Tangela Babbitt, a senior project manager and consultant in Elk Grove who previously spent more than 11 years working for Sacramento County’s Department of Human Assistance, says she saw the problem from inside the safety net system. Her work included helping administer CalFresh, CalWORKs and Medi-Cal benefits for residents in crisis.

Babbitt points to the case of a Sacramento County mother facing eviction who spent two months calling 211 and the county for help. Each agency directed her back to the other, with neither able to clearly identify what assistance was available or who was responsible for guiding her through the process.

The woman, Babbitt said, was not simply lost in a bureaucratic gap. Rather, the system was structured in a way that allowed agencies to operate separately while assuming another office had the answer.

That concern has implications across California, including in Southern California and the Inland Empire, where rising rents, limited affordable housing and evictions continue to pressure low-income families.

A UC San Francisco study found that one-third of unhoused adults in California had previously held long-term leases and had been evicted, many for the first time. The research also found that an eviction order increases the likelihood of homelessness by more than 300%.

Those findings, Babbitt argues, show that California understands a major pathway into homelessness but has not built a coordinated prevention system capable of intervening before families lose housing.

The state has funded several rounds of homelessness prevention and response programs, including the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention program. But Babbitt says the state has not consistently required measurable outcome reporting tied to continued funding.

In other fields, she noted, organizations typically do not approve repeated rounds of funding without evidence that earlier phases worked. California, she argues, has distributed billions of dollars without creating a uniform statewide accountability system to measure results.

The California Interagency Council on Homelessness was created to help provide that oversight. In 2021, it was directed to gather statewide data on homelessness programs. But according to a state audit cited by Babbitt, the council produced one report and then largely faded from public view.

Babbitt said the result is a system that often measures activity rather than success. Dollars awarded, shelter beds funded and programs launched may show movement, but they do not answer the central question: whether people are still housed six months or a year later.

She emphasized that frontline workers are not responsible for the failure. Instead, she said the problem stems from decisions made at the policy and program-design level.

One proposal, Senate Bill 1160, would require county courts to report eviction outcomes by ZIP code. Babbitt called the bill an important step, but said better data will not be enough unless the state also changes how it governs funding and measures results.

She argues that California should require outcome reporting as a condition of ongoing homelessness prevention dollars, give the interagency council a more active oversight role, and measure success by what happens to people in crisis — not simply by how much money is distributed.

In the case of the Sacramento mother, Babbitt said the calls eventually stopped. She does not know whether the woman kept her home, entered a shelter or became homeless.

The larger problem, she said, is that California’s system did not require anyone to find out.

Original source: CalMatters

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The Democratic governor unveiled a blueprint for a camping ban for cities and counties to follow in announcing more than $3 billion in grants for facilities to treat homeless people and others who struggle with mental health and substance use disorders.

He used the occasion to exhort cities and counties once again to use the money and policy changes provided by the state to do their part to help eradicate the disturbing street conditions that have come to define much of California.

“No more excuses,” he said at a news conference, adding, “It is time to take back the streets. It’s time to take back the sidewalks. It’s time to take these encampments and provide alternatives.”

Newsom, a former mayor of San Francisco, made homelessness a priority upon taking office in 2019, tackling statewide a problem long the purview of mayors and local officials. He has pressed on local leaders to think bigger to battle what has become one of the most pressing public health and safety issues in California — and one sure to dog Newsom if he runs for national office.

He appears to be the first Democratic governor to offer a statewide blueprint for local encampment bans. California has more than 187,000 people in need of housing, a quarter of the U.S. homeless population.

Supreme Court allows crackdown

Last year the U.S. Supreme Court made it easier for officials to ban homeless people from camping outside. Many Democratic leaders welcomed the ruling though advocates for homeless people criticized the conservative court’s decision as cruel.

Newsom’s model ordinance includes prohibitions on “persistent camping” in one location and encampments blocking sidewalks. It asks cities and counties to provide notice and make every reasonable effort to identify and offer shelter before clearing an encampment.

Major cities have already started cracking down on encampments.

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie pledged to clean up city sidewalks while San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan has proposed arrests if a person refuses shelter three times. Both Democrat-led cities have ramped up the number of shelter beds available.

In Los Angeles, Democratic Mayor Karen Bass has made clearing encampments a priority but sagging tents, makeshift shelters and rusting RVs remain a common sight in nearly every neighborhood. An annual tally last year estimated that more than 45,000 homeless people were living in the city.

Critics question encampment bans

In a Los Angeles neighborhood Monday, Jay Joshua oversaw a small encampment of about half a dozen tents where he lives. Joshua said he cleans the area daily because of a school nearby. He said encampments can be a safe space for those living there.

“It helps certain people build their lives back,” he said.

Critics say punitive bans make it even harder for homeless people to find stable housing and employment.

“My immediate reaction was that this is a distraction from a state budget that isn’t likely to have funding for housing and homelessness,” said Alex Visotzky with the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

Organizations representing California’s cities and counties have balked at the implication that they are to blame, and say they need sustained funding.

“Clearing encampments may be the most visible part of this crisis, but without addressing the underlying root causes of homelessness, the cycle will only repeat itself,” said Carolyn Coleman, executive director and CEO of the League of California Cities.

She said that eight in 10 cities have policies to address encampments.

The California State Association of Counties said the state has not provided as much money to address homelessness as it says it has and that half of the money has gone to housing developers.

Voters want changes

Housing and homeless advocates have applauded Newsom for pushing cities and counties to build more housing, especially for the unhoused.

He also pushed a voter-approved measure last year for more treatment beds for homeless people with serious mental illnesses or substance abuse problems, so they don’t wind up back in jail or on the streets still in need.

