Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 7 on Accountability and Oversight

We're going to begin the hearing today, so would all the panelists come up and join us? Thank you. Okay, good, because that their mics. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Assembly Budget Committee Subcommitee on Accountability and Oversight. This is our second hearing in a series this year examining key accountability and oversight issues affecting the state budget.

Before I begin, I'll provide opening remarks and ask the chair and vice chair of the Budget Committee, if they're here, if they have any comments and then quickly transition to our wonderful panel.

I ask that Members of the Committee hold your questions until after the panel presentations and Members of the public will have an opportunity to provide comment at the conclusion of the hearing. Today's hearing continues the subcommittee's work examining how state dollars to address homelessness are being spent and whether those investments are producing measurable results.

As we navigate a challenging budget year with continued uncertainty at the federal level, it's more important than ever that every dollar allocated by the Legislature is used effectively and transparently. There are more than 181,000 people in California experiencing homelessness over on any given night, approximately 60% of these 68% of these individuals, roughly 123,000 people, are unsheltered.

These numbers are not abstract. They represent people living in tents along our streets, families sleeping in cars, and individuals cycling in and out of emergency rooms, jails and shelters. They represent one of the most urgent public policy challenges facing our state. Since 2018, the state has invested approximately $5 billion in the Homeless Housing Assistance and Prevention Program.

About 4 billion of that funding has gone directly to cities, counties and continuums of care to prevent and end homelessness at the local level. I've seen firsthand how this program can make a difference.

Between 2019 and 2025, more than $21 million came to my district supporting community Members facing homelessness in Santa Barbara county and South San Luis Obispo County. HHAPP funding helped open transformative temporary supportive housing projects in Santa Barbara, Goleta and Santa Maria made possible through a strong partnership between the county of Santa Barbara and Dignity Moves.

It has supported rental assistance, rapid rehousing and services for individuals exiting homelessness. By the end of 2024, more than 800 people in Santa Barbara county had transitioned from homelessness to housing through HHAPP funded programs that progress matters. It helped reduce the post pandemic surge and unsheltered homelessness.

But we still have vulnerable people living on our streets, on the central coast and in every part of California. When we succeed in getting people off the street and into housing. We must also ask, how do we ensure they remain stably housed? Counties throughout the state have experienced successes and challenges. HHAPP was intentionally designed to provide flexibility.

Local governments are closest to the crisis and need the ability to tailor solutions to their communities. Each round of HHAPP funding has been a one time expenditure layered alongside other state and federal programs. Flexibility is only effective when paired with accountability.

Last year, through SB158 and the 2025 Budget Act, Legislature authorized the expedited release of Round 7 HHAPP funds contingent on additional accountability and provisions. These include considerations such as housing element compliance, local encampment policies and other performance expectations.

Today we're taking the opportunity to assess the current accountability framework before considering potential changes as part of the 26-27 state budget. The questions we need to ask Are the reporting requirements clear and meaningful? Are system performance metrics driving measurable reductions in homelessness? Are we striking the right balance between transparency and administrative burden?

And most importantly, are these investments reducing the number of people experiencing homelessness? This is not our first conversation about HHAPP accountability and Subcommitee 7 last year we examined transparency in grantee expenditures and rollout of public dashboards to track spending and outcomes to Today's hearing builds on that work.

We'll hear from the Legislative Analyst Office, the Department of Housing and Community Development, and local partners implementing these programs on the ground. Their perspective is essential and we consider whether additional statutory changes are warranted or whether improvements to the existing process would be more effective. HHAPP is one tool in our broader response to homelessness.

It cannot solve the crisis on its own, but it must function as efficiently and effectively as possible, particularly as federal policy changes create new fiscal pressures and potential risks vulnerable populations. The public deserves to know where these funds are going and what outcomes they're producing. Transparency builds trust. Clear metrics drive performance.

Accountability ensures that limited resources are aligned with measurable progress. I look forward to today's discussion and to continue our work to strengthen the program and improve results for Californians.

I don't see our Vice Chair or chair here, so I will just go to our first speaker who is Dr. Margot Kushel, professor of Medicine, UCSF Director of the UCSF center for Vulnerable Populations and the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing initiative. Thank you, Dr. Kushel.

Thank you so much, Chair Hart and other Members of the Assembly Subcommitee. I am here to focus on a broad overview of what we should think about or consider as we address a really important issue of accountability provisions for hap.

You know, the Amount of homelessness in a region, it's really important to realize, is very closely tied to the mismatch between the cost of housing and the ability of extremely low income households to afford that. In California, we have and continue to struggle deeply with that measure.

We currently have only 24 units of housing that's affordable and available for every 100 extremely low income households. Those are households that make less than 30% of the area median income. This means we're a million units short of where we need to be. And at its heart, this is why California struggles so deeply with homelessness.

There is no doubt that California's homelessness crisis is absolutely terr. There's also no doubt in my mind that without HAPP it would be much worse. HAPP funding has been absolutely essential and it has decreased since its peak in the pandemic.

To truly understand the impact of hap, one would have to consider the counterfactual or what would it look like in California had we not had hap? Some indicators of that measure is during the pandemic and from let's say 23 to 24, homelessness across the country increased by 24%.

But in California, where we made these local investments, we saw only a very modest increase in a way that is counterfactual. These victories, such as they are with hap, have been hard fought, difficult to see or celebrate, and tenuous right now. They are particularly tenuous because of the federal environment that we are dealing with.

Between cuts to health care and food benefits and others through HR1, the sunsetting of 15,000 emergency housing vouchers in California and threats to funding for permanent supportive housing really present a real threat to how HHAPP can succeed. But it also emphasizes the importance well designed accountability measures.

Understand that to keep systems or organizations accountable, they must be held accountable for what is in their control and and not blame for what falls deeply outside their control. Accountability demands that we have an agreement on what problem we're trying to solve, that we have clear timelines and that we have appropriate ways to determine this.

So I'm just going to highlight a few measures to consider. First is the outside impacts. Homelessness rates overall are deeply affected by General economic trends and they are more deeply affected, as I've said, by the current federal environment. One time funding versus ongoing funding.

High performing homelessness systems plan investments over the long term so that they can coordinate their efforts and make, make, you know, use the best evidence. One time funding, as HUP has been, can lead to a focus on short term wins rather than a system that is well coordinated and seeks a permanent end to homelessness.

The need for jurisdictions to apply every year may inadvertently reward short term solutions rather than the lasting solutions that we need. Jurisdictions face this sort of issue between obligating and expending funds for programs without knowing if funding will come in the next year. If they don't obligate and spend them, then they're ineligible.

Achieving true accountability may require longer term and more stable funding. Administrative burden versus Flexibility There are clear trade offs between accountability measures and evidence based work.

As a researcher, I can tell you that everything that we know about preventing and ending homelessness means that funds need to be expended quickly and flexibly and that the workforce is spent doing the work rather than keeping track of measures. I don't disagree with the need to measure. I'm an academic who measures things for a living.

I like measurement, but I think it's worth keeping in mind what the burden of measuring is if that is pulling your workforce from the field and if doing so decreases what we know works in homelessness, which is getting money out to the people in a flexible and quick way.

Control, for instance, the measures tying HHAPP funding to having pro housing designation, a compliant housing element, and progress on key housing metrics in some ways makes a lot of sense because what we really need to do to end this crisis is end our housing crisis. But I think there's a risk we're surfacing.

Communities without these policies may wind up struggling more with homelessness because they don't have these policies. If we think of the homeless system as the emergency Department for our housing system, we would be very sort of worried about decreasing our funding for our emergency Department.

While pandemics or gun violence or whatever was worse outside, I'm a little worried about the tying it. If we're going to actually take away funds from jurisdictions who might need it the most, what problem are we trying to solve?

The design of HHAPP accountability measures and determinations of funding will obviously have a large influence on how jurisdictions spend the money. We need to decide whether our goal is to address unsheltered homelessness or homelessness overall. There's no doubt that unsheltered homelessness is the most dire crisis we face.

But there's also no doubt that the only way to address unsheltered homelessness is to get at the root cause of the problem, which is homelessness overall. When you reduce homelessness overall, you can cycle people through shelters and get them into permanent housing quickly.

Measurement Measuring success in homelessness is remarkably difficult I would say more difficult than it should be. HHAPP funding is mostly counted by HMIS and whether you know how the numbers look. Here's the issue I want to surface when jurisdictions show more people experiencing homelessness and HMIs.

As an academic, I don't know if that's bad news or good news. More people in HMIS may show that a jurisdiction's level of homelessness is increasing, but it actually may show exactly the opposite, that the system is working as designed and that we are reaching more people.

There is no doubt in my mind that we are missing many Californians experiencing homelessness. California is working hard at getting to systems that will give us more accurate reporting. When doing so. It may be a little shocking because the numbers may look worse than they do.

But be careful of punishing people for doing what they might actually do well. And we need to have a much better understanding of what these numbers mean.

There is in my mind absolutely no doubt that HHAPP has been a critical piece of California's response to homelessness and that our crisis, as absolutely terrible as it is, would have been worse than without it.

But the very real threat of the loss of federal funding and the movement of federal funding away from evidence based policies and potential economic disruptions has the potential to really worsen the crisis. In that setting, HAPP funds are more important than ever. And we do absolutely need to demand accountability.

But we need to be sure that we craft our accountability measures to give us the best possible result. Thank you so much.

Thank you Dr. Kushel. Appreciate your comments. We also now have our budget chair and vice chair here and so like to create an opportunity for them to make some opening remarks. So Chair Gabriel or Vice Chair Tangipa.

Well again I'll just keep this quick. I really look forward to hearing a lot about this. This area is fairly personal to me. About a decade ago I was homeless. I was living on a bunch of my teammates couch when my parents home got red tagged. And so I understand exactly like this position.

So the fiscal portion of it again is very personal because I understand what a lot of these families go through and shifts changes what people can do. You know I was, I share this often. I was caught by the social safety net.

We just got to make sure it's not a social safety hammock for a lot of those and figure out ways that we can transition people from being homeless, being unsheltered into permanent housing and finding situations where they can be self sustaining as well.

I did a lot of work when I was with the Fresno County Board of Supervisors with a lot of the Home key funding, you know, and I can see where properly managed funds allocated by the state can do a lot of really good work.

I worked personally on the Smugglers Inn that was Rent RH Community Homebuilders did a really good job on that one. And I look forward to asking some questions after hearing everything done. Thank you.

Thank you. Vice Chair Tangipa Chair Gabriel yeah, thank.

You very much, Mr. Chair. Just want to start by acknowledging and appreciating your tremendous leadership and just appreciate the thoughtfulness and the seriousness with which you approach this issue and all issues. So thank you.

And just to everybody here, you know, I made a point. I wanted to be here today, just at least for a little bit, because of how important this topic is to the state, how important it is to me personally, how important it is, I know, to many Members of the Legislature.

Thank you.

And I don't think we need to belabor that. We understand how intensely the public is focused on this and how desperately they want us to make progress on it. And given the magnitude of state investment, I think we owe it to them to make sure that every dollar is being spent in the most efficient way.

We both have a moral obligation to do that for those who are suffering on our streets, and we have an obligation to the taxpayers who are sending money to local jurisdictions and who are asking us to be thoughtful and effective in the way that we solve this.

And so I've been, you know, focused on the issue of accountability for the reason that I believe that it helps to drive us in the direction of actually solving the problem.

And that's what we all want, I think, collectively, all of us, irrespective of the geography that we represent, our partisan affiliation, we want to make sure that we're achieving results. At the same time, I think, Dr. Kushel, you spoke to this.

I think we need to be careful that the strategies that we're implementing aren't actually getting in the way of the results that we're all trying to achieve.

And so that is a very delicate balance because we need to be able to go back to the Members of the public, look them in the eye and tell them that we are spending their hard earned money in a way that is actually moving the needle in a way that is actually helping the people that are suffering on our streets in a way that is actually making a difference on something that is a tremendous moral and economic crisis that is facing our state.

But at the same time, we need to be doing that in a way that is not undermining our goals. And I'm not sure that we have always gotten that balance right. And so as we think about how we're going to move forward here from a policy perspective.

Trailer Bill Language that we need to negotiate with the Administration, I want to make sure that our approach is calibrated. I want to make sure that our approach is delivering on both of those objectives.

And so we're going to lean on all of you who have the expertise, who are doing the work on the streets, who are both the recipients of state funding and interacting with these vulnerable folks to make sure that we get that right.

And I think that is one of the most important conversations that we're going to have this year, both because in terms of what's at stake for human beings and also what's at stake in terms of the dollars that are represented here. So thank you all for being here.

I look forward to hearing what you have to say, and I look forward to the conversations ahead.

Thank you. Chair Gabriel that's exactly the frame that we're talking about today. Next, we'll start with the person, the Leg Analyst Office, Paul Steenhausen.

PAUL yes, thank you. Good morning. Chair Hart and Members. Paul Steenhausen with the Legislative Analyst Office staff has asked me to provide a brief overview of the accountability framework for hap, and you should have a handout overview of Homeless Housing Assistance Prevention Program funding accountability.

I'm going to focus my remarks on the accountability part, but you can see in the first several pages of the handout an overview of the HAPP program, its purpose, its funding spending trends, and some other information.

And then you'll hear in a bit from the Department of Housing and Community development that round six is just being awarded now. That's money from 202425. So get an update on that.

If you turn to page five of the handout, it provides a brief summary of the HAPP accountability structure and how it's evolved over time since it began in 201920. Page five describes how a central part of the application right now is regional planning, in which regional partners must identify their respective roles and responsibilities.

And that started in round five and it's continued into Round six. Each region, which is generally defined as a county, must also identify key actions and local, state and federal funding sources they are leveraging to move the needle on homelessness objectives.

And you can actually see on page five a list of seven, what's known as system performance measures the state has adopted and is one of the main ways that the state is tracking and local locals are tracking their progress toward their homelessness objectives.

Page 6 notes that in recent rounds, the state has tied HAPP funding or spending to certain policies that it wants locals to adopt. And we'll on the next page, get into that a little bit more.

It's important to note also that as the state has added requirements, as it's added to this accountability framework over the past number of rounds, since 201920 the whole process has taken longer. Not surprisingly, it takes longer for HCD to get the notice out.

The notice for applications out takes longer for the regions to apply and then for HCD to go ahead and review and approve or modify those applications. In fact, I was looking in round one back again in 2019. It took nine months from the date of appropriation to when the awards were made.

Now we're looking at and this is in statute, by the way, about 19 months total time. And that's for round six, which is which is the money's going out now. Again, it was appropriated back in July 2024. So just something to keep in mind, the Legislature really has has recognized that.

And Chair Hart, you mentioned that in your opening remarks about a desire by the Legislature to see that money go up faster for Round seven. So the next page of the handout summarizes the accountability framework for Round six. You can see a number of requirements, a number of plans.

There's those policy requirements and actually Dr. Kushel mentioned some of them, having a compliant housing element is now a requirement to get a second disbursement of Round six funds once once the locals receive those funds.

And then there's other requirements, such as specifying an intention to seek pro housing designation status and some other things as well, encampment policy, having a plan to address encampments, and having a formal or informal policy to address those encampments. That's also now a condition of Round six funds.

If you go to the next page, Chair Hart, you mentioned this already. So just I'll just say very quickly that as a condition of that $500 million going out in 26-27, the 25-26 budget package included the trailer Bill, SB 158, which laid out six elements or components that may be included in that Round seven.

And that's up for the Legislature to decide in, through enacting or subsequent enacting legislation, what that round seven accountability framework is going to look like and how it might compare with Round six. And just to note that you'll see those those six listed, starting with having a compliant housing element.

Again, on page eight, you'll see that a number of those are already incorporated to some extent in round six. And then, Chair Hart, you mentioned this desire in SB158 for these funds to go out much faster than they have in the in the past, with a goal actually by September 2026 for those round seven funds.

To be dispersed for those grantees that have met all the requirements. So just on the last page there of the handout number of issues for legislative consideration, obviously the accounting framework has evolved quite a bit through the years and the Legislature has around six, which has got a number of requirements, more than two dozen requirements already.

And so the Legislature want to ask itself, we think, is there something missing? Are there things not on that previous two pages back that should be in round seven?

But also consider the tension between what's in 158 about potentially modifying the framework for round seven and weighing that against the expressed desire in the trailer Bill Language to get that money out in an expedited fashion, because everything that gets added is going to take more time for HCD to incorporate in the application and then the locals, the regions, to actually develop an application that speaks to those, that addresses those requirements.

Another question is, are there opportunities to streamline round seven application? For example, these regions just completed their application in August for round six money and should they be required to do another regional plan for round seven when they just finished that a few weeks, a few months ago.

So it's just something, maybe some opportunities there for the Legislature to look at ways to expedite things and not place too many burdens, unnecessary burdens on the regions. And then just the last point is you're thinking beyond round seven. Legislature obviously has a big decision to make about what is the future of hap?

What is the future of HAPP in light of the state's budget deficit? You've heard a lot about the multi year budget deficit, 25 to 35 billion dollars out for the next through, through the budget window into, through 29-30 even.

And so thinking about, you know, the HHAPP funding in light of the deficit as well as other considerations about if the Legislature wants to provide money, is this the right way to do it? Providing a large amount to locals and giving them four or five years to spend it.

And so thinking about the timing perhaps of how that money is allocated and how much is appropriate in a given year. So thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Steenhausen, appreciate that. Next we have Megan Kirkeby, the deputy Director for the Housing Policy Development at the Department of Housing and Community Development. Thanks, Megan.

Thank you. Good morning. Can everyone hear me? All right, great. Yes, I'm Megan Kirkeby here with HCD and this is our second round administering the Homeless Housing Assistance Program, the Encampment Resolution Fund and the Tribal HHAP program, the Tribal Homeless Housing Assistance Program.

And really great intro by Paul there to Hear about the various accountability measures that have been put in place in the last few years.

And I just want to kind of highlight a little bit of that, that some of what's really important, I think since we've taken on the Administration of the Program, is leveraging the policy solutions that actually address homelessness upstream. So our cities and counties are part of these regional partnerships, right?

We have 42 regional partnerships that apply for the HHAP program. And what the research shows, and Dr. Kushel mentioned this to a certain degree, is, you know, homelessness is a housing problem. When folks are paying too much of their, their income toward rent and housing costs each month, that has two main consequences.

One, it puts them at a big risk for homelessness. Because if you don't have any cushion, we all have emergency shocks that happen to us, right? You have a car breakdown or a job loss, and if that cushion is too low, that can start off a cycle of homelessness.

And then the other big consequence that we're not talking about today, but the other big consequence is homeownership.

So when we, the, it can feel counterintuitive, but when we don't have enough affordable rental housing, the big impact is we see declines in home ownership because people don't again have that buffer that they need to save for a down payment and to be able to, to move into home ownership later.

And so it's kind of a wonky term. But paying attention to that cost burden piece is really important for us. And the things that are within our control that we can do to make a difference are those upfront planning things, making sure that we have again things within their control that cities and counties can do.

Having, having a compliant housing element means you've actually set aside sufficient capacity for homes to be able to happen. You have programs in place that remove governmental constraints that are, that you're looking at, at various opportunities to set the table for that development to happen. And that's important to us.

If we're going to invest large state funding, we want to make sure that our cities and counties are doing those pieces within their control that we know make the biggest difference and that are required by law. So things like that are really important to us that we also want to.

I think one of the tenants that's been really important for us is making sure that the spending in these programs is directed to evidence based solutions. Right? So some of that, some of that early fast disbursement you're talking about didn't involve having these kinds of conversations about budgets and what we spend the dollars on.

And since, since those changes, we see a dramatic increase in spending these dollars on housing solutions. Now, that's not just permanent housing.

That's all sorts of housing that can be rental assistance, that can be rapid rehousing, that can be interim housing that has connections to permanent housing, all sorts of things that we know, again, make those lasting differences in homelessness. So we as a state, I think we should care about those uses.

And you know, after our goal, I think our sort of North Star with accountability has to be impact. And so I think that, you know, that's something I'd leave this Committee with to today is, you know, we, we agree that gotchas don't lead to less homelessness. Like, that's, that's not, that's not helpful. But, but what does.

It's what we spend the money on. It's these housing policies that are brought to bear. It's the concrete plans and ensuring that coordination is placed. You know, we all, you all come from different parts of the state, but I'm sure you have similar versions of the same story regions.

A lot of different folks and a lot of different organizations work together to address homelessness. And so this is an opportunity to make sure everyone's swimming in the same direction and everyone is on the same page. Right. And so with, with our regional partners, we do want to move expeditiously. And so, you know, we're part of the.

One of the other things that I think has evolved is just a lot more transparency. I think something we heard from the Legislature over and over again was, but where, what is this money going to? What's happening? What are the outcomes? And so a lot of things that weren't available in the past are now available.

We were the first program, the HHAP program was the first program to post its homelessness data information system data online in a public dashboard, you know, anonymized where it needs to be.

But we're hoping that sets the tenor for other programs to post their data as well, is, you know, we should be upfront about what the outcomes are coming out of these programs. And you know, that that's something where I feel like putting it. There are positive repercussions, right.

When we put that data online, that also helps people prioritize making sure that data is accurate. And so those are, those are, those are administratively burdensome things to do that data work. But we partner with Calich to try and provide extra support to our grantees so that we can get that information into a better state.

So Dr. Kushel is nodding her head, I assume because academics like it when they have more access to good data. But those are some of the things I kind of wanted to highlight for all of you.

And just a real small sample of the outcomes we're seeing, you know, more than 330,000 folks, and this is probably a conservative estimate because we are still working with some of our grantees on their data.

But more than 330,000 people are receiving services touched by the HAPP funding, and nearly 91,000 people have been able to move into permanent homes as a result of this money. We also these programs were named in a audit on homelessness several years ago.

And we last year had the pleasure of giving an update to the state auditor's office. And some. We were able to show them a lot of the transparency tools I just talked about, and that was sufficient for them to take HAPP off of the high risk report and so to feel some confidence in what's going on here.

So those are some things to share to you today. And happy to answer any questions.

Thanks, Ms. Kirkeby, and thanks for the good news about the transition and the audit. And that's always important to make progress like that. The next person we have speaking is Sasha Hauswald, the interim Chief Homelessness Solutions Officer for the City of Oakland.

Do you mind if I just offer? Yeah. Thank you. Sorry to jump in here. So thank you, Mr. Kirkeby. I appreciate that and really agree with a lot of your testimony.

I guess the one thing I would offer respectfully back is, you know, I've been the recipient of a lot of incoming from our big city mayors and others who've expressed some frustration with hcd. Absolutely. And I take that very seriously. And I think I appreciated that your North Star's impact, I appreciated what you said about acting expeditiously.

And I think that that's something that we need to really dive into together and figure out how we, working together can make sure that we're moving quickly here. The data is important, the transparency is important.

But for those of us sitting on this side of the table, when we vote to authorize money and make resources available and find out many months later that those resources have not yet hit the street, it makes all of our heads want to. And so I think that's a conversation that we need to have.

And I would really like to have that conversation with you, with your Department, with our partners, Administration, to figure out where can we be more efficient, where can we still focus on impact, where can we still get the data that researchers like Dr. Kushl and others need to make sure that our interventions are working?

But we've got to do it quicker. We've got to do it quicker, and I believe that we can.

And so I would love to have HCB come to the table with some solutions about how to decrease bureaucracy, how to increase the speed, and because I do think that our friends who are out there doing the work on the street have some really important points to make about how quickly we can move together. So I'll just offer that and I'll look forward to continuing those conversations.

Yes, absolutely.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Gabriel. Ms. Hauswald.

Thank you, Chair Hart. Can you all hear me? All right. All right. Thank you. So I'm here today on behalf of the city of Oakland. We co apply to HHAP with our partner county of Alameda.

So I am honored to be here representing the local perspective, but I actually am relatively recently from the state perspective, I was working on affordable housing development finance with HCD for a number of years. And for the past two years I have been working with the city of Oakland on homelessness and affordable housing policy.

And so I can bring the two sides of the conversation. And it has been a tremendous learning opportunity for me coming in from affordable housing development and beginning to learn through doing Oakland's strategic Homelessness Plan what it takes to end homelessness.

And I'm really excited to talk about the incredibly important role that HAPP plays and will play in our homelessness strategic plan to reduce homelessness by 50% over the next five years. Now that we've done the number crunching, I can tell you just exactly how important it is in terms of units and dollars and cents.

And I can also tell you that in order to reduce homelessness by 50%, there is not, unfortunately, a single best practice program. There is not a silver bullet.

There is not a thing that we have all been missing and not investing enough in yet that is just going to be the incentive for we have to invest across the spectrum of short term and permanent housing solutions because it's a continuum and they work together.

I learned also through doing the Homelessness Strategic Plan that homelessness is not static. People are exiting every day, every year, and our homelessness service system is tremendously successful. We are exiting 1500 people a year from our services and interim housing into permanent housing solutions.

Unfortunately, because of the housing instability that Dr. Kushel spoke about, we also have 2,500 people becoming unhoused in Oakland annually. So we are falling behind and this is not because our programs are not working. This is because we have not invested in bringing them to scale and the scale that we need.

So to keep up with inflow and turn the tide against homelessness, we need to reduce that inflow by reinvesting 10 times what we currently invest in the city of Oakland in targeted homelessness prevention, which is an eligible use of hap. Although we don't use our HHAP in that particular way.

We also need to accelerate our outflow with a combination of outreach to get people the information they need about where to go, interim housing solutions that stabilize folks and get them document ready, and of course the permanent housing solutions where people can survive no matter what income and they make.

In Oakland, our use of HHAP is particularly critical in the outflow side of the equation because we put our HHAP toward interim housing solutions, shelter and transitional housing, and predominantly for the operation and services of programs that we know are working. They survive on HHAP , but we keep the doors open.

With HHAP , we Fund over 800 interim beds and program slots. They include tiny homes, safe parking, transitional housing programs for youth and families. From here, these unhoused Oaklanders can stabilize. They can be protected from the violence and trauma of unsheltered living, and as I mentioned, become document ready and transition ready for permanent housing.

In terms of accountability, I want to emphasize that accountability can be incredibly strong and tied to the use of the funds by looking at the program outcomes for which you are using hap.

And we're in some ways really lucky that HMIS has been built out so much that there are pretty clearly defined and very rational program outcomes for each type of program that might be invested in.

So in Oakland, for instance, with interim housing, we expect to see that our nonprofit partners are exiting folks to permanent housing solutions, that they are not exiting folks to places unfit for human habitation, and that folks are not staying for excessive periods of time without a reason.

These are easy things to measure and they will tell you that if you put your HHAP dollars into those programs, those programs are working. I would caution against using system wide homelessness reduction as an accountability metric. Again along the lines of Dr. Kushel, there a lot of reasons for homelessness to rise and fall.

However, I can see that as the state is moving toward a more consolidated system, a one stop shop for housing finance and a single housing agency, that HHAP could be a really important way of just asking for some contextual information so that legislators like yourself know what the heck is going on at the jurisdictional level.

How we are weaving together state and local funds. And so I'd like to offer the idea of two different types of metrics collected via hap. One, that is contextual data, things like progress toward your arena goals or number of people exiting homelessness annually.

These are incredibly important in terms of understanding how we are layering your funds, how we are leveraging funds with quite a lot, frankly, of local investment. But they are not HHAP accountability measures because we do not use HHAP for most of those things that you would be measuring.

I would also like to double down on the idea that HHAP is uniquely suited and uniquely valuable as an ongoing. Sorry, as a resource for ongoing expenses and services, meaning running programs, not standing up new buildings. We have capital resources.

Not nearly enough, but we certainly do have, at least in Oakland, more capital resources for creating new buildings, for affordable housing and for interim housing than we have for keeping the doors open on the programs that we already have. And as Dr. Kushel mentioned again, we do need for those funds to be stable.

And so what we do in Oakland is we spread each year of HHAP over multi year contracts that we do in order to keep our programs alive, to prevent turnover in staffing, to make sure that we don't have a fiscal cliff at the end of each year, which would introduce even more chaos into our already stretched system.

So the speed of expenditure has very little to do with good program performance or good HHAP performance. I'd strongly encourage you to maintain HHAP as a stable source of funding to minimize the annual changes in the applications, the reporting metrics, the terminology, the eligible uses. This not only makes it much harder for us to.

To report back our performance, but I imagine it makes it much harder for HCD to see year over year improvement when each year you see slightly different things that are being measured. I'll leave you again with a final thank you. Thank you for advocating for hap. It is an absolutely critical program for us to address homelessness in Oakland.

Thank you, Ms. Hauswald. I appreciate that. Mr. Russell, the Director of Housing and Homelessness for Alameda County Health.

Thank you, Chair Hart and Members of the Committee for the ongoing opportunity to testify before you today. My name is Jonathan Russell. I'm the Director for Alameda County's Housing and Homelessness Services Department. We're located in our health agency and I'm also. We're also the lead agency for the continuum of care.

So I believe I'm speaking in some ways from both those continuum of care and county seats. But we have another wonderful county Representative that will speak as well. Obviously, Alameda County is a large county, so we have 13 cities in one big city. It is also a recipient. So there are three HHAP grantees in Alameda County.

We're a large homelessness response system. We serve more than 25,000 people across our system every year, 18,000 of those that are experiencing unsheltered homelessness of one kind or another during the course of that year. A little bit about Continuum of cares. What are they? What are we?

These are entities designated by HUD to oversee some of the basic functions of homelessness response in local communities. There's 44 of them across California and each community is covered by one or another CoC.

Among their functions, CoCs are required by HUD to first and foremost collect and administer data systems, including the Homeless Management information system that Dr. Kushel mentioned, which hold data and outcomes from across the homelessness system. These systems feed upward into the very important state HDIS system.

In addition to that, functions like the Point in Time Count and others are administered by the Continuum of Care in Alameda County. Our CoC is contiguous with the county, so my Department is both the homeless services lead for the county wide Strategic Response as well as the Continuum of Care's lead agency.

