to people's success.

And so then in your experience, for that 47% that cycle back in, we have a significant need for more housing production, affordable housing production, more roofs over people's heads, because in many instances there's no family Member for them to go to or other places to go, so they end up back on the street.

Yes, that's correct. And in our experience in the City of Fresno, the 47% that we're referencing are folks that really primarily do need some additional support prior to entering permanent supportive housing or even permanent affordable housing units.

And so the myriad, you know, sort of approaches that We've, you know, been able to deploy, have been really significant in and again, you know, seeing the results that we're seeing.

And I see Mr. Chair, Mr. Gloria, I think, raised his hand.

Yes. Mayor Gloria, please, I know you want to answer this question as well, just.

Quickly, because I agree with my colleague from Fresno. But for Senate Member Wicks, I would just give you this magnitude of scale. Prior to HAPP, we had about 1,000 beds in my city. We have over 2,000 in my city now because of HAPP. And we were adding about another 500 this fiscal year.

So what's that telling you is that there's roughly 1500 additional people who are not on the streets because of HAPP funds. And just to be clear, it's not all HAPP money, but I'm mixing in other sources of cash, philanthropic city funds, others to expand that capacity.

So the answer, the short answer to your question, I believe is yes. And to the point that I think was being made there a moment ago. I support housing first. I do believe people can successfully transition from the streets into permanent long term housing.

But we can't ask people to wait, you know, the periods of time that it may take to get that. And these interim shelter opportunities, whether it's congregate, non congregate, safe parking or safe sleeping, is proving effective and getting people housing ready and then allowing them to work with housing navigator to get to that housing outcome.

So the answer to your question is yes. And it is leveraging dollars that I don't believe the state would get the benefit of without the investment map.

So just to wrap up, and then I'll pass the baton. So it sounds like investments in HAPP are critical, gives you all the flexibility to serve your community in the way that you need to. In addition, helps you leverage for more resources. Plus then also we need to build more permanent and other affordable housing across the board.

And so some additional work in that space from the Legislature around permit streamlining and all the things we can do to fast track that so that we have all the tools in our toolboxes, holistic approach that we think could work.

I would agree with that. Great.

And just one more thing to add on that from the evolutions, it's I think an important part of your, the underlying piece of your question is we absolutely are seeing some grantees be more successful with their half dollars than others.

And so one of the evolutions is really putting that emphasis on this mid cycle correction point where, you know, if we aren't seeing those levels of successes, there are Opportunities to reinvest those second half of those funds in other, in other grantees. And so that's not where we want to start from. We want to bring everybody up to that level. But we are seeing some folks be more successful than others at this stage.

Thank you.

Thank you, Assembly member Wicks. And then Assembly member Caloza has a question.

Thank you so much, Chair Hart. Thank you to the panelists. I just had some additional follow up questions. You know, this is a topic that's really important to the district represent, which includes LA County.

From what I'm reading in the report, it sounds like is this the first year that the management of HAPP has been transferred to hcd?

Yes, that's right. okay.

And are you finished transitioning all the management authority and all the programs over to your Department? That's right. We fully transitioned as of July 1st. Okay. And I appreciate all the testimony from everyone here, from some of our local partners.

I think for me, it's really hard to talk about oversight and funding and accountability of our homelessness dollars without talking about LA County. From what I saw on the HAPP website, LA County receives the most dollars from HAPP and about over 40% of our homelessness population is in LA County.

And so I think that's something I would love to see in the future is to look at some LA County specific numbers. I know this was just transferred again to your Department.

Some of the numbers that I was just quickly looking up, I believe there's about 46,000 unhoused in LA City and about 70,000 people unhoused within LA County.

One of the things that I wanted to see whether or not HCD had a chance to look at was some of the audits that were really recently brought to public by Judge David Carter that kind of talked about some of the homelessness funding that comes from the state and whether or not you had an opportunity to take a look at what that meant, there were obviously some very, you know, damning claims here. Not to put you on the spot, but just curious if HSID had a chance to look at that report.

Yes, absolutely. And you know, I think we're always grateful for more, more information. LA County has. So the, the LA region includes all of the LA continuum of cares as well, well as LA county as well as LA City.

And so, yes, that that region is the largest recipient of HAPP funding, though the regional partners do act as their own administrative entities primarily. And LA County has been extremely forward in obligating its HAPP funding.

So they actually pre obligated all of their HAPP 5 funding and they have been very quick at expending it primarily on permanent housing solutions, operating subsidies and rapid rehousing. So, you know, they are spent. We're certainly interested to look into some of the things that came out of that report and verify our grantee reported data.

But there are some bright spots in what they've been able to share in their accomplishments as well. So it'll be valuable for us to coordinate with their Auditor and look further behind the curtain and you know, where there are successes and where there are issues and you know, we always have the availability with any of our grantees.

