California’s homelessness crisis — and possible solutions — explained

California is home to an estimated 181,399 unhoused residents, according to the latest data. That means 28% of the country’s entire homeless population lives in California. Of those, an estimated 123,423 are “unsheltered,” meaning they sleep outside, in tents, in cars or in other places not meant for human habitation. Nearly half of the country’s unsheltered homeless population resides in California, making the Golden State the epicenter of the crisis nationwide.

That data is from January 2023. Most California counties conducted another homeless census in January 2024, but not all of them have released their results yet. 
Those numbers should be taken with a grain of salt, as they’re gathered on a single night in January by volunteers to provide a snapshot of homelessness. Experts say this method likely underestimates the unsheltered population, and doesn’t capture the total number of people who fall into homelessness over the course of a year, which could be two or three times higher.

State numbers show that in 2023, more than 300,000 people accessed homeless services through local agencies. About 221,000 were people in adults-only households, and nearly 115,593 in families with kids. Nearly 100,000 of those who accessed services were in Los Angeles County. That number is dynamic, and much higher than the one-night snapshot, because someone may have been homeless at the start of the year, but housed by the end — or vice versa.

But it also excludes some individuals who never interacted with homeless providers, and survivors of domestic violence who are omitted for safety purposes, according to Ali Sutton, the state deputy secretary for homelessness.

Black people are disproportionately found on California’s streets — roughly 30% of homeless Californians are Black, according to HUD, compared with about 7% of the state’s population. Why? A legacy of racial discrimination in rental housing, higher rates of poverty among Black families, the highest incidence of rent burden, and overrepresentation in the state’s incarceration and child welfare systems all contribute.

And homeless Californians are getting older. Nearly half of all single homeless adults in California are 50 or older, according to a recent study from the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative. Many of them are ending up on the streets for the first time: 41% of older homeless adults became homeless for the first time after age 50. 

That poses challenges in providing aid, as many older homeless adults have chronic illness and disabling conditions that require special care. Being homeless is extremely bad for one’s health, and UCSF researchers found that homeless residents in their 50s and 60s more closely resemble people 20 years older. 

Homeless Californians also are more likely to have experienced domestic violence (22% according to state data on people who accessed homelessness services in 2023) or be disabled (48%). 

One of the more enduring myths about California’s homeless population is that the vast majority have traveled here from other states, seeking generous government assistance and weather more hospitable to living outdoors. It’s a baseless claim perpetuated by both sides of the aisle — Gov. Gavin Newsom has made it repeatedly.

A recent UCSF survey hailed as the most comprehensive analysis to date of the state’s homeless population found that 90% were last housed in California, while 75% live in the same county as where they lost their housing.

And data provided to the state by local agencies that manage homeless dollars shows that between 2021 and 2023, 96% of people who accessed homeless services did so in a single jurisdiction. Most of the people who moved went to neighboring counties, which the state says suggests “homelessness within California is not a problem of migration.”

Local surveys also indicate people living on the streets are typically from the surrounding neighborhood. Example: 71% of San Francisco’s homeless people were housed somewhere in the city when they lost housing as of 2022; only 4% came from out of state. And 35% have lived in San Francisco for 10 or more years. 

Many combined factors can lead to someone ending up on the street. But a recent UCSF study found that income loss was the No. 1 reason Californians end up homeless. Losing income was more prevalent than addiction, mental health struggles or anything else. 

In the six months before they became homeless, participants in that survey were making a median income of just $960 a month. And 70% of those surveyed said a monthly rental subsidy of just $300-$500 would have prevented them from becoming homeless. 

The problem, according to the UCSF study, is a yawning gap between people’s incomes and rent prices. Due to lack of production, California’s stock of “naturally occurring” affordable housing is dwindling, as shoddy, older apartments that used to house lower-income families are increasingly taken by higher-income tenants.

Government-subsidized housing has not filled the gap. California has just 24 affordable homes available for every 100 extremely low-income households, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

That’s partly because building enough low-income housing would be insanely expensive – think $8.1 billion a year for 12 years, according to the Corporation for Supportive Housing and the California Housing Partnership. 

Survivors of domestic violence are among those at high risk of homelessness. One California study found that women reporting an episode of domestic violence were four times more likely to suffer housing instability than other women.