So we in that way jointly administer the CoC and the county portions. A bit about HHAP and the accountability measures to date, we've been able to achieve a lot of success across the state with HHAP dollars in recent years. Within Alameda County, we've used it for a wide range of purposes.

A couple of those being significantly expanding access to street medicine services, housing, navigation, and both interim and permanent housing resources. This has contributed to over 6,000 people across Alameda County moving into permanent housing with HHAP-funded programs between January 2023 and June 2025.

Statewide, over 90,000 people, as Megan mentioned, have moved into permanent housing thanks to HHAP over that period. In Alameda County. In addition to the reductions that Dr. Kushel mentioned, where we're seeing some moderation in the state's increases in homelessness.

In Alameda county for the first time in 2024, we saw a reduction for the first time in 10 years in our point in time counter of 3% and an 11% reduction in unsheltered homelessness. And we expect those trends to continue in the Point in Time Count we just completed in 2026.

For context, in our system, to Sasha's point around, our systems do perform well. More than 4,500 people exited to permanent housing last year. In our homelessness response system.

A number of accountability measures thus far have helped us to get to this place, but both with HHAP producing real results and also where we have digestible, easy to understand data that shows what's working and what's not.

With the third round of hap, we moved to setting more tangible outcome measures to drive spending to the highest and best uses. As was mentioned with the fifth round, the state required us to come together as communities, City, county and CoC to plan together and leverage our respective resources and collaborate.

Since then, HCD has worked closely with grantees to better understand the gaps in our local response system, pushing us to, where appropriate, use the HHAP funds to fill those gaps so that more people can access shelter and housing.

As we consider how to move forward in the future and ensure that we keep the progress we've made going, there's four things I'd hope you consider.

First is that HHAP and homeless programs that move people off the street to provide services and shelter only represent half the ledger on the visibility of homelessness, limited as that amount of funding ultimately is in being made available. That is HHAP is really funding.

It's just a fraction of our overall funding and the ability that it's able to serve. Programs like HHAP can be extremely effective at moving people out of homelessness with alacrity. But if we aren't stopping the inflow, we're going to continue to see homeless in many ways. That's the conversation we need to have.

We need to realize that for every 10 people that become homeless, even if we're housing five to six and leveraging half to do that with myriad other sources, we need to improve and expand our system to rehouse people faster. Yes, but we also need to go upstream and ask why people continue to fall in.

HHAP is a limited but crucial funding source that measures our effort to triage and support those people as they fall in. But we need to talk about what's happening upstream as well.

Second, we need to also make sure that accountability measures are focusing on managing the effectiveness of programs and outcomes and focused on ensuring services and dollars are reaching the end user, which is folks on the street.

There's a trade off with additional reporting, which is that the limited resources were taking people away from actually managing the performance in some cases that we care about.

I question whether, to be candid, having exhaustively detailed monthly financial reports, which is now required for us every month for every round of HHAP and requires a lot more administrative work for both government and community based agency Providers that are boots on the ground is actually generating any better outcomes than quarterly reporting does.

I'd argue that it's actually taking people away from focusing on that end product of the programs. For context, in Alameda County, under the monthly financial reporting requirements, we have to develop individual reports for each of the five rounds of HHAP.

And we're spending 20 plus staff hours just going through the excruciating details on each of those 300 plus projects that now receive HAPP funding in one form or another, some with just a fraction of dollars in that program. I want housing navigators with our clients on the streets.

I want program managers looking at ways to improve their programs, not spending half their day on paperwork. I want county analysts measuring program quality and effectiveness, not just expenditure reports.

I think we can do both having people be accountable and transparent while also being realistic about how we collect that information in a real world way where frontline workers are constantly strained and burning out based on the accumulating caseloads and accumulating administrative requirements.

In summary, accounting does not equate to accountability and there are helpful analogs to other state programs such as the Mental Health Services act, now Behavioral Health Services act funding, which has very rigorous fiscal reporting, but it's annual expenditure reporting. The focus should be on holistic impacts appropriate to the scale of our investments, not onerous invoicing.

Third, we need to also make sure, as we consider whether stripping funding from jurisdictions that don't have a pro housing designation as is proposed in HHAP 7, is actually going to just end up punishing people potentially who need the services and housing in that jurisdiction instead of actually inspiring movement in the right direction from cities and counties?

Of course, having pro housing zoning and all the complex requirements for the designation is critical to addressing homelessness at a structural level over time.

But do we need to risk penalizing the individuals in a community who desperately need those funds if that community is mired in moving these needed reforms through, but just not getting it done in time for this round? Lastly, fourth, we need to remember that everyone is trying to manage to keep our homelessness response system afloat.

Afloat in a time when the Federal Government is actually trying to pull some of the rug out from under us. They've signaled through the CoC program that they're actively seeking to reduce resources.

They're sunsetting 15,000 emergency housing vouchers across the state that are serving people experiencing homelessness, seeking to cut funding for 27,000 formerly homeless Californians living in supportive housing right now. And of course they passed devastating cuts through the health care system.

This is resulting and can will likely result in tens of thousands of additional people potentially falling back into homelessness or being pushed in for the first time.

Again, for context, if the changes proposed in the 2025 NOFO were to move forward, it would immediately preclude Alameda County from receiving more than $33 million a year going toward permanent housing that serves more than 2,200 people that are disabled and vulnerable in housing right now.

That's almost three times the projected amount of HHAP 7 we might be able to receive at the reduced amount in this year's budget. No accountability measure can fix that. It takes dollars to keep people in housing. So let's have the robust conversation around accountability.

But also remember that none of this work will happen if we're not able to have consistent funding there. And a final thought, it's important to realize that accountability for us goes both ways.

Certainly down to the communities who need to leverage dollars in concert with others to get real lasting outcomes, but also up to our state partners to ensure that the way we are applying those reporting expectations support achieving versus detracting from those ultimate outcomes we all want. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Russell. Next, we have Heidi Marshall, the Director of Housing and Workforce Solutions for the County of Riverside.

Thank you. Good morning, Chair Hart and Members of the Committee. My name is Heidi, and as you just heard, I serve as the Director of the Department of Housing and Workforce Solutions for the county of Riverside. And as such, we have. We are the Department that also oversees our continuum of care.

In addition to that, in 2020, our county decided to start this new Department that truly included a lot of the services and programs that you all mentioned were important to you. We believe that homelessness is not. Doesn't just require one intervention, but it truly requires a host of other things.

Like you, we fully believe that a house is not the only thing we want to be able to facilitate. We want to make sure that individuals go back to into the workforce and really are integrated back into our communities. In Riverside county, we take our obligation to serve persons experiencing homelessness very seriously.

Accountability to us means truly owning the outcomes that we are achieving. I will be sharing some of those with you today, and I'm going to start with one that we're truly proud of, and that is the 19% reduction that we experienced in the unsheltered population just this past year during our last pit count.

19% is a number that is more than double the state average. It is by far our best performance indicator. We also saw decreases across all of our sub populations with regard to the unsheltered. That is inclusive of the transitional age youth, our veterans, our seniors, and households with children.

However, we still counted a total of 1,978 unsheltered persons, but there were 19% of them less than there were the last time that we counted, and that is very significant for us. We also counted 2012 individuals in our shelters. We're very happy to report that we used HAPP to increase our shelter capacity by 57%.

That is extremely significant in our region. HHAPP played a significant part of how we achieved these outcomes. It has been a true system builder for us, not just a grant. Our system of care that HAPP has supported includes a host of services. Homelessness prevention, emergency shelter, rapid rehousing, and most importantly, transitional and permanent supportive housing.

Each of these is a very critical component and HAPP has provided us that flexibility, excuse me, to deploy these services where they are most needed. Throughout our county, we moved A total of 6,916 people into permanent housing last year. A 21% increase in our system's performance.

And crucially to one of your earlier points, 81% of those folks remain housed today. While we have had this great progress thus far, I also want to be very candid about our challenges. Our Overall count rose by 7% because we are seeing an unprecedented number of seniors, first time seniors and families enter our system of care.

But make no mistake, this 7% increase is for us an economic reality and not a systemic failure, because the system that we have in place is truly working. We are successfully identifying and bringing people into the system of care.

But we need your continued support to Fund the needed services and really the permanent housing that is required to move them out of the other side. Accountability requires us to be fully honest.

If HAPP funds, especially the future rounds, are cut or its flexibility is reduced, we're not going to be able to continue to sustain the very beds that delivered that 19% reduction. In our unsheltered category, accountability should mean that we work hard to sustain what works.

And Riverside county has proof that this model that we have in place is working. We just need you to remain our full partner with us to help us finish that job. Again, thank you for all that you're doing for this system of care.

Thank you, Ms. Marshall. Appreciate that. Next, we'll go to questions from the colleagues and we'll start with Vice Chair Tangipa.

Thank you all for those reports. I have a couple questions when it comes to homekey funding and the continuum of care. So who do I ask on those? Any volunteers? Perfect. Well, the. I will say it's interesting information. When I look at the continuum of care last year. I mean, I have the September 2025 General report on that 14 counties did not report their continuum of care numbers. Why is that?

I think I would need a little more information on what you mean by Continuum of care numbers. But I know again, in our county, we are contiguous. The Continuum of care boundaries are the same as the county and we're the lead for both.

But Alameda did not submit theirs either.

Can you clarify what you mean by Continuum of care numbers are the same as the county numbers,

The point in time count. So the 2025 homeless count or the.

Point in time count. Gotcha.

Yes, that point in time count. So they did not submit that to the state. And the main reason why I asked that is especially if we're the ones allocating funds and we have 14 counties, Sacramento county, including in that which is the highest homelessness county in the entire nation, is not on that. How can we realize that we're allocating funds properly?

Yeah, that's a really easy one to clarify. So the point in time count, the unsheltered part of the point in time count, there's two parts to a point in time count. There's the sheltered count, obviously, folks that are inside in one way or another, and then the unsheltered count.

HUD mandates the unsheltered point time count to happen biannually, which is every two years. So the majority of counties, I know there are some that do also the unsheltered count annually, we do it in a biannual way. So it's 2024 and 2026. The sheltered count happens every year because that's just pulling data from hmis.