We rely on grantee reported data, but they all. We have audit protocols baked into all of our, all of our contracts as well, and the ability to bring in third party auditors as well. So, you know, we can always dig deeper behind the curtain, especially if we see cost to do so.

And I can just give some highlights of the report for those who haven't read it or aren't sure what I'm mentioning.

But you know, I think one of the things that I get asked about a lot when I go back to my district is of the billions of dollars that we're spending on our homelessness crisis to what some of my colleagues already mentioned is what progress are we making in LA County where we have really ground zero for our homelessness crisis.

And some of the reports and what it's outlining from Judge Carter is that there are some main takeaways is that one, there's really no clear data on spending, you know, two, there's also a lack of transparency and tracking on subcontractors because we subcontract out a lot of our work on getting people housed.

There's a lot more to it than that. And so I would love to follow up with you in your Department after this hearing to really dig deeper into this.

But I think whether it's on this budget Subcommitee or the Housing Committee or you know, the other budget sub on state Administration, I would, you know, highly encourage the Department to bring some of these numbers in specific to LA County because that is where we are spending the bulk of our homelessness dollars. But thank you for your time and your testimony.

Thank you, Assembly member Caloza. Next we'll have Assembly member harabidi.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for all the testimony, including from our former colleague, Mayor Gloria. I think it's been very educational for all of us. I think I only really have one question and that is when Judging, accountability and transparency. To me, it's always hard to nail down what a true metric of success is.

There's a lot of data in each of these presentations and a lot of ratios and data points that each of you have pointed to in your presentations as showing progress, if you will. But I don't.

I don't really hear a lot of uniformity or actual agreement between the four of you on what the most important metric of success is. And we as a body will need to figure that out when we're thinking about accountability and whether this is actually working or not working with our funding.

We need to figure out what metrics of success are. So could the four of you speak to maybe just very briefly in 30 seconds? What is the most important metric of success? Is it the number of people we've gotten off the street into temporary housing? Is it the number of people that we've transitioned from temporary to permanent? Is it housing starts? Is it something that I'm not mentioning at all? So feel free to jump in. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you for the question. And I think you're right that there are differences of perspectives on what are the things we're measuring. For me, the most important thing to measure is how many people we're helping to exit and to keep permanent housing over a long period of time. So there's two things you look at.

At the program level and at the community level, how many people over a given period of time have exited from sheltered or unsheltered homelessness into permanent housing, and looking at how many have returned back to homelessness within a one or two year period. Because for me, the ultimate goal is helping more people get and keep housing.

There are other metrics you can look at that tie into that goal, but that, to me, is the headliner.

Mayor Gloria, would you like to go second, please?

Sure. I appreciate the question, and honestly, I think if you ask any of our constituents, the answer is getting the number of candidates down. Right.

But I think the way you actually operationalize that is very similar to the comment that was just made in seeing the number of inflow, the ratio of folks who are exiting homelessness and those who are becoming newly homeless. Pretty much every mayor knows what that number is.

My ratio is not where I want it to be, and we need to invert that to see the downward climb. You know that that's what I think is probably the most important, to really get a trend line to the outcomes that you want.

But the fact of the matter is, as long as there are encampments in public spaces and the basic disorder that comes with that. That's what the General public asked me about. But obviously some number, whatever you all want to give us to shoot for, we'll do. Mayors understand this is your money that you're entrusting to us. So if you give us a metric, we will do our best to meet it.

And just briefly, Member Haribidean, I would want to underscore what Mayor Gloria just said, but Also my colleague Mr. Ratner from Santa Cruz.

I think it is both and, and so I think what you often hear is you hear multiple perspectives on the same issue that we're all trying to solve, all understanding that everything that we're doing matters. What you know, remember what, what my colleague

Mr. Ratner was emphasizing is exits from homelessness, people exiting homelessness, which is what we are all trying to do, is help people exit homelessness permanently. But what Mayor Gloria just emphasized is also the critical nature of getting people off the streets and providing pathways to exit the streets.

Because in so doing, even if it is into some interim housing solution, we are saving lives. And so I want to emphasize that really it is a both and approach. And those would be the things that I think we would hone in on.

And I think the good news is you heard a lot of, you'll hear a lot of consensus here is actually the people exiting into permanent housing from, in terms of addressing our today homelessness population, that's the most critical measure for us getting and we, and we do track that number.

And then I think on the prevention side, it is about that housing supply side, which can be measured in terms of cost burden, which is the amount that people pay of their income toward their housing costs. And so we know exactly when cost burden goes up, homelessness goes up. It is, it is pure fact.

And so if we can address that on the, on the upstream side, then be looking to get people into permanent housing, exiting homelessness into permanent housing and staying housed. We're doing a great job.

Thank you for the question. The next person on the list is Assembly member Hoover and then Ransom and then Rodriguez.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. First off, I just want to say thank you to my colleagues from Los Angeles and Pasadena. I think really excellent questions being raised.