Formerly incarcerated people — ineligible for many public housing programs and frequently a target of discrimination in the rental housing market — often take refuge in emergency shelters or on the streets. While comprehensive California data is lacking, one study by a criminal justice reform advocacy group found that people who have been in jail or prison are 10 times more likely to experience homelessness than the general public.Youth aging out of the foster care system also are more likely to be homeless. One study found 30% of former foster care children in the Midwest were homeless at least once before age 24. Lacking family support networks and often victims of childhood traumas, about 25% of California’s foster youth transitioning into adulthood live in precarious housing situations.

Though experts put the majority of the blame for homelessness on high housing costs, that’s not to say addiction and mental illness play no part. About one-third of people surveyed by UCSF researchers reported using drugs three or more times a week – mostly methamphetamines. And two-thirds reported experiencing mental health symptoms – including depression, anxiety or hallucinations – in the past 30 days.

In San Francisco, the proportion of unhoused people who reported using drugs and alcohol increased from 42% in 2019 to 52% in 2022. 

But experts caution against putting too much blame on mental illness or addiction when it comes to causing someone’s homelessness. They say many unhoused people start using drugs after they become homeless, either to cope with the grim realities of life on the street, or to help them stay awake at night so they won’t be attacked or robbed while they sleep. 

And they argue that plenty of low-income residents in other states struggle with drug addiction and debilitating psychological conditions. They simply manage to remain off the streets because the rent is cheaper.

Still, a 2019 Los Angeles Times investigation found two-thirds of L.A. County’s residents living on the streets suffer from a psychological or substance abuse disorder or both, far more than what’s been reported in official statistics.

Methamphetamine use is up across the West Coast, and is often to blame for some of the most visible episodes of homelessness seen on California streets. Unfortunately, physicians say meth addiction is confoundingly difficult to treat. While methadone is available to wean heroin addicts off of opioids, no such replacement medication exists for meth.

Worse still, meth can exacerbate existing mental illnesses. Addiction and psychological conditions are often inextricably intertwined, and present a complex case for outreach workers or (more often) law enforcement to confront. A disconcerting number of California board-and-care facilities, which have traditionally housed low-income patients with schizophrenia and other severe conditions, have shuttered in recent years.

As a result, many people in need of acute mental health care instead languish on the street. Sometimes they are too sick to know they need help. To combat that crisis, there has been a recent political push to force people into treatment. Newsom recently launched CARE Court, a program through which California courts can order people with schizophrenia and other serious mental illnesses to follow a treatment plan. He also signed into law a bill that makes it easier to get some people – including those with substance use disorders – into a conservatorship. 

Civil libertarians and disability rights groups argue that conservatorship —when a court-appointed official manages another person’s life, including medical decisions — should be used as sparingly as possible, as it risks violating civil liberties and is a hollow remedy given the severe shortage of actual treatment options. 

One of Newsom’s biggest recent homelessness initiatives sets aside special funds for homeless veterans. But how prevalent are vets in California’s homeless population?

Military veterans, at higher risk of mental illness and substance abuse issues, make up a disproportionate share of the country’s homeless population. Nearly 11,000 veterans experience homelessness in California on any given night, about 6% of the state’s total homeless population. Most vets experiencing homelessness are over age 50, and often have significant disabilities and medical conditions that are exacerbated by precarious housing situations. Military members who experienced an episode of sexual trauma during their service are at especially high risk.

While the number of vets living on the streets is down significantly from 2011, thanks in part to the Obama administration’s “housing first” approach targeting vets, it has plateaued in recent years – even increasing slightly last year. 

New homelessness initiatives continue to target this population. Newsom’s Proposition 1, narrowly approved by voters, promises to create 6,800 beds in mental health facilities, plus 4,350 new homes – 2,350 of which would be reserved for veterans. 

California has a patchwork of government-provided housing for people experiencing homelessness. While the nomenclature varies from city to city, the two most prevalent and important categories of housing are emergency shelters and permanent supportive housing.

Emergency Shelters: These are facilities that provide temporary shelter for people experiencing homelessness. At their most basic, they are a barracks-like arrangement of cots, and provide a bed and a meal. Typically they are operated by publicly funded nonprofit and religious organizations. Many shelters bar residents from staying with partners or pets, and are often viewed by homeless people as dangerous and dirty, even compared to sleeping on the streets. A KPCC investigation of Los Angeles area shelters found reports of rats, bedbugs, foul odors and harassment rampant at several shelters.