So it wasn't that we didn't report or didn't do something that we needed to. It's that we did it in 2026 as the federal cadence requires.

So when I'm looking at hudge report, the 14 of the counties, they don't. It's not showing any of the information, even when it comes to some of the sheltered information.

When San Francisco county, there was even a newspaper that was just written about it in San Francisco talking about how the point in time count was completely off and then a lot of the information was removed, information was put online, things were shifted. It really puts a fog out there. Same thing with Sacramento county as well.

I mean, Orange County didn't submit their numbers. So it's more from a clarity standpoint. Again, if we're doing. And I was. I worked a lot with the Fresno Madera Continuum of Care. And I understand the process. It's very interesting. I mean, we all just put on a bunch of vests and then we just go count people.

I think there are probably other ways we should really think about that. And I understand the complexities of that. It just the. Even in this report, it says 14 of the 44 continuum of CARES only completed a sheltered count only. So that means 30 of them completed both.

Right. There can be different cadences. Some people are doing it on different cadences in the biennial way. And some local communities have elected to do the unsheltered count every year as well. But I think all communities have to complete it in that biannual way for Hud.

And I don't know of a county that has not done so because it would risk that federal funding as well. But yeah, I'm not sure which report that is, but I can speak for the counties that I work closely with. It is a rigorous process. I also would say it's one way we capture data.

Often when I tell people the point in time count numbers, I say that is a moment in time that is imperfect. Which is why I use our 25,000 annual numbers to really show just how many people are experiencing.

And this was done by Joe Coletti with HUD for Urban Initiatives, Homeless and Housing Strategies for California. So that's their report.

Right? Because I think the issue here is that HUD has been requiring point in time count since I think the 90s. And intentionally they designed it to be an every other year process. Now in places like New York, where they have a right to shelter, they just pull their numbers out of the shelter.

They have very few unsheltered. It's not a big deal. Obviously, on the West Coast, we have much higher proportions who are unsheltered. I think in recognition of how many resources it takes and frankly, how hard it is to interpret just year to year, they've actually only required it every other year.

There are a fair number of counties in California that for their own planning reasons, do it every year. But that's pretty optional across the country. Most places only do it every other year.

And I bring that up again because we know, especially with HHAP funding, it's one time funding. And if the data has to be, we're allocating resources every year and some Counties are doing it. Some counties are not. How can we make sure that we're being the most accurate on which areas are actually need the most funding?

You know, the. We've all seen the data here that homelessness is something that a lot of people recognize as a major issue in California. I see it myself. I mean, we are in the richest state and the richest country in the history of the world, and we have a homeless population larger than cities in other states.

So when we're allocating resources, especially when it's one time funding. We have to be very, very accurate. What. What is needed. And I grew up in Sacramento. I grew up off of Roseville Road and Watt Avenue, which people know was tent city. And people want us to do something about homelessness.

And it's, you know, it's hard to say, like, yes, let's allocate more resources here when again, there's discrepancies in the data. And especially it makes it hard to. When we like to put out there that homelessness has dropped this year over year when. How can we even say that if we don't even have all the numbers?

Especially when it comes to. Out of those 14 counties, the largest counties with the largest homelessness population isn't reporting their unsheltered data. Because I feel like it's very wrong thing to report out that we're. We're actually doing better.

Mr. Chair, may I add something?

Yes, please do.

Yeah. So Dr. Kushel was talking about how this is a requirement by the Federal Government to do an unsheltered point in time count every two years. And it's historically been in an odd year, odd numbered year. And so all 44 were doing it an odd year. Covid comes along.

So it's 2021 and it's determined that it's going to be. It's just not safe. Yeah. To do an unsheltered count in 2021. So that year is scrapped. We don't have data for unsheltered for 2021. The problem emerged with this.

Some reporting in some years, and some others are all off track now in California because you had 14 Continuums of Care. Say, well, we don't want to wait till 2023 to do our next unshelter. Let's do it in 2022.

So they got in 2022 kind of even year track of unsheltered that they keep. And then the others 29 or 30 stuck to the odd year. They do 2023 and then 2025. So as a result I think we share the frustration that you never.

We are not in a place in California right now where we have the same all 44 counting and reporting unsheltered. On top of all this of course is the, the January 2025 count was over a year ago and the Federal Government still hasn't released those data. Normally we'd get that by the end of 2025. It hasn't so.

So we end up having I think a researcher referring to a researcher that independently contacted continuous of care to get their information. But there is no official publicly available numbers right now for unsheltered for those odd number years.

I completely understand too and that's why it's again I think it's almost disingenuous for us to say we're reducing when the numbers are so scrambled and specifically we're talking about one time funding right now. So we need the most available data for us if we're allocating another half a billion dollars.

If we spent $5 billion over the last few years, you know that immediate data is where we can say okay, this place is working. Because again I have seen it work in Fresno they took Smugglers Inn, worked with RH Community Home Builders $2.5 million to acquire a tore down abandoned building.

150 units, 164 actually units at $100,000 a door. Fresno county puts in behavioral health services there so people can go transition. It's in a large scale commercial corridor. They whether it's Walmart so I know exactly what it can do.

But it's about the data especially that's in front of us that shifts me to the homekey funding and some of the issues that we have seen now in the reports for broad waste and abuse.

We have seen the Attorney General come out and talk about the Shangri La properties, we've seen the Governor talk about this, we've seen the reports. What additional steps have we really taken to find this area?

Because if we look at the Shangri La property and what's happening with that was LAHCD that really allocated that funds but the state of California was the past well used them as the pass through entity. They submitted over $160 million in fake bank records. Have we taken new steps now to make sure that other.

Home key funding, grant funding isn't actually being stolen from the California people?

Yes, absolutely. I'm not the lead on home key but obviously aware of the issue there and I'm sure we could have someone give you a better briefing than I'm about to say right now, but yes, absolutely, there's been a many additional accountability measures there and that was caught very early in the process partially because of the accountability measures that were in place and sort of seeing, seeing some red flags there.

But you know, this is, this is one of the conversations you all are trying to bring up today is speed and accountability can, can have attention.

And you know, I think it is important to remember that with the HAPP money, with the homekey money, those are, those are dollars we're giving up front with expectations that our local partners are going to follow through.

And we, that that involves trust with our partners and it also involves us following up with our partners to make sure that things are going right.

And so that's, I think a tenor of the conversation you heard from me on where we're trying to balance that impact but limit bureaucracy where we can, but make sure that we are, that we are building systems in place, that it isn't just trust with our local partners, but that it is, we're able to see real time results of impact that help us catch red flags early and intervene.

But someone besides myself could tell you much more detail about the home key accountability work as well.

Well, thank you Ms. Kirkeby and Mr. Vice Chair. The home key issue is really important and I appreciate the offer to provide more information. But we're really focusing on the HHAP funding today.

So let's keep our questions there and you've had a lot of time, so if you would, if you don't have more questions about HAPP funding, we'll go to other Members of the Committee.

Well, the question I have on that is specifically with HAPP funding, I would say that a lot of the grant mechanisms similar to homekey and what I want to make sure is that the money is protected.

And again, I know we, we said that this was caught very early, but these properties were acquired in 2021 for millions and millions of dollars and the third. So you're just going back to the home question. Let's stay on HHAP funding.

Doesn't HHAP work with homekey funding? No, we're talking about HHAP funding. Different programs, different hearing, different subject. So with that Assembly Member Quirk Silva, why don't you pick up the line of questioning. We'll come back to you if you have questions about what's on our agenda today.

Thank you to the panelists. So much to say in so little time. But some of you know that this is a space that I care deeply about, but I want to kind of set the Stage for who we're talking about. And we in fact are talking about seniors, many women who are falling into homelessness.

We're talking about our veterans, we're talking about working and many times single parents who simply may have lost a job or who cannot afford their rent. We're talking about young people who are aging out of foster care.

And we know that when we say homeless there's often a image because now it is not hidden in our communities, it's on our streets. As we walk to the Capitol. I want us to set the stage for last night where the temperature is probably dipped into the 30s and it's been cold and raining.

So we know that people on our streets die. We know in one of the wealthiest counties where I live, Orange County, there's an average about 30 individuals a month who die on the streets of Orange County. So these funds are important and we certainly need transparency and accountability.

And I have been on this Committee and talked about this issue for well over a decade. And as we know with legislation we can swing too far or too slow. And in this case we've seen such an urgency for more accountability and more accountability.

And what I've heard today, it appears that it's almost doubled the time now to get an HHAP grant into the wardy's hands that I want us to in this year, this legislative year, get solutions from this body who came to us.

So that is a request of what can we take out of all of this accountability that you would say that would still protect the program. And I do concur with my colleague right here, Mr. Tangopa, on any fraud, whether it's the Home Key program or the HHAP program or our EDD programs.

Any fraud in our system takes dollars away from the recipients that we just mentioned. So we know that looking at fraud, flagging it early and getting those dollars back into the system can amount to millions of dollars and we want those dollars going to where they should go.

But I do have a few questions and obviously this is under my budget sub 5. So we will be having follow up questions. And as much as I respect the people who work in this space, because this is not an easy space to work in.

I mean, simply saying homelessness in California on the radar of local electeds to county elected to state is really in its infancy, about 15 years. Even though we know it, the seeds were planted much earlier by not producing housing. We know that affordability has continued to go up.

But where local cities, local counties have been grappling with this now for 15 years. When we look at the scope of our body of work, it's actually a very short amount of time. And the hardest thing that I have seen myself as a legislator is to attain these permanent supportive housing units for anybody, anywhere.

So one of my questions will be to you, and I'll just kind of add the questions was you said that you found 6,000 permanent support in Riverside. So I want to know how you found those or built them and what you did, because that's a huge amount to find. Secondly, what was my other question here?

I know it was for. Oh, I believe it was, Megan, that you said we're going to be sunsetting 15,000 vouchers. Or maybe you said it if you can. From the Federal Government. And is that the Section 8 vouchers that. Or is this separate? So if you can answer that after.

