The administration wants to steer more funding toward temporary shelters that require sobriety, while reducing support for permanent housing programs. That approach conflicts with California’s long-standing “housing first” model, which prioritizes getting people into stable housing without preconditions such as sobriety or participation in treatment.

A similar effort last year to redirect federal homelessness funding away from permanent housing was blocked by a federal judge. The administration is now trying again, and opponents have returned to court.

This week, the National Alliance to End Homelessness, Santa Clara County and other plaintiffs filed a legal challenge in federal court in Rhode Island, contesting the administration’s latest funding guidelines.

Santa Clara County Counsel Tony LoPresti criticized the renewed effort, saying in a statement that the administration was attempting once more to dismantle a key homelessness prevention program after a court had already stopped its previous attempt. He said the action disregards people who depend on the funding to remain housed.

At stake is more than $4 billion in federal homelessness funding nationwide. The National Alliance to End Homelessness estimates the proposed changes could cause California to lose nearly $238 million for permanent housing programs and could put close to 15,000 Californians at risk of returning to the streets.

The debate is especially significant in California, where cities and counties across Southern California and the Inland Empire continue to face high housing costs, visible encampments and growing pressure to expand shelter and housing options. Many local homelessness programs depend on a mix of federal, state and local dollars, and changes in federal priorities can affect what services agencies are able to provide.

Federal officials argue that the existing approach has not delivered results. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner said earlier this month that the “housing first” strategy failed by placing vulnerable people in housing without producing meaningful progress.

“This ideology promised to end homelessness,” Turner said in a statement. “Instead, billions of taxpayer dollars were spent while homelessness increased to record levels.”

Supporters of housing first policies argue that stable housing is the foundation for addressing mental illness, addiction, unemployment and other problems that can contribute to homelessness. Critics, including officials in the Trump administration, say federal money should place greater emphasis on sobriety and treatment requirements.

The court challenge will determine whether the administration can move forward with the new funding rules or whether California and other states will continue operating under the existing federal framework.

Original source: CalMatters

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SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — An employee opened fire Wednesday at a California rail yard serving Silicon Valley, killing eight people before ending his own life, authorities said.

The suspect was an employee of the Valley Transportation Authority, which provides bus, light rail and other transit services throughout Santa Clara County, the most populated county in the Bay Area, authorities said.

The attacker was identified as 57-year-old Sam Cassidy, according to two law enforcement officials. Investigators offered no immediate word on a possible motive.

The shooting took place around 6:30 a.m. at a light rail facility that includes a transit-control center, parking for trains and a maintenance yard.

Sheriff’s spokesman Deputy Russell Davis said the attack also resulted in “multiple major injuries.” He did not know the type of weapon used. He said the victims included VTA employees. Authorities did not release any of the victims’ names.

“These folks were heroes during COVID-19. The buses never stopped running, VTA didn’t stop running. They just kept at work, and now we’re really calling on them to be heroes a second time to survive such a terrible, terrible tragedy,” Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez.

It was not clear exactly where the shooting happened. VTA Chairman Glenn Hendricks said it took place in the rail yard but not in operations control center. Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen said it was his understanding the shooting happened inside the VTA building during a morning meeting.

Victims’ grief-stricken families sat huddled together, holding hands and crying, after learning they had lost a loved one, Rosen told reporters, describing the scene inside a county building.

“They’re just sitting and holding hands and crying,” Rosen said. “It’s terrible. It’s awful. It’s raw. People are learning they lost their husband, their son, their brother.” He said about 100 people were inside the family reunification center.

Police vehicles and orange crime-scene tape blocked off the area, and reporters were kept at a distance The rail yard is in the city’s administrative neighborhood, near the sheriff’s office and city and county offices.

Bomb squads were searching the rail complex after receiving information about possible explosive devices inside the building, Davis said.

Officials were also investigating a house fire that broke out shortly before the shooting, Davis said. Public records show Cassidy owned a two-story home where firefighters responded Wednesday morning. Fire crews found a fast-moving blaze after being notified by a passer-by. A neighboring house also caught fire, authorities said.

Cassidy had worked for the VTA since at least 2012, according to the public payroll and pension database known as Transparent California. His position from 2012 to 2014 was listed as a mechanic. After that, he was a substation maintainer, the records said.

VTA trains were already out on morning runs when the shooting occurred. Light rail service was to be suspended at noon and replaced with bus bridges, Hendricks told a news conference.

“It’s just very difficult for everyone to be able try to wrap their heads around and understand what has happened,” Hendricks said.

Outside the scene, Michael Hawkins told The Mercury News that he was waiting for his mother, Rochelle Hawkins, who had called him from a co-worker’s phone to assure him that she was safe.

When the shooting started, “she got down with the rest of her coworkers” and dropped her cellphone, Michael Hawkins told the newspaper. Rochelle Hawkins did not see the shooter, and she was not sure how close she had been to the attacker, her son said.

The bloodshed comes in a year that has seen a sharp increase in mass killings as the nation emerges from pandemic restrictions that closed many public places and kept people confined to their homes.

A database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University that tracks every mass killing over the last 15 years shows that the San Jose attack is the 15th mass killing so far in 2021, all of them shootings.

Eighty-six people have died in the shootings, compared with 106 for all of 2020. It is the sixth mass killing in a public place in 2021. The database defines mass killings as four people dead, not including the shooter, meaning the overall toll of gun violence is much higher when adding in smaller incidents.

White House deputy press secretary Karine Jeane-Pierre said the administration was monitoring the situation in San Jose. She reiterated President Joe Biden’s call for Congress to pass gun control measures.

“What’s clear, as the President has said, is that we are suffering from an epidemic of gun violence in this country, both in mass shootings and in the lives that are being taken in daily gun violence that doesn’t make national headlines,” she said.

San Jose, the 10th-largest city in the U.S. with more than a million people, is about 50 miles south of San Francisco in the heart of Silicon Valley.

In the city itself, the most recent mass shooting occurred in 2019 at a private home, according to The Mercury News. Police said it was a quadruple murder and suicide precipitated by family conflict.

Wednesday’s attack was the county’s second shooting in less than two years. A gunman killed three people before killing himself at a popular garlic festival in Gilroy in July 2019.

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