The COVID-19 pandemic popularized a new type of shelter: tiny homes. The small structures are generally less than 400 square feet and often lack a kitchen or bathroom – but they nevertheless allow for more privacy than traditional barracks-style shelters. They also often allow residents to bring their partners and pets. Tiny homes generally are meant to shelter people short-term while they wait for permanent housing. 

Overall the state has a major shortage of beds. Cities and counties across California reported in 2023 a little more than 71,131 beds in either an emergency shelter or transitional housing. The state would need more than twice that number to accommodate everyone.

Permanent Supportive Housing:

Homelessness experts agree that emergency shelters are mostly just a Band-Aid — permanent supportive housing is the long-term solution. Usually targeted at people who have been homeless for a long time and may have disabilities and other physical and mental health needs, this offers a highly subsidized apartment paired with support services including psychological counseling, substance abuse rehab and job training. 

Permanent supportive housing is a pillar of the “housing first” model of ending homelessness: Individuals don’t need to quit drugs or agree to participate in any program to get a permanent roof over their head. Studies show that once placed in permanent supportive housing, residents tend to stay off the streets and out of the hospital and jail, saving taxpayers considerable expense. 

One problem: Permanent supportive housing is really expensive to build. A recent project on Skid Row in Los Angeles cost nearly $600,000 per unit. The outrageous price tags aren’t just driven by land costs — a shortage of construction labor and prolonged city approval processes are also to blame. Some cities have recently begun buying and converting hotels to sidestep prohibitively high new construction costs, often paid for in part by state funding through Newsom’s Homekey program.

Despite efforts to move people into housing, the number of people living on the streets of California continues to climb. Experts say that’s because people are becoming newly homeless faster than local agencies can pull them off the streets. In Santa Clara County, for example, for every household that gets housing, another 1.7 become homeless. 

In response, states and local governments across the country (including California) are devoting a rising share of homelessness resources to prevention strategies. These include:

• Eviction protections and emergency rental assistance: A statewide eviction moratorium in response to the COVID pandemic banned landlords from kicking out tenants over missed rent payments. That was extended twice during 2021, in January and again in June, preventing an unknown number of displacements, while thousands still fell through the cracks or were evicted anyway. 
• Ongoing eviction counseling: Being evicted — forcibly removed from an apartment — can lead to devastating family housing instability. An eviction record also makes it exceedingly difficult to find rental housing. 
• Diversion and rapid re-housing: Quickly connecting individuals who just lost their home with a new one is one of the most cost effective ways of preventing long-term homelessness. In rapid re-housing programs, people teetering on the verge of homelessness or new to a shelter are often provided a security deposit, first month's rent (or more), and connected to a landlord with an immediate vacancy.

Is it legal for someone to sleep on the sidewalk or other public property?

A 2018 landmark federal court decision said yes — if there aren't shelter beds available. Allowed to stand by the Supreme Court in late 2019, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Martin vs City of Boise that ticketing, arresting or otherwise criminalizing people living outside violates constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment. Several California cities and counties have pushed back against that ruling, saying it hamstrings their efforts to clear homeless encampments that pose serious public health and safety risks.

In April, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in another case that asked the same question. A decision in City of Grants Pass, Oregon vs Johnson, expected shortly, could upend six years of legal protections for people who sleep outside in public places. 

In an effort to crack down on homeless camps, California cities including San Diego recently banned encampments in certain areas, such as near schools. But there appears to be little appetite for a statewide ban. For two years in a row, bills proposing such a ban have died early deaths.

Police departments and sheriffs still can enforce various "quality of life" ordinances, as well as bans against public defecation and drug use. Many advocates say issuing citations against these behaviors is counterproductive, because people experiencing homelessness have few resources to pay off city fines, and brief incarceration episodes only add to housing instability.

Experts question the effectiveness of encampment clearings, where people can lose what little belongings they still have and still not be anywhere closer to getting housed. Through a computer modeling study that did not undergo peer review, Boston researchers disbanding a homeless camp was more likely to drive up overdoses, hospitalizations and mortality. A national study conducted by Abt Associates and commissioned by the federal government found that clearings have very high price tags, but show little in the way of results.