And then if somebody can speak to not just the 15,000 vouchers that are going to be sunsetted, also the 6,000 units you were able to attain, but also to the Federal Government on the HUD housing with the Section 8 that we are actually predicting that may be ripped away from many, many vulnerable seniors.

And what that looks like, how many. What that would look like we're talking about. So those three questions. And I think I'll stop there. But again, thank you.

Thank you so much for that question. It gives me an opportunity to tell you a little bit more about our Riverside county story. But I'll begin by addressing your comment about. It's really about the folks who are out in the streets in all types of conditions.

One of the things in addition to the data that I've shared with you that we're proud of is that the coroner's report that we receive on an annual basis that indicates the number of people who have perished in our streets, HHAP has done such an incredible job to make a difference with those reports.

In Riverside county alone in 2024, we experienced a 27% decrease in the number of deaths. Last year, that number rose to 30%.

How we did it, how we achieved those additional permanent supportive units goes back to one of the things that make us unique is that our Board of Supervisors in 2020 decided that they wanted to bring under one roof a Department that truly had all of the tools at its disposal that made that effort to build easier.

So what that looks like in our county is we have at our disposal in the same, under the same, excuse me, roof, the Housing Authority. The Housing Authority brings all of those Section 8 vouchers, tenant based and project based, that can be used to incentivize development with developers under the same roof.

We have our development team that really started during the redevelopment era and, and has folks who have that expertise to build and work with developers day in and day out and have funding sources from home and a variety of other state and federal sources as well. We also have the Community Action Partnership.

So there are funds that come from Community Services block grant that could also go to supplement and make sure that we're leveraging those dollars so that people who are housing insecure can become secure. In addition to that, we have the continuum of care that I already spoke about.

And also what rounds us out is our workforce development board is also part of that Department. So the Workforce Innovation Act Dollars also come into play because it helps us bring those folks from out of the streets into a training and employment opportunity.

So on any given Monday, you will have the leaders of all of those units come together and and talk about the funding that we have access to and how that facilitates the building of those units. It's part of building real partnerships, leveraging those dollars and ultimately getting people in from out of the street.

So just to follow up, are those 6,000 units new units or units that have been readapted or that have just a combination? It is how long has have these units taken to build? Because that's been one of our most pressing question is how do we get this housing production move forward in a timely manner?

It takes time to build. As you know, you cannot build a project overnight. But those 6,000 units are an annual number that has been planned for the last several years. But it is an annual number that reflects the ability to leverage HHAP with other funding sources. Home key to and then last question.

Just for anybody, what is that 6,000 unit compared to other counties? Because I'm just going to think of Orange County and I would think that, and again, don't quote me, but they are probably building less than half, maybe 2,000 permanent supportive. So that seems like an astonishing number and I thank you for doing it.

But it is inclusive of all, a combination of several units in addition to the new builds.

Thank you.

Assembly Member Caloza.

Thank you so much, Chair Hart, for your leadership and for today's hearing. I appreciate the panelists and all of you bringing your expertise here.

I think that the more I learn about our homelessness systems, whether it's at the local level, the state or the federal level, we have so many increasing systems of bureaucracy, a lot of measures of accountability which we asked for on the state programs.

And also the amount of funding though I know the amount in question that we have in our budget currently is half than what it was last year. I did want to take a moment to appreciate Governor Newsom and this Administration.

I believe to be the First Administration, the first Governor to put state dollars towards homelessness because I don't believe we've ever seen that before. And I think that is really important and that's really critical.

I know our colleague who brought up HUD had to step out, but I think that's really important to note because I know that as he was reading the HUD report, this federal Administration, under the Trump Administration, has, as Ms. Quirk Silva pointed out, put a lot of really horrific limits around the use of our dollars, federal funding dollars on homelessness, capping the dollars that could be used towards permanent supportive housing at 30%.

And I know the Attorney General and the Governor are in the middle of all of that, trying to claw back our federal dollars.

And I know what that does to all of you is put a tremendous amount of pressure on the programs that you're managing, including hap, including the dollars that you are trying to piece together with a whole set of different accountability measures and having two dozen accountability measures.

You know, I think one of the things that I did appreciate about HHAP in this program, and I don't know if this was a change that was made when this Administration changed it over to HCD for these funds, was that I could actually go to your dashboard and, and to see pretty quickly where your dollars are, who your grantees are.

There's a lot of information there. So for colleagues of mine who really care about transparency, metrics, outcomes, I really encourage you to look on the HHAP dashboard online, because that's something that, at least from what I've seen with other dollars, especially at the federal level, you're not easily able to pull up.

So I think the state is actually doing a much at that transparency than other levels of government. I wanted to spend a little bit of time on the accountability measures because I know that's been raised.

And our budget chair also, I know, is wanting to talk about how quickly we can get those funds out, which I completely agree with. And so I wanted to echo, how can we really align some of these measures so that they're more streamlined across the board and that you're not having to do.

And you can correct me if I'm wrong, but how do the accountability measures with hap, how do they relate to the other accountability measures that you have to produce for the other streams of funding that you're having to. That you're. That you're. That you're receiving for homelessness?

Do you guys want to talk about that last one? Like how they braid? Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, I think it's a. I think it's actually, I've been taking a lot of notes as you all have been talking, and I think there are ways for us to continue to follow that North Star of Impact and make sure we keep the transparency of things, but, like, look for opportunities where we can, you know, I think we're two years in and we're, we're big believers in continuous improvement at hcd.

And so I think some of it will be looking for opportunities, Opportunities to adjust our processes. And, you know, one of the things that comes to mind for me that we've learned a lot over the past few years is how interim housing is tracked very differently than permanent housing.

And I promise I won't get too far in the weeds here. But just as my colleague from Oakland was sharing is we're noticing a lot of our grantees on the interim housing side. They might be good grantees in the sense they are obligating those funds.

They're programming those funds very quickly, but in order to stretch those dollars out, they're like planning the expenditure down to the last minute so it can give the appearance. What can give the appearance of slow spending is actually trying to meter out the funds to stretch them as far as possible.

And so those are things where it's like, those are interactions we're having with the grantees in real time and sort of when you Fund permanent housing, that housing is going to last for 55 years plus. But we don't say it's not expended until year 55. So there might be opportunities for us to kind of like adjust.

The way that we're looking at some of these metrics, I think is worth talking about, and I think there's a few other places where we can work together to try and try and add in some speed to that relationship.

But one of the things I wanted to make sure I said as well is in terms of the ways in which we're tracking. And I think that conversation has come up a lot today, both in terms of the point in time count, but also the HC system and the system performance measures is. We'd like. We.

Some of this is about communication, but where we're coming from is not to use those tools to stop funding, but to use those tools as an aid to work with our grantees to say, okay, it looks like you're having trouble on permanent housing, or it looks like you're having trouble with returns to homelessness.

And so get into a rhythm where that doesn't mean that we're saying, so you don't get funding, but that means, okay, how do we help you with these particular places where your metrics are falling short?

And so the way our disbursements work is if you accept technical assistance support from us, you can unlock those funds, even if your performance is Falling behind in certain metrics. And so that's something we know we need to do more communication about.

We hear from grantees all the time, zero, I can't get my second disbursement because my metrics are behind. And that's not, that's not the posture we want to be showing up with our grantees. So anyway, those are a few things I'll add on that point.

But I think my regional colleagues can talk more about the braiding of funding and how you all do that.

Yeah, I can, I can start. And I think this ties back to your question that we didn't answer around the 1500 person emergency housing vouchers, which I'll, which I'll try to tie in. I think one of the things is it's shifting sands, right.

If each round of HHAP as they have had, have had different eligible use categories that have changed over time, we have this accretion effect where things get layered on but other previous requirements don't get layered off. So the grants end up being very segmented. There's a structural segmentation and how they can be reported. They can't be.

There's no consolidated reporting. And there's also different requirements of how each can be used in the way those change. So I think I often talk about this a lot with our local electives when they say I see we got our HHAP this year, what are we going to do with it?

And I say keep funding the things we funded the previous round of HHAP with. Right. So a lot of the history of HHAP really connects with heap the first realm state funding sources that a lot of communities, cities and county partners use to stand up shelters and new programs. Right.

But with one time funding sources, it's to say great, what are we going to do with the navigation center next year? And then HHAP was created, so it became this really important, really needed gap filler for our community. I mentioned 300 grants.

Over those five we have 300 different projects, some with $3,000, some with 3 million that all need to be reported with the same level of rigor for all five rounds because of the way this kind of accretion process has happened.

So one of my recommendations is create a more consolidated reporting structure that rolls these into a more cohesive way in which the funds can be used. Right. To do more consolidated reporting in a lot of ways.

To your question, we have 60 plus funding sources in our community between city sources, state sources and federal sources over the course of a year that Alameda County is braiding in different projects that is a patchwork, the vast majority of which are one time funds.

So what we often have to do is make those funds work over time and to be candid, HAPP funds as one time funds. Much as we want to push them toward permanent housing uses, they're not the best uses for permanent housing dollars because that you need to know it's going to be there in year 15.

So we have to really make sure we're appropriately thinking about the system wide goals and helping HCD work with the local community to understand. Absolutely. We need to prioritize permanent housing. But the funding source parameters need to be oriented that way in order to make it useful. So an example of where we're struggling, 15,000 emergency housing vouchers.

You mentioned Section 8. They are a subset of 70,000 vouchers that were created under the Biden Administration during the pandemic that are section eight for folks experiencing homelessness. Essentially the state received 15,000 of those. That funding is being cut off.

Most of the housing authorities that received it and work with local continuums of care are losing it by sometime in 2026. So we're looking down the barrel to absorb those folks either on existing lists or take a selection of local sources to sort of backfill for those. So we are in a.

We are not just in a sort of fractured, different patchwork system.

Does that include the 15,000 plus the additional section 8 dropdown that I heard that was over 40,000 for California?

I'm not sure.

Is that the issue with the PSH restricted funding?

That's funding from the continuum of care that is also from HUD that if those restrictions that you mentioned, the 30% cap that would result in 27,000 people in addition to those EHVs that would be cut off from their assistance if not backfilled.