I think on the metric topic specifically, I can tell you what I don't think is a helpful metric is what our governor's new accountability accountability website has, which is just people served. You know, I think we really need to go beyond the surface level on this stuff.

And I actually really enjoyed looking at the slides that you were or the, the website that you were previewing, because I think that has a lot of really valuable data, and I would love to see that data really copied across all of the programs that we're spending money on in California.

Just a couple questions and then I'll have a couple comments as well. I'll try to be quick. Last April, the LAO, in one of the audits that I worked on, that, this, that the Joint Legislative Audit Committee passed with bipartisan support, highlighted some issues at the local level.

And I'm not going to call out the mayor here, but there certainly was a couple cities that they looked at specifically. One of them included San Diego. But, you know, one of the challenges that was highlighted was a failure to track the money spent by local nonprofits, basically the contracting out of homelessness programs.

Mayor Gloria, would you like to speak first?

I think a lot of those programs are really valuable and many of them are really good. We want to know what those. What's working, but what are. Maybe I'll just ask the Fresno representative and the mayor, what are you doing at the local level to figure out or hold these nonprofits accountable on what results that they're getting?

Okay. Thank you for the question. Member Hoover in terms of nonprofits and accountability, listen, we have contracts with all the nonprofits that are in our homeless service provision system.

And so we have, whether it be by virtue of a reporting requirement that is tied to a funding source or whether it's by virtue of our own local metrics, we have embedded those reporting requirements into all of our contracts.

And so in terms of accountability, we are on a monthly basis receiving those reports from our local service providers.

And so that has been the most important thing that we've done, I think, in terms of addressing your question, to ensure that, you know, once our local government expends a dollar, whether it's, you know, through a direct expenditure or through a nonprofit provider, that we're getting the result that we are seeking.

And if that dollar is coming from either the state or Federal Government, the state or the Fed or the Federal Government is getting the result that they are hoping for in appropriating that dollar. Does that help? Does that answer your question? Yeah, that's helpful.

Thank you. Appreciate it. I didn't know if. Is the mayor still here? He assumed it's up to you, Mr. Mayor.

No, I'm happy to, and I appreciate you asking. It's been a minute since I looked at that audit, but I recognize, I remember from the time that we disputed some of the Finding. But your question I think is fair. You know, how do we assure the outcomes that we're looking for?

And I think subsequent to that audit we have brought a lot of this homeless work inside the mayor's office. Got that direct oversight and accountability.

I will tell you, Assemblymember, the best example I can give you is that despite a significant budget deficit in my city, you heard me say a few moments ago that we're going to continue to expand our shelter capacity and that really comes from that accountability.

We're driving down the per night costs in order to help serve more people. And so I think that with a relatively new program, what happens around four or five years? Right. We are continuing to innovate and demand more from ourselves and from our providers. And I'm happy to continue to be judged by it.

But I do think key metrics and the way you started the comments I think are fair. What do we agree are the measurements that we want to hit and cities, mayors particularly will drive outcomes in that direction.

In my particular case, we know that this money is not promised, that we have to show better return every year and that's how we can bring down that room cost in order to serve more people.

Last hit on this would be I could get you a better return if I knew that I got this money for more than one year. We're on an annualized appropriation, but many of the shelters that we're standing up don't work that way.

If we could commit to a multi year phase of funding situation, I could bring down that cost and help more people. So again, hold me accountable for whatever you want to tell me.

I can tell you we're seeing progress, but one of the ways we can do more progress together is if we have a more reliable funding source of more than just one year at a time.

Yeah, thank you. And I think that's a fair point and certainly long term investment is very helpful. I wanted to follow up with the gentleman from Santa Cruz on the alternatives to point in time count. What alternatives are kind of you referencing when you say that? Are there some things you have in mind?

Yeah. One of them is the data that you all are collecting at the state level from HMIS and looking at the services that are being provided in that community and the new people that are coming in experiencing homelessness and the exits.

One of the pieces of legislation that you all pass, AB 977, require that individual provider data get submitted up to the state level through that HMIS and you have access to those dashboards. But what you don't have now is the inflow, outflow that we've been talking about. And I think that's a helpful thing to look at.

There are other systems of care as well, the health care systems, criminal justice systems that have data on housing status and homelessness.

I think that would be an interesting thing to look at at the state level, particularly in collaboration with the HDIS data, because there are a lot of people who are in institutional settings on a short term basis that were homeless before that aren't necessarily captured in those systems.

Got it. Thank you. My last question, and then I'll make just a brief comment. I know we gotta move on, but there's the biggest question that I get right from my constituents, and I know that local governments are constantly asking this too, is how do we help people who refuse services?

And I think to me this is like the key of figuring out this whole and solving this crisis is what do we do now?

You know, the City of San Jose just announced a pretty, I think, I think creative and, you know, experiment by implementing a new policy on giving people limited amounts of time to accept services before they would then compel the services. What is the answer to this question? How do we really tackle this?

Because the people that my jurisdictions are struggling the most with are the people that are offered services over and over and over again continuing to refuse those services. How do we get that issue.

That you provided cities like mine with the HAPP funding is allowing us to innovate, create new interventions that that population you're describing have been responding to. And I invite you and any Member of this Committee to come to San Diego and Australia Mount Personal, one of our safe sleeping sites.

These are legalized sanctioned impairment sites where we are surrounded with security and services. We have two in our city. They're very successful. And two, the question you're asking. 80% of the roughly 700 people at these two sites never previously touched our shelters.

What we found is a product that they will respond to, that they will say yes to. And that's a part of how we went from over 2,000 tents on the streets of downtown San Diego in 2023 to less than 800 today. So we've created something they'll respond to. So that flexibility you've provided is allowing us to innovate.

I can't represent that. Everything will always be a success, but this one is a home run. And there's a lot of businesses in downtown San Diego to finally get some relief from the cabinets. I think it's a matter of innovating and finding stuff that people will say yes to.

And I want to point out these were stood up at the same time when we passed our unsafe camping ordinance that said that it's not permissible to sleep on our city street if we have a shelter bed available naturally standing up.

This other opportunity created a tremendous amount of capacity, allowing us to both have the carrots and the sticks. Right? The unfortunately says you can't be here product that they wanted to take on again. 80% of those folks never stepped through the doors that we knocked before that are now at their safety.

Well, I appreciate that, Mr. Maynard. I really do appreciate your efforts on that in just making sure that our public spaces are safe and are clean. I think that's very important. It's what our constituents are calling for. I'll just close with this.

You know, I did hear a comment about, you know, some concern over the accountability conversation because it can lead to finger pointing. I would personally argue that jurisdictions that are failing their constituents on homelessness probably need to have a finger pointed at them from time to time.

I think, you know, in our packets we have this study from the nonpartisan lao, and this is why our constituents are so frustrated. It talks about $37 billion that we have spent in the last six years on housing and homelessness. Six years ago, our homeless count in California was 151,000 people. Today it is 187.

I really do admire and appreciate the jurisdictions that are having success and I think we need to model that across the state. But the reality is that as a state as a whole, we are failing in a lot of ways.

And so I would just really encourage three things as we continue to look at this problem on fixing it. Number one, we have to have accountability. We have to know where the dollars are going. To me, that is the key starting point to all of this. Number two, I think a lot of folks today, we're right.

We have to fix our housing crisis in California. We have some amazing Members like Assemblymember Wicks and others that are working very hard on this topic and really rolling back some of the policies in California that have made it harder to build and more expensive to build in California.

But the last thing I would really mention, and this is what I think doesn't get enough attention, is that this isn't just a housing problem in California. And I do have concerns about our housing first model, that it is too restricted. It is not.

There was a report that just came out a couple weeks ago that nearly 40% of those experiencing homelessness are addicted to drugs. We clearly need more supportive services, more treatment and recovery focused services.

I'm going to be doing some legislation to help give more flexibility to our state dollars to make sure that some of that money can be spent on programs that might require sobriety as a prerequisite for, for participation. I think it's really important that we're not just focused on housing, we're also focused on treatment as well.

But thank you all for being here today. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Assemblymember Hoover. I think that Mayor Gloria has a hard stop now. If you have to go, we appreciate you being here and if you can stay, that is wonderful as well. Assemblymember Ransom?

Yes. Thank you, Chair and I wanna thank you all for being here. It sounds like I'm not alone in my district. One of the top two issues that we're hearing is housing and homelessness. But more importantly, what people are asking me is what happened to their tax dollars.

I live in a district that's homelessness is growing more visibly. District 13 was recently in the news for people like living underground, living in the side of, of the highways. And so folks want to know where their dollars are going and they want us to be accountable.

And so those are the questions that I need to answer and that's why I'm going to ask you the questions that I have. So I really appreciate the dashboard. I guess my first question that I'll start with is everyone's data in there? Do you feel that you've gotten a full accounting?

I know that you fully transferred the information over, but have you gotten all of the data from every single grantee?

It's a great question. And so we have extremely good reporting into what I'll call our fiscal reporting system. So when we ask people how much of you contracted of the dollars we've given you, how much have you expended of the dollars you've given given you, and what categories is that money falling into?

In this last month we had, we did have some non reporters, but typically we have fairly good reporting on that side of things. The HCIS system that Mr. Ratner was mentioning, that's where we're going to get a lot more of the deeper layer of like what's happening to folks. Are they getting into permanent housing?

What, what are they staying housed? And we are embarking on an effort to really improve that compliance that we do not have great participation yet. And so, you know, accountability for me first up is always transparency.

So, you know, all of our grantees are going to be receiving information from us on where we understand there to be errors in their data or non reporting at all.

And I would say most folks are not in the complete non reporting category, but we do have some there and a lot more just need help working with their continuum of care to get their data entered correctly.

But that's a shared partnership between us and the California Interagency Council on Homelessness to really, like I said, make that transparent and then get the, get the help where it's needed.