But in spite of the money spent, California has had a hard time delivering visible results. A state audit last year found that the state spent $24 billion on more more than 30 homeless and housing programs between 2018 and 2023 to tackle homelessness, but lacked the data to fully understand what worked and what didn’t.

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The governor on Monday called on every local government in the state to adopt ordinances that restrict public camping “without delay.” He provided a hypothetical model ordinance that lays out exactly what he’d like to see banned: Camping in one place for more than three nights in a row, building semi-permanent structures such as make-shift shacks on public property, and blocking streets or sidewalks.

“We want to see this model ordinance across the state of California,” Newsom said during a virtual news conference Monday. “We want to see how quickly communities that have not adopted a local ordinance adopt it.”

On the other hand, some cities have gone too far — the governor cited Fremont’s brief attempt to make aiding and abetting a homeless encampment illegal — and need to “right size” their ordinances, Newsom said. 

Newsom warned that cities should not prohibit camping everywhere at all times if no shelter beds are available, and that they should “prioritize shelter and services.” He said cities should store belongings confiscated during encampment sweeps and give their owners a chance to claim them. He urged cities to give encampment residents a 48-hour warning before a sweep.

Though nothing about Newsom’s Monday missive would force cities to adopt this camping ordinance or any other, Newsom suggested that there could be financial consequences for those that fail to address encampments.

“I’m not interested anymore, period full stop, in funding failure,” he said, two days before he was scheduled to release an updated budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year. “I want to see real results, and you’ll see in my budget on Wednesday that we’re going to hold that line.”

Newsom coupled Monday’s announcement with an update on new funding that is supposed to help the sickest people on California’s streets — people with severe mental illnesses or struggling with addiction — come indoors. He said his office has awarded $3.3 billion to create more than 5,000 residential treatment beds and more than 21,800 out-patient treatment slots across California. That money comes from Proposition 1, a $6.4 billion bond that California voters approved in March that’s supposed to fund beds and mental health and addiction services.

Dr. Margot Kushel, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, called that news “awesome,” and said the state has done plenty of good things to help move people inside – such as turning hotels into homeless housing via its Homekey program. 

But she doesn’t see how Newsom’s model ordinance would address the core problem: a lack of housing and shelter. 

Unless a city has enough shelter beds or affordable housing to offer their entire homeless population — which is almost never the case — homeless Californians under Newsom’s ordinance would be forced to pack up their belongings and move at least 200 feet every three days.

The National Health Care for the Homeless Council has found that encampment sweeps can damage residents’ health, sever their connections to services and set them back on their path toward housing. 

“We know that disrupting people, making them move every two or three days, disrupting them from the outreach workers who are desperately trying to engage with them and build their trust — it just makes things worse,” Kushel said.

Even in cities that have shelter beds available, going to a shelter often requires people to abandon their pets or belongings, or to go without their partner. A CalMatters investigation earlier this year found some shelters throughout California are plagued by violence, poor conditions and little oversight. 

San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, who has proposed arresting homeless residents if they reject shelter three times over 18 months, applauded Newsom’s efforts.

“It’s great to have the Governor pushing alongside us to end the era of encampments,” he said in a statement. “To get the job done, we will need his leadership to ensure that every city provides its fair share of shelter options and every county does the same for mental health and addiction treatment beds.”

The League of California Cities and the Big City Mayors (a coalition of mayors from the state’s 13 largest cities) said there’s only so much local governments can do without more money.

“When it comes to addressing homelessness, the question is not how many cities have encampment ordinances, it is whether cities have the ongoing funding from the state to match the scale of the crisis,” Carolyn Coleman, executive director and CEO of the League of California Cities, said in an emailed statement. 

Her organization was pleased to hear about the $3.3 billion in Prop. 1 funds the governor has released, but that money can’t be used to implement the encampment ordinances Newsom is asking for, she said.

Newsom’s first budget draft, released in January, included no new money for the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention program – the main source of state homelessness funding for cities and counties. 

Newsom will negotiate with lawmakers before the legislature passes a final version of the budget this summer. On Monday, he said he wants any new money for homelessness to come with “new criteria” regarding encampments. 

Newsom’s call to ban certain homeless encampments is the latest salvo in his ongoing fight against street camping. The push started last summer, after the U.S. Supreme Court in Grants Pass v. Johnson ruled that cities can make it illegal to camp on all public property, even if there is nowhere else for people to go. That decision overturned six years of legal protections for homeless residents in California and other western states, where cities effectively had to make sure shelter was available before cracking down on camps. 

A month later, Newsom ordered state agencies to adopt policies to clear encampments on their property, and urged local governments to do the same. Since then, more than two dozen California cities and counties have passed new camping bans, resumed enforcing old bans or made existing ordinances more punitive. 

Approaches vary. Fresno bans camping, sitting or lying on all public property at any time. In San Diego, it’s illegal to camp on all public property — but only if shelter beds are available — and it’s always illegal to camp in city parks and near schools or shelters.

Many cities, even those that haven’t passed new encampment bans, also cite and arrest people for a myriad of other encampment-related offenses, such as trespassing, squatting, public urination or obstructing the public right-of-way.

Violations for camping-related offenses are typically misdemeanors handled with a citation or a brief trip to jail. Many aren’t prosecuted, and even those that are often don’t get very far — either because the person doesn’t show up for their court date, or the charges are dropped. 

A bill this year sought to ban cities from punishing people for sitting, laying or sleeping in public places. It was gutted early this legislative session after fierce opposition from cities and law enforcement agencies.

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