Cities will be able to open emergency homeless shelters on vacant state land under a new executive order from Gov. Gavin Newsom that escalates his attempts to handle the growing crisis.
The order, which comes amid a surge in homelessness throughout the state and growing concern about the issue from residents, will require state agencies to identify by the end of this month empty lots near highways, fairgrounds, decommissioned hospitals and other spaces where cities, counties or nonprofits can provide space for people to live temporarily.
The news, coupled with a new budget proposal from the governor to spend more than $1 billion serving homeless people, comes as President Donald Trump berates Newsom and other California Democrats for failing to do enough to address the issue.
“The state of California is treating homelessness as a real emergency — because it is one,” Newsom said in a statement. “Californians are demanding that all levels of government — federal, state and local — do more to get people off the streets and into services — whether that’s housing, mental health services, substance abuse treatment or all of the above.”
“That’s why we’re using every tool in the toolbox — from proposing a massive new infusion of state dollars in the budget that goes directly to homeless individuals’ emergency housing and treatment programs, to building short-term emergency housing on vacant state-owned land,” he continued.
In the order, Newsom said the state also would distribute 100 travel trailers and modular tents to local partners, who will receive help from state crisis response teams if they agree to provide counseling and help transition people into permanent housing.
A map of “excess” state-owned property from the Department of General Services shows a number of Bay Area locations that could potentially be considered, from Santa Cruz and San Jose over to Hayward and San Lorenzo.
Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf told reporters she felt “tremendous excitement” about the announcement.
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“I was very excited to see the philosophy and experience of Oakland reflected in his recommendations,” Schaaf said, pointing out that the city has worked with Caltrans to open cabins for homeless people on the agency’s land.
San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, who spent months in tense negotiations with Caltrans to lease land for tiny homes for the homeless, said he hopes Newsom’s announcement will prompt the agency to be more collaborative.
“It’s a positive step,” Liccardo said. “What’s sometimes more valuable than the resources is the deadline and by that I mean big cities throughout the state have been scrambling to build various alternative kinds of housing on vacant land. And it’s often been a challenge to get other agencies to move at the speed that this crisis demands.”
Liccardo suggested that housing could even go on cloverleafs near freeways.
“It seems to me like there’s a lot of wasted land,” Liccardo said, “that we should absolutely be able to use.”
The budget, Newsom said, should include a new fund to both pay rent for people facing homelessness and build housing for formerly homeless people. Initially, the fund would be backed by $750 million from the general fund, but the governor will call on nonprofits and businesses to kick in additional money.
The fund would need to be approved by state lawmakers, which wouldn’t happen until later this spring, but the governor’s executive order to open up vacant land does not and is more immediate.
Still, the order relies heavily on local elected officials and other community leaders being willing to manage the emergency shelters and work to move people into more stable housing, which remains in short supply. And they will be tracked on their efforts. The executive order calls for a system to monitor how many people local jurisdictions help get into stable housing.
“We’re glad to see the governor interested in allocating significantly more dollars to addressing our homelessness crisis,” said David Low of Destination: Home, a San Jose-based nonprofit aimed at eliminating homelessness. “It’s going to be equally important that we look at how we can deploy those dollars in a way that supports our local strategies and will have the most impact possible.”
In the last year, the state moved to distribute $650 million in emergency homeless aid to cities and counties across the state, with the final payments going out this week. San Jose, which has seen homelessness spike 42 percent over the last few years to more than 6,000 residents, was set to receive nearly $24 million. Oakland and San Francisco, which also both saw major increases in homelessness, were allocated more than $19 million each.
Yet despite such efforts, according to data recently released by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, California has more than 151,000 homeless people, including more than half of the country’s unsheltered population — a 16 percent increase over last year.
In addition to the $750 million fund, the governor’s budget proposal calls for boosting Medi-Cal funding to address the healthcare needs of chronically homeless people, particularly where mental health struggles, addiction or other issues that could be addressed with healthcare have led people to the streets. The budget also calls for around $25 million — which would rise to about $364 million over six years — to fund a new pilot program to put people with mental illness into care facilities in communities rather than in big state hospitals.
The executive order and budget proposal surface as a number of lawmakers in Sacramento put forward their own ideas to tackle the state’s persistent housing and homelessness problems. Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) recently brought back a controversial proposal to force cities to build denser housing near transit stops and job centers. And Sen. Jim Beall (D-San Jose) reintroduced a bill that would create a new ongoing funding source for affordable housing.
U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) applauded Newsom on Wednesday for treating homelessness “as the all-hands-on-deck crisis that it is.”
“Homelessness will require additional measures from local, state, and the federal government,” Feinstein said in a statement. “I’m heartened that California is stepping up; I will continue to fight for additional tools at the national level as well.”
