A decade-old shift in California drug policy may have done more than empty out state prisons — it may have quietly pushed thousands more people onto the streets, according to a new analysis that is likely to reignite debate over the state’s approach to crime, addiction and homelessness.
The report, released Thursday by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California, examined the long-term fallout from Proposition 47, the 2014 ballot measure that reclassified certain drug possession and low-level theft crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. While the measure achieved its stated goal of easing prison crowding, researchers found it also appears tied to a rise in unsheltered homelessness, a jump in overdoses, and a sharp decline in the number of people entering drug treatment programs.
According to the study, Proposition 47 likely contributed to roughly a 10% increase in street homelessness statewide between 2015 and 2019. Researchers also linked the measure to a 7% to 8% rise in drug use, based on overdose deaths and hospitalizations, and found that court-ordered treatment referrals dropped so significantly that overall enrollment in treatment programs fell by about 20%.
The findings land at a moment when public patience with California’s criminal justice reforms has clearly worn thin. Last November, voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 36, which rolled back parts of the 2014 law by reinstating tougher penalties for repeat drug and theft offenses. Backers of that measure argued it would curb both addiction and homelessness, though it included no new money for treatment programs or housing.
“Ever since Prop. 47 was passed in 2014, there’s been a lot of critics of that particular reform,” said Magnus Lofstrom, the PPIC report’s lead author. “It’s important to have a sense of what are those potential impacts.”
This marks the first study to draw a direct statistical connection between Proposition 47 and homelessness levels — a link certain to sharpen an already contentious argument. On one side are those who believe addiction is a root cause of homelessness and favor stricter enforcement against drug use and encampments. On the other are advocates who point to California’s soaring housing costs as the primary driver and argue that building more affordable housing, not expanding arrests, is the real solution.
Not everyone is convinced by the PPIC’s conclusions. Ron Hochbaum, a law professor at the University of the Pacific and director of the Buccola Family Homeless Advocacy Clinic, said the data may show a correlation but stops short of proving causation.
“I think it is more likely that two phenomena happened at the same time,” he said.
Hochbaum also noted the study didn’t account for how a felony drug conviction can itself trap people in homelessness — making it harder to find work or qualify for subsidized housing.
Meanwhile, counties across California that saw their homeless populations shrink this year credited increased investment in temporary and permanent housing, not stricter drug enforcement, CalMatters previously reported. The PPIC study backs that up in part: areas that added more permanent supportive housing units saw larger declines in homelessness following the pandemic, suggesting that recent state spending on housing has had a measurable impact.
Research has increasingly supported the “housing first” approach, which places people into stable housing without requiring sobriety or mental health treatment as a precondition. A 2023 study from the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative — the largest survey of unhoused Californians since the 1990s — found that while more than a third of respondents used drugs regularly, substance use was rarely the primary reason people became homeless. Most cited a loss of income as the trigger.
“We know that what drives rates of homelessness in communities are housing costs, but more specifically, the availability of housing for the lowest-income communities,” said Dr. Margot Kushel, the UCSF initiative’s director and lead author of that report.
Her study also found that one in five people who regularly used drugs or alcohol wanted treatment but could not access it. Kushel argues the state should be investing in expanding voluntary treatment options rather than funneling more people into the justice system, noting that the PPIC researchers did not track whether people who went through court-mandated treatment under Prop. 47 actually reduced their drug use.
For their part, the PPIC researchers were careful not to place the blame for California’s broader homelessness crisis entirely on the 2014 reform. They estimated that Proposition 47 contributed to roughly 7,000 additional Californians experiencing unsheltered homelessness — sleeping in tents, vehicles, parks or other places not meant for habitation — between 2015 and 2019. That accounts for about 20% of the total rise in unsheltered homelessness statewide during that period, according to federal housing data.
It remains unclear how much of that increase stems from rising drug use versus simply displacing people who previously might have been incarcerated. Lofstrom believes both factors are likely at play.
“Jails and prisons, they do serve as a source of shelter for people who are experiencing or are at risk of experiencing homelessness,” he said.
Kushel called that reality disturbing. “I think we can all agree that criminal legal systems were not designed to be places for people to live,” she said. “That’s not their role. That’s not what they’re meant for.”
To reach their conclusions, PPIC researchers compared California’s homelessness trends to those of similar states before and after Proposition 47 took effect, then examined whether counties with the steepest drops in drug arrests and jail populations also saw the largest spikes in homelessness and overdoses. They did.
The researchers cautioned that several factors could complicate their findings. Beginning in 2015, California and other states improved how they conducted annual homeless counts, which may have inflated apparent increases simply by counting more accurately. Rents in California also climbed far faster than in comparison states during the study period — a factor researchers tried to control for, though they acknowledged its true impact could be larger than their model suggests.
The study also found other forces at work. Areas that saw declines in residents receiving Social Security benefits tended to see local homelessness rise as well. And while counties with higher rents and tighter vacancy rates generally had more homelessness, changes in rent or vacancy levels over time didn’t directly correspond to changes in local homelessness rates.
Notably, researchers found that even though prison populations dropped sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic, that decline did not coincide with a rise in homelessness or drug use — likely, Kushel said, because state and federal governments simultaneously poured significant funding into emergency housing programs that kept many people off the streets.
Original source: CalMatters