Okay, and are we, when we talk about accountability, are we withholding, you know, rounds or clawing back dollars for people who are not accountable?

And when I say accountable, I don't mean just give us some data, but give us the data that we are requesting to the level that we can actually see where our dollars are being spent is, or do we have the ability to do that?

Absolutely. So that is new this round, but you cannot get your initial disburs until you're in good standing on all of your prior reporting. That's something very intentional because I believe that data is part of how we're going to make the decisions we've been talking about in this room.

And we need to understand where that return on investment is and who needs more intervention. So yes, absolutely, we'll be holding back dollars for that. And there are other forms of accountability beyond that, but that is included for the first time in this Round.

Awesome. What I would like to see and maybe you can guide me through it. I did go through the dashboard. What I'm not seeing is where we drill down into the information. It would be great to see accountability from jurisdictions. Right.

So we see county data, but within counties, you have cities that's, you know, folks who say, we're just, we're going to let this person solve our homelessness, we're not going to participate. I would love if we can click on where it says county and see where the dollars are actually being going within a jurisdiction.

When we talk about what it's required to solve homelessness, it would be great if this dashboard, we can see per jurisdiction how many people actually are going into permanent housing. Quite honestly, Fresno, what they presented, if this could be part of the dashboard, when we say, you know, where are our dollars going?

If we can say, hey, in district 13, X amount of people went into permanent housing. And by the way, we also got, you know, x number of new homeless people into homelessness, knowing that that may not be actual new new people.

Because with the point in time count, there's a lot of people who don't get counted from year to year. People actually hide from the point in time count. So at the same time, that data is very necessary so that we can see the work that is being done and to what level it's being done.

So if there's any way for you to add that level of transparency so that we as legislators, when people are asking us, where did my dollars go, we can say this, this website doesn't just show us what we spent, but how it was spent.

If I'm looking at some of these jurisdictions and as far as accountability, because I've been playing with your site, I'm wondering, like, what, what are these operational subsidies? Is this actually getting new opportunities set up to get people out of housing, or is this just subsidizing a program they currently have?

You know, we want to make sure that these dollars are being used and that these jurisdictions are accountable and that there is skin in the game. So that would be my hope, is that you can update this so that we can, you know, be able to see with the click of a button. And you may have that.

Maybe that's what you're going to walk me through, but it's not showing on this dashboard. I want to make it easy to see where our dollars are going.

Absolutely. And I will say I appreciate all the feedback. And I think data is a complicated thing. Right. You try and roll up to some Key pieces of information. You're going to miss part of the story. You do what I did, I'm going to bore you all to death. Right. But you're always trying to strike that balance.

So we're just making different tools available for the different level of depth that people want to go into. And if I get this wrong, assemblymember ransom. I'm sorry, but I think you're from San Joaquin County. I am. Okay, great.

So you can, through that HDIS system we talked about, that's where the continuums of care are uploading all this client level data into our statewide HC system. And so you can see everything that your continuum of care provided about the people served with your HAPP funds. And you also can understand the demographics of that community.

Like who are the clients being served, Gender, age, race, ethnicity. You can understand about the prior living situation that they were coming from. Was it an institutional setting? Was it permanent housing? And they, and they entered homelessness and entered into services, populations of interest, you know, specific health conditions as well as exit destinations.

So this is, this is every continuum of care. And you can select down to your, your county to see, you know, and in this one, the destinations, there's a lot of unknown, but you can see for the data that is provided, specifics on where, where they exited after receiving services.

Okay, so I would love, if you can, and I'll do this really quickly for the sake of time, San Joaquin County. So I actually helped start this, the continuum of care in my county. zero, wonderful.

So for San Joaquin county, can you please tell me how many new shelter beds were created and what percentage are you able to like get to that level? I just had Genevieve pull it up for me. But I'm trying to, I want to be able to find that data.

And that is, I believe I can. I. Why don't we convene? No, that's fine. I believe that. I believe you can get to that in here. And this is a little bit. This is my quick way to do it is. So with your HAPP funds in that county, about 7,500 people were served. And 49% of those.

And it says how many people that is. So 3600 were served through coordinated entry, 2300 served through emergency shelter, street outreach. But I think you're thinking more about like what the investment level is. Right.

I'm looking for return on investment. So I do appreciate the data and thank you because I appreciate you being prepared with that information. But what folks really want to know is how many people are we Pulling out of homelessness and how many people are getting into permanent housing with these dollars.

And, you know, those are the things that we want to know, how many new shelter beds were actually created. And I don't see that level of data here.

So the other. The other. And I, And I am always happy to spend more time. But the other piece I'll show you just before I stop talking, is this San Joaquin. I'm looking for San Joaquin on here. But they're.

And while you're looking, I would love to know if these numbers are unduplicated. There we go. Are these unduplicated? When you say 7,000 people were served, those are unduplicated numbers. Okay. Okay.

