San Mateo County sees paused state homelessness funding as positive move

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a pause on $1 billion in new spending on homelessness initiatives Thursday after determining plans from county, cities and homeless service providers were insufficient to adequately curb the number of residents living without stable housing.

Statewide, more than 161,000 people are currently homeless. The county’s One Day Homeless Count conducted in February found 1,092 people were sleeping on the street, in tents or in vehicles, a 20% increase from the previous count conducted in 2019. The number of those in shelters also grew, up to 716 from 611.

County officials set out to make experiencing homelessness in the county rare, brief and never chronic, an initiative dubbed functional zero, by the end of the year. Millions in funding has been needed to help achieve that goal, much of it coming from the state, philanthropic support and money from Measure K, a half-cent sales tax for county services.

Officials planned on submitting an application to receive some of the now paused funds but even without it, Callagy said the county is well off to achieve its goal with what has already been granted.

Supervisor David Canepa echoed Callagy’s positive tone, asserting the announcement will have “very minimal or zero effect on how we continue to do housing,” or the county’s mission of reaching function zero.

“It’s great to be ambitious. It’s great to want additional dollars and we should continue to fight for more dollars but I think the county has received a significant amount of these funds,” Canepa said. “Our county executive continues to say we’ll get to functional zero and I trust him on his creation and the way he sort of looks at it. The expectation is that we get to functional zero because we’ve made great progress in these previous rounds.”

Roughly $145 million have been granted to San Mateo County through Project Homekey, a state initiative aimed at transforming hotels and other sites into temporary or permanent housing. That initiative was born out of Project Roomkey, a COVID-19 inspired program meant to quickly house those without shelter in vacant hotels.

Those dollars have been used to purchase hotels that have now been renovated and occupied and to begin building a new 240-bed navigation center in Redwood City. Callagy noted he and his team successfully persuaded Newsom to allow funds to also be used on operational costs.

This pause, Callagy said, is another opportunity to continue pushing the state to expand where dollars can go, noting vouchers are a vital component of keeping seniors and low-income earners housed.

Callagy said he also hopes to show the governor that the county has adopted a successful model that can be adopted in other jurisdictions. As a member of a statewide homelessness task force, Callagy said more meetings will be held with the governor’s office in the near future.

“With what we have, we can create a model and show the governor it works for San Mateo County,” Callagy said. “If we create a model that can be replicated and duplicated by others that might inspire the governor to kick-start phase three of Homekey.”