Salwa Usmani, Dylan Wang & Paolo Felix-Ashman

Who is Impacted by Homelessness in California?

     Homelessness has evolved into a critical statewide emergency that California faces as one of its most severe ongoing problems. The crisis specifically affects California because it contains 187,000 unhoused people who represent 24% of the national total of 771,500 unhoused individuals, according to PPIC (Cremin, 2025). People without shelter experience harsher health conditions, dangerous situations, and ongoing instability because their income does not match the cost of housing. The majority of homeless people reside in large Continuums of Care (CoCs) across Los Angeles and San Francisco because these cities experience high housing expenses. The number of homeless people has grown in rural and suburban areas because these areas lack sufficient housing choices and services for their population. 

     This structure of governance establishes new barriers that result in increased damage to the affected communities. The State Auditor documented that 180,000 Californians became homeless during 2023 yet Cal ICH failed to monitor essential cost and outcome data from 2018 through 2021 (California State Auditor, 2024). The absence of proper evaluation allows ineffective programs to continue operating which forces homeless people to depend on systems that cannot prove their effectiveness. Professor Reyes demonstrates that homelessness affects low-income minority neighborhoods because wealthy communities use discriminatory zoning rules to prevent affordable housing development. The wealthy white communities in Orange County use zoning regulations and appeal processes to prevent affordable housing development, which forces Santa Ana to handle the front lines of overcrowding and rising rents, and forced evictions.

     The Mortgage Interest Deduction (MID) provides its greatest benefits to white homeowners who have large mortgages and itemize their deductions (Waters & Lautz, 2023). The groups that experience the most severe impact from homelessness include unsheltered people and low-income tenants and families with children and individuals with behavioral health needs and disadvantaged communities and renters who do not qualify for federal homeowner benefits. The combination of unfair governance systems and discriminatory land-use practices and housing policies that benefit wealthy homeowners results in homelessness among low-income Californians.

Who Are the Decision-Makers Regarding Homelessness in California?

     California’s homelessness policy depends on various decision-makers who determine how funds should be allocated. The California Legislature operates as the main authority that exercises power at the state level. The California Legislature dedicated billions of dollars to homelessness programs throughout the past few years, according to PPIC (Cremin, 2025). The Legislature decides how much funding to allocate and makes laws that define the rules for local housing development. The State Auditor demonstrated that insufficient monitoring systems prevent the successful implementation of these programs because Cal ICH failed to collect comparable cost and outcome data from 2018 to 2021 (California State Auditor, 2024). The governor along with executive departments creates administrative structures which direct the state's homelessness management efforts. The January budget of the governor includes a proposal to establish the California Housing and Homelessness Agency which would unite state homelessness programs under one agency (Cremin, 2025). However, the new agency needs authority to make people follow rules and share data, and gain local backing for successful execution.

     The primary responsibility for homelessness decision-making rests with local governments and CoCs, which operate at the local level. Service coordination, shelter site selection, and resource distribution fall under the responsibility of CoCs (Cremin, 2025). Local authorities face political exclusion, which affects their decision-making because Orange County cities use zoning regulations and court disputes to stop affordable housing construction (Reyes, 2024). The current governance system creates social inequalities between different areas while making it difficult for state housing requirements to achieve their goals. The RHNA process of SCAG requires cities to build housing, but Professor Reyes shows that affluent cities use legal battles to avoid fulfilling their required affordable housing requirements (Reyes, 2024).  State agencies work with civic organizations and voting citizens to establish the path for policy development. The Auditor makes sure that CalWORKs Housing Support operates at a low cost, yet multiple programs lack essential evaluation information (California State Auditor, 2024). The voters of California supported Proposition 1, which established new behavioral health housing programs (Cremin, 2025). Community organizations, according to Professor Reyes work to defend marginalized groups from discriminatory practices while advocating for fair housing strategies. 

What Has Been the Involvement of Civic Society?