So this is the other way to look at your data. This is the. For the San Joaquin County CoC. These are those system performance measures we were talking about. So trying to get beyond just point in time count, but it does include point in time count as well.

So this is the number of people experiencing homelessness that are accessing services through that continuum of care. The number that was happening in 2022 when the funding began. The number that's happening in the most recent data as well. And they.

That includes, like, so, for example, the number of people exiting homelessness into permanent housing in calendar year 2022, for your continuum of care, that was just over 1,000 people. That rose to 1242 people, a 14% increase in the most recent data year. Okay, so I don't.

Because I don't want to make you go through the whole exercise. I just want to know, can we agree that this spreadsheet's wonderful, but can we agree that there's an opportunity to make this more transparent and accessible? More accessible, certainly, for constituents so that, you know, we don't have to.

We can know which dollars are tied to which results. Yes, I think that's really important for us because as we are trying to figure out where we need to authorize, you know, funds, of course, we want to put funds where things are being effective.

And so if we can see the effectiveness, then I think everyone would be able to support things that are effective. And so in order to do that, in order for us to help you help us, we really could use just more accessible information.

But I do appreciate you and all the work that you've done to answer some of the questions that we've have. And I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Senator Ransom. And then next we'll have Assemblymember Rodriguez.

Thank you. A lot of my questions have been answered by the questions of my colleagues. Thank you for your presentation. I just had two additional questions. One is just because there's so much conversation right now about the measure of success, which I find interesting that we all don't have the same measure of success.

But I want to lift up the fact that you brought up veterans earlier in the conversation, and if it's pointed to as, you know, a successful population where we're making progress, all of the investments from the federal to the local level are all dedicated to creating a whole continuum of care where if someone falls into homelessness, we have the response, the beds, the transitional housing, and the permanent housing available to exit them.

And so I know that we each want to pick one slice that it makes sense, but the success of that population was the fact that we were prepared to help someone knowing that homelessness occurs.

I wanted to ask about prevention and where that's captured anywhere in the story, because a lot of success comes from ensuring no one falls in the first place. And the only way to end this is to ensure we are preventing homelessness. So where in all of the data available is that?

I mean, you guys should add more about what you're doing at the local level on those on that piece. But I would say in the overall picture, that's where some of the importance from this round's emphasis on prevention comes in multiple ways.

One, making sure that we are addressing that affordable housing supply piece up front because we know it has such a big impact. But then prevention strategies are absolutely eligible uses in the program. They have been and they continue to be. So those are important pieces of the puzzle in our mind as well.

And for us, what I mentioned earlier, we look at the inflow and outflow. So one of our goals is to reduce the inflow and looking deeply at the people who return to homelessness who've been in our system before. And are there any particular trends that we can work differently in the system to prevent that from happening?

And who are the new individuals who are becoming homeless so we can understand what neighborhood they're from, they have particular health issues, what kind of household are they we actually are investing in?

Because we've seen an increase in one city jurisdiction in our county, Watsonville, we're focusing some prevention efforts in that particular jurisdiction because we have the data from the pit count and HMIs to allow us to focus.

And the hope is we're going to see a reduction in inflow from that community, and hopefully the PIT count will also go down there. I completely agree about the importance of closing that gap between the cost of housing and, and the incomes of individuals.

And I think I wanted to say Assemblyman Ransom, one of the things I also get questions in my role from people at the local community and local officials. And one of the things that I've found particularly helpful is what you alluded to is being more transparent about how much things actually cost.

So I actually work in the most expensive real estate market in the United States.

And so I need to remind people in my community how much it costs to rent a unit and what the incomes are of seniors and people with disabilities, an example, or the people who work in the tourist industry, how much they're making and how much the rent is.

And then I explained to them what these program models are and how much it costs to run a shelter and the dollars that look really big to them initially when I show the math, they realize, wow, this really doesn't stretch very far given the we have a third of our population on Medi Cal.

So that kind of context setting I find is particularly helpful. And then also looking at the outcomes for a given investment. So if I decide I'm going to invest in a shelter and the shelter costs x amount how many people left that shelter and divide that by the total cost of the shelter.

So the kind of cost per outcome is something that we're starting to look at more to find out where are the places to your point that we can invest both to prevent people from losing their housing, but also to get from an unhoused situation back into housing.

I think it's really helpful that you just provided such like a tangible example of the challenges that people face when it comes specifically with seniors and their fixed income and the cost of living.

I think sometimes in the data and the numbers we lose the narrative and that qualitative data is so important when we're setting policy and making decisions. So thank you for lifting that up and I hope that as we continue conversations, we continue to talk about the people impacted.

For example, a veteran who is experiencing homelessness on the street and why we wouldn't require sobriety for someone who is, you know, self treating PTSD before they are able to have a roof over their head and not be in the rain outside.

