Editor’s note: Sacramento Snapshot is a weekly series during the legislative session detailing what Orange County’s representatives in the Assembly and Senate are working on — from committee work to bill passages and more.
Legislators got a look last week at California’s programs to address homelessness, including how much money has been spent and who is being served.
Billed as a collaborative effort between four Assembly committees and multiple representatives of state departments and agencies, including the California Interagency Council on Homelessness, legislators convened a lengthy hearing last week to discuss budgetary investments and what tangible results are seen thus far.
A report from CAL ICH, the interagency contingent, found California spent about $9.6 billion from 2018-2021 on nearly three dozen homelessness-focused programs, serving more than 571,000 people. That includes adding more than 17,000 emergency shelter beds in the state (albeit, the report says most of these are from Project Roomkey, which converted hotel and motel rooms during the pandemic when shelters needed to close or reduce capacity) and will result in more than 58,700 units of affordable housing “in the coming years.”
Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, an Irvine Democrat who chairs the Accountability and Administrative Review Committee, part of last week’s joint hearing, said California has “made historic and enormous investments to address” the homelessness crisis.
But still, she noted, “there is a growing sense of frustration from our constituents, up and down the state, (that) we’re spending all this money, we’re writing all these really big checks, but the problem doesn’t look like it’s getting any better.”
Her solution? Concrete statewide goals and metrics, for shelter beds and affordable housing and other services, that can be easily and often tracked.
And greater accountability — for how local and county governments are utilizing…
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