With CA funding cut, will I be living on the streets again?

By Shawn Pleasants, especially for CalMatters

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In June it will celebrating six years of residency. What has brought me here and kept me here is knowing that I am not on this journey alone.

People who have never lost their home think that housing is the end, but it’s actually the middle. Experience unemployment meant taking damage night after night. Having a roof over my head meant I could start healing.

And the support of a case manager—who helped me find an apartment, took my voucher, and helped me navigate my medical issues—meant I could move forward with my life in ways that completely prevented homelessness.

My story and those of my friends and fellow advocates who have experienced homelessness are proof that through proven solutions—connecting people to affordable housing with services like job training and behavioral health treatment—California can solve homelessness for each and every one of us.

If California dedicated 2.5% of its state budget to solutions to homelessness, we could solve the problem for all of us. Instead, despite being the fourth largest economy in the world, we spend lover 0.5% of the state budget about the reaction of the homeless.

California provides predictable, ongoing funding for public education, health care and transportation. Yet our homeless response sector must come to Sacramento every year to keep its doors open. With adequate ongoing funding, providers on the ground could plan and build infrastructure to bring more people home.

Even with unreliable funding, we made progress. While homelessness remained homeless in California last year, she grew by 18% in the rest of the country.

However, we are reducing disposable sources. There is no new funding in the governor’s proposed budget for the Homeless Housing Assistance and Prevention Program (HHAP), which has helped more than 100,000 Californians are moving out of homelessness of permanent residence in the last three years.

Funds from the program help local homeless response agencies across the country. Without funding, the shelters will be closed and key programs will end as suppliers cut staff. Eventually, someone will be left behind and may not survive to get a chance to move on.

In many cases, I almost lost my life through no fault of my own. I remember getting food poisoning and being in the hospital for days.

Ultimately, the cuts won’t save the state money. We’ll end up spending more putting people who live on the streets behind bars and in hospital beds.

The state funding problems come as federal funds are uncertain.

Last year, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) proposed changes that would make me and more than 27,000 Californians homeless again. For now, there is a court order preventing these new rules from entry into force. But the federal government can and will try putting them back in place.

That comes on top of the loss of 14,000 homes by the end of the year as federal emergency housing vouchers expire and Congress refuses to act. Together, HUD and voucher losses can mean a 22% increase in people sleeping rough on our streets.

People like me who have worked hard to thrive in supportive housing will be re-traumatized by housing insecurity because we can’t afford rent increases. Too many others will stay or return to the streets, cut off from family and friends, their past lives and the future we all hope to see.

I understand that this is another difficult budget year. However, funding for homelessness programs should be a priority as it supports the people who need it most.

People don’t get rich; they just get the basics of life: a roof, food and a chance to thrive again. I want to stay at home. I’m older now, and if I end up homeless again, I’m pretty sure I won’t get out.

Hundreds of thousands more people living on our streets and shelters want to go home.

Even more Californians are struggling to keep up with the cost of groceries, gas and rising rents. They need a safety net to catch them and keep them out of homelessness. Fully funding proven solutions can be a game changer. California is a place of opportunity based on compassion and caring. We can oppose the politics of cruelty.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.