I think it's really important we have the conversations about, like, who it is beyond the numbers. So thank you. And with that, my second question is regarding new laws and policies regarding encampments and anti camping ordinances and how we're able to capture data about how that's impacting our ability to truly Address homelessness.

Knowing that a lot of case managers who are perhaps working with outreach teams to get people document ready to get into an apartment can lose ties when some policies are being put into effect.

Is there a way that we're going to be able to capture through HMAs or any other mechanism if people, people are moving or detaching from services because of these policies being put into place in certain jurisdictions?

I can share a little bit of what we're trying to do to address those questions in Santa Cruz. So our HMIS system, we added an outreach module so we could get better information about where people are staying.

And we can, if we know where people end up after an encampment response activity happens, we can see that kind of movement. We, we also are piloting with the GIS software a way to work with law enforcement to map out where encampments are and where people are and see how that changes over time.

It is dependent on that relationship building and that outreach work being resourced well enough to be able to follow people at the individual level. So it's particularly challenging in our community. There certainly has been conversations about how enforcement actions may result in increased numbers of people moving to other jurisdictions.

And what I try to do in my role is to get all of those stakeholders together and talk about how can we move away from enforcement to getting people on a path to housing and trying to create some standards across all those jurisdictions.

And that was alluded to earlier as part of the HAPP6 approach, having local governments commit to following some standard protocols for addressing encampments. So we're not just moving people around from one jurisdiction to another, that we're actually getting them on a path to, to greater stability and connections.

I don't know if you want to say more about that.

No. But you look eager so you should go for it.

I don't know about eager, but Rodriguez, it's a wonderful question. I appreciate my colleagues experience and the work that is being done in Santa Cruz and Fresno.

One of the things I guess I would say is that I think there was a broad sweeping, you know, belief that jurisdictions that are adopting unlawful camping ordinances are really taking a hard line approach to homelessness.

Meaning that once the ordinance is adopted that the implementation of that ordinance really, in essence, you have law enforcement sweeping the streets and arresting people, you know, one after the other after the other. And I honestly don't know of a jurisdiction in California.

It doesn't mean, I mean, I just, I'm just not personally aware of one where that is what implementation has looked like. And certainly in the City of Fresno, that's not what it looks like.

And so the disconnection between, you know, existing case management relationships and those that are experiencing unsheltered homelessness is not occurring in a city like Fresno that has actually adopted an unlawful Cambi ordinance on any, on any broad level.

There was a question, I think, from some Member Hoover earlier, and I have to just very much appreciate some of the nuance and the complexity of all that we are attempting to do as a state. Right. And at the local level, there is not one answer.

And so in Fresno, we found that this unlawful camping ordinance has actually led to people exiting homelessness because it has removed an option from them choosing in instances where it's been a choice to live on the streets.

Now, that is certainly not everyone's experience or story, but where that has been the case, people are choosing now to accept services, to accept diversion, reunification with family Members, etc. So it's not that one strategy is the end all, be all.

But I would certainly say that this, again, I said earlier, this, you know, kind of myriad of options and tools is, you know, generally moving our cities in the direction that we want to move, which in the end of the day is about people exiting homelessness permanently and helping those that are on our streets as quickly and swiftly as possible get off of the streets for their own well being.

Thank you for providing your insight and for your safety. When there is not an ability to provide an appropriate bed for someone who is living on the street and that ordinance is in place, what happens then?

Yeah.

So in the City of Fresno, again, the way in which we have implemented this is unique exclusively to the City of Fresno, is that we are only implementing that ordinance in a manner in which someone is really, frankly becoming aggressive toward neighbors, business owners or law enforcement, and they are a potential danger to themselves or somebody else, but don't meet the threshold of criteria for, for example, a 5150 mental health hold.

So in that instance, or in a very sensitive use area, if someone is camping right outside of an elementary school, then we are implementing whether or not there is a shelter bed available. And so, as our ordinance says, you know, you potentially face up to a year in jail and, or a $1,000 fine.

Now, we've been tracking those that we have cited and arrested in those unique situations where it's being implemented. And we're seeing by and large the maximum penalties. We've not actually had anyone receive the maximum penalty. We've seen much lesser degrees of penalties.

And so in the end, and we've also seen, and we know this, we've seen people exiting homelessness as a result of just simply the ordinance being in place, even without enforcement.

I think it's going to be helpful after it sounds like you are collecting data because I imagine putting someone away for a year, if that was ever something, since you have the ability to exercise that, being able to show in data whether or not that proves to be helpful in putting someone in permanent housing eventually or prohibits them because they now have a record, can't rent an apartment and no longer has the ability to move out of homelessness.

Because I think about people that I've known working in the homelessness sector, like a mother with a one year old baby girl who was in her car because she didn't feel comfortable in a shelter because of assault she had experienced, experienced and should she be told that she would be ticketed or fined.

That fear in itself makes people hide in maybe places that are more unsafe for themselves and their family as opposed to giving them a path to exit or ensuring they stay connected to their caseworker to remain on a path to exit homelessness.

