A new report issued by the California State Auditor, Elaine M Howle, CPA, says the state’s approach to addressing homelessness has hampered the effectiveness of its efforts.
As directed by the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, the California State Auditor’s office conducted an audit of five local governments who play a key role in a Continuum of Care (CoC).
The auditor’s assessment of CoC agencies—groups of organizations, including local government agencies and homeless service providers, that receive funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to work toward ending homelessness within specified geographic areas—focused on best practices related to homeless services.
The report says the homeless council, Homeless Coordinating and Financing Council, has not adequately coordinated with other departments to fulfill its mission to combat homelessness.
With more than 151,000 Californians who experienced homelessness in 2019, the State has the largest homeless population in the nation, but its approach to addressing homelessness is disjointed.
It says that the council does not track homelessness spending by 9 different state agencies.
The 9 different agencies administered programs that provided homelessness funding of $13 billion among 41 different programs between fiscal years 2018 and 2020.
The conclusion of the report is that the lack of complete statewide data hinders the state’s ability to effectively combat homelessness.
The report also points out that the council has not finalized its action plan nor set expectations for continuums of care (CoCs) and has not provided guidance to them to combat homelessness.
Without proper guidance from the state, CoCs do not always employ best practices related to identifying, planning for, and providing services for those experiencing homelessness, according to the report.
Given the magnitude of the homelessness crisis in California and the amount of funding the state and federal governments commit to combatting it, the State needs to ensure that its system for addressing problems at both the CoC and the state level is coherent, consistent, and effective.
The state auditor’s office requested and received a list of member organizations and a list of the organizations that report data into its Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) from each of the five CoCs it reviewed: FresnoMadera CoC, Mendocino CoC, Riverside CoC, Santa Barbara CoC, and Santa Clara CoC.
A comparison of the two lists allowed the identification of member organizations at each CoC that do not report data into its HMIS.
It confirmed whether any of the organizations that were not in HMIS provide homeless services by either obtaining detailed information about the services that each member provided or by confirming with CoC staff whether a selection of these members provide homeless services.
Although HUD prohibits victim service providers, such as those providing services to victims of domestic violence, from reporting data into an HMIS, it identified several other types of service providers that are members of CoCs and do not report into their respective HMIS.
Our review of five CoCs—Fresno-Madera CoC, Mendocino CoC, Riverside CoC, Santa Barbara CoC, and Santa Clara CoC—found that they have not consistently complied with federal regulations or implemented best practices related to identifying those experiencing homelessness and planning to address those individuals’ needs.
FresnoMadera CoC explained that it believes its current processes are sufficient as it informs the CoC’s work and HUD has not provided explicit guidance in terms of how it wishes CoCs to conduct an annual gaps analysis.
Click here to read the full report.
Click to listen to the report by KMJ’s Liz Kern:
