Dangerous and ineffective: CalMatters investigates homeless shelters

All across California, temporary homeless shelters have become the foundation of taxpayer-funded efforts to get people off the street and back into housing.

Our new investigation found that shelters have instead turned into housing purgatory. They’re a mess — dangerous, chaotic and ultimately ineffective at finding people housing.

Shelters are usually off limits to anyone but staff and residents. To understand what’s happening inside them, investigative reporter Lauren Hepler obtained previously unreleased state performance data; reviewed thousands of police calls and incident reports; and interviewed more than 80 shelter residents and personnel.

We found that local and state agencies have spent at least $1 billion on shelters since 2018, more than doubling the number of emergency beds. As officials have ramped up encampment clearings, shelters have increasingly become central to the government response to homelessness. 

But more shelters does not equal more housing. We found that fewer than 1 in 4 people entering shelters have moved onto a permanent home. On top of that, internal records reveal allegations of shelter mismanagement, abuse and thousands of previously unreported deaths. 

• Catherine Moore, former shelter resident: “The shelter is a volunteer jail.”
• Dennis Culhane, leading policy expert: “It doesn’t work, and it never has.”
• Holly Herring, shelter worker who faced homelessness herself: “I know that it is safer and more dignified for me to sleep in my car than it is in a shelter.”

Read the full investigation here, or check out just the key takeaways. Let us know if you have a story about living or working in a shelter, and click here for resources on how to file a complaint against a shelter by CalMatters’ Byrhonda Lyons.

After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year to grant local governments more power to clear homeless encampments, dozens of California cities have passed measures banning public camping or updating existing ordinances to make them more punitive.

But to demonstrate the shortcomings of enforcing camping bans, some attorneys representing unhoused residents are keen to bring their cases before juries, writes CalMatters’ Marisa Kendall.

Samantha Pérez, an attorney with the Public Defender’s Office, is representing Linda Vazquez, a 52-year-old San Francisco resident who was handcuffed and cited for camping in October. This coming April, Pérez will argue in court that the city’s anti-camping rule is too vague to enforce, and that Vazquez’s case should be dismissed. It will mark a rare chance for a homeless person to publicly challenge their arrest in front of a judge.

Read more here.

Speaking of homelessness: On Monday Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled a new state website that shows what counties are doing to reduce homelessness, build more affordable housing and provide mental health services.

Aggregating data from local and state agencies, the site displays information such as the number of unsheltered people in a county, and how far along a county is in fulfilling its housing goals. Metrics shown in red indicate a county is failing at any of these criteria. 

Local officials have often been the target of Newsom’s frustration with the state’s growing homeless population.

• Newsom, at an online press event Monday: “Good things are happening at the local level, but not everywhere … this is calling balls and strikes and if we see that red, we’re going to call you out.”

As wetter wet periods and drier droughts become more common in the West, capturing underground water is key to supplying drinking water and irrigating crops across the state, reports CalMatters’ Alastair Bland. But despite a string of rainy winters, California’s groundwater remains depleted — raising concern among the state’s water managers.

Current levels of the state’s largest reservoirs are at more than 120% their historical average. Yet thousands of California wells have dried out. Most of these wells are in rural, low-income communities in the San Joaquin Valley.

Part of the reason is because crop growers overdraft groundwater supply. Millions of acre feet of water also escape every year because no statewide system of pumps and pipelines exist to capture it. Building the infrastructure to replenish aquifers — an underground layer of gravel or sediment that holds groundwater — also requires a lot of money and time.

Gov. Newsom’s administration has been pushing for more groundwater storage: In 2023, the governor issued a series of executive orders waiving environmental rules to facilitate groundwater replenishing. Still, water managers anticipate a 10% decline in California’s water supply by the 2040s.

Read more here.

Today is election day for two Republican-leaning, California legislative districts holding special primary elections.

Residents in Senate District 36, which includes coastal Orange County cities, are choosing their next state senator after former Republican Sen. Janet Nguyen was elected in November to the Orange County Board of Supervisors.

The Central Valley’s Assembly District 32, which encompasses parts of Kern and Tulare counties, is holding an election after U.S. Rep. Vince Fong successfully ran for Congress. His bid for the House occurred alongside his bid for reelection in the California Assembly. Fong emerged victorious in both races — winning a seat in the state Legislature that he no longer wanted and can’t legally occupy.

The top two candidates in each race will go on to face one other in the April 29 special general election.