The state allocated $24 billion for homelessness and housing in the last five fiscal years, and Newsom has implemented several new programs aimed at getting and keeping people off the streets.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Project Roomkey allowed cities and counties to use FEMA funds to shelter homeless residents in hotel rooms. Homekey, a program launched in 2020, lets cities and counties use state funds to buy hotels and other buildings and turn them into homeless housing. So far, that program has funded 15,319 homes in 250 projects. Funding for that program was tripled in 2021, jumping from $846 million to $2.75 billion.

The latest budget also pours $250 million into Newsom’s Encampment Resolution Funding Program, which helps cities and counties clear specific homeless encampments and provide housing or shelter for the camps’ residents. And Newsom threw his weight behind Proposition 1, a recently passed $6.4 billion bond that promises to fund 6,800 beds in facilities treating mental illness and addiction, plus 4,350 new homes for people who need mental health and addiction services. 

For the past several years, cities and counties also have received $1 billion per year to fight homelessness through the state’s Homeless Housing Assistance and Prevention Program. Newsom threatened to cut that funding this year, in an effort to plug major holes in the state’s budget. But cities, counties, nonprofits and the legislature pushed back, and the funds were reinstated. 

But the problem is continuing to get worse, despite increased state spending. That’s led some in the Legislature to ask: Where is all that money going?

A recent audit found the state is failing both to track its homelessness spending and to analyze the results of the programs that are supposed to be pulling Californians off the street. Three of the five state programs the auditor reviewed – including California’s main homelessness funding source – didn’t produce enough data to determine whether they are succeeding or not. 

Even before that scathing audit came out, “accountability” had become a buzzword in conversations about homelessness. Newsom keeps mentioning it as he demands cities make better use of the homelessness funds he gives them – in 2022 he even briefly withheld $1 billion because he said cities’ plans to spend that money weren’t ambitious enough.

Some U.S. cities, counties and states have made enviable progress in reducing homelessness, revealing possible solutions for California. 

Houston has reduced homelessness by more than half over the past decade, according to federal point-in-time data. What is Texas’ largest city doing differently? It pours all its homeless funding into long-term housing instead of shelters that offer a temporary fix. Housing also is cheaper in Houston. That’s partly because the city builds more of it – Houston has no zoning – coupled with a mayor who can push projects through – making it easier to build and harder to block housing. 

Houston also credits its success to strong collaboration. The city began by bringing together more than 100 agencies, the counties, nonprofit agencies, businesses and the federal HUD. Coalition members continually update a data dashboard that tracks homeless people as they interact with shelters and services. Federal funding also has been key to bringing thousands of new supportive housing units online: HUD nearly doubled its funding for Houston homelessness programs between 2008 and 2018, to $38.2 million.

Given the dire nature of California’s homelessness crisis, it should come as no surprise that people are floating some creative solutions.

Take for example, a proposal out of Oakland, where homelessness grew 47% from 2017 to 2019. City Council President Rebecca Kaplan floated a plan to house up to 1,000 homeless residents on a cruise ship in the city’s port. Though it was not an entirely novel idea — cruise ships offered emergency shelter during Hurricane Katrina — the Port of Oakland instantly dismissed the proposal as “untenable,” while Twitter users pointed out the irony of housing people in boats rather than in actual homes. 

Oakland several years ago came up with another controversial solution: move homeless residents out of street encampments and into metal structures more often used as tool sheds. The city’s “cabin communities” have improved in quality over the past few years, and the latest iteration, in West Oakland, includes onsite showers for residents. Supporters say they are warmer, safer, and more humane than sleeping in tents on cement. Detractors argue that the cramped structures are a poor substitute for permanent supportive housing or building affordable apartments.

Cities around the country have jumped on the tiny house craze, building villages of the pint-sized dwellings for homeless residents. 

A grassroots group out of San Diego wants to build a massive shelter to house the city’s homeless population called “Sunbreak Ranch.”

And, recognizing that they are nowhere close to building enough housing for everyone, cities increasingly are resorting to “sanctioned encampments.” In these camps, residents generally sleep in tents on a fenced-in, vacant lot. The lots usually have security, portable toilets and showers. San Diego recently opened two such sites that can serve about 500 people, and San Jose City Council has agreed to follow suit.