So we're saying 15,000 plus about 27,000 is a potential that we could see in 2026. Not receive any support from HUD that in fact could possibly have them not be able to afford their rent.

Would not be able to. Most of those to be to receive those are disabled permanent disabling conditions. And so they would be at risk within that same month falling back into homelessness.

I just want to add on a couple of things. One thing is that you know HHAP I think had it had an era where there was very, very little accountability and that was a huge problem.

And I think that we're maybe sometimes mentally still worried that that's where we are But I think HHAP has come a tremendous distance since then. And thanks to the leadership of the Legislature and HCD, now HHAP actually has swung a little bit the opposite direction.

Yeah.

I think Chair Hart was mentioning that spectrum of accountability and that I think it's time, as Jonathan was saying, that we look at consolidating across multiple years so that we're looking at the same performance measures for every year of HHAP funds. Right? So look backward and say, okay, can we standardize from HHAP 2 through 6?

We're going to be looking at system performance measures at the system wide level per county, and we're going to be looking at system performance measures for each program that receives HHAP funding.

And those are standard existing defined terms that we all in homelessness know and track already through the HMIS system that would be far more reliable than anything sort of innovative and new for each consecutive annual allocation of HUD. I think that's.

And I know, I know we're all bouncing off each other, but I think some of this is also that communication work and working together to try. Especially. As the HEIS system has evolved. I think we are beginning to be in a more stable place on the, on the system performance measure side.

And I just one piece I wanted to emphasize is I think as that HEIS reporting has improved as the, that system is stabilized, that also means that we can reduce duplicative reporting. So there are a lot of places where we were asking folks to answer questions through that, the information we're getting through that HMIS system into heis.

But then we're also manually asking them to report the same thing because there was an era where a lot of regions had not really, they hadn't gotten up to speed on their HMIS HCIS reporting. And so if we weren't asking them to also answer it manually, we were going to be having gaps in our data.

And I think we're entering an evolution of where partially again that transparency breeds better reporting and better participation. We can sort of reduce some of our manual reporting as well. And I think that that's one of the things we're trying to explore.

And already we've taken steps to like per statute, there are basically like two reports that we've now turned into the same report to all of our grantees to like reduce, reduce them having to double report. And so I think there's other opportunities like that as well.

Okay, thank you. I'm so sorry to take us down this rabbit hole.

No, no, you can tell you got a bunch of data nerds And I. Was like, I Ohh know.

I thought it was important to point out. I want to be respectful of the rest of my colleagues and their time. The last thing that I did just want to say to HCD specifically, and I'm happy to follow up with you and your team directly, is I did want to talk to you separately about the statewide encampment policies that we're requiring.

And I did also want to talk to h about our accountability measures for our own state agencies and whether or not we're asking our own agencies to do the same things that we're asking grantees to do, which I think is really important. But we can have that discussion offline. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.

Next up is Assemblymember Schultz and then Assemblymember Krell.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Thank you all very much for your presentation. I don't have any questions. I do have a very brief comment. Just want to begin by saying thank you, Mr. Chair, for bringing us together. Incredibly important topic today and Vice chair is no longer here.

But I would say I think this is important to all of us and I think we all have a connection to the issue. I don't think any one legislator is Beholden to this issue. I think we all are.

And especially today of all days, I am reminded that we as a state government have both a moral and a fiduciary obligation to play a role in tackling the homeless situation that we see in California.

So I wanted to just very quickly say I concur with all of my colleagues comments, especially those of Assembly Members Caloza and Quirk Silva. The three things I would just offer my takeaway from the hearing myself is looking at stability of funding.

When I look and I was in local government when HHAP really took off, I was with the city of Burbank. So during those pandemic years, we saw the influx of funding and we did some really great things at the local level with it. Obviously we have a challenging budget environment that we're going to have to navigate.

But the the thing that I take away is that the Legislature and the Administration have to come together and find a way to provide some continuous, stable funding, because the volatility in funding, I think, will be counterproductive to the goals. And we are seeing positive results.

We are seeing declines in our unsheltered, unhoused population, especially not limited to, but especially in Southern California. The second thing I would mention is I do believe we have to look at the stability of our accountability metrics. I think our emphasis moving forward should be on clarifying existing requirements and potentially entertaining a discussion about eliminating unnecessary ones.

I think that the more that we continue to add, it can be very counterproductive, especially for our local partners who are trying to keep up. And yet as we add more and more, they have to continually evolve and change their standard. And I think that that can lead to inefficiencies in the system. That's just one legislator's perspective.

The last thing I would just mention is I would personally be interested in looking at longer range planning as highlighted in the the report, and consolidating reporting requirements.

Removing duplicative reporting, monthly reporting sounds really great, but I, I, I do think to the point that was raised by several of our presenters, quarterly reporting might be a more efficient way to proceed. So with all that, just really appreciate all of you being here.

Thank you to all of my colleagues for your comments and of course thank you to Mr. Chair.

Thank you Assembly Member Schultz. That was a great summary. Assembly Member Carillo.

Thank you Mr. Chair, and thank you for your insightful information presentations and the hard work that you do every day. I just want to bring up a different way that homelessness looks like in the areas that I represent. Assemblyman Quirk Silva mentioned how vivid is homelessness when you walk in Sacramento.

Same thing when you walk in LA and other big urban areas. But homelessness looks different in high desert. You see some on the streets, on the sidewalks, but they go to the desert, they go deep into the desert and that's where homelessness happens.

So that's a very different way from what we see in urban areas to what we see in the high desert and the low desert, the Coachella Valley as well. To the point of sending Member Colossa the transparency and the information that is available through the website. Very helpful.

Also the HCD, very helpful in answering questions that we had. But my comment goes really to the report on page two of this report here and it's a question for me to understand better. On the last paragraph it reads, the HHAP funding is allocated to large cities with a population over 300,000.

I think that that puts a lot of our cities at a huge disadvantage. The cities that I represent, Palm Dale, Lancaster, Victorville, ..., Hesperia, none of them is over 300,000. When you combine them together in LA County, Palm Dale Lancaster goes over 750,000. But that does not qualify them individually.

And when we look at funds that were provided to the City of Los Angeles through the hub program, $143 million to LA, the city of LA, Los Angeles County, 85 million. So to your point on how homelessness is very statewide issue that we have, it looks to me like resources are not being spread adequately.

Because this here says that only those that are over $300,000 could qualify for that. That puts us in a big disadvantage. And I speak to LA County because that's what I represent in San Bernardino county, we get nothing from the county.

The $85 million that goes to the county, a lot of that still stays in the urban areas of La. And I say that because that's something that we experience time and time again. Some of you may be familiar with Metro age in LA. Millions of dollars to City of Palmdale. Lancaster contributed $15 million to that measure.

We got back less than a million dollars. So my question really is how can we address those cities that don't reach 300,000 residents? Because homelessness is there. It exists. It's not vivid. It's not like we see in urban areas. It's in the desert. Because that's what they do.

And they just don't get the resources that urban areas receive. And we don't get our taxes to the point where everybody pays taxes for that. We keep paying taxes in rural areas, but our populations don't benefit from what we pay. How can we fix that?

What I would say is the way that the program is structured now is all cities, Even those under 300,000 population, are eligible to apply. And I'm using Riverside county as the example to describe that the way we make decisions about how funding goes or where it goes is based on that data.

So it's not exclusive to the point in Time count. It also includes HMIs, the experience that our street outreach teams provide. But key to that effort is the participation in the Continuum of Care Discussions. So I would want to know for those cities that are not tapping into that, are they actively participating in those discussions?

Because at each Continuum of Care meeting, where those decisions are being made about where funding goes, are they showing up? Are they talking about their needs and why it is important to bring funds to address those issues? Because I would argue that there are areas where that isn't an issue.

And so by further imposing yet another requirement, you might be addressing a problem somewhere, but creating a problem.

And if I could just add one comment from the county's perspective, I think one, I really appreciate that the diversity you're pointing to, not just in how people experience homelessness, but the visibility or lack thereof between urban and Rural areas. To speak to the point around access for other cities.

We're much smaller than Los Angeles county by way of the number of cities and regions, but we have 14 cities and really five regions that we've broken out for the most part.

I think one of the strategies we're pursuing is how can we ensure half dollars are impacting regions proportional to need, including our city partners that might have smaller populations, without duplicating the Administration and paths pass through which would continue to pull more dollars to everyone cut contracts. Right.

So for our small cities, it actually is difficult in some ways to receive those small portions of the money, turn it around, have their own contracts do it. So we try to administer that essentially on their behalf and make sure we're reporting appropriately to all of our city partners. But it is a give and take.

I just, I raise that point to say how can we assure our regional city partners are. And the folks experiencing homelessness are accessing those resources without drawing so much of those resources into the spending of those resources by the dollars passing through so many hands? That's the tension, I think, in a system, it seems.

Our group conducted something called the California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness, Largest representative study of homelessness in 30 years. And we had the honor of studying homelessness not only in the urban areas, but in the rural areas. One point I would make is that homelessness is very present in rural areas, but it's actually very different.

It presents differently, it's found differently, and it often needs a different response. And one of the most important things about HHAP is that flexibility and that local governments often know best what their constituents need. And what will work in skid row in LA is very different than what will work in a rural area.

Both are important, but their needs are different. It's possible that their metrics may need to be a little bit different and how they spend their dollars is going to be different to get to the same goal that we all want, which is reducing homelessness.

Thank you for that Great question. That was really timely and that's why we all are here to contribute our unique perspectives around the state. Really want to thank the panelists for doing such a great job of presenting today and my colleagues for asking these wonderful questions. We kind of went full circle.

We started off with Dr. Kushel talking about the devastating impacts of HR1 and how challenging that's going to be to continue to make progress. She used the perfect analogy about HHAP funding being the emergency services Department and the housing services area.

Mr. Steenhausen set the context for the evolution of HHAP funding and how that has changed over time and the accountability has changed as well. And thank you for jumping in. To answer the question specifically about the point time count timing, that was really excellent.

Ms. Kirkeby talked about the need to invest in areas across the housing spectrum, not just the HHAP program, but making sure we prevent homelessness in the first place. And Ms. Hauswald made the point that there is no silver bullet to this solution. We need an all of the above strategy.