     The crisis of homelessness is an economic and public health-driven problem, but its management is decisively shaped by the intense, often contradictory engagement of civic society. Non-profit organizations operate as the key provider of direct care, making available services that include shelters, supportive housing, and specialized health services (Garcia et al., 2024). Their role extends past simple service provision; their special competence in implementing complex, evidence-based interventions such as PSH is crucial to long-term stability for the "medically vulnerable" population of a community (Garcia et al., 2024). In this regard, this particular civic engagement strengthens governance through the delivery of established long-term stability and forcing the hand of government to innovate, for example, through programs like Medi-Cal, key to integrating healthcare and housing systems (Garcia et al., 2024). Moreover, their advocacy increases awareness for the needed policy shift toward a resolution of the structural, economic causes of the crisis, housing unaffordability-relatively than overemphasizing individual circumstances (Streeter, 2022). Certainly, effective responses to homelessness require an integrated approach inclusive of a coalition of public, private, and non-profit actors committed to shared goals; organizations like Continuums of Care (CoCs) play a central role in coordinating resource allocation across programs often lodged in silos (National Civic League, 2025). It is important for developing a network that is capable of delivering timely and effective help (National Civic League, 2025).

     On the other hand, civic involvement exerts a major drag on democracy and the carrying out of structural solutions. The "Not In My Backyard" opposition from certain affluent community groups forms a powerful counter-force. This kind of civic participation serves to undermine democracy through the leveraging of local political processes-hearings and lobbying, baffling supply-side solutions such as affordable housing and shelters, no matter how evidence-based (Streeter, 2022). NIMBYism relies heavily on exclusionary zoning rules and restrictive land use regulations. These, by restricting the supply of housing and increasing the soft costs of construction through delays, are among the main drivers of rising house prices and housing shortages (HUDUser Archives, 2018). When affordable housing projects have been stopped through NIMBY opposition, the policy outcome is captured by the current property interests. This increases inequality and deepens structural constraints, setting off deeper economic and racial segregations, according to Streeter (2022) and HUDUser Archives (2018).

How Has This Impacted Governance & Democracy?

     Finally, the intensive reliance on the non-profit sector, while improving service effectiveness, creates two structural challenges for sound governance. The first is that it generates an accountability deficit when the state uses reliance on CSOs as a reason to withdraw its own resources and avoid direct provision, leaving unelected private organizations to manage vast public funds and policy implementation. The second is that the heavy political and financial investment in the service side of the problem can divert political attention and resources away from the fundamental issue at hand: the structural unaffordability and supply constraints of housing. This deficit is compounded because the non-profit model often reinforces the narrative of homelessness as individual moral failure rather than systemic failure of the housing and social systems. By focusing resources on the management of the consequences—shelters and services—rather than the cause of inadequate supply of housing, this structural reliance permits the state to perpetually treat the symptom without facing the political difficulties of enacting supply-side reforms, such as challenging exclusionary zoning or making massive investments of capital in public housing. The crisis thus cannot be solved without putting large-scale supply-side reforms first that directly attack the root economic cause-reforms that civic society efforts through a service-oriented focus cannot attain.

What Has Been Negotiated? What Negotiation Approaches Have Been Used?

     California’s homelessness response over the last several years has shifted from local-only actions to state-led conditional bargains that tie funding and encampment policy to specific service and housing commitments. State leaders have negotiated with cities and counties by making continued financial support contingent on adopting ‘Housing First’ principles and demonstrable plans to offer shelter and housing before engaging in encampment removals. These conditional funding arrangements are the dominant negotiated instrument: California’s state government persuades jurisdictions to expand shelter capacity, and prioritize rapid placement into permanent housing rather than repeated sweeps.

     Negotiations also take place between local governments and community providers over program design. State guidance and law, such as the SB-1380’s Housing First mandate (formally establishes Housing First as the required foundation for all state-funded homelessness programs), require that projects funded with state dollars follow approaches that mitigate repeated homelessness, which would be financially redundant. This is especially important when it comes to removing encampments, where California cities would use the funding to remove the encampments but not set up new housing alternatives. These people remain homeless, and it just kicks the can down the road where they’ll eventually make new encampments and state funding is continually drained. As a result, negotiation is shifted away from whether to follow ‘Housing First’ and instead toward how to operationalize it locally. Coordinated entry, outreach strategies, and shelter conversion/construction become the main uses of these funds. 