So I look forward to the additional data to understand what the true impacts are of these policies. Thank you.

Thank you, Assemblymember Reed. It's Grace course. Yes, go ahead, Mr. Kirkby.

Well, I was just going to add, you know, I, I said that the locals receiving HAPP funding needed to be consistent with the Interagency Council on Homelessness guidance with regard to encampments. So just to like talk a little bit about that, we're talking about prioritizing health and safety.

We're talking about noticing, we're talking about not vacating anyone into a situation that would be creating more danger and primarily vacating into interim or permanent housing solutions, which obviously, because we're pairing it with funding, there is a direct link there.

And then you need to attempt service provision and also do respectful and reasonable treatment of the people and their property. And so those are some of the things we're talking about when we're talking about how you're engaging and who's overnight residents. You know, that is a fair question.

The, the, the requirements are to have a policy and so they, the policy would have to be in line with that. And so in some ways we would provide that oversight in terms of the policy. But if, you know, someone were to break with their own policy, we might not know about that.

But obviously sometimes then that's how we end up with accountability cases, right, where someone reports that some a city is functioning outside of a policy that they have in place. So that would be some of the ways in which we have a stopgap there.

Well, thanks, everybody. Really appreciate the questions from Committee Members and the panelists. Amazing information. And I want to thank Genevieve Morales for her great work in setting up this hearing.

Absolutely.

I am struck by the fact that a year ago a lot of the discussion was about, you know, how are we going to focus on how fast local governments can get the money out the door. And this year we're talking about the excellent data that we have that we didn't have last year.

And we're focusing now more deeply on outcomes, which is really, really valuable. And I know you've done a tremendous amount of work.

I don't know that there's ever an end point to the collection of data, but it is informing decisions that we are going to make here in the Legislature to help increase investments for all the programs that have been successful and others that we will need to invest in to have more success.

And I just think this is a great example of what the Accountability and Oversight Committee is supposed to do, is identify a problem, you know, charge the agencies with solving that problem and, you know, and go on to the next next step. And that's where we're at today.

And if anyone in the audience would like to make any public remarks, I think we have a microphone that we could turn on. Come on up quickly and would love to hear from you.

Yes, good afternoon to the Committee. My name is Leslie Martinez. I'm a political science major and pre law minor at Mount St. Mary's University. And today I'm here to advocate for the increasing of funding for nonprofit organizations that help our community and that actually work.

So that means by that I mean that they have the evidence to support that. And just some background. As of January 2025, homelessness grew 3% in California.

Within the last year did not decrease, and 187,000 people still live on the streets of California, and 22% of whom are actually veterans who have risked their lives for us to be speaking here today.

And so funding for nonprofits, specifically, I want to talk about the Alexandria House in Los Angeles, which is where I was born and raised, that helps rehabilitate previously unhoused people and it prepares them for the workforce and ultimately removes the toxic stigma surrounding homelessness.

And I've met alumni, women from the Alexandria House, and they expressed that government resources were not helpful to them. But after completing, successfully completing the Alexandria House programs, 92% of families have left have gone on to permanent housing, 92%.

And so by funding these nonprofit organizations that actually work, we are incentivizing its growth and furthermore, reinvesting in successful pathways for our homeless community. And so furthermore, I ask for the Committee to further investigate accountability and oversight in Los Angeles because I walk the. The streets of downtown Los Angeles and encampments. Encampments overtake the streets. And so.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. Kim Lewis, representing the California Coalition for Youth. And appreciate the opportunity to provide some comments. And just want to note that, you know, the point in time count does not work for our young people. We know that.

We're seeing that in the HGIS data, where it's over two and a half times greater than what we're seeing in the point in time counts. Because young people hide, right? They don't want to be seen, they don't want to be picked up, particularly for our minors who are under 18.

You know, necessarily, they're choosing the street is a safer place than the homes that they came from. So that should say a lot about that and really want to focus in on that.

There's also we need for other outcome measures and data collection around safe and stable exits for our young people, because sometimes we can return them home and if with supports and services appropriate, it can be a safe exit and not just permanent supportive housing. That's not necessarily what we always want for our young people.

They shouldn't grow up in our programs. They should really be in that transitional phase that they are as a developmental youth and be able to go on and to live their lives independently later on. So really appreciate if we can have additional data and focus on those, our young people.

Thank you.

Justin Garrett with the California State Association of Counties. Just want to thank this Subcommitee for this great hearing today and really looking at accountability metrics and data and what we can all be doing, working together to improve everything that we're doing together in homelessness.

We joined recently with the Cal Cities, the Big City Mayors, and the Bring California Home Coalition, advocating for an additional round of HAPP funding. And so we look forward to partnering with the Legislature on what that could look like and what these accountability metrics should be as this conversation moves forward. Thank you. Thank you.

That concludes our hearing today. Our next Committee hearing will be on April 23rd. And we are adjourned. Thank you.

Thank you.