And also pointed out how important the HHAP funding is for the city of Oakland and all local governments for operations and services. That, you know, this is a unique source that is flexible, that allows the programmatic side of housing people to go forward.

And that point I think gets missed sometimes is that local governments have a variety of different funding sources. And having this funding to provide the glue and fill in the cracks in all the programs is really essential.

And the fact that it is a one time program that has been continued multiple years presents real planning challenges for local governments and that oftentimes to avoid a fiscal cliff, you try to spread those dollars out. And from our perspective that looks like slow. From your perspective, that looks like thoughtful and reasonable planning.

And I think that's exactly what we want to surface here today is the tension between the state looking down and saying, hey, do it faster and be more accountable and you saying we don't necessarily trust that you're going to be there next year.

And I think that's legitimate critique and that we all take that seriously too because our budgets are challenging and hard to balance on a year to year basis because of the inherent structural challenges that we have with state government financing. So that, that's a real thing that we have to address.

Mr. Russel, you focused on the problem of incoming unhoused people being a challenge, that we can show great progress on a year to year basis. But if we have more people becoming unhoused because of the supportive systems not working well, we are not making progress even though we're being successful.

And that's, that's a really hard thing to communicate to the public because that they would like to just see this problem solved. And we're really managing a really difficult situation, particularly with our Federal Government partners. And Ms. Marshall, thank you for purporting these wonderful success stories in Riverside and the progress that you're making.

And that's what we're all trying to do is make improvements. I did have one question, technical question that's kind of lingering out there. I don't understand how the HDIS system and the HMIS system work together. Do they. Are they creating information that is synced? Does this help the system? Are we doing two siloed reporting systems?

I feel like any of us could probably give would give you a slightly different version of this, but I'll just say that each COC has HMIS data on all of the homelessness clients.

And so to Dr. Kushel's point, like, sometimes adding more people to the system is a good thing as long as it's not because the homelessness count is going up.

But once we created the infrastructure and it's California Interagency Council on Homelessness that that manages that infrastructure for the state system is every three months the COCs export their data to us at the state into a larger database.

And then thanks to Assemblymember Gabriel and AB977, we also collect additional data through the local HMIS systems on state homelessness programs beyond the CoC traditional tracking.

Good. Well, thank you all for coming. This has been really helpful. And we still have the challenge of trying to figure out how to have accountability, have results, have predictable funding, and also not burden you with excessive administrative processes that are duplicative and overly detailed. And that's, that's what we're going to do in the next three months.

This is an informational hearing to help inform the larger conversation at the budget Committee. And hopefully because of your input, we're going to do a better job and really appreciate you being here. So thank you all.

Thank you.

Next we're going to go to public comment and we've got a microphone over here. Anybody who'd like to come up and speak. If you could limit your comments to a minute, that would be really helpful. Thank you.

Hi, Justin Garrett with the California State Association of Counties. Just really want to thank the Committee for this great discussion today on HAPP accountability. This program is essential component of our collective efforts and our recent success in reducing homelessness.

Counties are committed to using HHAP funding urgently, effectively and in a coordinated manner to meet the needs of our communities. And counties also welcome accountability.

You know, for example, we strongly advocated for some of the key elements in round five with the regional plans, the joint applications and you know, the MOUs on roles and responsibilities aligned with our at home plan. And so those are really important. But accountability must be aligned with the flexibility, resources and authority to meet those metrics.

And there's some challenges with how this is working for the HHAP program. The one year at a time approach to funding and uncertain funding levels leads to instability and makes it more difficult to sustain successful programs and prevents long term projects and commitments, which is really critical.

The lengthy review process, expanding requirements and added elements beyond what's in statute create delays in funding being distributed. And so it shouldn't take more than 20 months for funding to be authorized and then get out into our communities. And there's real world impacts to these challenges.

Stalled projects, uncertain program commitments to programs that are working and, you know, less funding for services and more for some of the administrative work.

And so just to talk about what we're advocating for related to HHAP, CSAC is advocating for ongoing funding of a billion dollars, including increasing the round seven from 500 million to a billion and related to round seven for it to be implemented in a manner that's simplified, that uses the applications that were just done and that allows for grantees to demonstrate progress towards meeting these new metrics, you know, so that this Fund doesn't get delayed in getting out and that we can meet the goal date of September 1st.

And so we look forward to the discussions this year. And thank you for the hearing today. Thank you,

Good morning Chair and Members. Purva Bhattacharjee with Housing California, thank you so much for focusing today's hearing on HAPP funds. HAPP is our state's most important and effective tool for addressing homelessness. Since 2023, HHAP has led to over 90,000 people being placed into permanent housing.

And this is a big reason why California has done so much better than the rest of the country on homelessness issues. Since round three, HAPP has had some of the strongest accountability measures. HAPP 5 added regional planning that ensures collaboration between cities, COCs and counties. This has been a significant factor in HAPP's strong outcomes this year.

HAPP dollars are more important than ever before. With federal cuts threatening to push at least 41,000 Californians back into homelessness in 2026, HAPP, which can Fund the rental assistance and operating subsidies, can play an important role in keeping Californians in their homes.

Lastly, making HAPP permanent and ongoing rather than one time would give the state more tools to ensure accountability by allowing HCD to use future funding as both carrot and stick options to drive better program performance are limited.

But when funding continues to come in one time trenches, we look forward to working with you to ensure that the HAPP program continues to improve outcomes for unhoused people in our communities statewide. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Hi Good morning, Sharon Rapport with the Corporation for Supportive Housing. As a national nonprofit working to advance evidence based policies, we strongly support the move toward accountability and care deeply about it. We care deeply about accountability at all levels of government to those experiencing or at risk of homelessness.

True accountability should be measured in outcomes and we have seen really positive outcomes in recent years. And we do think that's in large part thanks to HHAP. Some people mentioned some of those outcomes. Over 90,000 people getting housed and exiting homelessness for good over two and a half years.

But I think probably the most telling outcome is that for decades California had historic increases in homelessness every single year. And the last year that we have data shows really flat increases. Whereas nationally we saw an 18% increase in homelessness. We also saw the number of youth experiencing homelessness has decreased by 24%.

And we believe that's thanks to the set aside for youth and HHAP funding. And we know that we have a smaller unsheltered population or proportion of our population. We can only protect this progress with funding with HHAP funds, which includes rental assistance services, outreach, shelter operations. All of these things need ongoing funding.

Recent federal actions that you heard about today and reductions in HHAP funding at sample state level threatened the fragile progress we've made as more households are falling into homelessness every day than ever before. Blocking jurisdictions from HHAPfunding would only threaten the lives and welfare of those experiencing or at risk of homelessness. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Good morning. Susannah Parsons with All Home. I want to applaud the Legislature and the governor's leadership in investments in HHAP over the last six years. Those investments and increased accountability measures have led to important successes that you've heard about this morning.

Decreases in homelessness, decreases in youth homelessness, increasing the number of folks that are being connected to housing every year and more. I want to just emphasize a couple of points made by our speakers this morning. One, that the population of people becoming homeless every year is extremely dynamic.

Our systems are moving people into housing each year, more and more each year, but not keeping up with the number of new folks that are being pushed into homelessness. The rising cost of living, the federal policy changes and cuts that you've heard about only threaten to worsen that dynamic until we get more serious about prevention.

This dynamic will undermine our overall success in driving down homelessness and frustrate our ability to hold all actors in the system accountable. Finally, that consolidated reporting, standardized metrics and multi year appropriations of HAPP allow jurisdictions to resource programs more efficiently and allow the state to more effectively assess impact.

Thank you again for your leadership and look forward to the conversations.

Thank you for joining us today and your comments.

Hello, my name is Divya Shiv and I'm a senior policy advocate of behavioral health at the California Alliance of Child and Family Services, which represents over 200 CBOs that serve children, youth and families throughout the state. Addressing homelessness is important to us and our Members because of the relationship between homelessness and behavioral health.

In fact, almost half of people experiencing homelessness in California have complex behavioral health needs. These two issues are deeply intertwined and the solution is to make sure that people have both the housing and the service.

HHAP is therefore critical to address both behavioral health and homelessness in California, and it is imperative that the State Fund HHAP fully in an ongoing manner and avoid a funding gap by ensuring that round seven funding is distributed early in the 2026-2027 budget year.

In addition, as previous speakers mentioned, while accountability measures can be useful, it is also important that these HHAP accountability measures are not so overly burdensome that they prevent local communities from accessing these these funds. Thank you for your time. Thank you.

Good morning Mr. Chair. I'm Erin Evans. On behalf of Santa Clara County. The county supports HHAP funding in 26 and 27 fiscal year 26-27. Excuse me. We also welcome accountability measures including providing data as we share the goals of ending and preventing homelessness in our communities. We also invite. Excuse me.

We welcome the opportunity to provide suggestions on how these accountability measures can best be utilized by local governments. Hap is working. Mr. Chair, I appreciate your sort of wrap up of the panelists points and I think we too concur.

We would appreciate if the state would consider making this funding permanent to really help us with long term planning locally. Thank you.

Thank you and Welcome your suggestions about accountability measures. Thank you.

Good morning Mr. Chair Jean Hurst here today on behalf of the Urban Counties of California. I also want to express my gratitude for the hearing today and for highlighting two of our Member counties and the work that they're doing locally. Again, UCC also I concur with my county colleagues.

We support obviously the HHAP program, but I did want to underscore two things. First, the three points that Assemblymember Schultz had made, particularly about the frequency of reporting. I think that could be a change that would really be really assist our folks at the ground level. And I really appreciate you Mr.

Mr. Chair, wrapping up with a reminder that HR1 will have an impact on this population and has the potential to destabilize them further. So we want to make sure that those contextual aspects are also taken into consideration when we consider future funding for the HHAP program. Thanks very much.

Thanks so much for everybody's comments. Appreciate those all. And I just want to conclude our hearing by thanking Genevieve Morellis, our wonderful staff Member who did a fabulous job organizing this panel, running this Committee hearing and helping me in every way. So thank you so much. And we are adjourned.