     At the city-street level there are negotiated, person-to-person approaches: outreach teams negotiate with encampment residents about offers of shelter, storage for belongings, and services. Where offers are credible and capacity exists, these negotiations can resolve encampments with fewer confrontations and much lower costs, preventing repeated homelessness. These negotiation tactics are also essential for helping the homeless with accessing medical care, which is especially important considering over 80% of the California homeless population suffer from either substance abuse issues, physical disabilities or mental health problems. Getting them treatment greatly reduces repeated homelessness by giving opportunities to eventually reenter the labor force. The state’s more recent demand that jurisdictions offer shelter before clearing encampments effectively formalizes city-street level negotiation at policy scale: municipalities face the prospect of losing eligibility for state program funds if they clear without offering alternatives. 

     Negotiation approaches vary in style and leverage. The state mainly uses ‘carrot-and-stick’ contracting: sizable capital grants and technical assistance (carrots) paired with conditions and compliance expectations (sticks). The use of this contracting method incentivizes cities to follow their guidelines in hopes of potential reward, and is considerably more effective than using the funding solely for state-wide initiatives. Nonprofit providers negotiate contract terms (metrics, reimbursement rates), and community coalitions negotiate political compromises like agreeing to interim shelters in exchange for slower encampment removals.

Where Would Both Sides be if No Agreement is Reached?

     If no agreement is reached, the likely consequences diverge for each side. Without negotiated compliance with state conditions, cities risk losing access to major state funds they currently rely on for shelter and capital projects. This reduces the capacity to offer alternatives to street living, making encampment removals more difficult and ultimately less effective. Conversely, if state negotiators cannot secure city cooperation, the state’s ambitious spending may underperform. Beds and services can sit unused or be mismatched to local needs, leaving people unhoused and political pressure on both levels of government to take unilateral (and often costly) enforcement actions. The result for residents, if neither side successfully bargains toward shelter-oriented solutions, is more frequent sweeps without housing alternatives, increased health and safety risks, and intensified public backlash. 

     In short, California’s current equilibrium is the product of layered negotiations. Conditional State funding, local program design bargaining, provider-contract negotiations, and person-level outreach. Those negotiated settlements have pushed the system toward ‘Housing First' and stronger shelter offers, and failing to maintain these negotiated terms would likely worsen outcomes for people experiencing homelessness, and weaken the state’s ability to translate spending into permanent housing solutions.

​

Works Cited

Cremin, S. (n.d.). Homelessness hits record high in California, jumps dramatically in rest of Us. Public policy Institute of California . https://www.ppic.org/blog/homelessness-hits-record-high-in-california-jumps-dramatically-in-rest-of-us/

Alig, A. (2024, July 8). Homelessness in California The State Must Do More to Assess the Cost‑Effectiveness of Its Homelessness Programs. California State Auditor. https://www.auditor.ca.gov/reports/2023-102-1/

Reyes, A. (2024). Appealing for local control and spatial inequality: Reforming governance and development rationalities in Southern California. Journal of Planning Education and Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456x241288503

Waters, E., & Lautz, A. (n.d.). Is it time for Congress to reconsider the mortgage interest deduction?. Bipartisan Policy Center . https://bipartisanpolicy.org/explainer/is-it-time-for-congress-to-reconsider-the-mortgage-interest-deduction/

Community Solutions. (2023). Creating accountability for solving homelessness.

Garcia, L., et al. (2024). Involvement of Civic Society.

HUDUser Archives. (2018). Regulatory Barriers and Affordable Housing: Problems and Solutions. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

National Civic League. (2025). Communities Collaborating to Reduce Homelessness. National Civic Review.

Streeter, K. (2022). Involvement of Civic Society.

California Department of Housing and Community Development. (n.d.). Housing First (fact sheet) / Housing First guidance. https://www.hcd.ca.gov/grants-funding/active-funding/docs/Housing-First-Fact-Sheet.pdf and https://www.hcd.ca.gov/sites/default/files/docs/grants-and-funding/homekey/housing-first-guidance.pdf

Legislative Analyst’s Office. (2023, October 19). Housing and homelessness (Report). https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4808

Legislative Analyst’s Office. (2025, March 5). Oversight of encampment resolution funding. https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5007

Public Policy Institute of California. (2025, March 25). Homelessness hits record high in California, jumps dramatically in rest of U.S. https://www.ppic.org/blog/homelessness-hits-record-high-in-california-jumps-dramatically-in-rest-of-us/