If not now, when? Preventing and addressing homelessness in the eye of a pandemic

“Let’s call it what it is — a disgrace — that the richest state in the richest nation, succeeding across so many sectors, is failing to properly house, heal and humanely treat so many of its own people.”

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Gov. Newsom’s stated top priority was addressing homelessness in California. He devoted much of his February 2020 State of the State to the issue, outlining a five-point plan aiming to (1) “quickly and humanely” reduce street homelessness; (2) reform Medi-Cal to provide mental health treatment for people experiencing homelessness; (3) provide ongoing and stable funding to address homelessness as opposed to the one-time investments seen more recently; (4) support development of affordable housing; and (5) institute real accountability and consequences for local governments to address housing and homelessness in their jurisdictions. Indeed, homelessness has reached new levels of urgency in the state. The number of people sleeping in shelters, cars, or on the street is on the rise, an estimated 151,200 in the last official count. There is a corresponding rise in public pressure for government to act, with Californians naming homelessness as the most important issue for government to address.

Homelessness represents the harsh culmination of failures in our public institutions. Federal and state cuts to the social safety net have made it more difficult for people living in poverty to secure the resources necessary to remain stably housed. Barriers to health care, including tying health insurance to employment, have made poverty and poor health compounding problems for people already living with economic insecurity. And decades of exclusionary policy choices regarding the siting, development, condition, and stability of housing have restricted access to a stable home for millions of Californians. All of these problems have contributed to the homeless crisis we see today.

Homelessness is already a public health issue, but it is an even greater problem within a broader public health emergency. According to studies cited by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, people experiencing unsheltered homelessness already have high levels of morbidity and mortality. They already have poor access to food, habitable shelter, and health care. It is not hyperbole to say that by virtue of being unhoused, this population is among the most vulnerable to contracting and dying from complications related to COVID-19. State and local efforts to prevent and end homelessness have always been a matter of life and death, but these efforts have taken on new urgency if we are to prevent a new layer to the existing humanitarian crisis and the subsequent strain on local emergency and hospital systems.

Homelessness and the COVID-19 Response

The governor has made some moves to address the spread of COVID-19 among the unsheltered population. The governor is providing $150 million in emergency funding for local action, additional local authority for counties and municipalities to tailor solutions to homelessness, purchasing 1,309 travel trailers for temporary shelter, and leasing hotels and motels for temporary shelter. This is a good start, but considering that over 150,000 people are already unhoused, only a small percentage will obtain adequate shelter based on these steps.

It will require additional state intervention to ensure that local governments preserve the health and safety of individuals already unhoused during the pandemic, rather than using the state’s guidance as cover to forcibly remove people from encampments. In its Interim COVID-19 Guidance, the CDC cautions that removing people from encampments without securing individual housing units will “cause people to disperse throughout the community and break connections with service providers,” increasing the likelihood of community spread of the virus. Instead, the CDC advises local governments to ensure access to toilets and handwashing, and to establish a coordinated system of outreach and communication. And ideally, state and local governments act in concert to place as many people in individualized spaces (i.e., hotels and motels with vacant rooms).

People at Risk of Homelessness & the COVID-19 Response

There is a real need for political leadership to ensure foreclosures and evictions do not contribute to further increases in homelessness. With state and local orders to shelter-in-place and corresponding losses of income for huge numbers of Californians, we must keep people housed.

Yet to date the governor has not taken meaningful action to prevent people from being displaced and becoming at imminent risk of homelessness. On March 27, he issued an Executive Order, claiming that it was an “eviction moratorium,” but it is written in a manner that is so insufficient and ineffective that it is likely to result in as many evictions than if he had not acted at all. Among the many issues with the order, nothing stops a landlord from filing an eviction action regardless of whether the tenant has indicated that they cannot pay rent for a COVID-19 related reason. The order purports to give tenants who can prove lost income from a COVID-19 related reason an additional 60 days to file a responsive pleading, but there is no mechanism for tenants to assert the longer responsive pleading deadline. Tenants therefore still have to file a response within five days in order to avoid a default judgment and still have to appear in court notwithstanding state and local stay at home orders to defend against the eviction. There is no requirement in the executive order that landlords work with tenants to allow them to pay back rent. A true state-wide eviction moratorium is necessary to prevent a flood of displacement and homelessness during the state of emergency and immediately after it ceases.

Keeping the focus on preventing and ending homelessness

Long-term solutions to homelessness include preventing at-risk households from becoming homeless, and increasing the supply of affordable housing, including supportive housing, throughout the state. We can prevent homelessness with additional tenant protections, including a statewide eviction moratorium and financial relief for households impacted by the pandemic and, in general, access to legal information, representation, and rental assistance where appropriate. We must dramatically increase investments in deed-restricted housing available to people with extremely low incomes. We must also increase enforcement of state zoning laws that require municipalities to plan for and encourage development of affordable housing and necessary resources, like bridge housing or emergency shelters, which means fighting local opposition that is based on fear and discrimination.

In addition to investing in evidence-based short-term and long-term solutions, our local governments must move away from criminalization of homelessness. Ticketing, towing, arresting, and confiscating personal property such as lifesaving medication, identification, and important documents does nothing to lift people out of poverty and homelessness and create barriers to housing as well as access to benefits and health care.

We also must acknowledge that homelessness disproportionately impacts people on the basis of race and vulnerable populations that often experience housing discrimination or inaccessibility. For example, Black people make up nine percent (9%) of the population of Los Angeles County yet disproportionately make up more than one-third of the County’s population experiencing homelessness. Housed people at risk of homelessness due to severe rent burden are also disproportionately people of color, so a failure to act will exacerbate existing racial disparities in homelessness.

Long before COVID-19, California was in crisis. We require a paradigm shift in how we address homelessness and housing access more broadly. While we have made progress in recent years with this Legislature and governor, the pandemic has laid bare that even housed communities are teetering on a precipice.

Significantly greater effort is necessary to keep people housed in the coming months and years. Greater investments must be made to bring people into stable homes. We appreciate that the governor is taking homelessness seriously, but we need a holistic approach to not only to getting people housed but also to keeping them housed. Every Californian should have an affordable, safe, and stable home. 