This was supposed to be the year that California finally did something about its epidemic of homelessness. Then the pandemic hit, shuttering services and thrusting millions of Californians, many already precariously housed, into financial uncertainty.
The state’s crowded shelters, in short supply and usually considered safe ground for homeless people, suddenly posed a risk of transmission and had to be thinned out. The very conditions lambasted as California’s shameful legacy of neglect – people subsisting in makeshift shanties and battered tents in parks and alleys and freeway underpasses – emerged as a safer alternative.
But California still would need somewhere to house people considered most at risk: those who are older and have chronic health conditions. California’s “Project Roomkey” unfolded as the biggest public health experiment any state had undertaken to address the widening homelessness crisis. The state opened thousands of hotel rooms, which were lifesaving for some of those lucky enough to get inside. But they reached just a sliver of those in need. In some cases, hotel owners were unwilling to participate in Project Roomkey while, elsewhere, city and county leaders were hesitant or flat-out opposed.
In the meantime, the prolonged closure of shelters, churches and charities – along with the restaurants and retailers that offer unsheltered people access to electricity, water and food – has made life far more brutal for the tens of thousands of homeless people who weren’t selected for a room. In many counties, the life hacks and cobbled-together supports that homeless people rely on for survival have disintegrated. The squalid encampments have only gotten larger, fueled by covid-spurred prison and jail releases and an unprecedented economic shutdown that has landed scores more people on the streets.
KHN reporters Anna Maria Barry-Jester and Angela Hart spent months interviewing dozens of homeless people, activists and local officials in 12 counties. What results is a sobering narrative that reveals a new magnitude of hardship and indignity for California’s homeless – and no easy answers ahead.