We’ll pay for your homeless programs, but only if you show us they’re working. That was Gov. Gavin Newsom’s message to cities across California, like Oceanside and Carlsbad, receiving homeless funding from the state.
Last week, we learned two North County cities, Oceanside and Carlsbad, received a $11.4 million grant to move homeless people camped along state Route 78 into shelter. But now new requirements will force the city to track spending or risk future state funding.
It’s part of a series of grants the state is handing out through a program called the Encampment Resolution Fund, first announced by Newsom in 2021.
This round of grants, totaling $192 million, are going to 20 programs in 17 communities statewide. Oceanside and Carlsbad are the only cities in San Diego County to receive the funding.
The two cities proposed a joint effort to invest in existing services and shelters in both cities, according to anapplication summary provided by Salvador Roman, Oceanside’s senior management analyst.
Oceanside has the second highest unsheltered homeless population in North County with 290 unsheltered homeless people, according to last year’s point-in-time count. Carlsbad had 60 unsheltered homeless people at the time of the count.
The money is expected to help 350 people along SR-78 and house about 196 of them in some type of shelter, according to a press release from the California Interagency Council on Homelessness, which is administering the funds.
Oceanside will be investing some of those funds in the Oceanside Navigation Center, Oceanside’s first homeless shelter that opened last year, as well as a new safe parking program that is expected to be up and running later this year.
In Carlsbad, city leaders will put some of the money in Catholic Charities’ La Posada de Guadalupe shelter, according to the application summary. La Posada is a historically men-only homeless shelter in Carlsbad that is looking to expand to serve women and children.
Both cities are also planning to invest in motel vouchers, case management services, mental health support, substance abuse education and counseling, transportation services, storage facilities for holding homeless individuals’ belongings, help to find permanent housing and more.
The joint proposal emphasizes the Housing First approach, which encourages more shelters and affordable housing, contending that a stable home is the first step to helping people recover from life on the streets and drug and mental health crises.
There’s More Accountability Attached
The state wants to see results, literally.
The state is requiring the cities to document exactly how the money is being used and what outcomes they see.
“As the state provides unprecedented resources like this, we also expect accountability,” Newsom said in a press release. “Local governments must ensure this funding is being utilized on the ground.”
He also said in a virtual press conference last Thursday that he would be assigning 22 state housing enforcement personnel to help cities and counties deliver on the projects they outlined in their proposals.
The reason for the scrutiny: Earlier this month, a state audit revealed that some cities, including San Diego, failed to fully keep track of revenue and spending of state homeless dollars and evaluate the outcomes of their homeless programs during three fiscal years between July 2020 and June 2023.
The audit recommended that state law should mandate reporting of the costs and outcomes of state homelessness programs, and state agencies should require state-funded homeless programs to provide that data for people entering, experiencing and exiting homelessness.
According to the audit, the state agency normally tasked with gathering that type of data, the California Interagency Council on Homelessness – which is the same agency that distributed the Encampment Resolution Funds – didn’t analyze any spending past 2021.
And some of the state-funded programs throughout the state had such little data that tracked their spending and outcomes, it’s impossible to tell if the programs were effective, according to the audit.
The audit also analyzed homelessness services specifically in San Jose and San Diego, finding that each city has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on homelessness in recent years, but neither city had proper mechanisms in place to effectively track all of their spending and where the money went.
During the online news conference last Thursday, Newsom said that any cities that don’t document results with the money will be ineligible for future grants.
The auditors said it was too soon to evaluate the effectiveness of the Encampment Resolution Fund, which has already awarded hundreds of millions of dollars to cities up and down California as part of its first few rounds of grants.
But according to a report by CalMatters, reports and interviews with earlier grant recipients reveal the program has had mixed results. Some cities have seen success in clearing out encampments and moving people into shelter and housing, but some cities that received funds did not.
Like San Jose, for example, which used grant funds to move 200 people off a river trail. Only 11 percent made it into permanent housing, 37 percent made it into a shelter and the rest are unaccounted for.
Some city leaders and service providers are also concerned the progress they made might start to reverse without more funding to keep up the work, CalMatters reported.
In Other News
- ICYMI: The city of Escondido, which owns the California Center for the Arts in Escondido, is considering searching for a new “cost-effective” manager for the arts center amid its ongoing structural deficit. (Voice of San Diego)
- The deal to allow UC San Diego Health to run Tri-City Medical Center is still not complete because of delays related to Tri-City’s debts and its deferred maintenance. (Union-Tribune)
- The County Sheriff’s Department wants to open a new sheriff’s station in North County, as well as a new substation in Ramona and a new or renovated jail in Vista. (Union-Tribune)
